Hildreth and Darrie kissed each other on the mouth tenderly.

“Good night, Johnnie—­” and impulsively Darrie stepped up to me, took me by the two shoulders, and kissed me also a kind sisterly kiss....  I responded, abashed and awkward.

A ripple of pleasant laughter at me from both women.

“Johnnie’s a dear, innocent boy!” Darrie.

“He makes me feel like a mother to him!” said Hildreth.

Though each of these remarks was made without the slightest colour of irony, I did not like them ...  I lowered my head, humiliated under them.

Ever since I had been among them the three women had treated me in the way they act with small boys, preserving scarcely any reserve in my presence.  Penton himself had lost all his first disquiet.

Outside—­

“I’ll take you as far as the cottage ... it’s right on the way, you know.”

“All right, but where are you going?”

“Into the kitchen to get a lantern.”

“The moon is almost as bright as day.  We won’t need it.”

We stepped out into the warm, scented night.  In a mad flood of silver the moon reigned high in the sky, dark and bright with the contours and shades of its continents and craters, as if nearer the earth than it had ever been before....

“This night reminds me of those lines in Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, the ones that follow after ’Is this the face that launched a thousand ships, and burnt the topless towers of Ilion?’ which are, to me, a trifle over-rhetorical ... the ensuing lines are more lovely: 

“’Fair as the evening air—­

“‘Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars,’ or is it ’ten thousand stars’?”

Hildreth turned her face up to me.  Her arm went through mine.  She drew my arm close against her body and held it tight in silent response for a quiet interval....

“You are a poet ... a real poet ... and,” she dropped her voice, “and, what is more, a real man, too!” there was a world of compassion in her voice....

“—­You remember Blake’s evening star—­that ’washed the dusk with silver?’”

“Jesus, how beautiful!” I cried.

We were standing in front of her cottage, that darkled in the trees.

Suddenly, roused by our voices, like some sweet, low, miraculous thing, a little bird sang a few bars of song, sweet and low, in the bushes somewhere, and stopped....

“Hildreth, don’t let’s go to bed yet.”  I caught her arm in my hands, “it’s too beautiful ... to go to bed.”

I was trembling all over....

“Yes, boy?”

“Let’s—­let’s take a walk.”

* * * * *

We went through the little sleeping community.  She clung to my arm lightly....

“You’re the first woman I haven’t been frightened of, rather, have felt at home with.”

“You, who have been a tramp, a worker all over the country ... in big cities ... do you mean to tell me that?—­”