"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.
"Steady, you old fool!" whispered my familiar demon. "This isn't going to be child's play, you know. This is an hour-by-hour torture you've set out to grin and bear and live through. You'll never make the grade, if you don't take cognizance in advance. The road's devilishly steep and icy, and the corners are bad. What's more, there's no end to it; the crest's never in sight. Clamp your chains on and get into low. . . . Steady!
"But, of course," whispered my familiar demon, "there's probably an easier way round. Why attempt the impossible? Think what you've done for Susan! Gratitude, my dear sir—affectionate gratitude—is a long step in the right direction . . . if it is the right direction. I don't say it is; I merely suggest, en passant, that it may be. Suppose, for example, that Susan——"
"Damn you!" I spat out, jumping from my chair. "You contemptible swine!"
Congested blood whined in my ears like a faint jeering laughter. I paced the room, raging—only to sink down again, exhausted, my face and hands clammy.