"Hang it, I don't believe love has to be stupid and blind, and go thrashing through things! Ambo isn't thrashing through things--or Phil either. But, of course, they wouldn't. That's exactly what I mean about love; it can be tamed, civilized. No, not civilized--just tamed. _Cowed?_ Then it's still as wild as ever underneath? I'm afraid it is. Oh, dear! "Phil and Ambo really are captains of their souls though, so far as things in general let them be. _Things in general_--what a funny name for God! But isn't God just a short solemn name for things in general? There I go again. Phil says I'm always taking God's name in vain. He thinks I lack reverence. I don't, really. What I lack is--reticence. That's different--isn't it, Ambo?" * * * * * The above extracts date back a little. The following were jotted early in November, 1913, not long after our return from overseas. * * * * * "This is growing serious, Susan Blake. Phil has asked you to marry him, and says he needs you. Ditto Maltby; only he says he wants you. Which, too obviously, he does. Poor Maltby--imagine his trying to stoop so low as matrimony, even to conquer! As for Ambo--Ambo says nothing, bless him--but I think he wants and needs you most of all. Well, Susan?" * * * * * "Jimmy's back. I saw him yesterday. He didn't know me." "Sex is a miserable nuisance. It muddles things--interferes with honest human values. It's just Nature making fools of us for her own private ends. These are not pretty sentiments for a young girl, Susan Blake!" * * * * * "Speak up, Susan--clear the air! You are living here under false pretenses. If you can't manage to feel like Ambo's daughter--you oughtn't to stay." III It was perhaps when reticent Phil finally spoke to me of his love for Susan that I first fully realized my own predicament--a most unpleasant discovery; one which I determined should never interfere with Susan's peace of mind or with the possible chances of other, more eligible, men. As Susan's guardian, I could not for a moment countenance her receiving more than friendly attention from a man already married, and no longer young. A grim, confused hour in my study convinced me that I was an impossible, even an absurd, _parti_. This conviction brought with it pain so sharp, so nearly unendurable, that I wondered in my weakness how it was to be unflinchingly borne. Yet borne it must be, and without betrayal. It did not occur to me, in my mature folly, that I was already, and had for long been, self-betrayed.