e why. But I'm not made to be an editor--of
anything. Editors have to weigh other people's words. I can't even weigh
my own. And I talk of nothing but myself. Ugh!"

"You're tired out, overwrought," I stupidly began.

"Don't tell me so!" cried Susan. "If I should believe you, I'd be lost."

"But," I blundered on, "it's only common sense to let down a little, at
such a time. If you'd only take a real rest----"

"There is no such thing," said Susan. "We just struggle on and on. It's
rather awful, isn't it?" And presently, very quietly, as if to herself,
she said over those words, surely among the saddest and loveliest ever
written by mortal man:

_From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be_

_That no life lives forever,
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea._

"To sea," she repeated; "to sea.... As if the sea itself knew rest!--Now
please pay your big fat bill from your nice fat pocketbook, Ambo; and
take me home."

"If I only could!" was my despairing thought; and I astounded the
coat-room boy, as I tipped him, by muttering aloud, "Oh, damn Jimmy
Kane!"

"Yes, sir--thank you, sir--I will, sir," grinned the coat-room boy.

On our way downtown in the taxi Susan withdrew until we reached her West
Tenth Street door. "Good-night, Ambo," she then said; "don't come with
me; and thank you for everything--always." I crossed the pavement with
her to the loutish brownstone front-stoop of the boarding house; there
she turned to dismiss me.

"You didn't ask my second reason for not going on the review, Ambo. You
must know it though, sooner or later. I can't _write_ any more--not
well, I mean. Even my Dax paragraphs are falling off; Hadow Bury
mentioned it yesterday. But nothing comes. I'm sterile, Ambo. I'm
written out at twenty. Bless you. Good-night."

"Susan," I cried, "come back here at once!" But she just turned in the
doorway to smile back at me, waved her hand, and was gone.

I was of two minds whether to follow her or stay. Then, "A whim," I
thought; "the whim of a tired child. And I've often felt that way
myself--all writers do. But she must take a vacation of some kind--she
must!"

She did.

IX

I woke up the next morning, broad awake before seven o'clock, a full
hour earlier than my habit. I