d window.]

MR. X. Are you afraid of thunder?

MR. Y. One should be careful.

[They sit again at table.]

MR. X. You are a queer fellow. You struck here like a bomb two weeks
ago, and you introduced yourself as a Swedish-American who travels,
collecting insects for a little museum.

MR. Y. Oh, don't bother about me.

MR. X. That's what you always say when I get tired of talking about
myself and want to devote a little attention to you. Perhaps it was
because you let me talk so much about myself that you won my sympathy.
We were soon old acquaintances; there were no corners about you for me
to knock against, no needles or pins to prick. There was something
so mellow about your whole personality; you were so considerate, a
characteristic which only the most cultivated can display; you were
never noisy when you came home late, never made any disturbance when
you got up in the morning; you overlooked trifles, drew aside when ideas
became conflicting; in a word, you were the perfect companion; but you
were altogether too submissive, too negative, too quiet, not to have me
reflect about it in the course of time. And you are fearful and timid;
you look as if you led a double life. Do you know, as you sit there
before the mirror and I see your back, it's as if I were looking at
another person. [Mr. Y. turns and looks in the mirror.] Oh, you can't
see your back in the mirror. Front view, you look like a frank, fearless
man who goes to meet his fate with open heart, but back view,--well, I
don't wish to be discourteous, but you look as if you carried a burden,
as if you were shrinking from a lash; and when I see your red suspenders
across your white shirt--it looks like--like a big brand, a trade mark
on a packing box.

MR. Y. [Rising]. I believe I will suffocate--if the shower doesn't break
and come soon.

MR. X. It will come soon. Just be quiet. And the back of your neck, too,
it looks as if there were another head on it, with the face of another
type than you. You are so terribly narrow between the ears that I
sometimes wonder if you don't belong to another race. [There is flash of
lightning.] That one looked as if it struck at the sheriff's.

MR. Y. [Worried]. At the--sh-sheriff's!

MR. X. Yes, but it only looked so. But this thunder won't amount to
anything. Sit down now and let's have a talk, as you are off again
tomorrow.--It's queer that, although I became intimate with you so soon,
you are one of those peopl