coolly, for a long
time. Slowly I realised what I had just said.

"That's all I wanted to know, John Gregory! I've got it out of you at
last!"

He turned on his heel.

Changing his mind, he faced me again. This time there was a despairful
agony of kindness in his face.

"Dear boy, I'm sorry for all this thing that has come between us. But
there is yet time for you to keep out of it. Hildreth and I are done
with each other forever ... but you needn't be mixed up in this
affair....

"Johnnie, let her stay in New York, and, no matter how much she wants
you, don't go up there to join her."

"I love her. I adore her. I want to be where she is. Now the whole truth
is out."

"My poor friend!"

"Don't call me your friend--you--"

He tightened his lips....

"If you go up there to join her, remember that I gave you fair warning."

* * * * *

I could endure it no longer, the torment of not seeing her, of not being
with her....

As her favourite sonneteer, Santayana, writes--lines she often quoted--

"Love leads me on, no end of love appears.
Is this the heaven, poets, that ye paint?
Oh then, how like damnation to be blessed!"

* * * * *

I informed Ruth, Darrie, Penton that I was going to New York in the
morning....

Penton immediately whisked out of my sight, full of uncontrollable
emotion....

Darrie and Ruth almost fell upon me, trying to persuade me not to rejoin
Hildreth. I evaded by saying that I was now on my way to Europe, that
possibly I might see her before I went, but--

* * * * *

I had an hour till train time. My MSS. was packed again, my Josephus, my
Homer, my Shakespeare, my Keats, my bath robe.

I thought I would escape without saying good-bye.

But Penton came down the front porch, stood in my path.

"Johnnie, a last warning."

"I want none of your last warnings."

"Are you going to Hildreth?"

"I'm tired of being a liar. I've never lied so much in my life ... yes,
I'm going to Hildreth ... and I'm going to persuade her to live with me,
and defy the whole damned world--the world of fake radicals that talk
about divorces when the shoe pinches them, as well as the world of
conservatives," I announced harshly.

"I've done all I could!" he responded wearily, "I see you won't come to
your senses--wait a minute!" and he turned on his heel. He had asked me
to wait with such solemnity t