is hands and
feet.

On summer afternoons, when she had been married many
years and when her son George was a boy of twelve or
fourteen, Elizabeth Willard sometimes went up the worn
steps to Doctor Reefy's office. Already the woman's
naturally tall figure had begun to droop and to drag
itself listlessly about. Ostensibly she went to see the
doctor because of her health, but on the half dozen
occasions when she had been to see him the outcome of
the visits did not primarily concern her health. She
and the doctor talked of that but they talked most of
her life, of their two lives and of the ideas that had
come to them as they lived their lives in Winesburg.

In the big empty office the man and the woman sat
looking at each other and they were a good deal alike.
Their bodies were different, as were also the color of
their eyes, the length of their noses, and the
circumstances of their existence, but something inside
them meant the same thing, wanted the same release,
would have left the same impression on the memory of an
onlooker. Later, and when he grew older and married a
young wife, the doctor often talked to her of the hours
spent with the sick woman and expressed a good many
things he had been unable to express to Elizabeth. He
was almost a poet in his old age and his notion of what
happened took a poetic turn. "I had come to the time in
my life when prayer became necessary and so I invented
gods and prayed to them," he said. "I did not say my
prayers in words nor did I kneel down but sat perfectly
still in my chair. In the late afternoon when it was
hot and quiet on Main Street or in the winter when the
days were gloomy, the gods came into the office and I
thought no one knew about them. Then I found that this
woman Elizabeth knew, that she worshipped also the same
gods. I have a notion that she came to the office
because she thought the gods would be there but she was
happy to find herself not alone just the same. It was
an experience that cannot be explained, although I
suppose it is always happening to men and women in all
sorts of places."

* * *

On the summer afternoons when Elizabeth and the doctor
sat in the office and talked of their two lives they
talked of other lives also. Sometimes the doctor made
philosophic epigrams. Then he chuckled with amusement.
Now and then after a period of silence, a word was said
or a hint given that strangely illuminated the life of
the s