It was not until Phil had gone and Barb and Suzanne were reduced to the intimate kimono and pigtail state that Barb got the full force of the stream of Suzanne's confidences.
"When I think what a fool I was only just last September I could weep, if only it weren't so killingly funny." Suzanne sat up in bed to announce. "I thought because I had a pretty knack of juggling words and a little mother wit I could just walk right in and conquer the literary and dramatic world as easy as anything. The trouble with college is it gives you an over-dose of fine spun theories about life and doesn't teach you a thing about being up against the real article. Maybe it couldn't. I guess we all have to knock that lesson out of the bed rock itself with a chisel or a pick axe. I've tried both ways. I don't know all there is to know yet by a long shot but I know a whole heap more than I did, which is something to be thankful for." And the speaker thumped the pillow with her doubled fist rather as she had thumped Sylvia's hammock cushions the preceding September.
Barb, listening, sighed a little as she wondered if this knowledge of life were as desirable as Suzanne seemed to think. It left one a little tired, she thought, this knowing things.
"I don't know whether you ever guessed," Suzanne rattled on, "how near I was to the end of my rope last November. Phil knew, but he kept my secret, like the good dear he is. By the way, what is the matter with Phil? He looks awfully seedy and sober. Don't know but you do, too, come to think of it. City got on your nerves?"
Suzanne's keen eyes sought her friend's face with an intentness that made the latter turn under pretense of switching off the light.
"Nothing the matter with me," she said cheerfully. "With Phil, of course, it is Sylvia."
"H'm, I suppose so. He certainly looked as jolly as a tombstone when we were talking about her engagement a while ago. Well, why didn't he go in and get her himself? He could have last September easily enough. Anybody could have seen that with half an eye. Gets me why he didn't clinch it that night at Lover's Leap."
Barb made no reply. Even with Suzanne she could not discuss Phil's mischance, especially as Suzanne would be sure to say it served him right. Barb was very pitiful for Phil. She did not want to hear anybody say sharp things about him.