Susan, thank God, was not and probably is not exempt from this folly. It enables me from this time forward to present certain passages—mere scraps and jottings—from her notebooks, which she has not hesitated to turn over to me.
"I don't approve, Ambo," was her comment, "but if you will write nonsense about me, I can't help it. What I can help, a little, is your writing nonsense about yourself or Phil or the rest. It's only fair to let me get a word in edgeways, now and then—if only for your sake and theirs."
That is not, however, my own reason for giving you occasional peeps into these notebooks of Susan's.
"I'm beginning to wish that Shelley might have had a sense of humor. 'Epipsychidion' is really too absurd. 'Sweet benediction in the eternal curse!' Imagine, under any condition of sanity, calling any woman that! Or 'Thou star above the storm!'—beautiful as the image is. 'Thou storm upon the star!' would make much worse poetry, but much better sense. . . . Isn't it strange that I can't feel this about Wordsworth? He was better off without humor, for all his solemn-donkey spots—and it's better for us that he didn't have it. It's probably better for us, too, that Shelley didn't have it—but it wasn't better for him. Diddle-diddle-dumpling—what stuff all this is! Go to bed, Susan."
"There's no use pretending things are different, Susan Blake; you might as well face them and see them through, open-eyed. What does being in love mean?
"I suppose if one is really in love, head over heels, one doesn't care what it means. But I don't like pouncing, overwhelming things—things that crush and blast and scorch and blind. I don't like cyclones and earthquakes and conflagrations—at least, I've never experienced any, but I know I shouldn't like them if I did. But I don't think I'd be so terribly afraid of them—though I might. I think I'd be more—sort of—indignant—disgusted."
Editor's Note: Such English! But pungent stylist as Susan is now acknowledged to be, she is still, in the opinion of academic critics, not sufficiently attentive to formal niceties of diction. She remains too wayward, too impressionistic; in a word, too personal. I am inclined to agree, and yet—am I?