"Well--it's where the devils have been kicked out of Heaven and are lying in agony flat on the burning lake--and Satan rises up--and marches haughtily out among them--and calls out, `Awake!
Arise! Or forever more be damned!' That's what has happened to me several times in my life.When I was a boy, idling about the farm and wasting myself, that voice came to me--`Awake! Arise!
Or forever more be damned!' And I got a move on me, and insisted on going to college.Again--at college--I became a dawdler--poker--drink--dances--all the rest of it.And suddenly that voice roared in my ears, made me jump like a rabbit when a gun goes off.And last month it came again.I went to work--finished a play I've been pottering over for three years.
But somehow I couldn't find the--the--whatever I needed--to make me break away.Well--_you've_ given me that.I'll resign from the _Commercial_ and with all I've got in the world--three hundred dollars and a trunk full of good clothes, I'll break into Broadway."Susan had listened with bright eyes and quickened breath, as intoxicated and as convinced as was he by his eloquence.
"Isn't that splendid!" she exclaimed in a low voice.
"And you?" he said meaningly.
"I?" she replied, fearing she was misunderstanding.
"Will you go?"
"Do you want me?" she asked, low and breathlessly.
With a reluctance which suggested--but not to her--that his generosity was winning a hard-fought battle with his vanity, he replied: "I need you.I doubt if I'd dare, without you to back me up.""I've got a trunk full of fairly good clothes and about a hundred dollars.But I haven't got any play--or any art--or any trade even.Of course, I'll go." Then she hastily added, "I'll not be a drag on you.I pay my own way.""But you mustn't be suspicious in your independence," he warned her."You mustn't forget that I'm older than you and more experienced and that it's far easier for a man to get money than for a woman.""To get it without lowering himself?"
"Ah!" he exclaimed, looking strangely at her."You mean, without bowing to some boss? Without selling his soul? I had no idea you were so much of a woman when I met you that day.""I wasn't--then," replied she."And I didn't know where I'd got till we began to talk this evening.""And you're very young!"
"Oh, but I've been going to a school where they make you learn fast.""Indeed I do need you." He touched his glass to hers."On to Broadway!" he cried.
"Broadway!" echoed she, radiant.
"Together--eh?"
She nodded.But as she drank the toast a tear splashed into her glass.She was remembering how some mysterious instinct had restrained her from going with John Redmond, though it seemed the only sane thing to do.What if she had disobeyed that instinct! And then--through her mind in swift ghostly march--past trailed the persons and events of the days just gone--just gone, yet seeming as far away as a former life in another world.
Redmond and Gulick--Etta--yes, Etta, too--all past and gone--forever gone----"What are you thinking about?"
She shook her head and the spectral procession vanished into the glooms of memory's vistas."Thinking?--of yesterday.I don't understand myself--how I shake off and forget what's past.
Nothing seems real to me but the future."
"Not even the present?" said he with a smile.
"Not even the present," she answered with grave candor."Nothing seems to touch me--the real me.It's like--like looking out of the window of the train at the landscape running by.I'm a traveler passing through.I wonder if it'll always be that way.
I wonder if I'll ever arrive where I'll feel that I belong.""I think so--and soon."
But she did not respond to his confident smile."I--I hope so,"she said with sad, wistful sweetness."Then again--aren't there some people who don't belong anywhere--aren't allowed to settle down and be happy, but have to keep going--on and on--until----""Until they pass out into the dark," he finished for her."Yes."He looked at her in a wondering uneasy way."You do suggest that kind," said he."But," smilingly, to hide his earnestness, "I'll try to detain you.""Please do," she said."I don't want to go on--alone."He dropped into silence, puzzled and in a way awed by the mystery enveloping her--a mystery of aloofness and stoniness, of complete separation from the contact of the world--the mystery that incloses all whose real life is lived deep within themselves.