ain point about
infant prodigies is that experience hasn't caught
up with them. They live in things they've imagined
from things they've been told or read, live on
intuition and second-hand ideas; and they've no
means of testing their real values in a real
world. And they're childishly conceited, Ambo! I
am. Less now than some months ago; but I'm still
pretty bad....

Well, back in Birch Street, before I came to you,
when I was honestly a child, I lived all alone
inside of myself. I lived chiefly on stories I
made up about myself; and of course my stories
were all escapes from reality--from the things
that hurt or disgusted me most. There was hardly
anything in my life at home that I didn't long to
escape from. You can understand that, in a general
way. But there's one thing you perhaps haven't
thought about; it's such an ugly thing to think
about. I know it isn't modern of me, but I do hate
to talk about it, even to you. I must, though.
You'll never understand--oh, lots of later
things--unless I do.

Love, Ambo, human love, as I learned of it there
at home--and I saw and heard much too much of
it--frightened and sickened me. It was
swinish--horrible. Most of all I longed to escape
from all that! I couldn't. I wonder if anyone ever
has or can? We are made as we are made.... Yes, I
longed to escape from it; but my very made-up
story of escape was a disguised romance. Jimmy was
to be the gentle Galahad who would some day rescue
me. He had done battle for me once already--with
Joe Gonfarone. But some day he would come in
white, shining armor and take me far away from all
the mud and sweat of Birch Street to blue distant
hills. Artemis was all mixed up in it, too; she
was to be our special goddess; our free, swift,
cool-eyed protector. There was to be no heartsick
shame, no stuffiness in my life any more forever!
But it wasn't Jimmy who rescued me, Ambo. You did.

Only, when we've lived in a dream, wholly, for
months and months and months, it doesn't vanish,
Ambo; it never vanishes altogether;