"If the entire world fell about mother's ears, she wouldn't know."
"What do you two lovers purpose doing?"
I unfolded my scheme of living with Hildreth in a Jersey bungalow ... Derek's income to me would go on a while yet ... I could sell stories and poems to the New York magazines ... Hildreth could write a book as well as I ... we would become to the modern world an example of the radical love-life ... the Godwin and Wollstonecraft of the age.
We ate supper together, the three of us, in the flat. It was so cosy. Darrie and Hildreth joined in cleaning the house that afternoon.
But a bomb was to be hurled among us.
At twelve o'clock of the next day the 'phone rang.
Darrie answered it. After a few words she came for me, her face as white as a sheet....
"My God, Penton is in town!"
"—this is only Thursday ... he was not coming till Saturday!" I exclaimed, full of forboding.