“I missed the damn train.”

“Oh!’’ said the Doctor. “Did you come back across the field?”

“Yes, like a fool,” she said. “I could have hitched a ride and caught the train up the line. Only I didn’t think. If you’d run me over to the junction, I could still make it.”

“Maybe,” said the Doctor. “Did you meet anyone coming back?”

“Not a soul,” she said. “Aren’t you finished with that old job yet?”

“I’m afraid I’ll have to take it all up again,” said the Doctor. “Come down here, my dear, and I’ll show you.”

Evening Primrose

In a pad of Highlife Bond, bought by

Miss Sadie Brodribb at Bracey’s for 25¢

March 21 Today I made my decision. I would turn my back for good and all upon the bourgeois world that hates a poet. I would leave, get out, break away —

And I have done it. I am free! Free as the mote that dances in the sunbeam! Free as a housefly crossing first-class in the largest of luxury liners! Free as my verse! Free as the food I shall eat, the paper I write upon, the lamb’s-wool-lined softly slithering slippers I shall wear.

This morning I had not so much as carfare. Now I am here, on velvet. You are itching to learn of this haven; you would like to organize trips here, spoil it, send your relations-in-law, perhaps even come yourself. After all, this journal will hardly fall into your hands till I am dead. I’ll tell you.

I am at Bracey’s Giant Emporium, as happy as a mouse in the middle of an immense cheese, and the world shall know me no more.

Merrily, merrily shall I live now, secure behind a towering pile of carpets, in a corner nook which I propose to line with eiderdowns, angora vestments, and the Cleopatraean tops in pillows. I shall be cozy.

I nipped into this sanctuary late this afternoon and soon heard the dying footfalls of closing time. From now on, my only effort will be to dodge the night watchman. Poets can dodge.

I have already made the first mouse-like exploration. I tiptoed as far as the stationery department, and, timid, darted back with only these writing materials, the poet’s first need. Now I shall lay them aside, and seek other necessities: food, wine, the soft furniture of my couch, and a natty smoking jacket. This place stimulates me. I shall write here.

Dawn, Next Day I suppose no one in the world was ever more astonished and overwhelmed than I have been tonight. It is unbelievable. Yet I believe it. How interesting life is when things get like that!

I crept out, as I said I would, and found the great shop in mingled light and gloom. The central well was half illuminated; the circling galleries towered in a pansy Piranesi of toppling light and shade. The spidery stairways and flying bridges had passed from purpose into fantasy. Silks and velvets glimmered like ghosts, a hundred panty-clad models offered simpers and embraces to the desert air. Rings, clips, and bracelets glittered frostily in a desolate absence of Honey and Daddy.

Creeping along the transverse aisles, which were in deeper darkness, I felt like a wandering thought in the dreaming brain of a chorus girl down on her luck. Only, of course, their brains are not so big as Bracey’s Giant Emporium.