And my mind went back to those happy days at Eos ... happy despite the fly in the ointment....
I thought of my Southern widow, Mrs. Tighe.
"Poet," she had once said, "come to my place in the South. I have a bungalow back of my house that you may live in ... write your poems unmolested ... I won't be going there for awhile yet, but I will give you a letter to the caretaker, and you can use the place. And my pantry and ice box will be at your service ... so you'll need do nothing but write."
Now, fed full of rebuffs, I wished I had accepted her offer. And I wrote her, care of the Eos Artworks ... an ingenuous letter, burning with naïve love....
She had once told me how she had scandalised the neighbours by painting a little boy, in the nude, in that same bungalow ... the story being carried about by the servants ... and if it had not been for her social prestige!—
I thought there could be nothing pleasanter than living in her place, perhaps becoming her lover....
I imagined myself posing, nude, for her canvases....
But my brief hope fell to earth. A curt note from a married sister of hers ... who first apologised for having read my letter.... But Mrs. Tighe was abroad, painting in Spain.
The shock of having someone else, indubitably with a hostile eye, read my letter, in which I had poured forth all my heart, made me almost sick. I was chagrined inexpressibly.