o mean that you
didn't care much for boys. But I did always like boys better than girls,
so I decided I could never be a virgin. And yet I loved the thought of
Artemis from that moment. I began to think about her--oh,
intensely!--always keeping off by herself; cool, and shining, and--and
detached. And there was one boy she _had_ cared for; I remembered that,
too, though I couldn't remember his name. A naked, brown sort of boy,
who kept off by himself on blue, distant hills. So Artemis wasn't really
a virgin at all. She was just--awfully particular. She liked clean, open
places, and the winds, and clear, swift water. What she hated most was
_stuffiness_! That's why I decided then and there, Ambo, that Artemis
should be my goddess, my own pet goddess; and I made up a prayer to her.
I've never forgotten it. I often say it still....

_Dearest, dearest Far-Away,
Can you hear me when I pray?
Can you hear me when I cry?
Would you care if I should die?
No, you wouldn't care at all;
But I love you most of all._

"It isn't very good, Ambo, but it's the first rhyme I ever made up out
of my own head. And I just talked it right off to Artemis without any
trouble. But I had hardly finished it, when----"

What had happened next was the crash of glassware, followed by Bob's
thick voice, bellowing: "C'm ba' here! Damned slut! Tell yeh t' c'm ba'
an'--an' 'pol'gize!"

Susan heard a strangling screech from Pearl, the jar of a heavy piece of
furniture overturned. The child's first impulse was to run out into
Birch Street and scream for help. She tells me her spine knew all at
once that something terrible had happened--or was going to happen. Then,
in an odd flash of hallucination, she saw _Artemis_ poised the
fleetingest second before her--beautiful, a little disdainful, divinely
unafraid. So Susan gulped, dug her nails fiercely into her palms, and
hurried back through the parlor into the kitchen, where she stumbled
across the overturned table and fell, badly bruising her cheek.

As she scrambled to her feet a door slammed to, above. Her father, in a
grotesque crouching posture, was mounting the ladderlike stair. On the
floor at the stair's foot lay the parchment head of Pearl's banjo, which
he had cut from its frame. Susan distinctly caught the smudged pinks and
blues of the nondescript flowers. She realized at once that her father
was bound on no good errand. And Pea