“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?”

“Of course not, Johnnie ...  I think Darrie offered very good advice,” she sighed.

Back we turned, by the next day’s train, full of a sense of frustration; what an involved, unromantic, practical world we lived in!

* * * * *

Hildreth heaved a sigh of content as we walked into her mother’s flat again.  Her mother was still at Eden ... alone ... taking care of Daniel, for whom she had a great love.

We had Darrie over the telephone, and soon she was with us, giving us the latest news of the uproar.

The papers were at us pro and con, mostly con.

Dorothy Dix had written a nasty attack on me, saying that I was climbing to fame over a woman’s prostrate body ... that, in my own West, instead of a judge and a divorce court, a shotgun Would have presided in my case....

The Globe was running a forum, suddenly stopped, as to whether people of genius and artistic temperament should be allowed more latitude than ordinary folk....

As Hildreth and I rode down Broadway together, side by side, unrecognised, on a street car, we saw plastered everywhere, “Stop That Affinity Hunt,” a play of that name to be shown at Maxime Elliott’s Theatre....

I must admit that I was pleased with the sudden notoriety that had come to me ... years of writing poetry had made my name known but moderately, here and there ... but having run away with a famous man’s wife, my name was cabled everywhere ... even appeared in Japanese, Russian, and Chinese newspapers....