Darrie, as we called her, performed the most difficult task of all—­the task of remaining friends to all parties concerned.

The strain was beginning to tell on Penton.  A strange, new, unsuspected thing was welling up in his heart, Darrie averred ... his love for his repudiated wife was reviving so strongly that now he dared not see her, it would hurt him too deeply....

His friends, the Stotesburies, a wealthy radical couple, had let him have a cottage of theirs up in Connecticut, and he was staying in it all by himself, doing his own cooking and hurrying with a new book in order to get enough money to defray the enormous expenses he had incurred by initiating and prosecuting his divorce suit....

And now Daniel joined us.  Daniel and I agreed with each other famously.  For he liked me.  He took walks with me, and we went bathing together after I had done my morning’s writing.  We crabbed in the Manasquan River, and fished.

Once, when I was galloping along the road in imitation of a horse, with him perched on my shoulders—­

“Say, Johnnie, I like you ...  I won’t call you buzzer any more!”

“I like you, too, Daniel, but don’t squeeze me so hard about the neck ... it’s choking my wind off.”

* * * * *

That was a happy month ... that month of fine, fairly warm fall weather that Darrie, Hildreth, Daniel and I spent together in the little cottage back in the woods, secluded from the road.

The newspapers had begun to let up on us a little.  It had grown a bit galling and monotonous, the continual misrepresentations of ourselves and what Hildreth and I were trying to stand for.

* * * * *

Now that I was playing the conventional game of evasion and hypocritic subterfuge, holding a nominal lodging at Mrs. Rond’s as one Mr. Arthur Mallory, and explaining my being seen with Mrs. Baxter by the statement that I was a writer sent down by a publishing house for the purpose of helping her with a book she was engaged in writing—­

Though everybody knew well who I was, it assuaged the American passion for outward “respectability,” and we were left, comparatively speaking, alone to do as we wished....

* * * * *

Hildreth was a spoiled, willful little rogue ... once or twice she tried a “soul-state” on me....

Walking through the pines one day, suddenly she sat down in her tracks, began crying, and affirmed in a tragic voice, that she couldn’t stand the strain of what she had been through any longer, that she believed she was going crazy.

I immediately plumped down on all fours and began running up and down through the crashing underbrush, growling and making a great racket.  Startled, intrigued, she watched me.

“Johnnie, don’t be such a damn fool!  What are you doing?”

“I’m going crazy, too, I’m suffering the hallucination that I’m a big brown bear, and you’re so sweet that I’m going to eat you all up.”