"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?"