"It's all very well to stamp round declaiming that you're captain of your soul, but if an earthquake—even a tiny one—comes and shakes your house like a dice box and then scatters you and the family out of it like dice—it wouldn't sound very appropriate for your epitaph. 'I am the master of my fate' would always look silly on a tombstone. Why aren't tombstones a good test for poetry—some poetry? I've never seen anything on a tombstone that looked real—not even the names and dates.
"But does love have to be like an earthquake? If it does, then it's just a blind force, and I don't like blind forces. It's stupid to be blind oneself; but it's worse to have blind stupid things butting into one and pushing one about.
"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?"