As we took the train for Long Branch we realised that we had plunged midmost into the action that would put all our theories to the test....
I looked at my woman with a sidelong glance, as she sat beside me on the train seat.... She was so pretty, so frail, so feminine that I pitied her, while at the same time my heart swelled with tenderness for her, and with pride of possession. For she was mine now without dispute. She, for her part, spoke but little, except illogically to upbraid Penton Baxter, as if he had perpetrated an ill on two people thoroughly innocent.
I was angry with him on other grounds ... he was not playing the radical game, but taking advantage of the rules of the conventional world.
With a fugitive sense of pursuit, we hired a cabby to drive us to a summer boarding house at Long Branch ... where Hildreth and I rented a single large room for both of us....
And there Hildreth immediately went into hysterics, and did nothing but weep. While I waited on her hand and foot, bringing up food to her because she was sensitive about the probability of people recognising her.
We stayed there a week. Each day the papers were full of our mysterious disappearance ... reporters were combing the country to find us. Reports of our being in various places were sent in by enterprising local correspondents....
Again we entrained ... for Sea Girt.
An old cabman who drove a dilapidated rig hailed us with uplifted whip.
"We are looking for a place to board."
"I'll take you to a nice, quiet place, just suited to two home-loving folks like you," he replied, thinking he had paid us a compliment, and whipping up his ancient nag.