There followed the usual spying and publicity ...  Mrs. Spalton won her divorce....

* * * * *

But this was after several years.  Long before the divorce was granted John and Dorothy were aware of a tangible fruit of their love....  I had often wondered why the Master so ardently, so often, wrote eloquently in defense of the superior qualities of illegitimate children....

Dorothy bore their child ... a girl ... and went away to teach in a smart school somewhere in the East, under an assumed name....

Now, after many years, Spalton and she married.

* * * * *

I saw in the sitting room a wonderful girl.  She had shining, abundant hair, and a face rendered superlatively beautiful by the glowing of vivacity, understanding, feminine vitality behind it and through it, like a lamp held up within.  She was absorbed in the new exhibit of Gresham’s that hung on the walls of the guest room ... she wore a short, bouncing, riding skirt, and carried a quirt in her hand.

I walked up to her, fascinated.  Without letting her know who I was I quoted Poe’s To Helen to her.  She stood, smiling sweetly, as if it were the most usual thing in the world, to have a lean, wild-faced stranger address her with a poem.

“That’s the way I feel about you!” I ended.

She gave a lovely laugh ... held out both her hands, dropping the quirt on the floor ... took my hands and leaned back gaily, like a child.

“Oh, I know who you are ... you’re Razorre ... father wrote me a lot about you ... when I lived East ... you were one of his pet ’nuts’!”

We sat there and conversed a long time.  She talked of Socrates and Plato as if she had broken bread with them ... she discussed science, history, art as if wisdom and understanding were nearer her desire than anything else....

She was the child of “John” and Dorothy.

* * * * *

Again Spalton asked me to stay, “we need a poet for Eos!”

But I insisted that I must go on and acquire a college education ... which he maintained would be a hindrance, not a help—­“they will iron you out, and make you a decent member of society—­and then, Razorre, God help the poet in you ... poets and artists should never be decent ... only the true son of Ishmael can ever write or paint,” he waved.

* * * * *

There came to the artworkers one day a young Southern woman, a six months’ widow ... she was gentle and lily-coloured and lovely.  She had great, swimming, blue eyes, a sensitive red bow of a mouth ... and the lashes of her eyes lay far down on her cheeks.  She was the first woman I had met who approximated my poet’s ideal of what a woman should be.

I was working for Spalton during my stay, which I meant to make a brief one.  I was shovelling coal for him, and firing a furnace.