Hildreth, of course, was working hard at her book—­a novel of radical love....

After four was strolling time, for all of us ... along the river, by the ocean beach, further away ... or among the pines that reached up into our very backyard.

When the grocer boy or the butcher boy came, I (for the sake of outward appearances) stepped out of sight, though it irked me, still to resort to subterfuge, when we had launched forth with such a fanfare of publicity....

“Wait till Penton wins the decree, then we can come out into the open and live in a Free Union together—­or marry!” Hildreth begged of me ... and I acquiesced, for the time....

* * * * *

Each evening, by the open fire, I read aloud from the poets ... or Darrie or Hildreth did ... happy evenings by fire-light, that shall always live pleasantly in my memory....

We had but few disagreements, and those trifling ones.

Darrie was herself in the midst of a romantic courtship.  ’Gene Mallows, the Californian poet, had fallen madly in love with her, having met her during his brief visit to New York....

Every day Darrie received her two, three, even four letters from him, couched in the most beautiful literary phraseology ... and each letter invariably held a sonnet ... and that, too, of an amazingly high standard of poetic excellence, considering the number Mallows was dashing off every day ... many of them were quite lovely with memorable phrase, deft turn of fancy or thought.

* * * * *

Penton recalled Daniel to the city....  Afraid now that the papers might locate him with us....

We had a few warm mid-days of glorious sunshine still, and I often persuaded Darrie and Hildreth to take nude sunbaths with me back of the house ... which we enjoyed on outspread blankets, ever keeping a weather eye for intruders....

As we lay in the sun we read poetry aloud.  And I read aloud much of a book that amounted to our Bible, Havelock Ellis’s Sex in Its Relation to Society.

I might add, for the sake of the reader who may be prone to misinterpret, that our behaviour was quite innocent, as we lay about in that manner....

* * * * *

Our best friend was the artist’s wife, Mrs. Rond ... she was, in her way, herself a character ... the poverty of her family was extreme.  She had a numerous menage of daughters; and a horde of cats as pets.  Whenever she walked away from her house the cats followed her in a long line, their tails gaily in the air, like little ships sailing.

Mrs. Rond smoked incessantly, rolling her own cigarettes, from packages of Plowboy tobacco....

Her conversation was crisp, nervous, keen.  An intellectual woman of the highest type; with all her poverty, she preserved around her an atmosphere of aristocratic fineness (even if she did smoke Plowboy) which bespoke happier days, in an economic and social sense.