toxication have observed that in their cups
commonplace people, and not geniuses, do the most unusual things. So
with all other intoxications. Noble Dill was indeed no genius, and some
friend should have kept an eye upon him to-day; he was not himself. All
afternoon in a mood of tropic sunrise he collected rents, or with glad
vagueness consented instantly to their postponement. "I've come about
the rent again," he said beamingly to one delinquent tenant of his
father's best client; and turned and walked away, humming a waltz-song,
while the man was still coughing as a preliminary to argument.

Late in the afternoon, as the entranced collector sat musing alone near
a window in his father's office, his exalted mood was not affected by
the falling of a preternatural darkness over the town, nor was he roused
to action by any perception of the fact that the other clerks and the
members of the firm had gone home an hour ago; that the clock showed him
his own duty to lock up the office and not keep his mother "waiting
dinner"; and that he would be caught in a most outrageous thunderstorm
if he didn't hurry. No; he sat, smiling fondly, by the open window, and
at times made a fragmentary gesture as of some heroic or benevolent
impulse in rehearsal.

Meanwhile, paunchy with wind and wetness, unmannerly clouds came smoking
out of the blackened west. Rumbling, they drew on. Then from cloud to
cloud dizzy amazements of white fire staggered, crackled and boomed on
to the assault; the doors of the winds were opened; the tanks of deluge
were unbottomed; and the storm took the town. So, presently, Noble
noticed that it was raining and decided to go home.

With an idea that he was fulfilling his customary duties, he locked the
doors of the two inner rooms, dropped the keys gently into a
wastebasket, and passing by an umbrella which stood in a corner, went
out to the corridor, and thence stepped into the street of whooping
rain.

Here he became so practical as to turn up his collar; and, substantially
aided by the wind at his back, he was not long in leaving the purlieus
of commerce behind him for Julia's Street. Other people lived on this
street--he did, himself, for that matter; and, in fact, it was the
longest street in the town; moreover, it had an official name with
which the word "Julia" was entirely unconnected; but for Noble Dill (and
probably for Newland Sanders and for some others in age from nineteen to
sixty) it was "Julia