I thanked God that nothing trivial was in my heart to mar the stupendousness of my love, my first real passion for a woman!

* * * * *

“Johnnie!”

I leaped alert.  It was Hildreth, at my tent door....

“Get up, you lazy boy ... surely you haven’t been sleeping all this time?”

“No, darling.”

“I ate my breakfast all alone,” she remarked, in an aggrieved tone, “where’s Darrie and Mubby and Ruth?”

“God knows!  I don’t—­and I don’t care!”

“You needn’t be peevish!”

“Peevish?—­as long as you are with me I don’t care if all the rest of humanity are dead.”

I stepped out beside her.  We stood locked in a long embrace.

She drew back, with belated thoughtfulness....

“We ought to be more careful ... so near the house.”

“I’m so glad you’re in the little house near my tent, Hildreth.”

“But we can’t be together there much ... it’s too near the big house.”

“What shall we do, then?”

“There’s the fields and the woods ... miles of them ... the whole outside world for us.”

“I don’t see why we shouldn’t go strolling together ... the rest are all abroad somewhere, too ... but we must be careful, Johnnie, very careful.”

“Careful—­why?”

“Because of Mubby.”

“But he doesn’t love you any more?”

“I’m not so sure about that ...  I’m not so sure about anything.”

* * * * *

I never saw the world so beautiful as on that day.  I was translated to the veritable garden of Eden.  The community had been named rightly.  I was Adam and Hildreth was my Eve.

And so it went on for two blissful weeks....

If the Voice of God had met us, going abroad beneath the trees, I would not have been surprised.

Hildreth took her volume of Blake with her on our rambles ... and we revelled in his “Songs of Experience” as well as “Songs of Innocence”; and we were moved deeply by the huge, cloudy grandeur of his prophetic books....

Why could it not go on forever thus? eternal summer, everlasting love in its first rosy flush?...

Hildreth was very wise and very patient with one who was as yet a mere acolyte in love’s ways and uses ... she taught me many things, and I adored her for it—­as little by little, day by day, she brought me to the full stature of my manhood....

* * * * *

Of course the two other women of the household immediately sensed what was happening.  But Penton remained pathetically blind....

What an incredible man!  A mole would have gotten a glimmer of the gradually developing change.

With bravado I acted my part of the triangular drama ... but Hildreth carried off her part with an easiness, a femininely delicate boldness, that compelled my utmost admiration ... she even threw suspicious Ruth and Darrie off the scent—­at times.