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He could remember how it got hot in the afternoons, and how he would feel a sense of absence and vague sadness in the afternoons, when everyone had gone away. The house would seem so lonely, and sometimes he would sit inside, on the second step of the hall stairs, and listen to the sound of silence and of absence in the afternoon. He could smell the oil upon the floor and on the stairs, and see the sliding doors with their brown varnish and the beady chains across the door, and thrust his hands among the beady chains, and gather them together in his arms, and let them clash, and swish with light beady swishings all around him. He could feel darkness, absence, varnished darkness, and stained light within the house, through the stained glass of the window on the stairs, through the small stained glasses by the door, stained light and absence, silence and the smell of floor oil and vague sadness in the house on a hot mid-afternoon. And all these things themselves would have a kind of life: would seem to wait attentively, to be most living and most still.

He would sit there and listen. He could hear the girl next door practice her piano lessons in the afternoon, and hear the street car coming by between the backyard fences, half a block away, and smell the dry and sultry smell of backyard fences, the smell of coarse hot grasses by the car tracks in the afternoon, the smell of tar, of dry caulked ties, the smell of bright worn flanges, and feel the loneliness of backyards in the afternoon and the sense of absence when the car was gone.

Then he would long for evening and return, the slant of light, and feet along the street, the sharp-faced twins in sailor suits upon their tricycles, the smell of supper and the sound of voices in the house again, and Grover coming from the Fair.

That is how it was when he came into the street, and found the place where the two corners met, and turned at last to see if Time was there. He passed the house: some lights were burning, the door was open, and a woman sat upon the porch. And presently he turned, came back, and stopped before the house again. The corner light fell blank upon the house. He stood looking at it, and put his foot upon the step.

Then he said to the woman who was sitting on the porch: “This house—excuse me—but could you tell me, please, who lives in this house?”

He knew his words were strange and hollow, and he had not said what he wished to say. She stared at him a moment, puzzled.

Then she said: “I live here. Who are you looking for?”

He said, “Why, I am looking for—”

And then he stopped, because he knew he could not tell her what it was that he was looking for.

“There used to be a house—” he said.

The woman was now staring at him hard.

He said, “I think I used to live here.”

She said nothing.

In a moment he continued, “I used to live here in this house,” he said, “when I was a little boy.”

She was silent, looking at him, then she said: “Oh. Are you sure this was the house? Do you remember the address?”

“I have forgotten the address,” he said, “but it was Edgemont Street, and it was on the corner. And I know this is the house.”

“This isn’t Edgemont Street,” the woman said.”The name is Bates.”

“Well, then, they changed the name of the street,” he said, “but this is the same house. It hasn’t changed.”

She was silent a moment, then she nodded: “Yes. They did change the name of the street. I remember when I was a child they called it something else,” she said. “But that was a long time ago. When was it that you lived here?”

“In 1904.”

Again she was silent, looking at him. Then presently: “Oh. That was the year of the Fair. You were here then?”