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, God, when He made your face, Was thinking of a flower!" I read. "There again you have an instance, of what I mean ... you are only rhetoricising about love; not partaking of its feelings." "But I wrote all these poems about a real girl," and I told them the story of my distant passion for Vanna. "No matter--you're a grown-up man who, as far as knowledge of women is concerned, has the heart of a baby," observed Hildreth. --"in these days of sex-sophistication a fine thing!" cried Ruth. "Yes, when out of the mouths of babes and sucklings come quotations from Havelock Ellis and Ellen Key!" cried Darrie. "Good! Darrie, good!" Hildreth applauded.... "--time to go to bed ... here it's almost one o'clock." "--had no idea it was so late. I have a lot of typing to do to-morrow. Good night, folks!" and Ruth was off to her room upstairs. "Good-night, Hildreth,--suppose you're going to sleep down in the little house!" It was Darrie who spoke. "Yes," answered Hildreth, in a simple tone, "I will feel quite safe there ... Johnnie's tent is only a few yards away." Hildreth and Darrie kissed each other on the mouth tenderly. "Good night, Johnnie--" and impulsively Darrie stepped up to me, took me by the two shoulders, and kissed me also a kind sisterly kiss.... I responded, abashed and awkward. A ripple of pleasant laughter at me from both women. "Johnnie's a dear, innocent boy!" Darrie. "He makes me feel like a mother to him!" said Hildreth. Though each of these remarks was made without the slightest colour of irony, I did not like them ... I lowered my head, humiliated under them. Ever since I had been among them the three women had treated me in the way they act with small boys, preserving scarcely any reserve in my presence. Penton himself had lost all his first disquiet. Outside-- "I'll take you as far as the cottage ... it's right on the way, you know." "All right, but where are you going?"