She was silent again for several moments, pondering. I observed her furtively. Nothing was more distant from my desire than any addition, of any age, male or female, to my present family. Heaven, in its great and unwonted kindness, had sent me Susan; she was--to my thinking--perfect; and she was enough. Whether in art or in life I am no lover of an avoidable anticlimax. But Susan's secret purposes were not mine. "Ambo," she resumed, "I guess if you'd ever lived in Birch Street you'd feel differently about boys." "I doubt it, Susan." "I'm sure you'd feel differently about Jimmy." "Jimmy?" "Jimmy Kane, Ambo--_my_ Jimmy. Haven't I ever told you about him?" Guilefully, persuasively, she edged her chair nearer to mine. It was then that I first learned of Jimmy's battle for Susan, of the bloody but righteous downfall of Giuseppe Gonfarone, and of many another incident long treasured in the junior annals of Birch Street. Thus, little by little, though the night deepened about us, my eyes were unsealed. What a small world I had always lived in! For how long had it seemed to me that romance was--approximately--dead! My fingers tightened on Susan's, while the much-interrogated stars hung above us in their mysterious orbits and---- But no, that is the pathetic fallacy. Stars--are they not matter, merely? They could not smile. "Don't you truly think, Ambo," suggested Susan, "that Jimmy ought to have a better chance? If he doesn't get it, he'll have to work in a factory all his life. And here I am--with you!" "Yes. But consider, Susan--there are thousands of boys like Jimmy. I can't father them all, you know." "I don't want you to father them all," said Susan; "and there isn't anybody like Jimmy! You'll see." It came over me as she spoke that I was, however unwillingly, predestined to see. Maltby Phar thought otherwise. That night, after Susan had gone up to bed, I talked the thing over with him--trying for an airy, detached tone; the tone of one who discusses an indifferent matter for want of a more urgent. Maltby was not, I fear, deceived. "My dear Boz," he pleaded, "buck up! Get a fresh grip on your individuality and haul it back from the brink of destruction! If you don't, that little she-demon above-stairs will push it over into the gulf, once for all! You'll be nobody. You'll be her dupe--her slave. How can you smile, man! I'm quite serious, and I warn you. Fight the good fight! Defend the supreme rights of your ego, before it's too late!" "Why these tragic accents?" I parried. "It's not likely the washlady's kid would want to come; or his mother let him. Susan idealizes him, of course. He's probably quite commonplace and content as he is. No harm, though, if it pleases Susan, in looking him over?" Maltby took up his book again. He dismissed me. "Whom the gods destroy----" he muttered, and ostentatiously turned a page. VII