The silence was a tangible thing
almost, and he felt shut out from the world, lost to his kind,
marooned upon a bleak, inhospitable island in an ocean of sand. The
few men whom he met upon the sun-baked street eyed him with an
indifference which was worse than actual hostility. When he spoke they
nodded briefly and passed on. It was clear that if he looked upon them
as aliens, they looked upon him as a being with whom and whose class
they had nothing in common, no desire to have anything in common. For
a moment his good nature died down before a flash of anger that these
beings, with little, circumscribed existences, should feel and
manifest toward him the same degree of contempt that he, a visitor
from a higher plane of life, experienced toward them. But in Greek
Conniston good humor was a habit, and it returned as he assured
himself that what these desert-dwellers felt was worth only his
amusement.
At the store he bought some tobacco for his pipe and engaged the
storekeeper in trifling conversation. The talk was desultory and for
the most part led nowhere. But the little, brown, wizened old man,
contemplatively chewing his tobacco like a gentle cow ruminating over
her cud, answered what scattering questions Conniston put to him. The
young man learned that the town took its name from the stream which
crept rather than ran through it to spread out on the thirsty sands a
few miles to the north, where it was absorbed by them.
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