* * * *

"If he says anything to me I'll kill him.

"I'm a man now.

"I'll fight him or anybody you want me to."

* * * * *

These were the words we said, or left unsaid. I am even yet too confused
to remember the exact details of that memorable time.

For I was re-born then, into another life.

Is there anyone who can remember his birth?

I returned to my tent in a blissful daze.

I had not the least feeling of having betrayed a friend.

The only problem that now confronted us was divorce! I would ask Penton
to divorce Hildreth, and then Hildreth and I would marry.

But why even that? Was not this the greatest opportunity in the world
for Hildreth and me to put to practical test our theories ... proclaim
ourselves for Free Love,--as Mary Wollstonecraft and the philosopher
Godwin had done, a century or so before us?

* * * * *

The following day Ruth and I ate breakfast together, alone. I had
behaved with unusual sedateness, had showed an aplomb I had never before
evidenced. Full manhood, belated, had at last come to me.

With more than usual satisfaction I drank my coffee, holding the cup
with my hands around it like a child ... warming my fingers, which are
nearly always cold in the morning....

Then, while Ruth sat opposite me, eyeing me curiously, I began to sing,
half-aloud, to myself.

A silence fell. We exchanged very few words.

And it was our custom, when together, Ruth and I, to hold long
discussions concerning the methods and technique of the English poets,
especially the earlier ones.

This morning Baxter's secretary rose and left part of her breakfast
uneaten, hurrying into the house as if to avoid something which she had
seen and dreaded.

* * * * *

I ate a long time, dreaming.

Darrie came out, followed immediately by Daniel. Daniel was in an
obstreperous mood ... he cried out that I must be his "telegraph pole,"
that he would be a lineman, and climb me. I felt an affection for him
that I had not known before. I played with him, letting him climb up my
leg.

He finished, a-straddle my shoulders. I reached up and sat him still
higher, on my head. And he waved his arms and shouted, as if making
signals to someone far off.

Darrie laughed.

"Which would you rather have, a son or a daughter?" she asked me.

"I don't know," I replied, letting Daniel slide down, "b