Yet I was sure that I was writing better than ever before.
Simonds, of the _Coming Nation_, and the editor of the Kansas City
_Star_ were about the only editors who now took my work. I inferred
rightly that my notoriety was what was tabooing me. I determined to run
up to New York and find out for myself if this was true!
As I rode north along the flashes of sea, marsh, and town, I thought of
my little flock that I had left behind for a day, with intense
satisfaction and content. They were mine. Hildreth was my woman, Daniel
had been my child for the space he was with us. And I held Darrie in
friendly tenderness, much as the bourgeois business man holds the
supernumerary women of his household, though she was by no means that,
nor was she in any way dependent on me....
I was finding it very good to own, to possess, to take root; to be
possessed and owned, in turn. I carried an obscure sense of triumph over
Baxter.
* * * * *
Darrie, who had been to town the week before, had come back with a
report of Penton's unhappiness, his belated acknowledgment that he was
still, in spite of his battle against the feeling, deeply in love with
his discarded wife. It was not so easy to tear her out of his heart, she
had intertwined so deeply there ... eight years with a woman, and one
child by her, and affection for her was no easy thing to root up from
one's being.
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