Between the three women, nevertheless, Hildreth was easily my choice already ...  Darrie was lovely, but talked like a debutante from morning till night....

Ruth had too much of the quietist in her, the non-resistent.  She had a vast fund of scholarship, knew English poetry from the ground up ... but her bringing that knowledge to me as an attraction was like presenting a peacock’s feather to a bird of paradise....

However, when Penton came home that night, he found us all in huge good humour.  I had just received a check from Derek, and had insisted on spending most of it for a spread for all of us, including a whopping beefsteak.

And we ate and joked and enjoyed ourselves just like the bourgeoisie.

* * * * *

If Penton only had had a sense of humour ... but this I never detected in him.

Even at singing classes, which I attended one evening with him ... his whole entourage, in fact....

With solemn face he sang high, and always off key, till the three women had to stuff their handkerchiefs in their mouths to keep from laughing at him before his face....

After class, we strolled home by a devious path, through the moonlight.  This time Ruth walked ahead with little Dan, Hildreth with her husband, Penton,—­Darrie with me....

“Drag back a little, Johnnie ...  Penton and Hildreth are having a private heart-to-heart talk, I can tell by their voices.”

We hung back till they disappeared around a bend.  We were alone.  Darrie began to laugh and laugh and laugh....  “Oh, it’s so funny, I shall die laughing"....

* * * * *

“Why—­why, what’s the matter!”

For I saw tears streaming down the girl’s face in the moonlight.

“It’s so awful,” replied Darrie, now crying quietly, “—­so tragic ... yet I had to laugh ...  I’m so sorry for Penton ... for both of them....

“Penton is such a jackass, Johnnie,” she gulped, “and God knows, as I do, he’s such an honest, good man ... helping poor people all over the country ... really fighting the fight of the down-trodden and the oppressed.”

I put my arm around the girl’s waist, and she wept on my shoulder.

Finally she straightened up her head, stopping her crying with difficulty.

“We’re all so funny, aren’t we?”

“Yes, we’re a funny bunch, Darrie ... all so mixed up,—­the world wouldn’t believe it, would they, if we told them?”

“And you could never make them understand, even if you did tell them.  You know, my dear, old Southern daddy—­he thinks Penton is a limb of the old Nick himself ... with his theories about life, and the freedom of relations between the sexes, and all that ... even yet he may leave me out of his will for coming up here, though he has all the confidence in the world in me.”

And Mary Darfield Malcolm—­whom we always called “Darrie”—­went quickly to her room when we got back, so the others wouldn’t notice that she had been crying....