ding, with only my trunks on,--during the noon hour,--and ask me to
read poetry aloud to her. And I read Shelley. She would draw shyly
closer to me, sending me into a visible tremour that made me ashamed of
myself.

At times, as we read, her fair, fine hair would brush my cheek and send
a shiver of fire through me. But I still knew nothing about women. I
never even offered to kiss her.

But when she was away from me, at night specially, I would go into long,
luxurious, amorous imaginations over her and the possession of her, and
I would dream of loving her, and of having a little cottage and
children....

But words and elegant, burning phrases are never enough for a woman.

In a week I noticed her going by on the arm of a mill-hand.

* * * * *

And, broke again, I wrote to my grandmother that I must have fifty
dollars to get back to school on. And, somehow, she scraped it together
and sent it to me. My first impulse was to be ashamed of myself and
start to return it. Then I kept it. For, after all, it was for poetry's
sake.

* * * * *

On the train to Hebron, as I walked up the car to my seat, health
shining in my smooth, clear face and skin, the women and girls gave me
approving, friendly glances, and I was happy.

A summer of control from unhealthy habits had done this for me, a summer
of life, naked, in the open air, plus exercise. I had learned a great
lesson. To Barton I owe it that I am still alive, vigorously alive, not
crawlingly ... but I suffered several slumps before I attained and held
my present physique. For the world and life afford complications not
found in "Perfection City."

* * * * *

The school hill lay before my eyes again. From it spread on all sides
the wonderful Connecticut valley. Up and down the paths to the dining
hall, the buildings in which classes were held, the Chapel crowning the
topmost crest, wandered groups of boys in their absurd, postage-stamp
caps, their peg-top trousers, their wide, floppy raglan coats.

I was a senior now. At first my change in bodily build and bettered
health rendered me hardly recognisable to my friends.

The very first day I reached Hebron again I was out on the wide, oval
field, lacing around the track. In a month would come the big track-meet
and I was determined this time, to win enough points to earn me my "H."

* * * *