advice that doesn't
sound like advice at all. As one-half of a mutual-admiration syndicate
I'm a complete success! But as a professional author--hum, hum. Anyway,
I'm beginning to poke my inquisitive nose into a little of everything,
and you can't tell--something, some day, may come of this. As the
Dickens man said--who was he?--I hope it mayn't be human gore.
Meanwhile, one thing hits the most casual eye: We're still in the
double-room-with-alcove boarding-house stage, and likely to stay there
for some time to come."

IV

SUSAN TO PHIL

"Your short letter answering my long one has been read and reread and
read again. I know it by heart. Everything you say's true--and isn't.
I'll try to explain that--for I can't bear you to be doubting me. You
are, Phil. I don't blame you, but I do blame myself--for complacency.
I've taken too much for granted, as I always do with you and Ambo. You
see, I know so intensely that you and Ambo are pure
gold--incorruptible!--that I couldn't possibly question anything you
might say or do--the fineness of the motive, I mean. If you did murder
and were hanged for it, and even if I'd no clue as to why you struck--I
should know all the time you must have done it because, for some
concealed reason, under circumstances dark to the rest of us, your clear
eyes marked it as the one possible right thing to do.

"Yes, I trust you like that, Phil; you and Ambo and Sister and Jimmy.
Think of trusting four people like that! How rich I am! And you can't
know how passionately grateful! For it isn't blind trusting at all. In
each one of you I've touched a soul of goodness. There's no other name
for it. It's as simple as fresh air. You're good--you four--good from
the center. But, Phil dear, a little secret to comfort you--just between
us and the stars: So, mostly, am I.

"Truly, Phil, I'm ridiculously good at the center, and most of the way
out. There are things I simply can't do, no matter how much I'd like to;
and lots of oozy, opally things I simply can't like at all. I'm with you
so far, at least--peacock-proud to be! But we're tremendously different,
all the same. It's really this, I think: You're a Puritan, by instinct
and cultivation; and I'm not. The clever ones down here, you know, spend
most of their spare time swearing by turns at Puritanism and the
Victorian Era. Their favorite form of exercise is patting themselves on
the back, and this is one of their subtler ways of doing it. But they