a number of you would gasp a little,
knowing what firm, delicate imaginings all Susan Blake's later
interpretations were, if I should give you her pen name as well--which I
have promised myself not to do. This is not an official study of a young
writer of peculiar distinction; it is merely an unpretending book about
a little girl I knew and a young married woman I still know--one and the
same person. It is what I have named it--that only: _The Book of Susan_.

Meanwhile, this humid June night--to the sordid accompaniment of Bob
and Pearl snarling at each other half-drunkenly within--Susan waits for
us on the monolithic door slab; and there is a new wonder in her dizzy
little head. I can't do better than let her tell you in her own words
what this new wonder was like.

"Ambo, dear"--my name, by the way, is Ambrose Hunt; Captain Hunt, of the
American Red Cross, at the present writing, which I could date from a
sleepy little village in Southern France--"Ambo, dear, it was the moon,
mostly. There was a pink bud of light in the heat mist, way off beyond
East Rock, and then the great wild rose of the moon opened slowly
through it. Papa, inside, was sounding just like a dog when he's
bullying another dog, walking up on the points of his toes, stiff
legged, round him. So I tried to escape, tried to be the moon; tried to
feel floaty and shining and beautiful, and--and remote. But I couldn't
manage it. I never could make myself be anything not alive. I've tried
to be stones, but it's no good. It won't work. I can be trees--a little.
But usually I have to be animals, or men and women--and of course
they're animals too.

"So I began wondering why I liked the moon, why just looking at it made
me feel happy. It couldn't talk to me; or love me. All it could do was
to be up there, sometimes, and shine. Then I remembered about mythology.
Miss Chisholm, in school, was always telling us about gods and
goddesses. She said we were children, so we could recreate the gods for
ourselves, because they belonged to the child age of the world. She
talked like that a lot, in a faded-leaf voice, and none of us ever
understood her. The truth is, Ambo, we never paid any attention to her;
she smiled too much and too sadly, without meaning it; and her eyelashes
were white. All the same, that night somehow I remembered Artemis, the
virgin moon goddess, who slipped silently through dark woods at dusk,
hunting with a silvery bow. Being a virgin seemed t