SUSAN:

[_Author's Note_: This carefully written,

imaginary speech has been deleted _in toto_ by

Censor Susan from the page proof--at considerable

expense to me--and the following authentic

confession substituted for it in her own hand. But

she doesn't know I am making this explanation,

which will account to you for the form and manner

of her confession, purposely designed to be a

continuation of my own imaginary flight. In

admitting this, I am risking Susan's displeasure;

but conscience forbids me to let you mistake a

"genuine human document"--so dear to the modern

heart--for a mere effort at interpretation by an

amateur psychologist. What follows, then, is

veracious, is essentially that solemn thing so

dear to a truth-loving generation--sheer _fact_.]

Ambo dear, I can explain that, but not without a

long, unhappy confession. Must I? It's a shadowy,

inside-of-me story, awfully mixed and muddled; not

a nice story at all. Won't it be better, all

round, if I simply say again that I love _you_,

not Jimmy, with all my heart?

[No doubt I should then have reached for her

hands, and she would have drawn away.]

Ah, no, dear, please not! I've never made a clean

breast of it all, even to myself. It's got to be

done, though, Ambo, sooner or later, for both our

sakes. Be patient with me. I'll begin at the

beginning.

I'm ridiculously young, Ambo; we all keep

forgetting how young I am! I'm an infant prodigy,

really; you and Phil--and God first, I

suppose--have made me so. And the main point about

infant prodigies is that experience hasn't caught

up with them. They live in things they've imagined

from things they've been told or read, live on

intuition and second-hand ideas; and they've no

means of testing their real values in a real

world. And they're childishly conceited, Ambo! I

am. Less now than some months ago; but I'm still

pretty bad....

Well, back in Birch Street, before I came to you,

when I was honestly a child, I lived all alone

inside of myself. I lived chiefly on stories I

made up about myself; and of course my stories

were all escapes from reality--from the things

that hurt or disgusted me most. There was hardly

anything in my life at home that I didn't long to

escape from. You can understand that, in a general

way. But there's one thing you perhaps haven't

thought about; it's such an ugly thing to think

about. I know it isn't modern of me, but I do hate

to talk about it, even to you. I must, though.

You'll never understand--oh, lots of later

things--unless I do.

Love, Ambo, human love, as I learned of it there

at home--and I saw and heard much too much of

it--frightened and sickened me. It was

swinish--horrible. Most of all I longed to escape

from all that! I couldn't. I wonder if anyone ever

has or can? We are made as we are made.... Yes, I

longed to escape from it; but my very made-up

story of escape was a disguised romance. Jimmy was

to be the gentle Galahad who would some day rescue

me. He had done battle for me once already--with

Joe Gonfarone. But some day he would come in

white, shining armor and take me far away from all

the mud and sweat of Birch Street to blue distant

hills. Artemis was all mixed up in it, too; she

was to be our special goddess; our free, swift,

cool-eyed protector. There was to be no heartsick

shame, no stuffiness in my life any more forever!

But it wasn't Jimmy who rescued me, Ambo. You did.

Only, when we've lived in a dream, wholly, for

months and months and months, it doesn't vanish,

Ambo; it never vanishes altogether; it's part of

us--part of our lives. Isn't it? Gertrude was once

your dream, dear; and the dream-Gertrude has never

really vanished from your life, and never will.

Ah, don't I know!

Well, then you rescued me; and you and Phil and

Maltby and Sister and books and Hillhouse Avenue

and France and Italy and England, and my Magic

Circle--_everything_--crowded upon me and changed

me and made me what I am; if I'm anything at all!

But Birch Street had made me first; and my

dreams....

Ambo, I can never make you know what you've been

to me, never! Cinderella's prince was nothing

beside you, and my Galahad-Jimmy a pale phantom! I

shan't try. And I can never make you know what a

wild confusion of storm you sent whirling through

me when I first felt the difference in you--felt

your man's need of me, of _me_, body and soul! You

meant me not to feel that, Ambo; but I did. I was

only seventeen. And my first reaction was all

passionate joy, a turbulent desire to give, give,

give--and damn the consequences! It was, Ambo. I

loved you.

But given you and me, Ambo, that couldn't last

long. You're too moral--and I'm too complicated.

My inner pattern's a labyrinth, full of queer

magic; simple emotions soon get lost in me, lost

and transformed. And please don't keep forgetting

how young I was, and still am; how little I could

understand of all I was conceited enough to think

I understood! Well, dear, I saw you struggling to

suppress your love for me as something wrong,

unworthy; something that could only harm us both.

And then all that first, swift, instinctive joy

went out of me, and my old fear and distrust of

what men call love seized me again. "Stuffiness,

stuffiness everywhere--it leads to nothing but

stuffiness!" I said. "I hate it. I won't let it

rule my life. The great thing is to keep clear of

it, clean of it, aloof and free!" The old

Artemis-motive swept through me again like a

hill-wind--but it came in gusts; and there were

days--weeks, Ambo--when I simply wanted to be

yours. And one night I threw myself into your

arms....

But the next day I was afraid again. The phrase

"passion's slave" got into my head and plagued me.

Then you came to me and said, "It's the end of the

road, dear. We can't go on." That changed

everything once more, Ambo, in a flash. That was

my crisis. From that moment, I was madly jealous

of Gertrude; knew I always had been, from the

first. My telegram to her was a challenge to

battle. It was, dear--and I lost. She came back;

she was wonderful, too--her way--and the old

Gertrude-dream stirred in you again; just stirred,

but that was enough. You said to yourself, didn't

you? that perhaps after all the best solution for

our wretched difficulties was for Gertrude to

return to her home. At least, that would end

things. But you couldn't have said that to

yourself if Gertrude had been really repulsive to

you. The old dream had fluttered its tired wings,

once, Ambo; you know it had!

And so I flopped again, dear! I was sick of love;

I hated love! I said to myself, "I won't have this

stupid, brutal, instinctive thing pushing and

pulling me about like this! I'll rule my own life,

thanks--my own thoughts and dreams! _Freedom's_

the thing--the only good thing in life. I'll be

free! Ambo, too, must learn to be free. We can

only share what's honestly best in both of us when

at last we are free!"

My Galahad-Jimmy had turned up again, too.

Perhaps that had something to do with my final

fiercest revolt against you. I don't know. He was

all I had wanted him to be, Ambo; simple and

straightforward and clean. Oh, he had his white,

shining armor on, bless him! But I didn't want him

to rescue me, for all that; not in the old way. I

was just glad my dream-boy had come a little true;

that's all. You were jealous of him, weren't you?

Confess! You needn't have been.

But here in New York, with Sister, things happened

that made a difference....

First of all, dear, I discovered all I had lost in

losing you; discovered I _couldn't_ be free. All I

could do was to make some kind of a life of it;

for Sister, chiefly. And I tried; oh, I did try!

Then those whispered scandals about us began. But

it wasn't the scandal itself that did for me; it

was something added to it--by Mrs. Arthur, I

suppose--something _true_, Ambo, that I'd never

honestly faced. Suddenly my father rose from the

dead! Suddenly I was forced to feel that never,

never under any conditions, would it have been

possible for me to be yours--bear you children....

Suddenly I felt, saw--as I should have seen long

ago--that the strain of evil, perhaps of madness,

in my father--the strain that made his life a hell

of black passions--must end with me!

Here's where Jimmy comes back, Ambo--and it's the

worst of all I have to confess. My anxiety was all

for you now: not for myself, I happened to love

you that way. "Suppose," I kept thinking, "suppose

something should unexpectedly make it possible for

Ambo to ask me to be his wife? Suppose Gertrude

should fall in love herself and insist on divorce?

Or suppose she should die? Ambo would be certain

to come to me. And if he did? Should I have the

moral courage to send him away? As I must--I

must!"

Dear, from that time on a sort of demon in me

kept suggesting: "Jimmy--Jimmy's the solution!

He's almost in love with you now; all he needs is

a little encouragement. You could manage it,

Susan. You could engage yourself to Jimmy; and

then you could string him along! You could make it

an interminable engagement, years and years of it,

and break it off when Ambo was thoroughly

discouraged or cured; you're clever enough for

that. And Jimmy's ingenuousness itself. You could

manage Jimmy." Oh, please don't think I ever

really listened to my demon, was ever tempted by

him! But I hated myself for the mere fact that

such thoughts could even occur to me! They did,

though, more than once; and each time I had to

banish them, thrust them down into their native

darkness.

But they didn't die there, Ambo; they lived there,

a hideous secret life, lying in wait to betray me.

They never will betray me, of course; I loathe

them. But they can still stir in their darkness,

make themselves known. That's what the references

to Jimmy mean, Ambo, in those pages I scribbled in

my trance; and that's _all_ they mean. For I don't

love him; I love you.

But I can't marry you, ever. I can't. That black

strain concentrated in my father--oh, it must die

out with me! Just as Sister's line ended with

her.... She ran away from the one love of her

life, Ambo--just as I must run away from you. You

never knew that about Sister. But I knew it. Sonia

told me. Sister told _her_, the week before Sonia

married. Sister felt then that Sonia ought to run

away from all that, as she had. But Sonia wouldn't

listen to her....

"Good for Sonia!" I might then have cried out. "God bless her! Hasn't

she made her husband happy? Aren't her children his pride? Why in

heaven's name should she have denied herself the right to live! And for

a mere possibility of evil! As if the blood of any human family on earth

were wholly sound, wholly blameless! Sonia was selfish, but right, dear;

and Miss Goucher was brave, but wrong! So are you wrong! Actually

inherited feeble-mindedness, or insanity, or disease--that's one thing;

but a dread of mere future possibilities, of mere supposed tendencies!

Good Lord! The human race might as well commit suicide _en bloc_! It's

you I love--_you_--just as you are. And you say you love me. Well, that

settles it!"

But who knows? It might have settled it and it might not--could any such

imaginary conversation conceivably have taken place. It did not take

place. We are dealing, worse luck, with history.