The train swept round the corner out of sight, leaving a streaming cloud of smoke and sparks behind it. It went out with a kind of rush of delight, glad to be off, and conscious of its passengers' pleasure.
'Odd.' This was the word that filled his mind as he walked home. 'Perhaps—our minds are in such intimate sympathy together—perhaps he was thinking of—of that kind of thing—er—and some of his thoughts got into my own imagination. Odd, though, very, very odd.'
He had once read somewhere in one of his new-fangled books that 'thoughts are things.' It had made a great impression on him. He had read about Marconi too. Later he made a more thorough study of this 'thinking business.'
And soon afterwards, having put his chief's papers in order at the flat, he went home to Mrs. Minks and the children with this other thought—that he had possibly been overworking himself, and that it was a good thing he was going to have a holiday by the sea.
He liked to picture himself as an original thinker, not afraid of new ideas, but in reality he preferred his world sober, ordinary, logical. It was merely big-sounding names he liked. And this little incident was somewhere out of joint. It was—odd.
Success that poisons many a baser mind
May lift—-
But the sonnet had never known completion. In the space it had occupied in his mind another one abruptly sprouted. The first subject after all was banal. A better one had come to him—
Strong thoughts that rise in a creative mind
May flash about the world, and carry joy—-
Then it stuck. He changed 'may' to 'shall,' but a moment later decided that 'do' was better, truer than either. After that inspiration failed him. He retired gracefully upon prose again.
'Odd,' he thought, 'very odd!'