* * *

"Come, get into the group; I want the papers to tell the public about
you, too," he urged me, prophetically, as I stood on the outskirts,
while three camera men were focusing on him, as he stood, expectant,
blandly smiling, and vain-glorious.

"Boys, I want my friend, the poet, Mr. John Gregory, in the picture,
too."

"Oh, all right!" they assented indifferently, which injured my egotism.
But I was too adroit to show it. I still demurred with mock modesty.
Penton would have been franker.

Finally, at his urgency, they snapped us, our arms about each other's
shoulders.

In the light of subsequent events, they were glad of that picture.

* * * * *

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,