d it.

* * * * *

Penton came in ... the little, handsome, red-faced man, with his
Napoleonic head too large for his small, stocky body ... his large,
luminous eyes like those of the Italian fisher boy in the painting ...
his mouth a little too large ... his chin a trifle too heavy-jowled. His
hands were feminine ... but his feet were encased in heavy shoes that
made them seem the feet of a six-foot day labourer....

Ruth, his secretary, coming close behind him,--was tall, not ungraceful
in an easy, almost mannish way ... slab-figured ... built more like a
boy than a young woman dangerously near the old maid. She too wore
bloomers. Her face was tanned. It was too broad and placid for either
prettiness or beauty, but a mischievous tilt to the nose and large calm
hazel eyes kept her this side of mere plainness....

Penton glanced from me to his wife, from his wife to me, in one look of
instinctive inquiry, before he addressed me....

"Well, Johnnie, here you are ... East at last ... and about to become a
real literary man."

"He's been here a full hour ... we didn't want to interrupt you--" his
wife explained.

"Your work is too important for the world"--I began sincerely and
reverently.

Baxter beamed. His being expanded under my worship.

He caught both my hands, friendlily, in his.

"Welcome to Eden," then, introducing, "this is my secretary, Miss Ruth
Hazlitt; she's been quite keen to meet you ... we've talked of you a lot
... she knows your poetry and thinks you're a genius, and will some day
be recognised as a great poet."

Ruth Hazlitt nodded, shy, took my hand in introduction.

"Darrie, oh, Dar-_rie_!" called Baxter ... "a Southern society girl, but
a mighty good radical already," he explained to me, _sotto voce_, as we
heard sounds of her approach.

Mary Darfield Malcolm came in, in a flimsy dressing gown of yellow, with
blue ribbons in it, her hair wet and still done up in a towel. Superbly
she trusted to her big eyes of limpid brown, and to the marble-like
pallour of her complexion, the twin laughing dimples in her cheeks ...
she added her welcome to the others ... easily, with a Southern way of
speech that caught each recalcitrant word by the tail and caressed its
back as it came out....

* * * * *

That afternoon, at Baxter's suggestion, he and I launched forth on a
walk together....

"There is some beautiful country for walkin