The train swept round the corner out of sight, leaving a streaming
cloud of smoke and sparks behind it. It went out with a kind of rush
of delight, glad to be off, and conscious of its passengers' pleasure.
'Odd.' This was the word that filled his mind as he walked home.
'Perhaps--our minds are in such intimate sympathy together--perhaps he
was thinking of--of that kind of thing--er--and some of his thoughts
got into my own imagination. Odd, though, very, _very_ odd.'
He had once read somewhere in one of his new-fangled books that
'thoughts are things.' It had made a great impression on him. He had
read about Marconi too. Later he made a more thorough study of this
'thinking business.'
And soon afterwards, having put his chief's papers in order at the
flat, he went home to Mrs. Minks and the children with this other
thought--that he had possibly been overworking himself, and that it
was a good thing he was going to have a holiday by the sea.
He liked to picture himself as an original thinker, not afraid of new
ideas, but in reality he preferred his world sober, ordinary, logical.
It was merely big-sounding names he liked. And this little incident
was somewhere out of joint. It was--odd.
Success that poisons many a baser mind
May lift---
But the sonnet had never known completion.
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