Then she went to the docks and, secretly, watched Gene in action. She couldn't resist comparing his powerful body with the muscleless, correctly dressed men relatives of her friends at Vassar, men she'd met during the holidays. Occasionally Myron joined her on her walks.

"I wish there was some way to make Gene like me more," he confided. She gave him an affectionate pat on the shoulder. "Just be yourself."

As men have loved their lovers in times past

Where can the heart be hidden in the ground?

A miserably cold night she opened her door to find Gene with a mongrel in his arms, its leg broken. He'd rescued it from a slushy gutter. Edna went to the phone in the hall and called Charlie-Charlotte, her room mate at Vassar. To her she was Vince.

Charlie's father was the director of the Beekman Street Hospital. In a few minutes she called back and told Edna to take the dog to the hospital and ask for a Dr. Spencer. It was against regulations to treat animals but her dad had phoned the doctor and had his assurance it would be all right.

Dr. Spencer, a kindly, bespectacled man, greeted Edna with a warm smile and a handshake. He told her how much he had enjoyed her poems in Ainslees and the Forum. He put the dog's leg in a cast. Edna asked for a bill. He said to forget it, all she owed him was an autographed copy of her poem Renaissance. He then called for an ambulance and told the driver to take Edna, Gene and the dog where ever they wanted to go.

They went to Edna's room. Neither she nor Gene wanted the dog to be alone all day. She put her only pillow on the floor, lay the dog on it then covered it with her warmest sweater. She named it Champ. On her fifth birthday her father he and her mother were divorced-had sent her an English setter named Champ. Not much larger than she was then, Champ never left her side. Two years later he died of distemper. She wrapped his body in a silk kimono, lay it in a child's casket and buried it under an elm she could see from her window. While this dog would never take Champ's place, he satisfied her need for a pet to care for and worry about.

Several nights later Gene brought her a handsome silver and cutglass humidor filled with her favorite Virginia tobacco, so she threw the leather pouch she'd been using into the alley.

Until Edna came into his life, Washington Square to Gene was just another part of Greenwich Village. But passing through it early one April morning after a refreshing rain it looked so different to him he wanted Edna to see it. And she did with Champ.

A scrubwoman, homeward bound, saw a lovely young redhead with a coarse looking man in work clothes and a mongrel dog standing under the Washington Arch saying nothing, just looking. Wondering what such a refined looking girl saw in such a brute, she shook her head.

What Edna saw became: "Together we watch the first magnanimous rays of the sun on the tops of greening trees and on houses of red brick and stone." During the rehearsals at The Playhouse, Edna ate most of her meals at Myron's and cooked them herself on his gas burner atop his trunk. She knew if she didn't Myron would fail to eat the nourishing food he needed; and whenever his stock of canned foods became too low, she notified Ted and Ned, the Brigs brothers.

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