With Hildreth Baxter I was straightway, marvellously, at my ease.  We talked of Keats—­she seemed to know all of his verse by heart....

Shelley—­she quoted his less-known fragments....

  “O WORLD!  O LIFE!  O TIME!—­”

  “O world!  O life!  O time! 
  On whose last steps I climb,
    Trembling at that where I had stood before;
  When will return the glory of your prime? 
    No more—­Oh, never more!

  “Out of the day and night
  A joy has taken flight;
    Fresh spring, and summer, and the winter hoar,
  Move my faint heart with grief, but with delight
    No more—­Oh, never more!”

“Surely that does not express your feelings—­and you still a young and beautiful woman?”

“No, but I am profoundly moved by the sad beauty of it; and by the fact that perhaps Poe got his refrain of ‘nevermore’ for his Raven as a reminiscence from it.”

She laughed engagingly with feminine inconsequence and stooped down to recover a slight, silver bracelet that had slipped off over one of her small hands.  I caught a brief glimpse of the white division of her breasts as she stooped over.  The vision stabbed my heart with keen enjoyment that pained....

Already we were caught up in a current of mysterious fellow-feeling that was soon to bear us onward to the full ocean of frank love and passion.  Though at this time neither she nor I perceived it.

* * * * *

Penton came in ... the little, handsome, red-faced man, with his Napoleonic head too large for his small, stocky body ... his large, luminous eyes like those of the Italian fisher boy in the painting ... his mouth a little too large ... his chin a trifle too heavy-jowled.  His hands were feminine ... but his feet were encased in heavy shoes that made them seem the feet of a six-foot day labourer....

Ruth, his secretary, coming close behind him,—­was tall, not ungraceful in an easy, almost mannish way ... slab-figured ... built more like a boy than a young woman dangerously near the old maid.  She too wore bloomers.  Her face was tanned.  It was too broad and placid for either prettiness or beauty, but a mischievous tilt to the nose and large calm hazel eyes kept her this side of mere plainness....

Penton glanced from me to his wife, from his wife to me, in one look of instinctive inquiry, before he addressed me....

“Well, Johnnie, here you are ...  East at last ... and about to become a real literary man.”

“He’s been here a full hour ... we didn’t want to interrupt you—­” his wife explained.

“Your work is too important for the world”—­I began sincerely and reverently.

Baxter beamed.  His being expanded under my worship.

He caught both my hands, friendlily, in his.

“Welcome to Eden,” then, introducing, “this is my secretary, Miss Ruth Hazlitt; she’s been quite keen to meet you ... we’ve talked of you a lot ... she knows your poetry and thinks you’re a genius, and will some day be recognised as a great poet.”