the grand-stand,
George Willard sat beside Helen White and felt very
keenly his own insignificance in the scheme of
existence. Now that he had come out of town where the
presence of the people stirring about, busy with a
multitude of affairs, had been so irritating, the
irritation was all gone. The presence of Helen renewed
and refreshed him. It was as though her woman's hand
was assisting him to make some minute readjustment of
the machinery of his life. He began to think of the
people in the town where he had always lived with
something like reverence. He had reverence for Helen.
He wanted to love and to be loved by her, but he did
not want at the moment to be confused by her womanhood.
In the darkness he took hold of her hand and when she
crept close put a hand on her shoulder. A wind began to
blow and he shivered. With all his strength he tried to
hold and to understand the mood that had come upon him.
In that high place in the darkness the two oddly
sensitive human atoms held each other tightly and
waited. In the mind of each was the same thought. "I
have come to this lonely place and here is this other,"
was the substance of the thing felt.

In Winesburg the crowded day had run itself out into
the long night of the late fall. Farm horses jogged
away along lonely country roads pulling their portion
of weary people. Clerks began to bring samples of goods
in off the sidewalks and lock the doors of stores. In
the Opera House a crowd had gathered to see a show and
further down Main Street the fiddlers, their
instruments tuned, sweated and worked to keep the feet
of youth flying over a dance floor.

In the darkness in the grand-stand Helen White and
George Willard remained silent. Now and then the spell
that held them was broken and they turned and tried in
the dim light to see into each other's eyes. They
kissed but that impulse did not last. At the upper end
of the Fair Ground a half dozen men worked over horses
that had raced during the afternoon. The men had built
a fire and were heating kettles of water. Only their
legs could be seen as they passed back and forth in the
light. When the wind blew the little flames of the fire
danced crazily about.

George and Helen arose and walked away into the
darkness. They went along a path past a field of corn
that had not yet been cut. The wind whispered among the
dry corn blades. For a moment during the walk back into
town the spell that held them was broken. Whe