ople. We are not to judge them by our usages. No
reverend institutions are insulted by their proceedings--for they have
none among them. No peace of families is violated--for no family ties
exist among them.... No deep affections are disquieted, no holy-wedlock
bands are snapped asunder--for affection's depth and wedded faith are
not the growth of that soil. There is neither right nor wrong.... Of
what consequence is it to Virtue or how is she at all concerned?... The
whole thing is a passing pageant."

It is probable that Maltby at first mistook her interest in the
spectacle for the preliminary stirrings of its spell within her; but he
must soon have been aware--for he had intelligence--that Susan was not
precisely flinging herself among his maskers with the thrilled abandon
that would betoken surrender. She was not afraid of these clever,
beauty-loving maskers, some of whom bore celebrated names; it was not
timidity that restrained her; she, too, loved beauty and lilting wit and
could feel joyously at ease among them--for an hour or two--once in a
while. But to remain permanently within those twining circles, held to a
limited dream, when she was conscious of wilder, freer, more adventurous
spaces without----! Why should she narrow her sympathies like that? It
never occurred to her as a temptation to do so. She had drunk of a
headier cup, and had known a vaster intoxication. From the magic circle
of her cedar trees, in that lonely abandoned field back of Mount Carmel,
the imagination of her heart had long since streamed outward beyond all
such passing pageants, questing after a dream that does not pass....

No gilded nutshell could bound her now; she could become the slave of no
_intersected_ ring.... Lesser incantations were powerless.

So much, then, for my own broad annotation of Susan's letter to Phil!
But I leave you with generalizations, when your interest is in concrete
fact. Patience. In my too fumbling way I am ready for you there, as
well.

VI

SUSAN TO JIMMY

"I suppose you'd really like to know what I've lately been up to; but I
hardly know myself. It's absurd, of course, but I almost think I'm
having a weeny little fit of the blues to-night--not dark-blue devils
exactly--say, light-blue gnomes! I hate being pushed about, and things
have pushed me about, rather. It's that, I think. There's been too
much--of everything--somehow----

"You see, my social life just now is divided into three parts, li