venue preserving especially--through
valorous prodigies of rejection--much of its ancient, slightly
disdainful, studiously inconspicuous calm.

Phil Farmer was waiting for us at the doorstep. For all his inclusive
greeting, his warm, welcoming smile, he looked older, did Phil, leaner
somehow, more finely drawn. There was a something hungry about
him--something in his eyes. But if Susan, who notices most things, noted
it, she did not speak of her impression to me. She almost hugged Phil as
she jumped out to greet him and dragged him with her up the steps to the
door.

And now, if this portion of Susan's history is to be truthfully
recorded, certain facts may as well be set down at once, clearly, in due
order, without shame.

1. Phil Farmer was, by this time, hopelessly in love with Susan.

2. So was Maltby Phar.

3. So was I.

It should now be possible for a modest but intelligent reader to follow
the approaching pages without undue fatigue.

II

Susan never kept a diary, she tells me, but she had, like most beginning
authors, the habit of scribbling things down, which she never intended
to keep, and then could seldom bring herself to destroy. To a writer all
that his pen leaves behind it seems sacred; it is, I treacherously
submit, a private grief to any of us to blot a line. Such is our vanity.
However inept the work which we force ourselves or are prevailed upon to
destroy, the unhappy doubt always lingers: "If I had only saved it? One
can't be sure? Perhaps posterity----?"

Susan, thank God, was not and probably is not exempt from this folly. It
enables me from this time forward to present certain passages--mere
scraps and jottings--from her notebooks, which she has not hesitated to
turn over to me.

"I don't approve, Ambo," was her comment, "but if you _will_ write
nonsense about me, I can't help it. What I can help, a little, is your
writing nonsense about yourself or Phil or the rest. It's only fair to
let me get a word in edgeways, now and then--if only for your sake and
theirs."

That is not, however, my own reason for giving you occasional peeps
into these notebooks of Susan's.

* * * * *

"I'm beginning to wish that Shelley might have had a sense of humor.
'Epipsychidion' is really too absurd. 'Sweet benediction in the eternal
curse!' Imagine, under any condition of sanity, calling any woman that!
Or 'Thou star above the storm!'--beautiful as the image is. 'Th