Phillip Grimes was a slender young fellow with
blue eyes, yellow hair and a not very vigorous mustache. He was from a
small town in the northern end of the State, where his father published a
weekly newspaper. When he came to see Clara he sat on the edge of his chair
and talked rapidly. Some person he had seen in the street had interested
him. "I saw an old woman on the car," he began. "She had a basket on her
arm. It was filled with groceries. She sat beside me and talked aloud to
herself." Clara's visitor repeated the words of the old woman on the car.
He speculated about her, wondered what her life was like. When he had
talked of the old woman for ten or fifteen minutes, he dropped the subject
and began telling of another experience, this time with a man who sold
fruit at a street crossing. It was impossible to be personal with Phillip
Grimes. Nothing but his eyes were personal. Sometimes he looked at Clara in
a way that I made her feel that her clothes were being stripped from her
body, and that she was being made to stand naked in the room before her
visitor. The experience, when it came, was not entirely a physical one. It
was only in part that. When the thing happened Clara saw her whole life
being stripped bare. "Don't look at me like that," she once said somewhat
sharply, when his eyes had made her so uncomfortable she could no longer
remain silent. Her remark had frightened Phillip Grimes away.
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