.. write your poems
unmolested ... I won't be going there for awhile yet, but I will give
you a letter to the caretaker, and you can use the place. And my pantry
and ice box will be at your service ... so you'll need do nothing but
write."
Now, fed full of rebuffs, I wished I had accepted her offer. And I wrote
her, care of the Eos Artworks ... an ingenuous letter, burning with
naive love....
She had once told me how she had scandalised the neighbours by painting
a little boy, in the nude, in that same bungalow ... the story being
carried about by the servants ... and if it had not been for her social
prestige!--
I thought there could be nothing pleasanter than living in her place,
perhaps becoming her lover....
I imagined myself posing, nude, for her canvases....
But my brief hope fell to earth. A curt note from a married sister of
hers ... who first apologised for having read my letter.... But Mrs.
Tighe was abroad, painting in Spain.
The shock of having someone else, indubitably with a hostile eye, read
my letter, in which I had poured forth all my heart, made me almost
sick. I was chagrined inexpressibly.
* * * * *
The truth was, spring was coming on. Spring affects me as it does
migratory fowls. With its first effort of meadow and bough toward
renewed flowers and greenness, the instinct for change and adventure
stirs anew in me.
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