Wash Williams spat forth a succession of vile oaths.  “Yes, she is dead,” he agreed.  “She is dead as all women are dead.  She is a living-dead thing, walking in the sight of men and making the earth foul by her presence.”  Staring into the boy’s eyes, the man became purple with rage.  “Don’t have fool notions in your head,” he commanded.  “My wife, she is dead; yes, surely.  I tell you, all women are dead, my mother, your mother, that tall dark woman who works in the millinery store and with whom I saw you walking about yesterday—­all of them, they are all dead.  I tell you there is something rotten about them.  I was married, sure.  My wife was dead before she married me, she was a foul thing come out a woman more foul.  She was a thing sent to make life unbearable to me.  I was a fool, do you see, as you are now, and so I married this woman.  I would like to see men a little begin to understand women.  They are sent to prevent men making the world worth while.  It is a trick in Nature.  Ugh!  They are creeping, crawling, squirming things, they with their soft hands and their blue eyes.  The sight of a woman sickens me.  Why I don’t kill every woman I see I don’t know.”

Half frightened and yet fascinated by the light burning in the eyes of the hideous old man, George Willard listened, afire with curiosity.  Darkness came on and he leaned forward trying to see the face of the man who talked.  When, in the gathering darkness, he could no longer see the purple, bloated face and the burning eyes, a curious fancy came to him.  Wash Williams talked in low even tones that made his words seem the more terrible.  In the darkness the young reporter found himself imagining that he sat on the railroad ties beside a comely young man with black hair and black shining eyes.  There was something almost beautiful in the voice of Wash Williams, the hideous, telling his story of hate.

The telegraph operator of Winesburg, sitting in the darkness on the railroad ties, had become a poet.  Hatred had raised him to that elevation.  “It is because I saw you kissing the lips of that Belle Carpenter that I tell you my story,” he said.  “What happened to me may next happen to you.  I want to put you on your guard.  Already you may be having dreams in your head.  I want to destroy them.”

Wash Williams began telling the story of his married life with the tall blonde girl with the blue eyes whom he had met when he was a young operator at Dayton, Ohio.  Here and there his story was touched with moments of beauty intermingled with strings of vile curses.  The operator had married the daughter of a dentist who was the youngest of three sisters.  On his marriage day, because of his ability, he was promoted to a position as dispatcher at an increased salary and sent to an office at Columbus, Ohio.  There he settled down with his young wife and began buying a house on the installment plan.