I shut the door quietly and went to her, sitting on the hearth rug at her feet, my knees in my arms.

"Sweetheart," I said, "it seems that in spite of myself I've done you little good and about all the harm possible." And I made a clean breast of all the facts and fears that the evening had developed. "So you see,"

I ended, "what my guardianship amounts to!"

Susan's hand came to my shoulder and drew me back against her knees; she did not remove her hand.

"Ambo," she protested gently, "I'm just a little angry with you, I think."

"No wonder!"

"Oh!" she exclaimed. "If I am angry it's because you can say stupid things like that! Don't you see, Ambo, the very moment things grow difficult for us you forget to believe in me--begin to act as if I were a common or garden fool? I'm not, though. Surely you must know in your heart that everything you're afraid of for me doesn't matter in the least. What harm could slander or scandal possibly do me, dear? Me, I mean? I shouldn't like it, of course, because I hate everything stodgy and _formidablement bete_. But if it happens, I shan't lose much sleep over it. You're worrying about the wrong things, Ambo; things that don't even touch our real problem. And the real problem may prove to be the real tragedy, too."

"Tragedy?" I mumbled.

"Oh, I hope not--I think not! It all depends on whether you care for freedom; on whether you're really pa.s.sion's slave. I don't believe you are."

The words wounded me. I shifted, to look up at, to question, her shadowy face. "Susan, what do you mean?"

"I suppose I mean that _I'm_ not, Ambo. You're far dearer to me than anybody else on earth; your happiness, your peace, mean everything to me. If you honestly can't find life worth while without me--can't--I'll go with you anywhere; or face the music with you right here. First, though, I must be sincere with you. I can live away from you, and still make a life for myself. Except your day-by-day companionship--I'd be lonely without that, of course--I shouldn't lose anything that seems to me really worth keeping. Above all, I shouldn't really lose you."

"Susan! You're planning to leave me!"

"But, Ambo--it's only what you've felt to be necessary; what you've been planning for me!"

"As a duty--at the bitterest possible cost! How different that is! You not only plan to leave me--I feel that you want to!"

"Yes, I want to. But only if you can understand why."

"I don't understand!"

"Ah, wait, Ambo! You're not speaking for yourself. You're a slave now, speaking for your master. But it's _you_ I want to talk to!"

I snarled at this. "Why? When you've discovered your mistake so soon!...

You don't love me."

She sighed, deeply unhappy; though my thin-skinned self-esteem wrung from her sigh a shade of impatience, too.

"If not, dear," she said, "we had better find it out before it's too late. Perhaps you are right. Perhaps love is something I only guess at and go wrong about. If love means that I should be utterly lost in you and nothing without you--if it means that I would rather die than leave you--well, then I don't love you. But all the same, if love honestly means that to you--I can't and won't go away." She put out her hand again swiftly, and tightened her fingers on mine.

"It's a test, then. Is that it?" I demanded. "You want to go because you're not sure?"

"I'm sure of what I feel," she broke in; "and more than that, I doubt if I'm made so that I can ever feel more. No; that isn't why I want to go.

I'll go if you can let me, because--oh, I've got to say it, Ambo!--because at heart I love freedom better than I love love--or you.

And there's something else. I'm afraid of--please try to understand this, dear--I'm afraid of stuffiness for us both!"

"Stuffiness?"

"s.e.x _is_ stuffy, Ambo. The more people let it mess up their lives for them, the stuffier they grow. It's really what you've been afraid of for me--though you don't put it that way. But you hate the thought of people saying--with all the muddy little undercurrents they stir up round such things--that you and I have been pa.s.sion's slaves. We haven't been--but we might be; and suppose we were. It's the truth about us--not the lies--that makes all the difference. You're you--and I'm I. It's because we're worth while to ourselves that we're worth while to each other.

Isn't that true? But how long shall we be worth anything to ourselves or to each other if we accept love as slavery, and get to feeling that we can't face life, if it seems best, alone? Ambo, dear, do you see at all what I'm driving at?"

Yes; I was beginning to see. Miss Goucher's desolate words came suddenly back to me: "Susan doesn't need _you_."

X

Next morning, while I supposed her at work in her room, Susan slipped down the back stairs and off through the garden. It was a heavy forenoon for me, perhaps the bleakest and dreariest of my life. But it was a busy forenoon for Susan. She began its activities by a brave intuitive stroke. She entered the Egyptian tomb and demanded an interview with Gertrude. What is stranger, she carried her point--as I was presently to be made aware.

Miss Goucher tapped at the door, entered, and handed me a card. So Gertrude had changed her mind; Gertrude had come. I stared, foolishly blank, at the card between, my fingers, while Miss Goucher by perfect stillness effaced herself, leaving me to my lack of thought.

"Well," I finally muttered, "sooner or later----"

Miss Goucher, perhaps too eagerly, took this for a.s.sent. "Shall I say to Mrs. Hunt that you are coming down?"

I forced a smile, fatuously enough, and rose.

"When I'm down already? Surely you can see, Miss Goucher, that I've touched the bottom?" Miss Goucher did not reply. "I'll go myself at once," I added formally. "Thank you, Miss Goucher."

Gertrude was waiting in the small Georgian reception room, whose detailed correctness had been due to her own; waiting without any vulgar pretense at entire composure. She was walking slowly about, her color was high, and it startled me to find her so little altered. Not a day seemed to have added itself; she looked under thirty, though I knew her to be thirty-five; she was even handsomer than I had chosen to remember.

Even in her present unusual restlessness, the old distinction, the old patrician authority was hers. Her spirit imposed itself, as always; one could take Gertrude only as she wished to be taken--seriously--humbly grateful if exempted from disdain. Gertrude never spoke for herself alone; she was at all times representative--almost symbolic. Homage met in her not a personal grat.i.tude, but the approval of a high, unbroken tradition. She accepted it graciously, without obvious egotism, not as due to her as a temporal being, but as due--under G.o.d--to that timeless ent.i.ty, her cla.s.s. I am not satirizing Gertrude; I am praising her. She, more than any person I have ever known, made of her perishing substance the temple of a completely realized ideal.

It was, I am forced to a.s.sume, because I had failed in entire respect for and submission to this ideal that she had finally abandoned me. It was not so much incompatibility of temperament as incompatibility of worship. She had removed a hallowed shrine from a felt indifference and a possible contamination. That was all, but it was everything. And as I walked into the reception room I saw that the shrine was still beautiful, faultlessly tended, and ready for any absolute but dignified sacrifice.

"Gertrude," I began, "it's splendid of you to overlook my inexcusable rudeness of yesterday! I'm very grateful."

"I have not forgiven you," she replied, with casual indignation--just enough for sincerity and not a shade too much for art. "Don't imagine it's pleasant for me to be here. I should hardly have risked your misinterpreting it, if any other course had seemed possible."

"You might simply have waited," I said. "It was my intention to call this evening, if only to ask after your health."

"I could not have received you," said Gertrude.

"You find it less difficult here?"

"Less humiliating. I'm not, at least, receiving a husband who wishes to plead for reconciliation--on intolerable grounds."

"May I offer you a chair? Better still--why not come to the study? We're so much less likely to be disturbed."

She accepted my suggestion with a slight nod, and herself led the way.

"Now, Gertrude," I resumed, when she had consented to an easy-chair and had permitted me to close the door, "whatever the situation and misunderstandings between us, can't we discuss them"--and I ventured a smile--"more informally, in a freer spirit?"

She caught me up. "Freer! But I understand--less disciplined. How very like you, Ambrose. How unchanged you are."

"And you, Gertrude! It's a compliment you should easily forgive."

She preferred to ignore it. "Miss Blake," she announced, "has just been with me for an hour."

She waited the effect of this. The effect was considerable, plunging me into dark amazement and conjecture. Not daring to make the tiniest guess as to the result of so fantastic an interview, I was left not merely tongue-tied but brain-tied. Gertrude saw at once that she had beggared me and could now at her leisure dole out the equal humiliation of alms withheld or bestowed.