All Martha’s plots turned on blackmail; each of her denouements was a study in blackmail foiled.
Every time the telephone rings, she added, Martha expects it to be anonymous.
We have all, in brief, known blackmail.
“Emotional Blackmail: An Affair of Every Heart” as seen inVogue, November 1962.
I once had a friend who practiced blackmail: perhaps we have all had one.
Just this once, he would say, hinting darkly at emergencies, deadlines, saving my life.
(Other times it was angina, and on his most imaginative days it was cirrhosis.)
In brief, he could expose us to ourselves, and we quite flatly bought him off.
Put to it, we can live with our indiscretions.
What we can not live with, all too often, are the secrets we keep from ourselves.
There is, of course, nothing irrational about it.
Instead, we play games with ourselves.
Unhappily, we do not quite convince ourselves.
Getting rid of the Dane in each of our hearts is, of course, no easy task.
