They never will betray me, of course; I loathe
them. But they can still stir in their darkness,
make themselves known. That's what the references
to Jimmy mean, Ambo, in those pages I scribbled in
my trance; and that's _all_ they mean. For I don't
love him; I love you.

But I can't marry you, ever. I can't. That black
strain concentrated in my father--oh, it must die
out with me! Just as Sister's line ended with
her.... She ran away from the one love of her
life, Ambo--just as I must run away from you. You
never knew that about Sister. But I knew it. Sonia
told me. Sister told _her_, the week before Sonia
married. Sister felt then that Sonia ought to run
away from all that, as she had. But Sonia wouldn't
listen to her....

"Good for Sonia!" I might then have cried out. "God bless her! Hasn't
she made her husband happy? Aren't her children his pride? Why in
heaven's name should she have denied herself the right to live! And for
a mere possibility of evil! As if the blood of any human family on earth
were wholly sound, wholly blameless! Sonia was selfish, but right, dear;
and Miss Goucher was brave, but wrong! So are you wrong! Actually
inherited feeble-mindedness, or insanity, or disease--that's one thing;
but a dread of mere future possibilities, of mere supposed tendencies!
Good Lord! The human race might as well commit suicide _en bloc_! It's
you I love--_you_--just as you are. And you say you love me. Well, that
settles it!"

But who knows? It might have settled it and it might not--could any such
imaginary conversation conceivably have taken place. It did not take
place. We are dealing, worse luck, with history.

VIII

Perhaps six weeks after Miss Goucher's death one little conversation,
just skirting these hidden matters, did take place between us; but how
different was its atmosphere, and how drearily different its conclusion!
You will understand it better now that--like a theater audience, or like
God--you are in full possession of Susan's facts and of mine; but I fear
it will interest you less. To know all may sometimes be to forgive all;
but more often, alas, it is to be bored by everything....

[Firmly inserted note, by Susan: "Rubbish! It's only when we _think_ we
know it all, and don't really, that we are bored."]

I had taken Susan for d