The stage was set for the second act. I must get the play finished in the rough. I owed this much to Mr. Derek, who was faithfully backing me—if not to my own career ... and already I had succeeded in interesting Mitchell Kennerley, the new young publisher, in my effort. After the book was disposed of ... then Europe ... then London ... then Paris, and all the large life of the brilliant world of intellect and literature that awaited me.
But, at the present, one small, dainty, dark woman unconsciously stood in my pathway. I looked into Hildreth Baxter's face with caution, strangely disquieted, but proud to be outwardly self-possessed.
"Let's us take a walk," she suggested.
"No, I must go to my tent and write!"
"Oh, come now ... don't you be like Mubby!... that's the way he talks."
"All right," I assented, amazed at her directness, "I'll put my work by for the day—though the entire dialogue of the three Galilean fishermen about the miracle of the great draught of fishes is at this very moment burning in my brain."
She laid her hand lightly, but with an electric contact, on the bend of my arm, and off we started, into the inviting fields.
Not far out, we came across a group of romping children. They were shouting and chasing one another about, as happy dogs do when overjoyed with excessive energy.
The example the children set was contagious.... Hildreth and I were soon romping too—when out of the former's sight. We took hands and ran hard down a hill, and half-way up another one opposite, through our own natural impetus.
We changed our mood, strolling slowly and thoughtfully till we came to a small rustic bridge, so pretty it seemed almost like stagecraft, that spanned, at one leap, one of the countryside's innumerable, flashing brooks. We stood looking over into the foaming, speeding water.