* * * * *

The cold weather that Darrie and the old settlers had predicted was now descending on the countryside....

* * * * *

One morning Hildreth timidly and haltingly proposed returning to her mother’s flat in New York....

I could stay and finish my play and, having disposed of it, come likewise to the city, and rent a flat, and she would come and live with me again.  I am sure she was sincere in this.  Or I could come to New York, rent a furnished room somewhere, and she would be with me daily, as now....

Darrie seconded Hildreth’s proposal.

* * * * *

And yet my heart broke as Hildreth rode off in the carriage that came for her.  I kissed her, and I kissed her ... despite the stern, unbending figure of the aged, moral coachman in the seat.

Then, after she had started off, I pursued the carriage, overtook it by a short cut, cried out that I had still something I had forgotten to give her ... it was more kisses ... and I kissed and kissed her again and again.. and we both wept, with aching hearts.

Then the moral coachman unbent.

“—­beg pardon,” he ventured, “but I’m sorry for you two children ... oh, yes, I know all about you ... everybody knows ... and I wish you good luck.”

Darrie stayed over for the night, after Hildreth left, in order to see to packing the latter’s clothes in her trunk ...  Hildreth had been too upset to tend to the packing....

* * * * *

The next day Darrie left, too.

“You have no more need of your chaperon,” she laughed, a tear glinting in her eye....

* * * * *

So now I was left utterly alone....

And a hellish winter descended upon the coast ... bitter, blowing, frosty winds that ate into the very bone and made a fellow curse God as he leaned obliquely against them.

I learned how little a summer cottage was worth—­in winter.

Mrs. Rond lent me a huge-bellied stove, the fireplace no longer proving of comfort.

But though I kept the stove so hot that it glowed red, I still had to hug it close, my overcoat on, and a pair of huge, woollen socks that I’d bought at the general store down in West Grove.

But, despite the intense cold, I worked and worked ... my play, Judas was nearing completion ... its publication would mean the beginning of my life as a man of letters, my “coming out” in the literary world.

I ate my food from open cans, not taking the trouble to cook.

At night (I had pulled my bed out close to the stove) I heaped all the blankets in the house over me, and still shivered ...  I lived on the constant stimulus of huge draughts of coffee....

“Only a little while longer ... only a few days more ... and the play will then be finished ... and it will be published.  And it will be produced.