As we took the train for Long Branch we realised that we had plunged
midmost into the action that would put all our theories to the test....
I looked at my woman with a sidelong glance, as she sat beside me on the
train seat.... She was so pretty, so frail, so feminine that I pitied
her, while at the same time my heart swelled with tenderness for her,
and with pride of possession. For she was mine now without dispute. She,
for her part, spoke but little, except illogically to upbraid Penton
Baxter, as if he had perpetrated an ill on two people thoroughly
innocent.
I was angry with him on other grounds ... he was not playing the radical
game, but taking advantage of the rules of the conventional world.
With a fugitive sense of pursuit, we hired a cabby to drive us to a
summer boarding house at Long Branch ... where Hildreth and I rented a
single large room for both of us....
And there Hildreth immediately went into hysterics, and did nothing but
weep. While I waited on her hand and foot, bringing up food to her
because she was sensitive about the probability of people recognising
her.
We stayed there a week. Each day the papers were full of our mysterious
disappearance ... reporters were combing the country to find us. Reports
of our being in various places were sent in by enterprising local
correspondents....
Again we entrained .
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