We sank down together on a small knoll under the low-spreading branches of a live oak. We watched the man who we thought had observed our antics bobbing off down the road, as if running for exercise.

We sat quite apart, at first. Then our hands met in instinctive fondness ... met in the spirit in which we had been romping together.

"You're like a small boy, Johnnie."

"And you haven't acted so very much like a grown woman, have you, Hildreth?" It was the first time I had called her by her first name.

"Can you, or anyone else, tell me just how grown women do act? I myself don't know, yet I'm a woman."

I drew closer to her as if drawn by some attractive power. A stray wisp of her hair lit across my cheek stingingly. Then the wind blew a perfumed strand of it across my lips and over my nostrils.

It made me rub my lips, it tickled so. Hildreth noticed it.

"Wait," she bade playfully, "I'll bet I can make you rub your lips again."

"No, you can't."

"Hold still!" she leaned toward me; I could look down into her bosom. She just touched my lips with her forefinger.

"Now!" she exclaimed triumphantly.

"—think you've tickled me, do you?"

"—just wait!"

I forgot myself. My lips tickled and I rubbed them with the length of a finger ... Hildreth laughed....

"Hildreth!"

I leaned toward my friend's wife, calling her again by her first name.

I lay in a half-reclining posture, my head almost against her hip. I was looking up into her face. She glanced down at me with a quick start at the tone of my voice. She looked gravely for a moment into my face. I observed an enigmatic something deep in her eyes ... which sank slowly back as the image of a face does, in water,—as the face itself is withdrawn. She moved apart a little, with a motion of slow deliberation.

"Hildreth!" I heard myself calling again, with a deep voice, a voice that sounded alien in my own ears....

"Come, boy!" and she pulled back her hand from my grasp, and catching mine in hers a moment, patted the back of it lightly—"come, don't let's be foolish ... we've had such a happy afternoon together, don't let's spoil it ... now let's start home."

As soon as I was on my feet and away from her, she became playful again. She reached up her hand for me.

"Help me up!"

I brought her to her feet with a strong, quick pull, and against my breast. But I did not dare do what I desired—take her in my arms and try to kiss her. She paused a second, then thrust me back.

"Look, the sun's almost gone down ... and Mubby and Darrie will be home a long time by this time ... and Mubby will be getting fidgety."

The sun's last huge shoulder of red was hulking like a spy behind a distant, bare knoll ... separate blades of grass stood up in microscopic yet giant distinctness, against its crimson background.

Our walk home was a silent, passively happy one that went without incident....

* * * * *

Penton and Darrie were indeed home before us.

"Where have you two been all this time," Penton asked, a slight touch of querulousness in his voice.

"Oh, Johnnie and I have been out for a walk, too!" replied Hildreth in an even voice.

* * * * *

At lunch, the next day,—a day when Penton was called in to Philadelphia on business—while Darrie, Ruth, Hildreth and I sat talking together peacefully about our outdoor board, Hildreth suddenly threw a third of a glass of milk on Darrie's shirt-waist front.

We were astounded.

"Why, Hildreth, what does this mean?" I asked.

"I won't stop to explain," she said, "but from now on I won't stay in the same house with her ... I'm going to move this afternoon, down to Penton's house" (meaning the little cottage but a few steps from my tent).... Ruth rose to intercede ... "Don't Ruth, don't! I want to be let alone." And Hildreth hurried away.

"What in the world could be the matter with Hildreth?" I asked of Ruth. Darrie had also departed, to the big house, to rub her blouse quickly, so that no stain would remain.

"Hildreth's capricious," answered Ruth, "but the plain explanation is downright jealousy."

"Jealousy?"

"Yes ... even though Hildreth no longer loves Penton, she's jealous of him ... the fact is, Hildreth doesn't know what she wants."

"But Darrie—Darrie is her friend?"

"Of course ... and remains her friend. Darrie doesn't want Penton. She only pities him."

I quoted the line about pity being akin to love ... "they do a lot of strolling together."

"Yes. But there's nothing between them ... not even a kiss ... of that I'm certain. Darrie is as cool as a cucumber ... and Penton is as shy with women as—you are!"

I smiled to myself. If Ruth had seen us that preceding afternoon!

"Of course the fault could not all be on Hildreth's side."

"No, they're both a couple of ninnies ... but there's this to be said for Penton, he's trying to get something done for the betterment of humanity ... while Hildreth's only a parasite."

"And Darrie—how about her? What does she do but loaf around in a more conventional manner, talking about her social prestige, the dress of one of her ancestresses in the Boston Museum, her aristocratic affiliations ... how many and how faithful those negro servants of hers are, down South ... between the two, Hildreth has the livest brain, and puts on less."

"Take care! You'll be falling in love with Penton Baxter's wife yet!"

Our talk was halted by Darrie's re-appearance. Hildreth came furtively back, too, from the little cottage, like a guilty child. She apologized to Darrie, and her apology was accepted, and, in a few minutes we were talking ahead as gaily as before....

We rehearsed Hildreth in her part as Titania ... for that was the part she was to play in The Mid-Summer Night's Dream, that the Actors' Guild of the colony was to put on in their outdoor theatre, a week from that afternoon ... Hildreth insisted on dressing for the part ... in her green, skin tights ... letting her black hair flow free ... wearing even her diadem, as fairy queen. She had a good, musical voice ... a way of speaking with startled shyness that was engaging.

But Hildreth stuck to her original intention of moving to the cottage. She had Mrs. Jones move her things for her.

As I sat in the library of the big house reading Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, I overheard Darrie telling Ruth in the bathroom that Hildreth would not have insisted on donning her tights, if she had not been proud of her symmetrical legs, and had not wanted to show them off to me.

Between the three women, nevertheless, Hildreth was easily my choice already ... Darrie was lovely, but talked like a debutante from morning till night....

Ruth had too much of the quietist in her, the non-resistent. She had a vast fund of scholarship, knew English poetry from the ground up ... but her bringing that knowledge to me as an attraction was like presenting a peacock's feather to a bird of paradise....

However, when Penton came home that night, he found us all in huge good humour. I had just received a check from Derek, and had insisted on spending most of it for a spread for all of us, including a whopping beefsteak.

And we ate and joked and enjoyed ourselves just like the bourgeoisie.

* * * * *

If Penton only had had a sense of humour ... but this I never detected in him.

Even at singing classes, which I attended one evening with him ... his whole entourage, in fact....

With solemn face he sang high, and always off key, till the three women had to stuff their handkerchiefs in their mouths to keep from laughing at him before his face....

After class, we strolled home by a devious path, through the moonlight. This time Ruth walked ahead with little Dan, Hildreth with her husband, Penton,—Darrie with me....

"Drag back a little, Johnnie ... Penton and Hildreth are having a private heart-to-heart talk, I can tell by their voices."

We hung back till they disappeared around a bend. We were alone. Darrie began to laugh and laugh and laugh.... "Oh, it's so funny, I shall die laughing"....

* * * * *

"Why—why, what's the matter!"

For I saw tears streaming down the girl's face in the moonlight.

"It's so awful," replied Darrie, now crying quietly, "—so tragic ... yet I had to laugh ... I'm so sorry for Penton ... for both of them....

"Penton is such a jackass, Johnnie," she gulped, "and God knows, as I do, he's such an honest, good man ... helping poor people all over the country ... really fighting the fight of the down-trodden and the oppressed."

I put my arm around the girl's waist, and she wept on my shoulder.

Finally she straightened up her head, stopping her crying with difficulty.

"We're all so funny, aren't we?"

"Yes, we're a funny bunch, Darrie ... all so mixed up,—the world wouldn't believe it, would they, if we told them?"

"And you could never make them understand, even if you did tell them. You know, my dear, old Southern daddy—he thinks Penton is a limb of the old Nick himself ... with his theories about life, and the freedom of relations between the sexes, and all that ... even yet he may leave me out of his will for coming up here, though he has all the confidence in the world in me."

And Mary Darfield Malcolm—whom we always called "Darrie"—went quickly to her room when we got back, so the others wouldn't notice that she had been crying....

* * * * *

Quite often, in the afternoons, toward dusk, around a dying fire, the whole community had "sings" out in the woods, near the one large stream that abutted the colony, and gathered into itself, all the little brooks....

The old songs were sung; rich, beautiful, old Scotch and English and Irish ballads—which were learnt, by all who wanted to know them, at the singing school ... and the old-fashioned American songs, too.

And the music softened our hearts and fused us into one harmony of feeling. And all the bickerings of the community's various "isms" melted away ... after all, there was not so very much disharmony among us. And, after all, the marvel is that human beings get along together at all.

* * * * *

The afternoon before the "circus" the little settlement more than ever took on the appearance of a medieval village ... almost everybody took turns in participating in the "circus" ... almost everybody togged out in costume. But first we had a parade of the "guilds" ... the Actors' Guild, in which Hildreth bore a part; in her pretty tights she looked like a handsome boy page in some early Italian prince's court.

Don Grahame was the son of the leader of the community whom Jones had promised to rake over the coals that night, after the circus.

Don led the Carpenters' Guild, looking like nothing else than a handsome boy Christ. Don, secretly disliking in his heart the free-love doctrines his father and others taught (though he always rose loyally in his father's defence) had gone to the other extreme, he lived an ascetic, virgin life. But it didn't seem to hurt him. He was as handsome as Hildreth was beautiful.

Everybody liked the young fellow. He had sworn that he would maintain his manner of abstinent living till he fell in love with a girl who loved him in return. Then they would live together....

That, he maintained, was the true and only meaning of free love. He had no use for varietism nor promiscuity.

The Guilds paraded twice around the Village Green, led by the Guild of Music Masters, who played excellently well.

The Children's Guild was a romping, lovely sight.

* * * * *

The circus was held shortly afterward in the huge communal barn, in the centre of its great floor,—the spectators seated about on the sides....

There was the trick mule, made up of two men under an ox-hide, the mule fell apart and precipitated Don Grahame in between its two halves ... each half then ran away in opposite directions.

Don rode so well that that was the only way they (I mean the mule) could unseat him. He won much affectionate applause.

Then there was the fearful, great boa-constrictor ... which turned out to be a double-jointed, lithe, acrobatic, boy-like girl whom we knew as Jessie ... Jessie, they whispered, was marked for death by consumption, if she didn't look out and stop smoking so many cigarettes ... she was slender and pretty—but spoke with an adenoidal thickness of speech.

The colony was as merry as if no storm impended.

We adjourned for supper.

After supper, under the evening star we marched back to the barn again, which also served as our town hall. On the way there our talk was subdued and expectant. Many people were disgruntled with Jones.

"Why must he do this?"

"Why can't old Jones let well enough alone?... no community's perfect, not even our community."

Daniel had been put to bed, angrily objecting.

The five of us joined the flow of people toward the barn. Penton carried a lantern.

"Jones is all right," said Penton to me, "I like his spirit. I'm going to stand by him, if he finds himself seriously pressed, just because the man's spirit is a good one ... nothing mean about him ... but I know he'll place me among the snobs and wealthy of the community."

When all were gathered, as still as at the opening of a prayer meeting, Grahame came in, and, with his son and other friends, took seats opposite Jones. Grahame, who had been master of ceremonies and ring master for the afternoon circus, had not changed his dress of knee-britches and ruffed shirt.

The debate was prolonged and fiery....

Jones launched into a gallant attack on Grahame, and was replied to evasively. Don Grahame wanted to punch Jones's head for what he called slurs cast at his father's good name....

Penton made a famous speech reconciling, almost, the irreconcilable parties.

And so we adjourned.

Penton and I accompanied Jones home. All the way the latter was arguing against Baxter's plea, that he be more lenient with Grahame....

"You look out, Penton," Jones warned with genial firmness ... "Grahame has been trying to persuade people in this community not to bring shoes to me to be mended ... a dirty attempt to starve me out ... Oh, no!... I haven't the slightest trace of persecution mania....

"And you'd better look out, Penton, and not play tennis this Sunday, for I'm going to strike back at the tennis-playing snobs here, of whom you're one."

"Jones, what do you mean by that? Surely not a bomb to smear us all over the courts!" Penton joked.

"A bomb, yes ... it will be a bomb of sorts ... but I warn you you shan't play games on Sunday any more. I'll see to that ... not that I've unexpectedly grown religious, but that I mean to strike back as pettily as the way in which I'm being persecuted."

* * * * *

"I suppose he means the Blue Laws," Penton commented seriously, "but surely he can get no one to enforce them."

* * * * *

But Jones found a facetious officer of the law or so, down in Philadelphia, who were as glad of a chance to molest a radical colony as of an opportunity to put over a good joke....

Baxter, Grahame, Bedell, and others of the prominent members of the community were haled in to court ... and, to the surprise of everyone, sentenced to forty-eight hours hard labour on the rock-pile, in the workhouse....

And Jones sang triumphant snatches of song and hammered away merrily at shoes in his little shack along the road, while unused hands gathered water blisters making big stones into little ones, with other and heavier hammers.

The newspapers made a great to-do about the matter. The affair was just serio-comic enough to attract nation-wide attention. And the story was a good one—the story of the anarchist-shoemaker who invoked the use of archaic, reactionary laws, in his battle against his less radical antagonists, the Single Taxers and Socialists.

Story after story was also written about our curious little colony.

Penton Baxter shared honours with the shoemaker. Reporters swarmed over his front porch and into his house to interview him, on the triumphant return of the party when they had served their forty-eight hours.

Penton gave out interview after interview. And, to his credit let it be said, though he revelled in the notice accorded him, he also effected two serious results from what had begun as almost a practical joke ... he started a fight on the absurd Blue Laws by focusing publicity on them ... and he exposed the bad prison conditions his unknown fellow prisoners lived under, who had not gone to the workhouse in a jocular mood because of resurrected Blue Laws.

Jones was willing to let the matter rest, as well as were his other opponents ... but Baxter kept the fight going as long as he could. He was accused of loving notoriety. His attitude toward it was mixed. He did love notoriety ... he enjoyed every clipping about himself with infinite gusto. But he also used publicity as a lever to get things done with, that would otherwise never have been noticed. The others were willing to consider what had happened to them, as a private affair. Penton gracelessly used that, and every private adventure for propaganda—turned it sincerely in the way he thought it might benefit people....

He gave the papers a very bad poem—The Prison Night. I remember but one line of it—

"The convict rasped his vermin-haunted hide."

* * * * *

"Come, get into the group; I want the papers to tell the public about you, too," he urged me, prophetically, as I stood on the outskirts, while three camera men were focusing on him, as he stood, expectant, blandly smiling, and vain-glorious.

"Boys, I want my friend, the poet, Mr. John Gregory, in the picture, too."

"Oh, all right!" they assented indifferently, which injured my egotism. But I was too adroit to show it. I still demurred with mock modesty. Penton would have been franker.

Finally, at his urgency, they snapped us, our arms about each other's shoulders.

In the light of subsequent events, they were glad of that picture.

* * * * *

Our tennis-playing, Blue-Law martyrs, as I have said, were held over night in the workhouse ... or maybe two nights, I do not exactly remember which ... and when they came back they were full of the privations of jail-life, and the degradation of the spirit and mind suffered by prisoners there. To me, their attitude seemed rather tender-foot and callow. It was something that would have been accepted off-handedly by me. I had been in jail often, not for a cause, as I punned wretchedly, but be-cause. I did not accord hero-worship to Penton when he returned, as the women of the household did.

For a week it quite reconciled Hildreth with him....

* * * * *

But on the first night of his absence Hildreth and I took a stroll together in the moonlight.

Long the three women and myself had sat in the library, while I read aloud from a MSS. volume of my poetry, which I intended submitting to the Macmillans soon. For Ruth knew Mr. Brett and promised to give me an introduction to him. And I was to make a special trip to the city on the money I had saved from my weekly remittances ... for Penton would not permit me to spend a cent for my keep while I visited him. And I had already been with him three weeks....

* * * * *

I read them many love poems—those I had written for Vanna....

"Why," commented Hildreth, "these verses sound like what a very callow youth would write, who never had experience with women ... I mean by that, intimate knowledge of them."

I flushed and sat silent.

"Some day, when you've lived more," remarked Ruth, "you'll write love-poetry more simple, more direct."

"Though infinite ways He knows To manifest His power, God, when He made your face, Was thinking of a flower!"

I read.

"There again you have an instance, of what I mean ... you are only rhetoricising about love; not partaking of its feelings."

"But I wrote all these poems about a real girl," and I told them the story of my distant passion for Vanna.

"No matter—you're a grown-up man who, as far as knowledge of women is concerned, has the heart of a baby," observed Hildreth.

—"in these days of sex-sophistication a fine thing!" cried Ruth.

"Yes, when out of the mouths of babes and sucklings come quotations from Havelock Ellis and Ellen Key!" cried Darrie.

"Good! Darrie, good!" Hildreth applauded....

"—time to go to bed ... here it's almost one o'clock."

"—had no idea it was so late. I have a lot of typing to do to-morrow. Good night, folks!" and Ruth was off to her room upstairs.

"Good-night, Hildreth,—suppose you're going to sleep down in the little house!" It was Darrie who spoke.

"Yes," answered Hildreth, in a simple tone, "I will feel quite safe there ... Johnnie's tent is only a few yards away."

Hildreth and Darrie kissed each other on the mouth tenderly.

"Good night, Johnnie—" and impulsively Darrie stepped up to me, took me by the two shoulders, and kissed me also a kind sisterly kiss.... I responded, abashed and awkward.

A ripple of pleasant laughter at me from both women.

"Johnnie's a dear, innocent boy!" Darrie.

"He makes me feel like a mother to him!" said Hildreth.

Though each of these remarks was made without the slightest colour of irony, I did not like them ... I lowered my head, humiliated under them.

Ever since I had been among them the three women had treated me in the way they act with small boys, preserving scarcely any reserve in my presence. Penton himself had lost all his first disquiet.

Outside—

"I'll take you as far as the cottage ... it's right on the way, you know."

"All right, but where are you going?"

"Into the kitchen to get a lantern."

"The moon is almost as bright as day. We won't need it."

We stepped out into the warm, scented night. In a mad flood of silver the moon reigned high in the sky, dark and bright with the contours and shades of its continents and craters, as if nearer the earth than it had ever been before....

"This night reminds me of those lines in Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, the ones that follow after 'Is this the face that launched a thousand ships, and burnt the topless towers of Ilion?' which are, to me, a trifle over-rhetorical ... the ensuing lines are more lovely:

"'Fair as the evening air—

"'Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars,' or is it 'ten thousand stars'?"

Hildreth turned her face up to me. Her arm went through mine. She drew my arm close against her body and held it tight in silent response for a quiet interval....

"You are a poet ... a real poet ... and," she dropped her voice, "and, what is more, a real man, too!" there was a world of compassion in her voice....

"—You remember Blake's evening star—that 'washed the dusk with silver?'"

"Jesus, how beautiful!" I cried.

We were standing in front of her cottage, that darkled in the trees.

Suddenly, roused by our voices, like some sweet, low, miraculous thing, a little bird sang a few bars of song, sweet and low, in the bushes somewhere, and stopped....

"Hildreth, don't let's go to bed yet." I caught her arm in my hands, "it's too beautiful ... to go to bed."

I was trembling all over....

"Yes, boy?"

"Let's—let's take a walk."

* * * * *

We went through the little sleeping community. She clung to my arm lightly....

"You're the first woman I haven't been frightened of, rather, have felt at home with."

"You, who have been a tramp, a worker all over the country ... in big cities ... do you mean to tell me that?—"

"Yes ... yes ... before God, it is true! You don't think I'm a fool, do you—a ninny?"

"No, on the contrary, I think you are a good man ... that it is miraculous ... I—I feel so old beside you ... how old are you, Johnnie?"

"Twenty-six."

"Why, I'm only two years older ... yet I feel like your mother."

* * * * *

In the groves adjoining the colony, for a mile on either side, wherever there was a big tree, a circular seat had been built about it. It was on one of these that we sat down, without a word.

I laid my head against Hildreth's shoulder. Soothingly she began stroking my hair. With cool fingers she stroked it.

"What fine hair you have. It's as soft and silky as a girl's."

"I took after my mother in that."

"What a mixture you are ... manly and strong ... an athlete, yet sensitive, so sensitive that sometimes it hurts to look at your face when you talk ... you've suffered a lot, Johnnie."

"In curious ways, yes."

"Tell me about yourself. I won't even whisper it in the dark, when I'm alone."

"I know I can trust you, Hildreth."

"What are you doing, boy?"

"I want to sit at your feet."

"You dear boy."

"I feel quite humble ... I don't want you to see my face when I talk."

She drew my head against her knees. Threw one arm as if protectingly over my shoulder.

"There. Are you comfortable, boy?"

"Yes. Are you?"

"Quite ... don't be ashamed ... I know much about life that you do not know ... tell me all."

* * * * *

So I told her all about myself ... my ambition ... my struggles ... my morbidity ... my lack of experience with girls and women....

"And I must have experience soon ... it's obsessing me ... it can't last this way much longer ... I shall go mad."

And I rehearsed to her a desperate resolve I had made ... to find a woman of the streets, in New York, when I went in, the ensuing week ... and force myself, no matter how I loathed it—

I buried my head in her lap and sobbed hysterically.

Then I apologised—"forgive me if I have been too frank!"

"I am a radical woman ... Penton and I both believe in the theory of free love, though we happen to be married ... what you have told me is all sweet and natural to me ... only—you must not do what you say you'll do—in New York!—"

"I must, or—" and I paused, to go on in a lower, embarrassed voice ... "Do—do you know what else I thought of—dreamed of—?

"In Paris—I understand—men live with women as a matter of course—

"You see—" I was hot with shame to the very ears, "you see—there, you know,—I thought if I went there I would find some pretty little French girl that I would take to live with me ... in some romantic attic in the Montmartre district ... and we would be happy together ... and I would be grateful, so grateful, to her!"

"Why you're the Saint Francis of the Radicals," Hildreth exclaimed.

"Please don't make fun of me ... I suppose you think me very foolish."

"Foolish?... No, I think you have a very beautiful soul. I wish every man had a soul like that."

She took my head in her hands and kissed me on the brow.

"Hildreth, only tell me what I am to do?"

"I do not know ... theoretically I believe in freedom in sex ... I wish to God I could help you."

"Why can't you?"

"Hush, you do not know what you're asking!"

"By the living Christ, I only know that I would crawl after you, and kiss your holiest feet before all the world, if you helped me."

"Now I understand what Lecky meant when he spoke of the sacrificial office of a certain type of women ... I only wish ... but come, we must go."

I was on my feet beside her, as she rose.

"Yes, we had better go home," I spoke quietly, though my heart pumped as if I had taken strychnine.

I put my arms about her, to steady her going, for she stumbled.

"Why, Hildreth, dearest woman, you're trembling all over, what's the matter?... have I—I frightened you with my wild talk?"

"Never mind ... no, take your arm away ... Let me walk alone a minute and I'll be all right ... I'll be all right in a minute ... it's just turned a trifle chilly, that's all."

"Hush!" going down the path by the big house, Hildreth stopped, hesitated. "I'm—I'm not going to the little cottage to-night."

"Then I'll say good-night!"

"No, come on in and we'll sneak out to the kitchen and find something to eat ... aren't you hungry?"

"A little bit. But I'm afraid we might wake Ruth and Darrie up."

We tip-toed in. Hildreth searching for the matches, knocked the wash-basin to the floor. We stood hushed like mice.

"Who's down there?" asked Darrie's voice, with a dash of hysteria in it ... of hysteria and fright.

"Damn it, there's Darrie waked up."

"Such a clatter would wake anyone up!"

"Who's there, I say!"

"It's only me, Darrie ... I got hungry in the night and came up to the house to snatch a bite to eat."

"Oh ... I'm coming down to join you, then."

We saw Darrie standing at the top of the stairs, her eyes luminous and wide with emotion.

She stood, rosy-bodied, in her night-dress, which was transparent in the light of the lamp she carried....

"Johnnie's here, too!" warned Hildreth.

"Oh!" cried Darrie, and turned back, to re-appear in her kimono.

"I'm sorry we waked you up. But I knocked that infernal basin down off the sink."

"You didn't wake me. I was awake already. I haven't slept a wink."

"Neither have we!" I responded.

"What?" Darrie asked me in so startled, impulsive a manner that Hildreth and I laughed ... and she laughed a little, too ... and then grew grave again....

"It was such a beautiful night, Johnnie and I took a walk in the moonlight."

Darrie looked from one to the other of us with a wide, staring look.

"You needn't look that way, Darrie!"

"Please, please, Hildreth!"

"You and Penton have taken walks in the moonlight."

"Hildreth, dear, I'm not rebuking you ... and you know my walks with Penton are all right, are harmless."

"Yes, I know they are ... but you mustn't rebuke me, either."

"I wasn't rebuking either you or Johnnie ... it isn't that I'm thinking of at all ... but everything has been so uncanny here to-night ... I could not sleep ... every little rustle of curtains, every creak or motion in the whole house vibrated through me ... something's going to happen to someone."

"You're only upset because Penton's in jail," I explained.

"No, that's not it ... that's nothing compared to this feeling ... this premonition—"

"Come on, let's make some coffee ... in the percolator."

"You girls sit down and I'll make it. I've been a cook several times in my career."

Someone was knocking about in the dark, upstairs. We heard a match struck....

"There, we've waked Ruth, too."

"What's the matter down there?" Ruth was calling.

"Come on down and join us, Ruth,—we're having a cup of coffee a-piece."

"It's only two o'clock ... what's everybody doing up so early? Has Penton come back?"

"No ... but do come down and join us," I replied.

* * * * *

"I tell you, I thought it was burglars at first, and I was going to the drawer in Penton's room and get out his six-shooter."

"Does Penton keep a gun?" I asked.

"Yes ... it's the one he bought to shoot the mongrel dog with."

* * * * *

We ate some cold roast beef sandwiches and drank our coffee.

Hildreth stayed in the big house, not going down the path with me.

I went silently to my tent. It was blowing a little now. The moon was surging along behind little, grey, running clouds. It would rain before daylight. A haunted shiver swept through my back as I stole along the path. I repeated poetry rapidly aloud to crowd out uncanny imaginings. I had a silly, sick impulse to run back to the big house and sleep on the couch in the library.

But I forced myself on. "If you're ever going to be a man, you'd better begin now," I muttered to myself, as if talking to another person.

In my tent ... I lit the lamp. I removed all hanging objects because their lurching shadows sent shivers of apprehension through me....

"That damned coffee—wish I hadn't drunk it."

* * * * *

The wind and rain came up like a phantom army. It sang in the trees, it drummed musically on my tent. It comforted me.

The floodgates of my mind, my inspiration, broke loose. I rose to my super-self. And now if a horrible thing had stood grey at my elbow, unmoved, I would have looked it unflinchingly in the sightless visage....

My pencil raced over paper ... raced and raced.

"Here it comes ... just like your good rain, so kind to earth.... Oh, beautiful God, I thank Thee for making me a poet," I prayed, tears streaming down my face.

* * * * *

The second act of Judas stood complete, as if it had written itself.

I rose. It seemed hardly an hour had passed.

It took me a few minutes to work the numbness out of my legs. How they ached! I stepped out of the tent-door like a drunken man ... fell on my face in some bushes and bled from several scratches. The blare of what was full daylight hurt my eyes. I had been writing on, entranced, by unneeded lamp, when unheeded day burned about me.

Stepping inside again, I saw by my Ingersoll that it was twelve o'clock. I fell into a deep sleep, still dressed ... I was so exhausted. Usually I slept absolutely naked.

* * * * *

These were the things that happened while Penton was in jail because he played tennis on Sunday.

* * * * *

Now I was part and parcel of the household, no longer a stranger-friend on a visit. Though Penton's jail-experience did not thrill me, the continued thronging of reporters did, as did Baxter's raging desire to do good for the poor ordinary prisoners in jail. He had got at several of them who had received a raw deal in the courts, and was moving heaven and earth to bring redress to them. He gave interviews, dictated articles ... the State officials were furious. "What's the matter with the fellow? What's he bother about the other fellows for, he ought to be glad he's not in their shoes!"...

In agitations for the public good, in humanitarian projects, Baxter was indeed a great man ... I loomed like a pigmy beside him.

* * * * *

Darrie and I in dialogue:

She met me on the path, as I was proceeding toward the big house. She carried Carpenter's Love's Coming of Age in her hand. She was dressed daintily. Her brown eyes smiled at me, and a rich dimple broke in her cheek.

But Darrie was taller than Hildreth, and I like small women best; perhaps because I am myself so big.

"Don't go up to the house, Johnnie."

"I want a book from the library."

"Hildreth and Penton are there. Hildreth is having a soul-state."

"A what?" I laughed.

"Oh, she thinks something is the matter with her soul, and, for the three hundredth time since I've known them, Penton and she are discussing their lives together."

"I don't see anything to jest about in that."

"I'm tiring of it ... if Hildreth has a tooth-ache, or anything that the rest of us women accept as a matter of course, she runs to Mubby, as she calls him ... and, as if it were some abstruse, philosophical problem, they talk on, hour after hour ... like German metaphysics, there's no end to it. They've been at it since ten and they'll go on till four, if they follow precedents ... Penton takes Hildreth too seriously."

"You talk as if you, you were jealous of Hildreth and in love with Penton."

"It's neither the one nor the other. I love them both, and I want to see them happy together."

"You see, Darrie, neither you nor I are married, and neither of us knows anything about sex, except in the theory of the books we've read—how can we judge the troubles of a man and woman who are married?"

"There's a lot in what you say."

"I believe it would be better if we both cleared out and left them to fight this out alone."

"Perhaps it would."

* * * * *

"Darrie, Oh, Darrie!—want to come for a walk with Hildreth and me?"

So the three set off together, leaving me and Ruth alone.

* * * * *

Ruth and I had just settled down to a discussion of the writing of narrative poetry, how it was done, and the reason why it was no longer customary with the poets to write longer stories out of real life, like Chaucer's Canterbury Tales,—when we heard a rustling as of some wild thing in the bushes beside the house, and here came Hildreth breaking through, her eyes blazing, her hair down, her light walking skirt that she had slipped on over her bloomers torn by catching on thorns.

She staggered into the open, swept us with a blazing glance as if we had done something to her, and hurried on down the path toward the little house where Penton had written in quiet till she had strangely routed him out and taken its occupancy for herself.

"Hildreth!" I leaped to my feet, starting after her, "Hildreth what's the matter?"

I had put all thought of narrative poetry out of my head.

"Don't follow her," advised Ruth, in a low, controlled voice, "it's best to let her alone when she acts like that ... she'll have it out, and come back, smiling, in an hour or so."

I plunged on. Ruth ran after me, catching me by the shoulder from behind.

"Listen to me. Take my advice and keep out of this—Johnnie!" she called my name with a tender drop in her voice.

If it had not been for her tell-tale pronouncement of my name I might have listened to her ... but that made me angry, and it ran through my mind how she and Penton had fatuously arranged my marrying her....

I ran after Hildreth. She slammed the door when I was so close upon her that the wind of its shutting went against my face like a blow.

I found myself on my knees by the door.

"Let me in," I said through the key-hole, for the door was locked; she had thrown the bolt on the inside.

"Go away, Johnnie, I want to be alone."

"Hildreth, dearest woman, do let me in. It hurts my heart to see you so suffer so."

"I don't want to see anybody. I want to die."

"I'll come in the window."

I was at the window madly. I caught it. It was locked. But I pulled it up like a maniac. The lock, rusty, flew off with a zing! The window crashed up. I tumbled in at one leap.

My whole life was saying, "this is your woman, your first and only woman—go where she is and take her to yourself!"

That avalanche of me bursting in without denial, struck little Hildreth Baxter dumb with interest. She had been kneeling by her bed, sobbing. Now she rose and was sitting on it.

"Well?" and she smiled wanly, looking at me with fear and a twinkle of amusement, and intrigued interest, all at one and the same time, on her face—

"I couldn't stand seeing you suffer, Hildreth. I had to come in. And you wouldn't unlock the door ... what has gone wrong?"

"It's Darrie!—"

"But you all three started on your hike like such a happy family, and—"

"For God's sake don't think I'm jealous of Darrie ... I'm only wild about the way she encourages Mubby to talk over his troubles with her—and tell her about him and me, asking her advice ... as if she could give any advice worth while—

"They began to talk and talk about me just as if I were a laboratory specimen....

"Damn this laboratory marriage! damn this laboratory love!

"Penton experiments, and Penton experiments ... on his cat, his dog, himself, me—you, if you'd let him ... everybody! let him marry Humanity if he loves it so much."

"But what did you do?"

"I caught myself running away from them, and sobbing."

"And what did they do?"

"'Hildreth, for God's sake!' Mubby called, 'what's the matter now?' in that bland, exasperating tone of his,—that injured, self-righteous, I'm-sacrificing-myself-for-mankind tone—"

I had to laugh at her exact mimicry....

I stroked her hair....

* * * * *

"I'm glad you came to Eden, John Gregory. You might be a poet, but you have some human sense in you, too....

"Oh, you don't know what I've been through," then, femininely, "poor, poor Mubby, he's been through a lot, too."

Her tears began to flow again. I sat beside her on the bed. I put my arm about her and drew her to me. I kissed her tear-wet mouth. The taste of her ripe sweet mouth with the salt of her tears wet on her lips was very good to me....

In a minute unexpectedly she began returning my kisses ... hungrily ... her eyes closed ... breathing deeply like one in a trance....

* * * * *

"Go up to the house now, Johnnie, my love ... go, so Mubby won't be suspicious of us ... I want to stay here ... leave the blinds drawn as they are....

"You have been so gentle, so sweet."

"Hildreth ... listen to me ... this has been the greatest day in my life, will always be! If I died now, I would go to death, singing....

"You're the most wonderful woman in the world....

"I want you to be mine forever....

"I know what it all means now....

"It's like Niagara, sweetheart ... one hears so much of it ... expects so much ... that it seems disappointing, the first actuality....

"Then afterward, it's more than any dream ever dreamed of what it would be!

"I want to work for you....

"I want to let you walk all over me with your little feet....

"I want you to kill me, sweetheart....

"I want to die for you....

"Hildreth, I love you!

"I'll tell Penton ... I'll tell everybody—'I love Hildreth! I love Hildreth!'"

* * * * *

"Johnnie, my own sweet darling, my own dear, pure-hearted, mad, young poet....

"Don't talk that way....

"Come to me again...."

* * * * *

"Penton must not know. Not yet. You must let me tell him.

"It is my place to tell him, sweetest of men, my darling boy...."

* * * * *

"Go to your tent.

"He'd see it in your eyes now."

"No, I won't go to my tent. I'll go right up to the house."

* * * * *

"If he says anything to me I'll kill him.

"I'm a man now.

"I'll fight him or anybody you want me to."

* * * * *

These were the words we said, or left unsaid. I am even yet too confused to remember the exact details of that memorable time.

For I was re-born then, into another life.

Is there anyone who can remember his birth?

I returned to my tent in a blissful daze.

I had not the least feeling of having betrayed a friend.

The only problem that now confronted us was divorce! I would ask Penton to divorce Hildreth, and then Hildreth and I would marry.

But why even that? Was not this the greatest opportunity in the world for Hildreth and me to put to practical test our theories ... proclaim ourselves for Free Love,—as Mary Wollstonecraft and the philosopher Godwin had done, a century or so before us?

* * * * *

The following day Ruth and I ate breakfast together, alone. I had behaved with unusual sedateness, had showed an aplomb I had never before evidenced. Full manhood, belated, had at last come to me.

With more than usual satisfaction I drank my coffee, holding the cup with my hands around it like a child ... warming my fingers, which are nearly always cold in the morning....

Then, while Ruth sat opposite me, eyeing me curiously, I began to sing, half-aloud, to myself.

A silence fell. We exchanged very few words.

And it was our custom, when together, Ruth and I, to hold long discussions concerning the methods and technique of the English poets, especially the earlier ones.

This morning Baxter's secretary rose and left part of her breakfast uneaten, hurrying into the house as if to avoid something which she had seen and dreaded.

* * * * *

I ate a long time, dreaming.

Darrie came out, followed immediately by Daniel. Daniel was in an obstreperous mood ... he cried out that I must be his "telegraph pole," that he would be a lineman, and climb me. I felt an affection for him that I had not known before. I played with him, letting him climb up my leg.

He finished, a-straddle my shoulders. I reached up and sat him still higher, on my head. And he waved his arms and shouted, as if making signals to someone far off.

Darrie laughed.

"Which would you rather have, a son or a daughter?" she asked me.

"I don't know," I replied, letting Daniel slide down, "but I think I'd rather have a daughter ... the next generation will see a great age of freedom for women ... feminism....

"Then it would be a grand thing, too, to have a beautiful daughter to go about with ... and I would be old and silver-haired and benignant-looking ... and people would say, as they saw the two of us:

"'There goes the poet, John Gregory, and his daughter ... isn't she a beautiful girl!'

"And she would be a great actress."

* * * * *

Penton came forth from the big house ... he poised tentatively like a queer bird on the verge of a long flight ... then he wavered rapidly down the steps.

"—slept late!... has the mail come yet?... where's Ruth?"

"Isn't she in the house?" I queried.

"I saw her stepping out at the back door a minute ago" ... said Darrie.

"We had breakfast together ... I...."

"I hope she doesn't stay away long ... I have an article on Blue Laws as a Reactionary Weapon, that I want to dictate for a magazine ...—one of her moods, I suppose!"

I looked the little, large-browed man over almost impersonally. I saw him as from far away. He came out very clear to me.

I found a profound pity for him waking in my heart, together with a sort of contempt.

"And where's Hildreth?"

"Not up yet I presume," replied Darrie.

* * * * *

I excused myself and hurried back to my tent ... where, instead of settling down to work on the third act of my play, I lay prone on my cot, day-dreaming of the future. How beautiful it would be, now that I had at last found my life-mate!

I thanked God that nothing trivial was in my heart to mar the stupendousness of my love, my first real passion for a woman!

* * * * *

"Johnnie!"

I leaped alert. It was Hildreth, at my tent door....

"Get up, you lazy boy ... surely you haven't been sleeping all this time?"

"No, darling."

"I ate my breakfast all alone," she remarked, in an aggrieved tone, "where's Darrie and Mubby and Ruth?"

"God knows! I don't—and I don't care!"

"You needn't be peevish!"

"Peevish?—as long as you are with me I don't care if all the rest of humanity are dead."

I stepped out beside her. We stood locked in a long embrace.

She drew back, with belated thoughtfulness....

"We ought to be more careful ... so near the house."

"I'm so glad you're in the little house near my tent, Hildreth."

"But we can't be together there much ... it's too near the big house."

"What shall we do, then?"

"There's the fields and the woods ... miles of them ... the whole outside world for us."

"I don't see why we shouldn't go strolling together ... the rest are all abroad somewhere, too ... but we must be careful, Johnnie, very careful."

"Careful—why?"

"Because of Mubby."

"But he doesn't love you any more?"

"I'm not so sure about that ... I'm not so sure about anything."

* * * * *

I never saw the world so beautiful as on that day. I was translated to the veritable garden of Eden. The community had been named rightly. I was Adam and Hildreth was my Eve.

And so it went on for two blissful weeks....

If the Voice of God had met us, going abroad beneath the trees, I would not have been surprised.

Hildreth took her volume of Blake with her on our rambles ... and we revelled in his "Songs of Experience" as well as "Songs of Innocence"; and we were moved deeply by the huge, cloudy grandeur of his prophetic books....

Why could it not go on forever thus? eternal summer, everlasting love in its first rosy flush?...

Hildreth was very wise and very patient with one who was as yet a mere acolyte in love's ways and uses ... she taught me many things, and I adored her for it—as little by little, day by day, she brought me to the full stature of my manhood....

* * * * *

Of course the two other women of the household immediately sensed what was happening. But Penton remained pathetically blind....

What an incredible man! A mole would have gotten a glimmer of the gradually developing change.

With bravado I acted my part of the triangular drama ... but Hildreth carried off her part with an easiness, a femininely delicate boldness, that compelled my utmost admiration ... she even threw suspicious Ruth and Darrie off the scent—at times.

* * * * *

The night of the performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream I shall never forget ... Hildreth as Titania in her green tights ... I sat in the back (she would not allow me in the front because it might fluster her, she pleaded) and enjoyed a sense of blissful ownership in her, as she glided about, through the Shakespearean scenes ...—such a sense of ownership that it ran through my veins with a full feeling, possessed my entire body....

Who was this little, alien man, Penton Baxter, who also dared claim her possession!...

Nonchalantly and with an emotion of inner triumph I let him walk homeward with Hildreth, while I paced along with Ruth and Darrie.

Let him congratulate her now on her triumph ... that she had had, as Titania, there under the wide heaven of stars, in our outdoor theatre ... in the midst of the Chinese lanterns that swayed in the slight breaths of summer air....

Later on, when she was warm in my arms, I would congratulate her ... —tell her she was greater than Bernhardt ... than Duse herself!... tell her every incredible thing that lovers hold as mere, commonplace truths.

* * * * *

Jones had acquitted himself wonderfully as Bottom ... roaring like any suckling dove ... putting real philosophic comedy in his part ... to the applause of even the elder Grahame, who, to do him credit, was not such a bad sport, after all.

* * * * *

"Johnnie, we are having a sing to-night ... there'll be a full moon up. I have informed the committee that you will read a few of your poems by the camp-fire."

"—the first time I ever heard of it," I replied, concealing my pride in the invitation, under show of being disgruntled....

That was Penton's way, arranging things first, telling you afterward.

"But you will do it? I have said you would!"

"Yes, Penton, if you wish me to!"

* * * * *

Hildreth was always insistent on my strength ... my greyhound length of limb, my huge chest ... she stood up and pounded on my chest once....

"Oh, why do I pick out a poor poet, and not a millionaire, for a lover!"

* * * * *

There grew up between us a myth ... we were living in cave-days ... she was my cave-woman ... I was her cave-man....

As I came to her in my bath-robe (for now, bolder with seeming immunity, we threw caution aside, and met often in the little house)—

As I came to her in my bath-robe, unshaven, once ... she called me her Paphnutius ... and she was my Thais ... and she told me Anatole France's story of Thais.

But the cave-legend of our love ... in a previous incarnation ... was what spelled her most ... she doted on strength ... cruel, sheer, brute strength....

That I could carry her, lift her high up with ease, toss her about, rejoiced her to the utmost....

I caught her up in my arms, pleasing this humour, tossing her like a ball ... till my muscles were as sore as if I had fought through the two halves of a foot-ball game....

Out of all this play between us there grew a series of Cave Poems.

One of them I set aside to read at the sing, beside the camp-fire.

* * * * *

They had chorused Up With the Bonnet for Bonny Dundee and You Take the Highway....

There ran a ripple of talk while they waited for me.

In the red glow of the camp-fire I towered over the stocky little husband as he introduced me. Hildreth was sitting there ... I must make a good impression before my mate. All I saw was she—too patently, I fear.

I went through poem after poem, entranced with the melody of my verse ... mostly delicate, evanescent stuff ... like this one ...

"THE EMPEROR TO HIS LOVE

"I've a green garden with a grey wall 'round Where even the wind's foot-fall makes no sound; There let us go and from ambition flee, Accepting love's brief immortality. Let other rulers hugely labour still Beneath the burden of ambition's ill Like caryatids heaving up the strain Of mammoth chambers, till they stoop again ... Your face has changed my days to splendid dreams And baubled trumpets, traffics, and triremes; One swift touch of your passion-parted lips Is worth five armies and ten seas of ships."

Hildreth's applause was sweet. My heart almost burst with happiness within me, as those tiny hands, that had run through my hair and been so wonderful with me ... hands that I had kissed and fondled in secret—joined in unison with Penton's and Darrie's and Ruth's hand-claps.

"And now I will finish with the Song of Kaa, the Cave-Man," I announced ... it seemed that the poem was not, after all, in the bunch of MSS. I had brought along with me....

At last I found it—and read:

"THE SONG OF KAA

"Beat with thy club on a hollow tree While I chant the song of Kaa for thee: I lived in a cave, alone, at first, Till into a neighbouring valley I burst Wild and bearded and seeking prey, And I came on Naa, and bore her away ... Away to my hole in the crest of the hill, Where I broke her body to my fierce will....

* * * * *

"My fellow cave-men, fell in a rage: 'What hast thou done?' cried Singh, the Sage, 'For I hear far off a battle-song, And the tree-men come, a hundred strong ...' Long the battle and dread the fight; We hurled rocks down from our mountain height"—

I copy this from memory alone ... Hildreth has all my cave-poems. I gave them to her, holding no transcripts of them—

The upshot—

"All of our tribe were slain ... Naa and I alone escaped— going far off— To start another people and clan: She, the woman, and I, the man!"

In my love-drunkenness, I looked directly at Hildreth as I read the last lines ... she lowered her head and picked at her sandal....

The applause was tumultuous....

Penton Baxter rose to his feet, as chairman of the occasion....

"I'm sure we all thank Mr. Gregory—"

* * * * *

Events trod rapidly on one another's heels. Though Penton had gone on frequent walks with Darrie, after his day's work,—chiefly because Hildreth had not wanted to go on walks with him herself, or had not wanted to accompany them both—yet she and I seized on the precedent Penton and Darrie had set, and we were abroad most of the time ... roaming idyllically in the fields, the woods ... passionate ... mad with the new love that had come to us ... unseeing, in our absorption in each other's arms ... praying with devout lover's prayers that we were as unseen as unseeing....

We were abroad in the fields so much that even Penton himself must notice it....

So we developed the flimsiest of all flimsy pretexts ... pretended to be engrossed, together, in of all things, the study of—toadstools and mushrooms ... taking with us Neltje Blanchan's book on Mushrooms and Toadstools, with its beautiful coloured illustrations ... and we did learn a lot about these queer vegetations that grow without the need of chlorophyll ... entering into a world of new colours in the vegetable kingdom ... exquisite pinks and mauves and greys ... blues ... purples ... reds ... russets ... in the darkest spots of the woods we sought and found strange species of these marvellous growths ... that grow more readily in the dark and obscurity, the twilights of nature, than in the open sunlight of green summer days....

* * * * *

Down vistas of forest we often pursued each other ... often got lost so that it took hours for re-orientation ... once, for awhile, to our great fright, we could not re-discover our clothes, that we had lightly tossed aside on the bank of a brook lost and remote,—that had never before laved a human body in its singing recesses of forest foliage ... for I had been playing satyr to her nymph, pursuing her....

* * * * *

And each day saw us a little more reckless, more bold and open in our love, our passion, for each other.

* * * * *

"How handsome love is making you, my Paphnutius!"

I was wearing my bath-robe, had stopped at her cottage a moment, in the morning, where she sat, in an easy chair, reading peacefully ... I was on my way for my morning dip in a nearby brook....

My bath-robe, that made me, somehow, feel so aristocratic, so like a member of the leisure class ... I forgot to tell how I had brought it all the way from Kansas, together with my MSS.

* * * * *

As I swam about in the brook, not over four feet deep, I sang and shouted. I had never been so happy in my life....

I dried myself in the sun, using its morning heat for a towel....

As I sat there on a rock, I heard a crackling of twigs, and Penton thrust his way through the intervening branches to my bare rock and my bare self ... I hastily, I do not know why, put on my bathrobe....

"Hello, Penton."

"Good morning, Johnnie. I felt you'd be down here for your morning bath ... I came to have a serious talk with you."

"Yes?"

"I want you to take calmly what I am about to say!"

Penton was much impressed with my stories of tramp days and tales of adventure on land and sea, which you may be sure my sense of the dramatic had encouraged me to lay on thick—and he, plainly, did not desire any heat in the discussion which was to follow....

"Recently it has come to my attention that there has been a lot of gossip about you and Hildreth ... your conduct together." He drew his lips together tightly, settled himself for a long siege....

"Why, Penton," I began, protestingly and hypocritically,—I had planned far other and franker conduct in such an emergency—but here I was, deprecating the truth—

"Why, Penton, God knows—"

"Never mind ... if it is true, I am very sorry for you—for Hildreth's sake, for yours, for mine ... but I want to warn you, if it is not true, to look out ... you, as a friend, owe me some obligations ... I have taken you in here, accepted you as one almost of my family, and—"

"But, Penton, this is unfair," I lied, "unfair even to suspect me—"

"If it had been anybody but you, Johnnie, I would have been suspicious weeks ago ... Oh, I know, Hildreth ... she is giving all the manifestations ... how her face shines, how beautiful she has grown, as she does, with a new heart interest!... and her taking my little cottage ... ousting me from it....

"If it was anyone else," and he fetched a deep sigh, with tears standing in his eyes, leaving the sentence incomplete.

At that moment I was impelled almost to cast myself at his feet, to confess, and beg forgiveness....

"I want to warn you," he went on, "of Hildreth ... once before this has happened ... she is a varietist by nature, as I am essentially a monogamist."

"—and the free love idea, it was you who taught her this, brought her into contact with Havelock Ellis, Ellen Key, Rosa Von Mayerreder?"

"I deny that. I believe in human freedom ... divorce ... remarriage ... but not in extreme sex-radicalism ... Hildreth has misinterpreted me ... the people you mention are great idealists, but in many ways they go too far ... true—I brought Hildreth into contact with these books; but only that she might use her own judgment, not accept them wholly and blindly, as she has done...."

I looked at the man. He was sincere. An incredible, naive, almost idiotic purity shone in his face....

Again I was impelled to confess. Again I held my tongue. Again I lied.

"Penton, what you have just said about you and Hildreth and your lives together, I shall consider as sacred between us."

He gave me his hand.

"Promise me one thing, that you will not take Hildreth as your sweetheart ... be true to our friendship first, Johnnie."

"Penton, I am only flesh and blood; I will promise, if anything happens, to tell you, ultimately, the truth."

He looked at me with close scrutiny again, at this ambiguous speech.

"Johnnie, have you told me the absolute truth?"

"Yes!" evading his eyes.

"—because there is a wild strain in Hildreth that only needs a little rousing—" He paused.

* * * * *

"Johnnie," as we walked away, "don't you think you had better pack up and leave? The next time I am going to sue for a divorce."

* * * * *

We walked home arm in arm. I simulated so well that it was Baxter who begged pardon for even suspecting me.

But I felt like a dog. I, for my part, determined to bid farewell to Hildreth that very evening, before she retired for the night, in her cottage—take train to New York, and so to Paris, without first finishing my Judas, as I had intended.

We would bury forever in the secret places of our hearts what had already happened between us ... this was my first impulse....

My next was—that we should up and run away together, and defy Penton Baxter and the world.

* * * * *

Hildreth could see by the strangeness in my behaviour, as I came into the cottage, to kiss her good-night ... and stay a little while—a new custom of ours, as we grew bolder—could see that I had something on my mind.

I related to her all that had taken place between me and Penton that morning....

"The cad," she cried, "the nasty cad, to talk to you so about me ... I would have told you myself because you are my lover ... but he had no right to tell you ... as far as he has proof positive, you are merely a mutual friend....

"But that's the way with him. He has mixed his own life up so that it is all public, to him.

"Yes," she cried impetuously and passionately ... "it's true ... I have not been faithful to him before...."

"—and you returned to him? wasn't that weak?"

I took her hands in mine, with mind and soul made up at last....

"This time you can go through with it. Here's a man who will stand by you forever. I can earn a living for both of us, and—"

"Don't let's discuss the horrid old subject any more to-night ... I'm tired of discussing ... as you love me, read some poetry to me ... or I shall scream!"

"Have you ever read the sonnets of George Santayana?... I know most of them by heart ... let me quote you his best ...

'O world, thou choosest not the better part! It is not wisdom to be only wise, And on the inward vision close the eyes, But it is wisdom to believe the heart. Columbus found a world, and had no chart Save one that faith deciphered in the skies To trust the soul's invincible surmise Was all his science and his only art. Our knowledge is a torch of smoky pine That lights the pathway but one step ahead Across a void of mystery and dread. Bid, then, the tender light of faith to shine By which alone the mortal heart is led Unto the thinking of the thought divine!'"

* * * * *

"I wish I had written that!" I said, in a hushed, awed voice, after a moment's silence....

* * * * *

"Now kiss me good-night and go to your tent ... I feel restless, troubled in spirit, to-night," she said, continuing:

"Perhaps I have been too harsh with Penton....

"He is steering on a chartless sea with no compass....

"No wonder he, and all radicals and pioneers in human thought, blunder ridiculously....

"The conservative world has its charts, its course well mapped out....

"I suppose I am not strong enough, big enough, for him."

"Hush! now it is you who're just talking!" I replied.

"You're jealous!"

"By God, yes. I am jealous, though I suppose I ought to be ashamed of it."

* * * * *

She sat in bed, propped up with pillows. She had been reading Shakespeare's sonnets aloud to me. The big green-shaded reading lamp cast a dim light that pervaded the room.

She reached out both arms to me, the wide sleeves falling back from them, and showing their feminine whiteness....

I sat down beside her, caught her to me, kissed her till she was breathless....

"There ... there ... please! Please!"

"What! you're not tiring of my kisses?"

"No, dearest boy, but I have a curious feeling, I tell you ... maybe we're being watched...."

"Nonsense ... he believes I told him the truth."

And I caught her in my arms again, half-reclining on the bed.

"Sh!" she flung me off with a sudden impulse of frightened strength, "I hear someone."

"It's only the wind."

"Quick!... my God!"—

* * * * *

I snatched up a volume of Keats. It fell open at "St. Agnes Eve." I hurled myself into a chair ... gathering my breath I began aloud, as naturally as I could—

"St. Agnes' Eve! ah, bitter chill it was; The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold—"

At that very instant, Penton burst in at the door.

He paused a dramatic moment, his back to it, facing us.

I stopped reading, in pretended astonishment.

"Well, Penton?" acted Hildreth languidly....

The look of defeat and bewilderment on the husband's face would have been comic if it had not been pitiable.

I rose, laying the book down carefully.

"I think I'll go now, Hildreth ... you wish to see Penton alone." I put all the calm casual deference in my voice possible. I started to walk easily to the door.

"No! stop! I wish you to stay here, John Gregory ... since you've got yourself into this—"

"I'd like to know what you mean by 'got yourself into this'?"

"Oh, Gregory, let's not talk nonsense any longer."

"You don't believe what I assured you this morning?"

"Johnnie, it's not human ... I can't make myself, and I've tried and tried, God knows!"

"I'd like to know, for my part, just what you mean, Penton Baxter, spying on me this way—bursting in on poor Johnnie Gregory and me like a maniac, while we were only reading poetry together."

"—reading poetry together!" he echoed bitterly, almost collapsing, as he went into a chair.

Again I tried to make my exit.

"Johnnie, I want you to stay. I want to have all this out right here and now," snapped Baxter decisively.

"Very well ... if you put it that way."

"—a nice way to treat your guest," Hildreth interposed, "the way you've been raving about him, too. 'Johnnie Gregory' this, and 'Johnnie Gregory' that!—and the minute he arrives, first you try to make him put up at the community inn; and now you accuse him of—of—"

Hildreth began to weep softly....

And then began a performance at which I stood aside, mentally, in admiration ... the way that little woman handled her husband!

She wept, she laughed, she upbraided, she cajoled ... at one moment swore she wanted nothing better than to die, at the other, vowed eternal fidelity till old age overtook them both....

* * * * *

"I must go," I cried, quite ashamed of myself in my heart. Baxter's credulity had expanded again, in the sun of Hildreth's forgiveness of him for his unjust suspicions!...

For the first time in my life I perceived how a desperate woman can twist a man any way she wants.

"No, you must not go! it is I who am going—to show that I trust you."

"Good God!" I protested—this was too much! "no, no ... good-night, both of you ... good-night, Penton! good-night, Hildreth!"

Penton Baxter stepped in my way, took hold of one of my hands in both of his....

"Please, Johnnie, please, dear friend ... I wish you to stay while I myself go. Finish reading the poem to Hildreth ... I think I have been too harsh in my judgment of both of you ... only please do be more discreet, if only for appearance's sake, in the future....

"Sit down where you were. I wish to show that I trust you both....

"Good-night, Hildreth!" and he kissed his wife in fond contrition.

"Good-night, Johnnie ... forgive me!"

And he wavered out at the door, his face set in pain.

* * * * *

As soon as he had gone I rose swiftly.

"And now I must go."

"If you men aren't the funniest things!" she caught me by the hand, detaining me ... "not yet ... wait a minute. Read more of that poem you began, if only for a blind."

I picked up the book, started reading again ... strangely a rush of tears flooded my eyes and blurred the type....

I began to sob, heart-sick. I did love the absurd little man. My heart ached, broken over my lies....

"Oh! Oh!" I sobbed, "Hildreth, my woman, my sweetheart—he trusted me, Hildreth ... he trusted me!"

I knelt by the bed, thrusting my head into the lap of my First Woman.

She kissed me on top of the head.

"You're both two big, silly babies, that's all you are."

* * * * *

It was dawn when I returned to my tent, pulled the flap aside, fell, exhausted, on my cot in dreamless sleep....

* * * * *

How was it all going to end?

It seemed to me that I had tapped violent, subterranean currents in life and passion, that I had not hitherto known existed....

Free Love, Marriage, Polygamy, Polyandry, Varietism, Promiscuity—these were but tossing chips of nomenclature, bits of verbal welter, upborne by deep terrible human currents that appalled the imagination!

The man who prated glibly of any ready solution, orthodox or heterodox, radical or conventional, of the problem of the relationships between men and women was worse than a fool, he was a dangerous madman!

* * * * *

Hildreth and I, a-field, had found a bed of that exceptionally poisonous mushroom named Pallida something or other ... the book said its poison was kin to that of the poison in the rattlesnake's bite. My eyes met with Hildreth's ... we needed say no word, both thinking the same thought that frightened us!... "how easy it would be—!"

* * * * *

Now we were plumbing the darker side of passion. Something that Carpenter does not write of in his Love's Coming of Age.

* * * * *

A night of wind, shifting into rain. Hildreth I knew would be afraid, alone.

I stepped into her cottage, in my bath-robe. She almost screamed at my sudden appearance. For I came in at the door like a shadow, the wind and rain making such a tumult that a running horse would not have been heard.

"Dearest ... you're all wringing wet ... you're dripping all over the floor. Throw off that robe. Dry yourself—there's a towel there!"

She flung me her kimono. "Here, put this on, till you're comfortable again."

I came out in her kimono, which I was bursting through ... my arms sticking out to my elbow.

She laughed herself almost into hysteria at my funny appearance.

* * * * *

"It will be quite safe to-night. I don't think he'd venture out. This is a hurricane, not a rainstorm ... besides, I believe he's a little afraid of you, Johnnie ... I was watching him rather closely, while I handled him, the other night ... he kept an uneasy eye on you all the time."

"God, but you were superb, Hildreth ... if you could only act that way on the stage!—"

"I could act that way on the stage," she replied unexpectedly, a trifle put out....

Then—

"A woman has to do many things to save herself—"

"Oh, I swear that you are the most marvellous, the most beautiful woman in the world ... I love you ... I adore you ... I'd die for you ... right here ... now!"

* * * * *

As we lay there in the dark the storm pulled and tugged and battered as if with great, sinister hands, striving to get in at us.

Hildreth trembled in my arms, shaking afresh at each shock of the wind and the rain.

"Don't be afraid, my little woman!"

"I wonder if he'd dare come down to-night?"

"If he did, and caught us, I'd kill him."

"He knows that, if he knows anything, I'm sure ... that's why I think we're all right!"

And she came up closer into my arms with a sigh of content.

* * * * *

I had been asleep....

The sudden madness and saturnalia of love into which I had these few weeks been plunged tapped, it seemed, my subliminal consciousness, maybe my memory of former incarnations....

I never had such a vision in my life....

I was fully aware of my surroundings, yet through them shone another, a far reality that belonged to me, too.

I described it to Hildreth, as she lay, thrilled, beside me.

A cave ... high up on the hill-crest ... our cave, that we had imagined, now come true....

I was a huge chap, with a girdle of leaves about my waist ... strange, tropic leaves ... there was black hair all over my body ... there was a little, red fire back in the cave's obscurity....

I had come in, casting a dead fawn down from my shoulder....

Hildreth came forward ... it was plainly she ... though with fine red hair like down on her legs....

"But your name is Naa ... my name is Kaa, the hunter, the slayer of good, red meat."

"Johnnie, do you really see that,—all that!"

She was enthralled like a child, as I described the landscape that lay, spread immense, beneath us ... and the wide ocean, great and blue, that tossed to the east.

Though I was genuinely possessed by this strange vision, though it was no make-believe, I could not help injecting a little Kansas horse-play into it....

I sank my teeth in "Naa's" shoulder, till she cried aloud. I seized her by the hair and dragged her till she lay prone on the floor.

I stood over her, making guttural noises, which I did so realistically that it made shivers run up and down my back while doing it....

I was almost as frightened as she was.

Before I knew it, she was thinking I had suddenly gone mad. She was shouting "Mubby" for help—her husband's pet name....

The little fool! I caught her over the mouth with a grim hand.

"Don't do that ... can't a fellow play once in a while?"

"But it wasn't all play, was it?"

"No, I really saw the cave, and the primeval landscape.

"Shall I tell you some more?"

"No, it frightens me too much ... it seems too real. And you've bruised me, and my head feels as if you've torn half my hair out."

"Why did you call out your husband's pet name?"

"I don't know ... did I?"

"Yes!"

"After a pause in the dark.

"Tell me, was he ... was Mubby.. back there, in our former life?"

"O yes, he was there."

"And Darrie, too?"

"Yes, Darrie, too!"

"If my name was Naa and your name was Kaa, what were their names?"

"Mubby was named Baa and Darrie was Blaa!"

This convulsed Hildreth.

"You great, big, sweet fool of a poet, I do love you, I really do!"

* * * * *

"We were made for each other in every way ... my head just fits your shoulder," she observed quaintly.

* * * * *

"Mubby came down to me this morning," said Hildreth one evening, "and pleaded to be taken back again ... as husband...."

"And what?—"

"What did I do?... when I love you?... the mere idea made me sick to think of. I couldn't endure him again."

* * * * *

One afternoon Penton and Hildreth were closeted together from lunch to dark. It was my turn to cry out in my heart, and suffer agonies of imagination.

* * * * *

The next morning Hildreth began packing up, with the aid of Mrs. Jones. I came upon her, in the library, where I had gone to get a book. My face fell dismally.

"I can't endure it any longer, Johnnie, I'm going back home, to New York ... my father will take me in."

"And how about me?"

"—wait patiently a few days then, if you still feel the same about me, follow me!... and, until you come to join me, write me at least three times a day."

"I'll do it ..." then I couldn't help being playful again, "I'll write you entirely in cave-fashion."

"I am taking a big step, Johnnie, I'm through with Penton Baxter forever—but I wonder if my new life is to be with you ... you are such an irresponsible, delightful madman at times....

"You're wonderful as a lover ... but as a man with a woman to take care of—!"

"Don't worry about that! just give me a chance, and I'll show you I can be practical too."

* * * * *

Hildreth had gone. With her going the bottom seemed to drop out of my existence, leaving a black hole where it had fallen through. I walked about, looking so truly miserable, that even Baxter spoke with gentle consideration to me.

"Poor Johnnie, to think you'd run into a proposition like this, the first pop out of the box."

"No, it isn't what you think ... I'm getting malaria, I believe."

* * * * *

But to be deprived of her, my first love. No longer to be in her presence, no longer to watch her quiet smile, the lovely droop of her mouth's corner ... to feed on the kisses no more that had become as necessary as daily bread itself to me—

I began to lose weight ... to start up in the night, after a brief fit of false slumber, hearing myself, as if it were an alien voice, crying her name aloud....

I whispered and talked tender, whimsical, silly things to my pillow, holding it in my arms, as if it were she....

* * * * *

Each day I sent her four, five letters ... letters full of madness, absurdity, love, despair, wild expressions of intimacy that I would Have died to know anybody else ever saw.

Her first letter in return burned me alive with happiness....

* * * * *

"—you know why she went to the city," Penton teased, "it's because 'Gene Mallows, the California poet, is up there. He and she got on pretty well when we were on the coast."

"You lie!" I bellowed, beside myself, "Hildreth will be faithful to me ... she has promised."

Penton Baxter looked me up and down, courageously, coolly, for a long time. Slowly I realised what I had just said.

"That's all I wanted to know, John Gregory! I've got it out of you at last!"

He turned on his heel.

Changing his mind, he faced me again. This time there was a despairful agony of kindness in his face.

"Dear boy, I'm sorry for all this thing that has come between us. But there is yet time for you to keep out of it. Hildreth and I are done with each other forever ... but you needn't be mixed up in this affair....

"Johnnie, let her stay in New York, and, no matter how much she wants you, don't go up there to join her."

"I love her. I adore her. I want to be where she is. Now the whole truth is out."

"My poor friend!"

"Don't call me your friend—you—"

He tightened his lips....

"If you go up there to join her, remember that I gave you fair warning."

* * * * *

I could endure it no longer, the torment of not seeing her, of not being with her....

As her favourite sonneteer, Santayana, writes—lines she often quoted—

"Love leads me on, no end of love appears. Is this the heaven, poets, that ye paint? Oh then, how like damnation to be blessed!"

* * * * *

I informed Ruth, Darrie, Penton that I was going to New York in the morning....

Penton immediately whisked out of my sight, full of uncontrollable emotion....

Darrie and Ruth almost fell upon me, trying to persuade me not to rejoin Hildreth. I evaded by saying that I was now on my way to Europe, that possibly I might see her before I went, but—

* * * * *

I had an hour till train time. My MSS. was packed again, my Josephus, my Homer, my Shakespeare, my Keats, my bath robe.

I thought I would escape without saying good-bye.

But Penton came down the front porch, stood in my path.

"Johnnie, a last warning."

"I want none of your last warnings."

"Are you going to Hildreth?"

"I'm tired of being a liar. I've never lied so much in my life ... yes, I'm going to Hildreth ... and I'm going to persuade her to live with me, and defy the whole damned world—the world of fake radicals that talk about divorces when the shoe pinches them, as well as the world of conservatives," I announced harshly.

"I've done all I could!" he responded wearily, "I see you won't come to your senses—wait a minute!" and he turned on his heel. He had asked me to wait with such solemnity that I stuck still in my tracks, waiting.

He disappeared into the big house, to re-emerge with, of all things, the coffee percolator!

"Here!" he exclaimed, holding out the object to me ceremoniously and seriously, "you can take this to your goddess, this poison-machine, and lay it on her altar. Tell her I offered this to you. Tell her that it is a symbol of her never coming back here again."

Here was where I too lacked a sense of humour. I struck the coffee percolator out of his hands. I stalked off.

* * * * *

On the way to New York I built the full dream of what Hildreth and I were to effect for the world—a practical example, in our life as we lived it together, of the rightness of free love....

We would test it out, would rent a cottage somewhere, preferably on the Jersey coast near the sea shore ... autumn was coming on, and there would be lovely, crystal-clear weather ... and the scent of pines in the good air.

* * * * *

Perhaps Penton, Hildreth and I could all three join in amicable accord, over the solution of our difficulty, along radical and idealistic lines.

* * * * *

I hurried to the address given me by Hildreth. She was not in, but her mother was ... a plump, rather good looking, fashionably dressed woman. Evidently the mother did not know of the relationship between me and her daughter.

"So you are the poet Hildreth has told me about?" after we had discoursed for upwards of an hour—

"I can easily see how Hildreth has grown so fond of you," and she patted me on the head as if I were a schoolboy, in motherly fashion.

* * * * *

"Mother's rather stupid and old-fashioned ... there'd be no use trying to explain the situation to her. The best thing we can do is to persuade her that Daniel needs her, down in Eden ... that will remove her from the flat, so we can have it all to ourselves for a few days, in order to plan what is to be done next."

Next morning Mrs. Deuell, Hildreth's mother, as innocent as a new-born lamb as to what was up, permitted herself to be shipped off to Eden, to take care of Daniel.

* * * * *

Instead of planning, however, and marshalling our resources, Hildreth and I abandoned ourselves to the mutual happiness and endearments of two love-drunk, emotion-crazed beings on a honeymoon....

* * * * *

The bell rang. In walked Darrie.

"Well, Darrie!" and Hildreth embraced her friend. And I was glad to see her, too. I knew that, in spite of the high pressure we had lived under during the past summer, Darrie was trying hard to be just, to be friend to all of us....

She laughed at the disorder of the place ... dishes unwashed ... food scattered about on the table....

"What a pair of love-birds you two are."

"And has Penton accepted the situation?"

"I came up to tell you that he has ... it has made him quite sick, though!"

"Poor Mubby!" Hildreth ejaculated.

"—but he has sent me to tell you that you can go away together wherever you please, that he won't molest you in the least."

"It's too incredible!" cried Hildreth, almost disappointed, "you don't know him ... he's changed his mind, I am sure, since you left."

"He said he would follow me by Saturday (it was Wednesday) leaving your mother in care of Daniel."

"Does mother suspect?—"

"No ... not at all."

"If the entire world fell about mother's ears, she wouldn't know."

"What do you two lovers purpose doing?"

I unfolded my scheme of living with Hildreth in a Jersey bungalow ... Derek's income to me would go on a while yet ... I could sell stories and poems to the New York magazines ... Hildreth could write a book as well as I ... we would become to the modern world an example of the radical love-life ... the Godwin and Wollstonecraft of the age.

* * * * *

We ate supper together, the three of us, in the flat. It was so cosy. Darrie and Hildreth joined in cleaning the house that afternoon.

But a bomb was to be hurled among us.

At twelve o'clock of the next day the 'phone rang.

Darrie answered it. After a few words she came for me, her face as white as a sheet....

"My God, Penton is in town!"

"—this is only Thursday ... he was not coming till Saturday!" I exclaimed, full of forboding.

"I knew, I knew he wouldn't keep his original mind!" exclaimed Hildreth.

"He's holding the wire ... wants to say something to you, Johnnie."

* * * * *

"Yes, Penton, what is it?"

"Only this," his voice replied, as if rehearsing a set speech, "yesterday afternoon I sent a telegram to my lawyer to institute proceedings for a divorce, and I mentioned you as co-respondent...."

"Damn you to hell ... I thought we were going to settle this in the radical way?"

"It's the only way out that I can see. I've stood this business till it's almost killing me."

"Well, is that all?"

"No ... somehow—how, I do not know, the New York Journal has gotten hold of my wire ... it will be in all the papers to-night or to-morrow ... so I advise you and Hildreth to disappear quietly somewhere, if you don't want to see the reporters,—who will all presently be on the way to the flat."

"Damn you, Penton ... needn't tell me about the news leaking out ... you've done it yourself ... now I want you to promise me only one thing, that you'll hold the reporters off for a couple of hours, till we have a good start."

"I'll do my best," answered he, "but please believe me. How they got the contents of the telegram I do not know, but on my honour I did not give it out nor did I tell the reporters where you are."

* * * * *

Hildreth was so angry she could hardly speak.

"This is a fine to-do," exclaimed Darrie, "Penton distinctly promised me—"

"I'd like to get a good crack at him!" I boasted, at the same time enjoying the excitement.

* * * * *

Hildreth began packing her clothes in a large suitcase ... as we later found she cast all her clean clothes aside, and in her excitement included all her soiled linen and lingerie....

We had our last meal together. I brought in a large bottle of white wine. All of us grew rather hilarious and made a merry joke of the adventure. We poked fun at Penton.

We sallied forth at the front door, Darrie to go to the Martha Washington. "I don't want to be mixed up in the coming uproar and scandal," she exclaimed ... "so far, I'm clear of all blame, and I know only too well what the papers would insinuate."

Hildreth and I took train for New Jersey ... two tickets for—anywhere ... in our excited condition we ran off first to Elizabeth. We had with us exactly one hundred dollars, which I had borrowed of Darrie before we parted on our several ways.

I registered for Hildreth and myself as "Mr. Arthur Mallory and wife," in the register of an obscure hotel hear the noise and clatter of a hundred trains drawing continually out and in.

It made me happy and important to sign her name on the register as something belonging to me.

Once alone in the room, Hildreth, to my consternation, could talk of nothing else but Penton.

"—to think that he would do such a thing to me, only to think of it!" she cried vehemently, again and again.

"If he believes in freedom for men and women, why was all this necessary? the sordidness of the public clamour? the divorce court?... oh, my poor, dear, sweet, wild poet-boy, you're in for it! Don't you wish you were well out of all this and back in Kansas again?"

"No; I am glad. As long as I am with you I don't care what happens. I love you, Hildreth!"

* * * * *

In the night she woke, screaming, from a nightmare. I could hardly stop her.

"Hush, dearest ... darling ... sweetheart ... I am with you; everything is all right" ... then, as she kept it up, "for God's sake ... Hildreth, do be quiet ... you're all right ... the man you love is here, close by you ... no harm shall come to you."

"Oh, Johnnie," clutching me, quivering, "I've just had such a horrible dream," sobbing as I took her tenderly in my arms....

"There, there, darling!"

She was quiet now.

"In a few minutes we would have had the whole hotel breaking in at the door ... thinking I was killing you."

* * * * *

She woke up again, and woke me up.

"Johnnie, find me some ink and a pen. I'm going to write that cad a letter that will shrivel him up like acid."

"Can't you wait till morning, Hildreth?" sleepily.

"No ... I must write it now."

I dressed. I went down to the hotel writing-room and came back with pen and ink.

She sat up in bed and wrote the letter. She then read it aloud to me. She was immensely pleased with her effort.

With a final gesticulation of vindictive, feminine joy, she succeeded in spilling the whole bottle of ink on the white bed-spread.

"Now you've done it."

"We'll have to clear out early before the chambermaid comes in ... we're only staying here for one night and can't waste our money paying for the damage."

In the morning I bought the papers.

The American had made a scoop. There it was, the story of the whole thing on the front page.

"PENTON BAXTER SUES FOR DIVORCE ————————————— NAMES VAGABOND-POET AS CO-RESPONDENT"

There it stood, in big head-lines.

The actuality stared us in the face. We belonged to each other now. It was no longer a summer idyll, but a practical reality.

As we took the train for Long Branch we realised that we had plunged midmost into the action that would put all our theories to the test....

I looked at my woman with a sidelong glance, as she sat beside me on the train seat.... She was so pretty, so frail, so feminine that I pitied her, while at the same time my heart swelled with tenderness for her, and with pride of possession. For she was mine now without dispute. She, for her part, spoke but little, except illogically to upbraid Penton Baxter, as if he had perpetrated an ill on two people thoroughly innocent.

I was angry with him on other grounds ... he was not playing the radical game, but taking advantage of the rules of the conventional world.

With a fugitive sense of pursuit, we hired a cabby to drive us to a summer boarding house at Long Branch ... where Hildreth and I rented a single large room for both of us....

And there Hildreth immediately went into hysterics, and did nothing but weep. While I waited on her hand and foot, bringing up food to her because she was sensitive about the probability of people recognising her.

We stayed there a week. Each day the papers were full of our mysterious disappearance ... reporters were combing the country to find us. Reports of our being in various places were sent in by enterprising local correspondents....

Again we entrained ... for Sea Girt.

An old cabman who drove a dilapidated rig hailed us with uplifted whip.

"We are looking for a place to board."

"I'll take you to a nice, quiet place, just suited to two home-loving folks like you," he replied, thinking he had paid us a compliment, and whipping up his ancient nag.

Hildreth gave me a nudge and a merry look and it pleased me to see she still had her sense of humour left.

That night, as I held her in my arms, "Don't let these little, trivial inconveniences and incidents—the petty persecutions we are undergoing, have any effect on our great love," I pleaded.

"That's all very well, darling Johnnie, but where are we going to?"

"We'll find a cottage somewhere ... a pretty little cottage within our means," I replied, visioning a vine-trellised place such as poets and their brides must live in.

"Our money is giving out ... soon we'll have—to turn back to New York!"

"If we do, that need not part us.... I'll get a job on some newspaper or magazine and take care of you."

* * * * *

When I called for my mail at the Sea Girt post office, sure of hearing from Darrie, anyhow,—who promised us she would keep us posted, I found no letter. And the man at the window was certain he had handed over several letters addressed to me to someone else who had called for them, giving my name as his.

A wave of hot anger suffused my face. How stupid of me not to have noticed it before. Now I remembered the men who had followed us.

Our mail was being intercepted. How was Baxter to procure his divorce without gaining evidence in just such a way?

* * * * *

One night I started on a long walk alone. I walked along the beach. In the dark I took off my clothes and plunged for a swim into the chilly surf ... a high sea was thundering in. I was caught in the undertow, swept off my feet, and dragged beyond by depth ... for a moment I was of a heart to let go, to permit myself to be drowned ... I was even intrigued, for the moment, by the thought of what the newspapers would say about my passing over in such a romantic way.

But the will to live rose up in me. And I fought my way,—and it was a bitter fight,—back to shallow water. I flung myself prone on the beach, exhausted.

When I reached our room again, I related my adventure to Hildreth.

It was she who took care of me now. I lay all night in a high fever ... but I was so happy, for the woman of my heart sat close by me, holding my hand, speaking soft terms of endearment to me, tending to all my wants.

This tenderness, this solicitude and companionship seemed for the first time better to me than the maddest transports of passion that swept us into one.

* * * * *

In the morning mail came a letter, general delivery, from Penton.... Now I was sure he was having our every step watched. A blind passion against him rose in me ... the little bounder!

In the letter he asked me to meet him at the Sea Girt railway station at four o'clock. I made it by the time indicated, by a brisk walk.

There he was, dropping off the train as it came to a stop. Another scene flashed through my mind, a visual remembrance of the day he had dropped off to visit me at Laurel.

Then we had rushed toward each other, hands extended in warm, affectionate greeting ... now ... I slowly sauntered up to him.

"Yes, Penton, what do you want; how much longer are you going to torture your wife?"

"—yours now, Johnnie; mine no longer!" grimly.

"If she were wholly mine, I'd knock you flat ... but you still have a sort of right in her that protects you from what I otherwise might do to you."

"For heaven's sake, let's be calm."

"Calm—when you say in your letter, 'you need not be afraid, I meditate no harm?'—do you mean to imply that, under any circumstance, I would be afraid of you?"

"Johnnie, there is only one way to settle this ... I'm set on getting the complete evidence for a divorce ... exactly where is Hildreth now?"

"None of your damned business ... all I can say is that she is somewhere near here ... and she's sick and hysterical through your persecutions ... and if you don't call off your snooping detectives, by the Lord God, if I run into any of them, I'll try to kill them."

"Johnnie, it's the best thing to deliver the legal evidence and have it over with. Let me accompany you to where Hildreth is, and—"

"If she set eyes on you," I replied, "she'd fly at you and scratch your eyes out—in her present mood."

"Only show me where she is, then—point out the place."

"If I find you snooping around, you'll need hospital attention for a long time."

"Then you won't help facilitate the proceedings, secretly?"

"No, since you've begun this game, find out what you can yourself. What do you think I am?"

"A very foolish young man to treat me so when I am still your best friend."

"Here comes the north-bound train. You hop aboard and go on back to New York."

Seething with rage, I caught Penton Baxter by the arm and thrust him up the steps....

* * * * *

Next morning came a letter from Darrie, from the Martha Washington. We were the talk of the town, she told us.

She had tried to keep Penton from employing detectives to follow us. She advised us to return to New York—we must be out of money by this time....

Hildreth could stay at her mother's and father's flat till we made further arrangements for going off some place together.

* * * * *

"Darling, if we return from what has proven to be a wild-goose chase, will you promise me not to become disheartened, to lose faith in me?"