"Beat with thy club on a hollow tree While I chant the song of Kaa for thee: I lived in a cave, alone, at first, Till into a neighbouring valley I burst Wild and bearded and seeking prey, And I came on Naa, and bore her away ... Away to my hole in the crest of the hill, Where I broke her body to my fierce will.... * * * * * "My fellow cave-men, fell in a rage: 'What hast thou done?' cried Singh, the Sage, 'For I hear far off a battle-song, And the tree-men come, a hundred strong ...' Long the battle and dread the fight; We hurled rocks down from our mountain height"-- I copy this from memory alone ... Hildreth has all my cave-poems. I gave them to her, holding no transcripts of them-- The upshot-- "All of our tribe were slain ... Naa and I alone escaped-- going far off-- To start another people and clan: She, the woman, and I, the man!" In my love-drunkenness, I looked directly at Hildreth as I read the last lines ... she lowered her head and picked at her sandal.... The applause was tumultuous.... Penton Baxter rose to his feet, as chairman of the occasion.... "I'm sure we all thank Mr. Gregory--" * * * * * Events trod rapidly on one another's heels. Though Penton had gone on frequent walks with Darrie, after his day's work,--chiefly because Hildreth had not wanted to go on walks with him herself, or had not wanted to accompany them both--yet she and I seized on the precedent Penton and Darrie had set, and we were abroad most of the time ... roaming idyllically in the fields, the woods ... passionate ... mad with the new love that had come to us ... unseeing, in our absorption in each other's arms ... praying with devout lover's prayers that we were as unseen as unseeing.... We were abroad in the fields so much that even Penton himself must notice it.... So we developed the flimsiest of all flimsy pretexts ... pretended to be engrossed, together, in of all things, the study of--toadstools and mushrooms ... taking with us Neltje Blanchan's book on _Mushrooms and Toadstools_, with its beautiful coloured illustrations ... and we did learn a lot about these queer vegetations that grow without the need of chlorophyll ... entering into a world of new colours in the vegetable kingdom ... exquisite pinks and mauves and greys ... blues ... purples ... reds ... russets ... in the darkest spots of the woods we sought and found strange species of these marvellous growths ... that grow more readily in the dark and obscurity, the twilights of nature, than in the open sunlight of green summer days.... * * * * *