Susan: It isn't nonsense. You forget; I'm a specialist in nonsense nowadays. Oh, Ambo, how can you care for me! I've been so insufferably self-satisfied; so childishly blind! My eyes are wide open now. I've had the whole story of what happened that awful night—all of it—from Doctor Askew. He thought he was psycho-analyzing me, while I pumped it out of him, drop by drop. And I've been to Maltby, too; yes, I've been to Maltby, behind your back. Ambo, he isn't really certain yet that I didn't go crazy that night and kill your wife. Neither, I'm sure, is Mrs. Arthur. They've given me the benefit of the doubt simply because they dread being dragged through a horrible scandal, that's all. But they're not convinced. Of course, Maltby didn't say so in so many words, but it was plain as plain! He was afraid of me—afraid! I could feel his fear. He thinks madness is in my blood. Well, he's right. Not just as he means it, but as Setebos means it—the cruel, jealous God of this world! . . . No, wait, dear! Let me say it out to you, once for all. My father ended a brutal life by an insanely brutal murder, then killed himself; my own father. And I've never all these years honestly realized that as part of my life—part of me! But now I do. It's there, back of me. I can never escape from it. Oh, how could I have imagined myself like others—a woman like others, free to love and marry and have children and a home! How could I!
I: Susan! Is that all? Is it really all that's holding you from me? Good God, dear! Why, I thought you—secretly—perhaps even unknown to yourself—loved Jimmy!
Susan: Jimmy? You thought——
I: I think so even now. How can I help it? Look. . . . [And here you must suppose me to show her those first scrawled sheets, written automatically by her hand.] Perhaps I'm revealing your own heart to you, Susan—dragging to light what you've tried to keep hidden even from yourself. See, dear. "A net. No means of escape from it. To escape—somehow. Jimmy——"
[And then Susan would perhaps have handed back those scrawled pages to me with a pitying and pitiful smile.]
Susan:
[Author's Note: This carefully written, imaginary speech has been deleted in toto by Censor Susan from the page proof—at considerable expense to me—and the following authentic confession substituted for it in her own hand. But she doesn't know I am making this explanation, which will account to you for the form and manner of her confession, purposely designed to be a continuation of my own imaginary flight. In admitting this, I am risking Susan's displeasure; but conscience forbids me to let you mistake a "genuine human document"—so dear to the modern heart—for a mere effort at interpretation by an amateur psychologist. What follows, then, is veracious, is essentially that solemn thing so dear to a truth-loving generation—sheer fact.]
Ambo dear, I can explain that, but not without a long, unhappy confession. Must I? It's a shadowy, inside-of-me story, awfully mixed and muddled; not a nice story at all. Won't it be better, all round, if I simply say again that I love you, not Jimmy, with all my heart?
[No doubt I should then have reached for her hands, and she would have drawn away.]
Ah, no, dear, please not! I've never made a clean breast of it all, even to myself. It's got to be done, though, Ambo, sooner or later, for both our sakes. Be patient with me. I'll begin at the beginning.