"There is no such thing," said Susan. "We just struggle on and on. It's rather awful, isn't it?" And presently, very quietly, as if to herself, she said over those words, surely among the saddest and loveliest ever written by mortal man: _From too much love of living, From hope and fear set free, We thank with brief thanksgiving Whatever gods may be_ _That no life lives forever, That dead men rise up never; That even the weariest river Winds somewhere safe to sea._ "To sea," she repeated; "to sea.... As if the sea itself knew rest!--Now please pay your big fat bill from your nice fat pocketbook, Ambo; and take me home." "If I only could!" was my despairing thought; and I astounded the coat-room boy, as I tipped him, by muttering aloud, "Oh, damn Jimmy Kane!" "Yes, sir--thank you, sir--I will, sir," grinned the coat-room boy. On our way downtown in the taxi Susan withdrew until we reached her West Tenth Street door. "Good-night, Ambo," she then said; "don't come with me; and thank you for everything--always." I crossed the pavement with her to the loutish brownstone front-stoop of the boarding house; there she turned to dismiss me. "You didn't ask my second reason for not going on the review, Ambo. You must know it though, sooner or later. I can't _write_ any more--not well, I mean. Even my Dax paragraphs are falling off; Hadow Bury mentioned it yesterday. But nothing comes. I'm sterile, Ambo. I'm written out at twenty. Bless you. Good-night." "Susan," I cried, "come back here at once!" But she just turned in the doorway to smile back at me, waved her hand, and was gone. I was of two minds whether to follow her or stay. Then, "A whim," I thought; "the whim of a tired child. And I've often felt that way myself--all writers do. But she must take a vacation of some kind--she must!" She did. IX I woke up the next morning, broad awake before seven o'clock, a full hour earlier than my habit. I woke to find myself greatly troubled by Susan's parting words of the night before, and lay in bed for perhaps twenty minutes turning them over fretfully in my mind. Then I could stand it no longer and rose, bathed, dressed and ate my breakfast in self-exasperating haste, yet with no very clear idea of why I was hurrying or what was to follow. I had an appointment with my lawyer for eleven; I was to lunch with Heywood Sampson at one; after lunch--my immediate business in town being completed--I had purposed to return to New Haven.