As the time for my return to school drew near, I was in fine physical condition, better than ever before in my life. I was still somewhat thin, but now it could be called slenderness, not thinness. And I was surprised at the laughing, healthy, sun-browned look of my face.
I felt a confidence in myself I had never known before....
I had a flirtation with a pretty, freckle-faced girl. She worked in Barton's "factory," and she used to come down to my tent where I sat reading, with only my trunks on,—during the noon hour,—and ask me to read poetry aloud to her. And I read Shelley. She would draw shyly closer to me, sending me into a visible tremour that made me ashamed of myself.
At times, as we read, her fair, fine hair would brush my cheek and send a shiver of fire through me. But I still knew nothing about women. I never even offered to kiss her.
But when she was away from me, at night specially, I would go into long, luxurious, amorous imaginations over her and the possession of her, and I would dream of loving her, and of having a little cottage and children....
But words and elegant, burning phrases are never enough for a woman.
In a week I noticed her going by on the arm of a mill-hand.
And, broke again, I wrote to my grandmother that I must have fifty dollars to get back to school on. And, somehow, she scraped it together and sent it to me. My first impulse was to be ashamed of myself and start to return it. Then I kept it. For, after all, it was for poetry's sake.