crowd, smoking his cigarette, and then he took off his hat, looked anxiously about for a moment, and suddenly began shouting in a loud voice.
He stood there, shouting and trying to tell the story of what had happened in a loud voice and with the uncertain air of one trying to remember a dream. He did that for a moment and then after running a little way along the pavement stopped and began his story again. It was only after he had gone thus, in short rushes, back along the street to the house and up the rickety stairway to where the woman was lying—the crowd following curiously at his heels—that a policeman came up and arrested him.
He seemed excited at first, but was quiet afterwards; and he laughed at the notion of insanity when the lawyer who had been retained for him tried to set up the plea in court.
As I have said, his action during his trial was confusing to us all, as he seemed wholly uninterested in the murder and in his own fate. After the confession of the man who had fired the shot he seemed to feel no resentment toward him either. There was something he wanted, having nothing to do with what had happened.
There he had been, you see, before he found the woman, wandering about in the world, digging himself deeper and deeper into the deep wells he talked about in his poetry, building the wall between himself and all us others constantly higher and higher.
He knew what he was doing, but he could not stop. That's what he kept talking about, pleading with people about. The man had come up out of the sea of doubt, had grasped for a time the hand of the woman, and with her hand in his had floated for a time upon the surface of life, but now he felt himself again sinking down into the sea.
His talking and talking, stopping people in the street and talking, going into people's houses and talking, was I presume but an effort he was always afterwards making not to sink back for ever into the sea; it was the struggle of a drowning man I dare say.
At any rate I have told you the man's story, have been compelled to try to tell you his story. There was a kind of power in him, and the power has been exerted over me as it was exerted over the woman from Kansas and the unknown hunchback girl kneeling on the floor in the dust and peering through a keyhole.
