Without realizing what was happening, Alice was trying feebly at first, but with growing determination, to get a new hold upon life.  Beside the drug clerk she walked in silence, but sometimes in the darkness as they went stolidly along she put out her hand and touched softly the folds of his coat.  When he left her at the gate before her mother’s house she did not go indoors, but stood for a moment by the door.  She wanted to call to the drug clerk, to ask him to sit with her in the darkness on the porch before the house, but was afraid he would not understand.  “It is not him that I want,” she told herself; “I want to avoid being so much alone.  If I am not careful I will grow unaccustomed to being with people.”

* * *

During the early fall of her twenty-seventh year a passionate restlessness took possession of Alice.  She could not bear to be in the company of the drug clerk, and when, in the evening, he came to walk with her she sent him away.  Her mind became intensely active and when, weary from the long hours of standing behind the counter in the store, she went home and crawled into bed, she could not sleep.  With staring eyes she looked into the darkness.  Her imagination, like a child awakened from long sleep, played about the room.  Deep within her there was something that would not be cheated by phantasies and that demanded some definite answer from life.

Alice took a pillow into her arms and held it tightly against her breasts.  Getting out of bed, she arranged a blanket so that in the darkness it looked like a form lying between the sheets and, kneeling beside the bed, she caressed it, whispering words over and over, like a refrain.  “Why doesn’t something happen?  Why am I left here alone?” she muttered.  Although she sometimes thought of Ned Currie, she no longer depended on him.  Her desire had grown vague.  She did not want Ned Currie or any other man.  She wanted to be loved, to have something answer the call that was growing louder and louder within her.

And then one night when it rained Alice had an adventure.  It frightened and confused her.  She had come home from the store at nine and found the house empty.  Bush Milton had gone off to town and her mother to the house of a neighbor.  Alice went upstairs to her room and undressed in the darkness.  For a moment she stood by the window hearing the rain beat against the glass and then a strange desire took possession of her.  Without stopping to think of what she intended to do, she ran downstairs through the dark house and out into the rain.  As she stood on the little grass plot before the house and felt the cold rain on her body a mad desire to run naked through the streets took possession of her.

She thought that the rain would have some creative and wonderful effect on her body.  Not for years had she felt so full of youth and courage.  She wanted to leap and run, to cry out, to find some other lonely human and embrace him.  On the brick sidewalk before the house a man stumbled homeward.  Alice started to run.  A wild, desperate mood took possession of her.  “What do I care who it is.  He is alone, and I will go to him,” she thought; and then without stopping to consider the possible result of her madness, called softly.  “Wait!” she cried.  “Don’t go away.  Whoever you are, you must wait.”