At last I sympathised fully with him.
Ashamed, in my slowly gathering new man's pride, I did not go in to see Mrs. Rond. Instead, I drove past her house with that curious, bent-kneed walk of mine,--and I walked and walked, not heeding the cold, till the ocean shouldered, phosphorescent, in the enormous night toward me.
Home again, I slept like a drunkard. It was broad day when I woke.
I had dreamed deliciously all night of Hildreth ... was strangely not unsatisfied--when I woke again to the hell of the reality her letter had plunged me into.
Mrs. Rond ... of course I finally took her into my confidence, and told her the entire story....
"Not to speak in disparagement of Hildreth, I knew it all along, Johnnie ... knew that this would be the result ... but come, come, you have bigger things in you ... Penton Baxter will win his divorce sooner or later. Hildreth has another man, poor little girl! You have all that God means you to have at present: _Your first book_!"
THE END