High day. I walked along the path, past the little house where Baxter sequestered himself when he wished to be alone to think or write; it was close to my tent, around a corner of trees. I tiptoed religiously by it, went on up to the big house where the three women slept, as if drawn to their abode by a sort of heliotropism.
The whole house stood in quiet, the embodiment of slumber.
A lank, flat-chested woman came up the path from the opposite direction ... dressed drab in one long, undistinguished gown like a Hicksite or Quaker, without the hood ... her head was bare ... her fine, brown hair plaited flat.
"Good morning!"
"Good morning," she replied, a query in her voice.
"I am John Gregory, the poet," I explained. "I arrived yesterday on a visit to the Baxters."
She said she had heard of me ... she opened the door and went into the house. I followed.
She was the wife of Anarchist Jones, of whom I had already heard the household speak—as a difficult, recalcitrant member of the colony.