.. 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?"
"Into the kitchen to get a lantern."
"The moon is almost as bright as day. We won't need it."
We stepped out into the warm, scented night. In a mad flood of silver
the moon reigned high in the sky, dark and bright with the contours and
shades of its continents and craters, as if nearer the earth than it had
ever been before....
"This night reminds me of those lines in Marlowe's _Doctor Faustus_,
the ones that follow after 'Is this the face that launched a thousand
ships, and burnt the topless towers of Ilion?' which are, to me, a
trifle over-rhetorical .
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