* * * * *

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.

* * * * *