"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
Godwin 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.
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