woman with a sidelong glance, as she sat beside me on the
train seat.... She was so pretty, so frail, so feminine that I pitied
her, while at the same time my heart swelled with tenderness for her,
and with pride of possession. For she was mine now without dispute. She,
for her part, spoke but little, except illogically to upbraid Penton
Baxter, as if he had perpetrated an ill on two people thoroughly
innocent.

I was angry with him on other grounds ... he was not playing the radical
game, but taking advantage of the rules of the conventional world.

With a fugitive sense of pursuit, we hired a cabby to drive us to a
summer boarding house at Long Branch ... where Hildreth and I rented a
single large room for both of us....

And there Hildreth immediately went into hysterics, and did nothing but
weep. While I waited on her hand and foot, bringing up food to her
because she was sensitive about the probability of people recognising
her.

We stayed there a week. Each day the papers were full of our mysterious
disappearance ... reporters were combing the country to find us. Reports
of our being in various places were sent in by enterprising local
correspondents....

Again we entrained ... for Sea Girt.

An old cabman who drove a dilapidated rig hailed us with uplifted whip.

"We are looking for a place to board."

"I'll take you to a nice, quiet place, just suited to two home-loving
folks like you," he replied, thinking he had paid us a compliment, and
whipping up his ancient nag.

Hildreth gave me a nudge and a merry look and it pleased me to see she
still had her sense of humour left.

That night, as I held her in my arms, "Don't let these little, trivial
inconveniences and incidents--the petty persecutions we are undergoing,
have any effect on our great love," I pleaded.

"That's all very well, darling Johnnie, but where are we going to?"

"We'll find a cottage somewhere ... a pretty little cottage within our
means," I replied, visioning a vine-trellised place such as poets and
their brides must live in.

"Our money is giving out ... soon we'll have--to turn back to New York!"

"If we do, that need not part us.... I'll get a job on some newspaper or
magazine and take care of you."

* * * * *

When I called for my mail at the Sea Girt post office, sure of hearing
from Darrie, anyhow,--who promised us she would keep us posted, I found
no letter. And the man at the window w