Tramping on Life Part 112

"Oh, you don't know what I've been through," then, femininely, "poor, poor Mubby, he's been through a lot, too."

Her tears began to flow again. I sat beside her on the bed. I put my arm about her and drew her to me. I kissed her tear-wet mouth. The taste of her ripe sweet mouth with the salt of her tears wet on her lips was very good to me....

In a minute unexpectedly she began returning my kisses ... hungrily ...

her eyes closed ... breathing deeply like one in a trance....

"Go up to the house now, Johnnie, my love ... go, so Mubby won't be suspicious of us ... I want to stay here ... leave the blinds drawn as they are....

"You have been so gentle, so sweet."

"Hildreth ... listen to me ... this has been the greatest day in my life, will always be! If I died now, I would go to death, singing....

"You're the most wonderful woman in the world....

"I want you to be mine forever....

"I know what it all means now....

"It's like Niagara, sweetheart ... one hears so much of it ... expects so much ... that it seems disappointing, the first actuality....

"Then afterward, it's more than any dream ever dreamed of what it would be!

"I want to work for you....

"I want to let you walk all over me with your little feet....

"I want you to kill me, sweetheart....

"I want to die for you....

"Hildreth, I love you!

"I'll tell Penton ... I'll tell everybody--'I love Hildreth! I love Hildreth!'"

"Johnnie, my own sweet darling, my own dear, pure-hearted, mad, young poet....

"Don't talk that way....

"Come to me again...."

"Penton must not know. Not yet. You must let _me_ tell him.

"It is my place to tell him, sweetest of men, my darling boy...."

"Go to your tent.

_"He'd see it in your eyes now."_

"No, I won't go to my tent. I'll go right up to the house."

"If he says anything to me I'll kill him.

"I'm a man now.

"I'll fight him or anybody you want me to."

These were the words we said, or left unsaid. I am even yet too confused to remember the exact details of that memorable time.

For I was re-born then, into another life.

Is there anyone who can remember his birth?

I returned to my tent in a blissful daze.

I had not the least feeling of having betrayed a friend.

The only problem that now confronted us was divorce! I would ask Penton to divorce Hildreth, and then Hildreth and I would marry.

But why even that? Was not this the greatest opportunity in the world for Hildreth and me to put to practical test our theories ... proclaim ourselves for Free Love,--as Mary Wollstonecraft and the philosopher G.o.dwin had done, a century or so before us?

The following day Ruth and I ate breakfast together, alone. I had behaved with unusual sedateness, had showed an aplomb I had never before evidenced. Full manhood, belated, had at last come to me.

With more than usual satisfaction I drank my coffee, holding the cup with my hands around it like a child ... warming my fingers, which are nearly always cold in the morning....

Then, while Ruth sat opposite me, eyeing me curiously, I began to sing, half-aloud, to myself.

A silence fell. We exchanged very few words.

And it was our custom, when together, Ruth and I, to hold long discussions concerning the methods and technique of the English poets, especially the earlier ones.

This morning Baxter's secretary rose and left part of her breakfast uneaten, hurrying into the house as if to avoid something which she had seen and dreaded.