It was she who took care of me now. I lay all night in a high fever ... but I was so happy, for the woman of my heart sat close by me, holding my hand, speaking soft terms of endearment to me, tending to all my wants. This tenderness, this solicitude and companionship seemed for the first time better to me than the maddest transports of passion that swept us into one. * * * * * In the morning mail came a letter, general delivery, from Penton.... Now I was sure he was having our every step watched. A blind passion against him rose in me ... the little bounder! In the letter he asked me to meet him at the Sea Girt railway station at four o'clock. I made it by the time indicated, by a brisk walk. There he was, dropping off the train as it came to a stop. Another scene flashed through my mind, a visual remembrance of the day he had dropped off to visit me at Laurel. Then we had rushed toward each other, hands extended in warm, affectionate greeting ... now ... I slowly sauntered up to him. "Yes, Penton, what do you want; how much longer are you going to torture your wife?" "--yours now, Johnnie; mine no longer!" grimly. "If she were wholly mine, I'd knock you flat ... but you still have a sort of right in her that protects you from what I otherwise might do to you." "For heaven's sake, let's be calm." "Calm--when you say in your letter, 'you need not be afraid, I meditate no harm?'--do you mean to imply that, under any circumstance, I would be afraid of you?" "Johnnie, there is only one way to settle this ... I'm set on getting the complete evidence for a divorce ... exactly where is Hildreth now?" "None of your damned business ... all I can say is that she is somewhere near here ... and she's sick and hysterical through your persecutions ... and if you don't call off your snooping detectives, by the Lord God, if I run into any of them, I'll try to kill them." "Johnnie, it's the best thing to deliver the legal evidence and have it over with. Let me accompany you to where Hildreth is, and--" "If she set eyes on you," I replied, "she'd fly at you and scratch your eyes out--in her present mood." "Only _show_ me where she is, then--point out the place." "If I find you snooping around, you'll need hospital attention for a long time." "Then you won't help facilitate the proceedings, secretly?" "No, since you've begun this game, find out what you can yourself. What do you think I am?" "A very foolish young man to treat me so when I am still your best friend." "Here comes the north-bound train. You hop aboard and go on back to New York." Seething with rage, I caught Penton Baxter by the arm and thrust him up the steps.... * * * * * Next morning came a letter from Darrie, from the Martha Washington. We were the talk of the town, she told us.