We, the enlightened public, feel that in the shoes of either the hero or the heroine we must have acted more wisely, and we refuse our sympathy to misfortunes that need never have occurred. Our reaction is perhaps inevitable and æsthetically justified; but I am wondering--I am wondering whether two-thirds of the unhappiness of most mortals is not due to their failure clearly to read another's thoughts or clearly to reveal their own? Is not half, at least, of the misery in our hearts born of futile misunderstandings, misunderstandings with which any sane onlooker in full possession of the facts on both sides, can have little patience, since he instinctively feels they ought never to have taken place? But it is only in the theater that we find such an onlooker, the audience, miraculously in possession of the facts on both sides. In active life, we are doing pretty well if we can partly understand our own motives; we are supermen if we divine the concealed, genuine motives of another. Certainly at this period Susan, with all her insight, did not seize my motives, nor was I able to interpret hers. Hence, we could not speak out! What needed to be said between us could not be said. And the best proof that it could not is, after all, that it was not.... The conversation that ought to have taken place between us might not unreasonably have run something like this: SUSAN: Ambo dear--what _is_ the matter? Heaven knows there's enough!--but I mean between _us_? You've never been more wonderful to me than these past weeks--and never so remote. I can feel you edging farther and farther away. Why, dear? I: I've been a nuisance to you too long, Susan. Whatever I am from now on, I won't be that. SUSAN: As if you could be; or ever had been! I: Don't try to spare my feelings because you like me--because you're grateful to me and sorry for me! I've had a glimpse of fact, you see. It's the great moral antiseptic. My illusions are done for. SUSAN: What illusions? I: The illusion that you ever have really loved me. The illusion that you might some day grow to love me. The illusion that you might some day be my wife. SUSAN: Only the last is illusion, Ambo. I do love you. I'm growing more in love with you every day. But I can't be your wife, ever. If I've seemed changed and sad--apart from Sister's death, and everything else that's happened--it's _that_, dear. It's killing me by half-inches to know I can never be completely part of your life--yours! I: [But I can't even imagine what babble of sorrow and joy such words must have wrung from me! Suppose a decent interval, and a partial recovery of verbal control.]