“Don’t I, Peaches?” he asked again in a still softer voice.  Again I had that sensation of being against something warm and great and good like your own mother’s breast and I don’t know how I controlled it enough not to—­to—­

“Well, have some jam then,” I managed to say with a little laugh as I turned away and picked up the silver spoon.

“Thank you, I will, all of it and the bread and butter, too,” he answered, in that detestable friendly tone of voice as he drew himself up and sat in the window.  “Hustle, Peaches, if you are going to feed me, for I’m ravenous.  It took Sam Benson’s wife the longest time to have the shortest baby I ever experienced and I haven’t had any supper.  You have; so I don’t mind taking it all away from you.”

“Supper,” I sniffed as I spread the jam on those lovely, lovely slices of bread and thick butter that I had fixed for my own self.  “That apple-toast combination tires me so now that I forget it if I can.”  As I handed him the first slice of drippy lusciousness I turned my head away.  He thought it was from the expression of that jam, but it was from his eyes.

“Slice up the whole loaf, Peaches, and let’s get on a jam jag!  Come with me just this once and forget—­forget—­” He didn’t finish his sentence and I’m glad.  We neither of us said anything more as I fed him that whole loaf.  I found that the bite I took off of each piece I had ready for him when he finished with the one he had in hand satisfied me as nothing I had ever eaten in all my life before had done, while at the same time my nibbles soothed his conscience about robbing me.

His teeth are big and strong and white and his jaws work like machinery.  He is the strongest man I ever saw, and his gauntness is all muscle.  What is that glow a woman gets from feeding a hungry man whom she likes with her own hands; and why should I want to be certain that he kissed the lace on my sleeve as it brushed his face when I reached across him to catch an inquisitive rose that I saw peeping in the window at us?

LEAF FIFTH

BLUE ABSINTHE

“The juice of a lemon in two glasses of cold water, to be drunk immediately on wakening!” Page eleven!  I’ve handed myself that lemon every morning now until I am sensitive with myself about it.  If there was ever anybody “on the water wagon” it’s I, and I have to sit on the front seat from dawn to dusk to get in the gallon of water I’m supposed to consume in that time.  Sometime I’m going to get mixed up and try to drink my bath if I don’t look out.  I dreamed night before last that I was taking a bath in a glass of ice-cream soda-water and trying to hide from Doctor John behind the dab of ice-cream that seemed inadequate for food or protection.  I haven’t had even one glass for two months and I woke up in a cold perspiration of embarrassment and raging hunger.

I don’t know what I’m going to do about this book and I’ve got myself into trouble about writing things besides records in it.  He looked at me this morning as coolly as if I was just anybody and said: