“Yes,” he continued, “I want to spare you trouble ...  Hildreth and I, you see,” he proceeded with painful frankness, “are quite near the breaking point ...  I don’t think we’ll be together very many months longer ... and ... and ...  I don’t want you to become involved ... for I’m simply desperate.”

“But, Penton, how could I become involved?”

“Johnnie, you don’t know women, or you wouldn’t ask ... especially women of my wife’s type ... hysterical, parasitic, passionate, desperate....  I tell you what, you stay at the inn!”

A pause;—­I was startled by what he said next: 

“Besides, it’s time you had a mate, a real mate ... and I,” he proceeded with incredible gravity, “I have been urging Ruth, my secretary, to take you ... you and she would be quite happy together ... she can support herself, for instance ... that would place no economic burden on you.”

“Really, Penton!” I demurred.

I was learning how utterly bookish, how sheerly a literary man Penton Baxter was ... and how absurd, at the same time.  How life never drew near him, how he ever saw it through the film of his latest theory, and tried to order his own, as well as everybody else’s life, to jibe with it....

* * * * *

“Penton, it is a matter of indifference to me where I put up.  It was you who invited me to come to Eden ... but I won’t mind staying at Community Inn, as I can only be with you for a couple of weeks, anyhow ...  I’m due to take a cattleboat for Paris, for Europe, as soon as I have Judas finished.”

* * * * *

Supper ... veal steaks served on a plain board table outside the big house, under a tree.  We waited on ourselves.  We discussed Strindberg, his novels and plays ... his curious researches in science ...  Nietzsche....

Afterward, having eaten off wooden plates, we flung the plates in the fireplace, burning them ...  Ruth washed the knives, forks, spoons....

“It’s such a saving of effort to use wooden plates and paper napkins ... so much less mere household drudgery ... so much more time for living saved.”

I had taken my suitcase and was about to repair to the much-discussed inn.  But Penton asked me to wait, while he had a conference with the three women of the household.

Soon he came out, smiling placidly and blandly.

“Johnnie, I’m sorry about this afternoon ...  I’ve been rather hasty, rather inhospitable ... you are not to go to the inn, but stay with us.  The girls have persuaded me ... the tent, down beside the little house, is yours all summer, if you like.”

* * * * *

I found the tent in a clump of trees ... it had a hard board floor, a wash-stand, table, chair, and cot.

Along with the rest of the household, I retired early ... but not to sleep.

I lit my big kerosene lamp and sat propped up with the pillows, reading, till late, the poetry of Norah May French, the beautiful, red-headed girl who had, like myself, also lived in Eos, where Roderick Spalton’s Artworks were....