He stopped on the stairs, but did not answer at once. Her voice was like her face, a little fleshy and heavy. How odd it was for him, a commonplace washing machine manufacturer in a Wisconsin town to be thinking in this way, to be noting all these little details of life. He resorted to a trick, wanting to hear his daughter's voice. "Did you call to me, Jane?" he asked. The daughter answered, explaining that it was her mother who had spoken and repeating what had been said. He answered that he wanted nothing but to lie down for an hour and went on up the stairs and into his own room. The daughter's voice, like the mother's, seemed to represent her exactly. It was young and clear, but had no resonance. He closed the door to his room and bolted it. Then he began taking off his clothes.
Now he was not in the least weary. "I'm sure I must be a little insane. A sane person would not note every little thing that goes on as I do to-day," he thought. He sang softly, wanting to hear his own voice, to in a way test it against the voices of his wife and daughter. He hummed over the words of a negro song that had been in his mind earlier in the day,
"And before I'd be a slave,
I'd be buried in my grave,
And go home to my father and be saved."
He thought his own voice all right. The words came out of his throat clearly and there was a kind of resonance too. "Had I tried to sing yesterday it would not have sounded like that," he concluded. The voices of his mind were playing about busily. There was a kind of gaiety in him. The thought that had come that morning when he looked into the eyes of Natalie Swartz came running back. His own body, that was now naked, was a house. He went and stood before a mirror and looked at himself. His body was still slender and healthy looking, outside. "I think I know what all this business is I am going through," he concluded. "A kind of house cleaning is going on. My house has been vacant now for twenty years. Dust has settled on the walls and furniture. Now, for some reason I do not understand, the doors and windows have been thrown open. I shall have to scrub the walls and the floors, make everything sweet and clean as it is in Natalie's house. Then I shall invite people in to visit me." He ran his hands over his naked body, over his breast, arms, and legs. Something within him was laughing.
