.. and we ourselves will set the example of
true love that fears nothing but the conventional legal slavery."
"It will soon be very cold down here," commented Darrie, irrelevantly,
"this is only a summer cottage, and they say--the old settlers--that we
are to have a severe winter ... the frost fish are already beginning to
come ashore."
* * * * *
It was generally known, sub rosa, that Hildreth and I were living
together. But, as long as she pretended it was not so, as long as I
lived seemingly in another house, pretending, under another name, to be
Mrs. Baxter's literary adviser, the hypocrisy of the world was
satisfied.
I was, in other words, following the accepted mode.
It was a nasty little article by a fellow literary craftsman from the
Pacific coast, that set me off, brought me to the full realisation that
I was but playing the usual, conventional game,--that roused me to the
determination that I must no longer sail under false colours.
This writer retailed how, after a brief, disillusioning few weeks
together, Hildreth had grown tired of the poverty and spareness of the
living a poet was able to make for her ... of how I was lazy, impliedly
dirty ... of how, up against realities, we had parted ... I had, he
stated, in fact, deserted her, and was now on my way back to Kansas,
riding the rods of freights, once more an unsavoury outcast, a knight of
the road .
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