. If you had been free, I
think there's no doubt I should have married you. Oh, I know, dear, it
sounds cold-blooded like that! But the point is, I shouldn't then have
questioned things as I do now. My feeling for you--your need of me--they
wouldn't have been put to the test. Now they have been--or rather,
they're being tested, every minute of every hour. Suppose I should ask
you now--meaning every word of it--to divorce Mrs. Hunt so you could
marry me? At least you'd know then, wouldn't you, that simply being
yours meant more to me than anything else in life? Or suppose I couldn't
bring myself to ask it, but couldn't face life without you? Suppose I
drowned myself----"

"Good God, dear!"

"I'm not going to, Ambo--and what's equally important, neither are you.
Why, you don't even pause over Mrs. Hunt's suggestion! You don't even
wait to ask my opinion! You say at once--it's impossible! That proves
something, doesn't it--about you and me? It either proves we're not half
so much in love as we think we are, or else that love isn't for either
of us the only good thing in life--the whole show." She paused, but
added: "Why can't you consider divorcing Mrs. Hunt, Ambo? After all, she
isn't honestly your wife and doesn't want to be; it would only be common
fairness to yourself."

Miss Goucher stirred uneasily in her chair. I stirred uneasily in mine.

"There are so many reasons," I fumbled. "I suppose at bottom it comes to
this--a queer feeling of responsibility, of guilt even...."

"Nonsense!" cried Susan. "You never could have satisfied her, Ambo. You
weren't born to be human, but somehow, in spite of everything, you just
are! It's your worst fault in Mrs. Hunt's eyes. Mrs. Hunt shouldn't have
married a man; she should have married a social tradition; an abstract
idea."

"How could she?" asked Miss Goucher.

"Easily," said Susan; "she's one herself, so there must be others. It's
hard to believe, but apparently abstractions like that do get themselves
incarnated now and then. I never met one before--in the flesh. It gave
me a creepy feeling--like shaking hands with the fourth dimension or
asking the Holy Roman Empire to dinner. But I don't pretend to make her
out, Ambo. Why _did_ she leave you? It seems the very thing an incarnate
social tradition could never have brought herself to do!"

Before I could check myself I reproved her. "You're not often merely
cruel, Susan!" Then, hoping to soften it, I hurried on: "You s