I was finding it very good to own, to possess, to take root; to be possessed and owned, in turn.  I carried an obscure sense of triumph over Baxter.

* * * * *

Darrie, who had been to town the week before, had come back with a report of Penton’s unhappiness, his belated acknowledgment that he was still, in spite of his battle against the feeling, deeply in love with his discarded wife.  It was not so easy to tear her out of his heart, she had intertwined so deeply there ... eight years with a woman, and one child by her, and affection for her was no easy thing to root up from one’s being.

“I sat there a long while with him in Riverside Park,” Darrie reported, “it was chilly and he wore an old overcoat because he couldn’t afford a new one.  His hair was greying at the temples.  He looked stooped, aging, frail as if an extra wind might lift him up and carry him away from me....

“He was worried about my having been brought into what he called ’the mess’ ... wondered how the papers had not scented ‘the other woman’ in me, no matter how innocent I was of that appellation.

“He seemed so lonely ... admitted he was so lonely....

“Johnnie, you’re both poor, dear innocents, that’s what you are—­

“But of the two of you, you are the harder, the best equipped to meet the shock of life ... for you will grow wiser, where Penton never will.”

“How did Penton speak of me?”

“Splendidly—­said he considered that in a way, perhaps, he had worked you a wrong, done an injustice to you.”

“Nonsense, the poor little chap!”

“He made me cry, he acted so pathetic ... he seemed like a motherless little boy that needed a woman’s love and protection.”

“Darrie, why don’t you marry him?”

“Now you’re trying to do with me as he tried to do with Ruth and you ... marry him ... no ...  I’m—­I think I’m—­in love with ’Gene Mallows.”

Penton was pleased to hear, she said, that Daniel and I had got on so nicely together, while he was down at West Grove....

* * * * *

So, as I rode in the dusty, bumping train, my mind reverted to our whole friendship together, and tenderness welled up in my heart for Penton Baxter.

* * * * *

In the office of the New York Independent sat William Hayes Ward, old, bent over, with his triple-lensed glasses behind which his dim, enlarged eyes floated spectrally like those of a lemur.

He greeted me with a mixture of constraint and friendliness.

“Well, my boy, you’ve certainly got yourself into a mess this time.”

“A ‘mess,’ Dr. Ward?” I interrogated, quoting back to him the word he had used,—­with rebuke in my voice.

“How else shall I phrase it?”

“—­with the understanding that I expect from an old friend, one who bought my first poems, encouraged my first literary endeavours,—­who enheartened and helped me at the inception of my struggle for recognition and fame.”