it's part of
us--part of our lives. Isn't it? Gertrude was once
your dream, dear; and the dream-Gertrude has never
really vanished from your life, and never will.
Ah, don't I know!

Well, then you rescued me; and you and Phil and
Maltby and Sister and books and Hillhouse Avenue
and France and Italy and England, and my Magic
Circle--_everything_--crowded upon me and changed
me and made me what I am; if I'm anything at all!
But Birch Street had made me first; and my
dreams....

Ambo, I can never make you know what you've been
to me, never! Cinderella's prince was nothing
beside you, and my Galahad-Jimmy a pale phantom! I
shan't try. And I can never make you know what a
wild confusion of storm you sent whirling through
me when I first felt the difference in you--felt
your man's need of me, of _me_, body and soul! You
meant me not to feel that, Ambo; but I did. I was
only seventeen. And my first reaction was all
passionate joy, a turbulent desire to give, give,
give--and damn the consequences! It was, Ambo. I
loved you.

But given you and me, Ambo, that couldn't last
long. You're too moral--and I'm too complicated.
My inner pattern's a labyrinth, full of queer
magic; simple emotions soon get lost in me, lost
and transformed. And please don't keep forgetting
how young I was, and still am; how little I could
understand of all I was conceited enough to think
I understood! Well, dear, I saw you struggling to
suppress your love for me as something wrong,
unworthy; something that could only harm us both.
And then all that first, swift, instinctive joy
went out of me, and my old fear and distrust of
what men call love seized me again. "Stuffiness,
stuffiness everywhere--it leads to nothing but
stuffiness!" I said. "I hate it. I won't let it
rule my life. The great thing is to keep clear of
it, clean of it, aloof and free!" The old
Artemis-motive swept through me again like a
hill-wind--but it came in gusts; and there were
days--weeks, Ambo--when I simply wanted to be
yours. And one night