he unhappiness of most mortals is not
due to their failure clearly to read another's thoughts or clearly to
reveal their own? Is not half, at least, of the misery in our hearts
born of futile misunderstandings, misunderstandings with which any sane
onlooker in full possession of the facts on both sides, can have little
patience, since he instinctively feels they ought never to have taken
place? But it is only in the theater that we find such an onlooker, the
audience, miraculously in possession of the facts on both sides. In
active life, we are doing pretty well if we can partly understand our
own motives; we are supermen if we divine the concealed, genuine motives
of another. Certainly at this period Susan, with all her insight, did
not seize my motives, nor was I able to interpret hers. Hence, we could
not speak out! What needed to be said between us could not be said. And
the best proof that it could not is, after all, that it was not....

The conversation that ought to have taken place between us might not
unreasonably have run something like this:

SUSAN: Ambo dear--what _is_ the matter? Heaven
knows there's enough!--but I mean between _us_?
You've never been more wonderful to me than these
past weeks--and never so remote. I can feel you
edging farther and farther away. Why, dear?

I: I've been a nuisance to you too long, Susan.
Whatever I am from now on, I won't be that.

SUSAN: As if you could be; or ever had been!

I: Don't try to spare my feelings because you like
me--because you're grateful to me and sorry for
me! I've had a glimpse of fact, you see. It's the
great moral antiseptic. My illusions are done for.

SUSAN: What illusions?

I: The illusion that you ever have really loved
me. The illusion that you might some day grow to
love me. The illusion that you might some day be
my wife.

SUSAN: Only the last is illusion, Ambo. I do love
you. I'm growing more in love with you every day.
But I can't be your wife, ever. If I've seemed
changed and sad--apart from Sister's death, and
everything else that's happened--it's _that_,
dear. It's killing me by half-inches to know I can
never be completely part of your life--yours!

I:

[But I can't even