Our tennis-playing, Blue-Law martyrs, as I have said, were held over night in the workhouse ... or maybe two nights, I do not exactly remember which ... and when they came back they were full of the privations of jail-life, and the degradation of the spirit and mind suffered by prisoners there.  To me, their attitude seemed rather tender-foot and callow.  It was something that would have been accepted off-handedly by me.  I had been in jail often, not for a cause, as I punned wretchedly, but be-cause.  I did not accord hero-worship to Penton when he returned, as the women of the household did.

For a week it quite reconciled Hildreth with him....

* * * * *

But on the first night of his absence Hildreth and I took a stroll together in the moonlight.

Long the three women and myself had sat in the library, while I read aloud from a MSS. volume of my poetry, which I intended submitting to the Macmillans soon.  For Ruth knew Mr. Brett and promised to give me an introduction to him.  And I was to make a special trip to the city on the money I had saved from my weekly remittances ... for Penton would not permit me to spend a cent for my keep while I visited him.  And I had already been with him three weeks....

* * * * *

I read them many love poems—­those I had written for Vanna....

“Why,” commented Hildreth, “these verses sound like what a very callow youth would write, who never had experience with women ...  I mean by that, intimate knowledge of them.”

I flushed and sat silent.

“Some day, when you’ve lived more,” remarked Ruth, “you’ll write love-poetry more simple, more direct.”

  “Though infinite ways He knows
    To manifest His power,
  God, when He made your face,
    Was thinking of a flower!”

I read.

“There again you have an instance, of what I mean ... you are only rhetoricising about love; not partaking of its feelings.”

“But I wrote all these poems about a real girl,” and I told them the story of my distant passion for Vanna.

“No matter—­you’re a grown-up man who, as far as knowledge of women is concerned, has the heart of a baby,” observed Hildreth.

—­“in these days of sex-sophistication a fine thing!” cried Ruth.

“Yes, when out of the mouths of babes and sucklings come quotations from Havelock Ellis and Ellen Key!” cried Darrie.

“Good!  Darrie, good!” Hildreth applauded....

“—­time to go to bed ... here it’s almost one o’clock.”

“—­had no idea it was so late.  I have a lot of typing to do to-morrow.  Good night, folks!” and Ruth was off to her room upstairs.

“Good-night, Hildreth,—­suppose you’re going to sleep down in the little house!” It was Darrie who spoke.

“Yes,” answered Hildreth, in a simple tone, “I will feel quite safe there ...  Johnnie’s tent is only a few yards away.”