Our talk was halted by Darrie's re-appearance. Hildreth came furtively back, too, from the little cottage, like a guilty child. She apologized to Darrie, and her apology was accepted, and, in a few minutes we were talking ahead as gaily as before....
We rehearsed Hildreth in her part as Titania ... for that was the part she was to play in The Mid-Summer Night's Dream, that the Actors' Guild of the colony was to put on in their outdoor theatre, a week from that afternoon ... Hildreth insisted on dressing for the part ... in her green, skin tights ... letting her black hair flow free ... wearing even her diadem, as fairy queen. She had a good, musical voice ... a way of speaking with startled shyness that was engaging.
But Hildreth stuck to her original intention of moving to the cottage. She had Mrs. Jones move her things for her.
As I sat in the library of the big house reading Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, I overheard Darrie telling Ruth in the bathroom that Hildreth would not have insisted on donning her tights, if she had not been proud of her symmetrical legs, and had not wanted to show them off to me.
Between the three women, nevertheless, Hildreth was easily my choice already ... Darrie was lovely, but talked like a débutante from morning till night....
Ruth had too much of the quietist in her, the non-resistent. She had a vast fund of scholarship, knew English poetry from the ground up ... but her bringing that knowledge to me as an attraction was like presenting a peacock's feather to a bird of paradise....
However, when Penton came home that night, he found us all in huge good humour. I had just received a check from Derek, and had insisted on spending most of it for a spread for all of us, including a whopping beefsteak.
And we ate and joked and enjoyed ourselves just like the bourgeoisie.
If Penton only had had a sense of humour ... but this I never detected in him.