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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1263 ***
+
+THE GLIMPSES OF THE MOON
+
+By Edith Wharton
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+I
+
+IT rose for them--their honey-moon--over the waters of a lake so famed
+as the scene of romantic raptures that they were rather proud of not
+having been afraid to choose it as the setting of their own.
+
+“It required a total lack of humour, or as great a gift for it as ours,
+to risk the experiment,” Susy Lansing opined, as they hung over the
+inevitable marble balustrade and watched their tutelary orb roll its
+magic carpet across the waters to their feet.
+
+“Yes--or the loan of Strefford’s villa,” her husband emended, glancing
+upward through the branches at a long low patch of paleness to which the
+moonlight was beginning to give the form of a white house-front.
+
+“Oh, come when we’d five to choose from. At least if you count the
+Chicago flat.”
+
+“So we had--you wonder!” He laid his hand on hers, and his touch renewed
+the sense of marvelling exultation which the deliberate survey of their
+adventure always roused in her.... It was characteristic that she merely
+added, in her steady laughing tone: “Or, not counting the flat--for
+I hate to brag--just consider the others: Violet Melrose’s place at
+Versailles, your aunt’s villa at Monte Carlo--and a moor!”
+
+She was conscious of throwing in the moor tentatively, and yet with
+a somewhat exaggerated emphasis, as if to make sure that he shouldn’t
+accuse her of slurring it over. But he seemed to have no desire to
+do so. “Poor old Fred!” he merely remarked; and she breathed out
+carelessly: “Oh, well--”
+
+His hand still lay on hers, and for a long interval, while they stood
+silent in the enveloping loveliness of the night, she was aware only of
+the warm current running from palm to palm, as the moonlight below them
+drew its line of magic from shore to shore.
+
+Nick Lansing spoke at last. “Versailles in May would have been
+impossible: all our Paris crowd would have run us down within
+twenty-four hours. And Monte Carlo is ruled out because it’s exactly
+the kind of place everybody expected us to go. So--with all respect to
+you--it wasn’t much of a mental strain to decide on Como.”
+
+His wife instantly challenged this belittling of her capacity. “It took
+a good deal of argument to convince you that we could face the ridicule
+of Como!”
+
+“Well, I should have preferred something in a lower key; at least I
+thought I should till we got here. Now I see that this place is idiotic
+unless one is perfectly happy; and that then it’s--as good as any other.”
+
+She sighed out a blissful assent. “And I must say that Streffy has done
+things to a turn. Even the cigars--who do you suppose gave him those
+cigars?” She added thoughtfully: “You’ll miss them when we have to go.”
+
+“Oh, I say, don’t let’s talk to-night about going. Aren’t we outside of
+time and space...? Smell that guinea-a-bottle stuff over there: what is
+it? Stephanotis?”
+
+“Y--yes.... I suppose so. Or gardenias.... Oh, the fire-flies! Look...
+there, against that splash of moonlight on the water. Apples of silver
+in a net-work of gold....” They leaned together, one flesh from shoulder
+to finger-tips, their eyes held by the snared glitter of the ripples.
+
+“I could bear,” Lansing remarked, “even a nightingale at this
+moment....”
+
+A faint gurgle shook the magnolias behind them, and a long liquid
+whisper answered it from the thicket of laurel above their heads.
+
+“It’s a little late in the year for them: they’re ending just as we
+begin.”
+
+Susy laughed. “I hope when our turn comes we shall say good-bye to each
+other as sweetly.”
+
+It was in her husband’s mind to answer: “They’re not saying good-bye,
+but only settling down to family cares.” But as this did not happen to
+be in his plan, or in Susy’s, he merely echoed her laugh and pressed her
+closer.
+
+The spring night drew them into its deepening embrace. The ripples of
+the lake had gradually widened and faded into a silken smoothness, and
+high above the mountains the moon was turning from gold to white in
+a sky powdered with vanishing stars. Across the lake the lights of a
+little town went out, one after another, and the distant shore became a
+floating blackness. A breeze that rose and sank brushed their faces with
+the scents of the garden; once it blew out over the water a great white
+moth like a drifting magnolia petal. The nightingales had paused and the
+trickle of the fountain behind the house grew suddenly insistent.
+
+When Susy spoke it was in a voice languid with visions. “I have been
+thinking,” she said, “that we ought to be able to make it last at least
+a year longer.”
+
+Her husband received the remark without any sign of surprise or
+disapprobation; his answer showed that he not only understood her, but
+had been inwardly following the same train of thought.
+
+“You mean,” he enquired after a pause, “without counting your
+grandmother’s pearls?”
+
+“Yes--without the pearls.”
+
+He pondered a while, and then rejoined in a tender whisper: “Tell me
+again just how.”
+
+“Let’s sit down, then. No, I like the cushions best.” He stretched
+himself in a long willow chair, and she curled up on a heap of
+boat-cushions and leaned her head against his knee. Just above her,
+when she lifted her lids, she saw bits of moon-flooded sky incrusted
+like silver in a sharp black patterning of plane-boughs. All about them
+breathed of peace and beauty and stability, and her happiness was so
+acute that it was almost a relief to remember the stormy background of
+bills and borrowing against which its frail structure had been reared.
+“People with a balance can’t be as happy as all this,” Susy mused,
+letting the moonlight filter through her lazy lashes.
+
+People with a balance had always been Susy Branch’s bugbear; they were
+still, and more dangerously, to be Susy Lansing’s. She detested them,
+detested them doubly, as the natural enemies of mankind and as the
+people one always had to put one’s self out for. The greater part of her
+life having been passed among them, she knew nearly all that there was
+to know about them, and judged them with the contemptuous lucidity
+of nearly twenty years of dependence. But at the present moment her
+animosity was diminished not only by the softening effect of love but
+by the fact that she had got out of those very people more--yes, ever so
+much more--than she and Nick, in their hours of most reckless planning,
+had ever dared to hope for.
+
+“After all, we owe them this!” she mused.
+
+Her husband, lost in the drowsy beatitude of the hour, had not repeated
+his question; but she was still on the trail of the thought he had
+started. A year--yes, she was sure now that with a little management
+they could have a whole year of it! “It” was their marriage, their being
+together, and away from bores and bothers, in a comradeship of which
+both of them had long ago guessed the immediate pleasure, but she at
+least had never imagined the deeper harmony.
+
+It was at one of their earliest meetings--at one of the heterogeneous
+dinners that the Fred Gillows tried to think “literary”--that the young
+man who chanced to sit next to her, and of whom it was vaguely rumoured
+that he had “written,” had presented himself to her imagination as the
+sort of luxury to which Susy Branch, heiress, might conceivably have
+treated herself as a crowning folly. Susy Branch, pauper, was fond of
+picturing how this fancied double would employ her millions: it was one
+of her chief grievances against her rich friends that they disposed of
+theirs so unimaginatively.
+
+“I’d rather have a husband like that than a steam-yacht!” she had
+thought at the end of her talk with the young man who had written, and
+as to whom it had at once been clear to her that nothing his pen had
+produced, or might hereafter set down, would put him in a position to
+offer his wife anything more costly than a row-boat.
+
+“His wife! As if he could ever have one! For he’s not the kind to marry
+for a yacht either.” In spite of her past, Susy had preserved enough
+inner independence to detect the latent signs of it in others, and also
+to ascribe it impulsively to those of the opposite sex who happened to
+interest her. She had a natural contempt for people who gloried in what
+they need only have endured. She herself meant eventually to marry,
+because one couldn’t forever hang on to rich people; but she was going
+to wait till she found some one who combined the maximum of wealth with
+at least a minimum of companionableness.
+
+She had at once perceived young Lansing’s case to be exactly the
+opposite: he was as poor as he could be, and as companionable as it was
+possible to imagine. She therefore decided to see as much of him as her
+hurried and entangled life permitted; and this, thanks to a series of
+adroit adjustments, turned out to be a good deal. They met frequently
+all the rest of that winter; so frequently that Mrs. Fred Gillow one
+day abruptly and sharply gave Susy to understand that she was “making
+herself ridiculous.”
+
+“Ah--” said Susy with a long breath, looking her friend and patroness
+straight in the painted eyes.
+
+“Yes,” cried Ursula Gillow in a sob, “before you interfered Nick liked
+me awfully... and, of course, I don’t want to reproach you... but when I
+think....”
+
+Susy made no answer. How could she, when she thought? The dress she had
+on had been given her by Ursula; Ursula’s motor had carried her to the
+feast from which they were both returning. She counted on spending the
+following August with the Gillows at Newport... and the only alternative
+was to go to California with the Bockheimers, whom she had hitherto
+refused even to dine with.
+
+“Of course, what you fancy is perfect nonsense, Ursula; and as to my
+interfering--” Susy hesitated, and then murmured: “But if it will make
+you any happier I’ll arrange to see him less often....” She sounded the
+lowest depths of subservience in returning Ursula’s tearful kiss....
+
+Susy Branch had a masculine respect for her word; and the next day she
+put on her most becoming hat and sought out young Mr. Lansing in his
+lodgings. She was determined to keep her promise to Ursula; but she
+meant to look her best when she did it.
+
+She knew at what time the young man was likely to be found, for he was
+doing a dreary job on a popular encyclopaedia (V to X), and had told her
+what hours were dedicated to the hateful task. “Oh, if only it were a
+novel!” she thought as she mounted his dingy stairs; but immediately
+reflected that, if it were the kind that she could bear to read, it
+probably wouldn’t bring him in much more than his encyclopaedia. Miss
+Branch had her standards in literature....
+
+The apartment to which Mr. Lansing admitted her was a good deal cleaner,
+but hardly less dingy, than his staircase. Susy, knowing him to be
+addicted to Oriental archaeology, had pictured him in a bare room
+adorned by a single Chinese bronze of flawless shape, or by some
+precious fragment of Asiatic pottery. But such redeeming features were
+conspicuously absent, and no attempt had been made to disguise the
+decent indigence of the bed-sitting-room.
+
+Lansing welcomed his visitor with every sign of pleasure, and with
+apparent indifference as to what she thought of his furniture. He seemed
+to be conscious only of his luck in seeing her on a day when they had
+not expected to meet. This made Susy all the sorrier to execute her
+promise, and the gladder that she had put on her prettiest hat; and for
+a moment or two she looked at him in silence from under its conniving
+brim.
+
+Warm as their mutual liking was, Lansing had never said a word of love
+to her; but this was no deterrent to his visitor, whose habit it was
+to speak her meaning clearly when there were no reasons, worldly or
+pecuniary, for its concealment. After a moment, therefore, she told him
+why she had come; it was a nuisance, of course, but he would understand.
+Ursula Gillow was jealous, and they would have to give up seeing each
+other.
+
+The young man’s burst of laughter was music to her; for, after all, she
+had been rather afraid that being devoted to Ursula might be as much in
+his day’s work as doing the encyclopaedia.
+
+“But I give you my word it’s a raving-mad mistake! And I don’t believe
+she ever meant me, to begin with--” he protested; but Susy, her
+common-sense returning with her reassurance, promptly cut short his
+denial.
+
+“You can trust Ursula to make herself clear on such occasions. And it
+doesn’t make any difference what you think. All that matters is what she
+believes.”
+
+“Oh, come! I’ve got a word to say about that too, haven’t I?”
+
+Susy looked slowly and consideringly about the room. There was nothing
+in it, absolutely nothing, to show that he had ever possessed a spare
+dollar--or accepted a present.
+
+“Not as far as I’m concerned,” she finally pronounced.
+
+“How do you mean? If I’m as free as air--?”
+
+“I’m not.”
+
+He grew thoughtful. “Oh, then, of course--. It only seems a little odd,”
+ he added drily, “that in that case, the protest should have come from
+Mrs. Gillow.”
+
+“Instead of coming from my millionaire bridegroom, Oh, I haven’t any; in
+that respect I’m as free as you.”
+
+“Well, then--? Haven’t we only got to stay free?”
+
+Susy drew her brows together anxiously. It was going to be rather more
+difficult than she had supposed.
+
+“I said I was as free in that respect. I’m not going to marry--and I
+don’t suppose you are?”
+
+“God, no!” he ejaculated fervently.
+
+“But that doesn’t always imply complete freedom....”
+
+He stood just above her, leaning his elbow against the hideous black
+marble arch that framed his fireless grate. As she glanced up she saw
+his face harden, and the colour flew to hers.
+
+“Was that what you came to tell me?” he asked.
+
+“Oh, you don’t understand--and I don’t see why you don’t, since we’ve
+knocked about so long among exactly the same kind of people.” She stood
+up impulsively and laid her hand on his arm. “I do wish you’d help
+me--!”
+
+He remained motionless, letting the hand lie untouched.
+
+“Help you to tell me that poor Ursula was a pretext, but that there IS
+someone who--for one reason or another--really has a right to object to
+your seeing me too often?”
+
+Susy laughed impatiently. “You talk like the hero of a novel--the kind
+my governess used to read. In the first place I should never recognize
+that kind of right, as you call it--never!”
+
+“Then what kind do you?” he asked with a clearing brow.
+
+“Why--the kind I suppose you recognize on the part of your publisher.”
+ This evoked a hollow laugh from him. “A business claim, call it,” she
+pursued. “Ursula does a lot for me: I live on her for half the year.
+This dress I’ve got on now is one she gave me. Her motor is going to
+take me to a dinner to-night. I’m going to spend next summer with her
+at Newport.... If I don’t, I’ve got to go to California with the
+Bockheimers--so good-bye.”
+
+Suddenly in tears, she was out of the door and down his steep three
+flights before he could stop her--though, in thinking it over, she
+didn’t even remember if he had tried to. She only recalled having stood
+a long time on the corner of Fifth Avenue, in the harsh winter radiance,
+waiting till a break in the torrent of motors laden with fashionable
+women should let her cross, and saying to herself: “After all, I might
+have promised Ursula... and kept on seeing him....”
+
+Instead of which, when Lansing wrote the next day entreating a word with
+her, she had sent back a friendly but firm refusal; and had managed soon
+afterward to get taken to Canada for a fortnight’s ski-ing, and then to
+Florida for six weeks in a house-boat....
+
+As she reached this point in her retrospect the remembrance of Florida
+called up a vision of moonlit waters, magnolia fragrance and balmy airs;
+merging with the circumambient sweetness, it laid a drowsy spell upon
+her lids. Yes, there had been a bad moment: but it was over; and she was
+here, safe and blissful, and with Nick; and this was his knee her head
+rested on, and they had a year ahead of them... a whole year.... “Not
+counting the pearls,” she murmured, shutting her eyes....
+
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+
+
+LANSING threw the end of Strefford’s expensive cigar into the lake, and
+bent over his wife. Poor child! She had fallen asleep.... He leaned
+back and stared up again at the silver-flooded sky. How queer--how
+inexpressibly queer--it was to think that that light was shed by his
+honey-moon! A year ago, if anyone had predicted his risking such an
+adventure, he would have replied by asking to be locked up at the first
+symptoms....
+
+There was still no doubt in his mind that the adventure was a mad one.
+It was all very well for Susy to remind him twenty times a day that they
+had pulled it off--and so why should he worry? Even in the light of her
+far-seeing cleverness, and of his own present bliss, he knew the future
+would not bear the examination of sober thought. And as he sat there
+in the summer moonlight, with her head on his knee, he tried to
+recapitulate the successive steps that had landed them on Streffy’s
+lake-front.
+
+On Lansing’s side, no doubt, it dated back to his leaving Harvard with
+the large resolve not to miss anything. There stood the evergreen Tree
+of Life, the Four Rivers flowing from its foot; and on every one of the
+four currents he meant to launch his little skiff. On two of them he had
+not gone very far, on the third he had nearly stuck in the mud; but the
+fourth had carried him to the very heart of wonder. It was the stream of
+his lively imagination, of his inexhaustible interest in every form of
+beauty and strangeness and folly. On this stream, sitting in the stout
+little craft of his poverty, his insignificance and his independence, he
+had made some notable voyages.... And so, when Susy Branch, whom he had
+sought out through a New York season as the prettiest and most amusing
+girl in sight, had surprised him with the contradictory revelation of
+her modern sense of expediency and her old-fashioned standard of good
+faith, he had felt an irresistible desire to put off on one more cruise
+into the unknown.
+
+It was of the essence of the adventure that, after her one brief visit
+to his lodgings, he should have kept his promise and not tried to see
+her again. Even if her straightforwardness had not roused his emulation,
+his understanding of her difficulties would have moved his pity. He knew
+on how frail a thread the popularity of the penniless hangs, and how
+miserably a girl like Susy was the sport of other people’s moods and
+whims. It was a part of his difficulty and of hers that to get what they
+liked they so often had to do what they disliked. But the keeping of his
+promise was a greater bore than he had expected. Susy Branch had become
+a delightful habit in a life where most of the fixed things were
+dull, and her disappearance had made it suddenly clear to him that his
+resources were growing more and more limited. Much that had once amused
+him hugely now amused him less, or not at all: a good part of his world
+of wonder had shrunk to a village peep-show. And the things which had
+kept their stimulating power--distant journeys, the enjoyment of art,
+the contact with new scenes and strange societies--were becoming less
+and less attainable. Lansing had never had more than a pittance; he had
+spent rather too much of it in his first plunge into life, and the best
+he could look forward to was a middle-age of poorly-paid hack-work,
+mitigated by brief and frugal holidays. He knew that he was more
+intelligent than the average, but he had long since concluded that
+his talents were not marketable. Of the thin volume of sonnets which a
+friendly publisher had launched for him, just seventy copies had been
+sold; and though his essay on “Chinese Influences in Greek Art” had
+created a passing stir, it had resulted in controversial correspondence
+and dinner invitations rather than in more substantial benefits.
+There seemed, in short, no prospect of his ever earning money, and his
+restricted future made him attach an increasing value to the kind of
+friendship that Susy Branch had given him. Apart from the pleasure of
+looking at her and listening to her--of enjoying in her what others less
+discriminatingly but as liberally appreciated--he had the sense, between
+himself and her, of a kind of free-masonry of precocious tolerance and
+irony. They had both, in early youth, taken the measure of the world
+they happened to live in: they knew just what it was worth to them
+and for what reasons, and the community of these reasons lent to their
+intimacy its last exquisite touch. And now, because of some jealous whim
+of a dissatisfied fool of a woman, as to whom he felt himself no more to
+blame than any young man who has paid for good dinners by good manners,
+he was to be deprived of the one complete companionship he had ever
+known....
+
+His thoughts travelled on. He recalled the long dull spring in New York
+after his break with Susy, the weary grind on his last articles,
+his listless speculations as to the cheapest and least boring way of
+disposing of the summer; and then the amazing luck of going, reluctantly
+and at the last minute, to spend a Sunday with the poor Nat Fulmers, in
+the wilds of New Hampshire, and of finding Susy there--Susy, whom he had
+never even suspected of knowing anybody in the Fulmers’ set!
+
+She had behaved perfectly--and so had he--but they were obviously much
+too glad to see each other. And then it was unsettling to be with her in
+such a house as the Fulmers’, away from the large setting of luxury
+they were both used to, in the cramped cottage where their host had
+his studio in the verandah, their hostess practiced her violin in the
+dining-room, and five ubiquitous children sprawled and shouted and blew
+trumpets and put tadpoles in the water-jugs, and the mid-day dinner was
+two hours late--and proportionately bad--because the Italian cook was
+posing for Fulmer.
+
+Lansing’s first thought had been that meeting Susy in such circumstances
+would be the quickest way to cure them both of their regrets. The case
+of the Fulmers was an awful object-lesson in what happened to young
+people who lost their heads; poor Nat, whose pictures nobody bought, had
+gone to seed so terribly--and Grace, at twenty-nine, would never again be
+anything but the woman of whom people say, “I can remember her when she
+was lovely.”
+
+But the devil of it was that Nat had never been such good company, or
+Grace so free from care and so full of music; and that, in spite of
+their disorder and dishevelment, and the bad food and general crazy
+discomfort, there was more amusement to be got out of their society
+than out of the most opulently staged house-party through which Susy and
+Lansing had ever yawned their way.
+
+It was almost a relief to the young man when, on the second afternoon,
+Miss Branch drew him into the narrow hall to say: “I really can’t
+stand the combination of Grace’s violin and little Nat’s motor-horn any
+longer. Do let us slip out till the duet is over.”
+
+“How do they stand it, I wonder?” he basely echoed, as he followed her
+up the wooded path behind the house.
+
+“It might be worth finding out,” she rejoined with a musing smile.
+
+But he remained resolutely skeptical. “Oh, give them a year or two more
+and they’ll collapse--! His pictures will never sell, you know. He’ll
+never even get them into a show.”
+
+“I suppose not. And she’ll never have time to do anything worth while
+with her music.”
+
+They had reached a piny knoll high above the ledge on which the house
+was perched. All about them stretched an empty landscape of endless
+featureless wooded hills. “Think of sticking here all the year round!”
+ Lansing groaned.
+
+“I know. But then think of wandering over the world with some people!”
+
+“Oh, Lord, yes. For instance, my trip to India with the Mortimer
+Hickses. But it was my only chance and what the deuce is one to do?”
+
+“I wish I knew!” she sighed, thinking of the Bockheimers; and he turned
+and looked at her.
+
+“Knew what?”
+
+“The answer to your question. What is one to do--when one sees both
+sides of the problem? Or every possible side of it, indeed?”
+
+They had seated themselves on a commanding rock under the pines, but
+Lansing could not see the view at their feet for the stir of the brown
+lashes on her cheek.
+
+“You mean: Nat and Grace may after all be having the best of it?”
+
+“How can I say, when I’ve told you I see all the sides? Of course,”
+ Susy added hastily, “I couldn’t live as they do for a week. But it’s
+wonderful how little it’s dimmed them.”
+
+“Certainly Nat was never more coruscating. And she keeps it up even
+better.” He reflected. “We do them good, I daresay.”
+
+“Yes--or they us. I wonder which?”
+
+After that, he seemed to remember that they sat a long time silent, and
+that his next utterance was a boyish outburst against the tyranny of the
+existing order of things, abruptly followed by the passionate query why,
+since he and she couldn’t alter it, and since they both had the habit of
+looking at facts as they were, they wouldn’t be utter fools not to take
+their chance of being happy in the only way that was open to them, To
+this challenge he did not recall Susy’s making any definite answer; but
+after another interval, in which all the world seemed framed in a
+sudden kiss, he heard her murmur to herself in a brooding tone: “I don’t
+suppose it’s ever been tried before; but we might--.” And then and there
+she had laid before him the very experiment they had since hazarded.
+
+She would have none of surreptitious bliss, she began by declaring;
+and she set forth her reasons with her usual lucid impartiality. In the
+first place, she should have to marry some day, and when she made the
+bargain she meant it to be an honest one; and secondly, in the matter
+of love, she would never give herself to anyone she did not really care
+for, and if such happiness ever came to her she did not want it shorn of
+half its brightness by the need of fibbing and plotting and dodging.
+
+“I’ve seen too much of that kind of thing. Half the women I know who’ve
+had lovers have had them for the fun of sneaking and lying about it; but
+the other half have been miserable. And I should be miserable.”
+
+It was at this point that she unfolded her plan. Why shouldn’t they
+marry; belong to each other openly and honourably, if for ever so short
+a time, and with the definite understanding that whenever either of them
+got the chance to do better he or she should be immediately released?
+The law of their country facilitated such exchanges, and society was
+beginning to view them as indulgently as the law. As Susy talked, she
+warmed to her theme and began to develop its endless possibilities.
+
+“We should really, in a way, help more than we should hamper each
+other,” she ardently explained. “We both know the ropes so well; what
+one of us didn’t see the other might--in the way of opportunities, I
+mean. And then we should be a novelty as married people. We’re both
+rather unusually popular--why not be frank!--and it’s such a blessing
+for dinner-givers to be able to count on a couple of whom neither one is
+a blank. Yes, I really believe we should be more than twice the success
+we are now; at least,” she added with a smile, “if there’s that amount
+of room for improvement. I don’t know how you feel; a man’s popularity
+is so much less precarious than a girl’s--but I know it would furbish me
+up tremendously to reappear as a married woman.” She glanced away from
+him down the long valley at their feet, and added in a lower tone: “And
+I should like, just for a little while, to feel I had something in life
+of my very own--something that nobody had lent me, like a fancy-dress or
+a motor or an opera cloak.”
+
+The suggestion, at first, had seemed to Lansing as mad as it was
+enchanting: it had thoroughly frightened him. But Susy’s arguments were
+irrefutable, her ingenuities inexhaustible. Had he ever thought it all
+out? She asked. No. Well, she had; and would he kindly not interrupt? In
+the first place, there would be all the wedding-presents. Jewels, and a
+motor, and a silver dinner service, did she mean? Not a bit of it! She
+could see he’d never given the question proper thought. Cheques, my
+dear, nothing but cheques--she undertook to manage that on her side: she
+really thought she could count on about fifty, and she supposed he could
+rake up a few more? Well, all that would simply represent pocket-money!
+For they would have plenty of houses to live in: he’d see. People were
+always glad to lend their house to a newly-married couple. It was such
+fun to pop down and see them: it made one feel romantic and jolly. All
+they need do was to accept the houses in turn: go on honey-mooning for
+a year! What was he afraid of? Didn’t he think they’d be happy enough to
+want to keep it up? And why not at least try--get engaged, and then
+see what would happen? Even if she was all wrong, and her plan failed,
+wouldn’t it have been rather nice, just for a month or two, to fancy
+they were going to be happy? “I’ve often fancied it all by myself,”
+ she concluded; “but fancying it with you would somehow be so awfully
+different....”
+
+That was how it began: and this lakeside dream was what it had led up
+to. Fantastically improbable as they had seemed, all her previsions had
+come true. If there were certain links in the chain that Lansing
+had never been able to put his hand on, certain arrangements and
+contrivances that still needed further elucidation, why, he was lazily
+resolved to clear them up with her some day; and meanwhile it was worth
+all the past might have cost, and every penalty the future might exact
+of him, just to be sitting here in the silence and sweetness, her
+sleeping head on his knee, clasped in his joy as the hushed world was
+clasped in moonlight.
+
+He stooped down and kissed her. “Wake up,” he whispered, “it’s
+bed-time.”
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+
+THEIR month of Como was within a few hours of ending. Till the last
+moment they had hoped for a reprieve; but the accommodating Streffy had
+been unable to put the villa at their disposal for a longer time, since
+he had had the luck to let it for a thumping price to some beastly
+bouncers who insisted on taking possession at the date agreed on.
+
+Lansing, leaving Susy’s side at dawn, had gone down to the lake for a
+last plunge; and swimming homeward through the crystal light he looked
+up at the garden brimming with flowers, the long low house with the
+cypress wood above it, and the window behind which his wife still
+slept. The month had been exquisite, and their happiness as rare, as
+fantastically complete, as the scene before him. He sank his chin into
+the sunlit ripples and sighed for sheer content....
+
+It was a bore to be leaving the scene of such complete well-being, but
+the next stage in their progress promised to be hardly less delightful.
+Susy was a magician: everything she predicted came true. Houses were
+being showered on them; on all sides he seemed to see beneficent spirits
+winging toward them, laden with everything from a piano nobile in Venice
+to a camp in the Adirondacks. For the present, they had decided on the
+former. Other considerations apart, they dared not risk the expense of a
+journey across the Atlantic; so they were heading instead for the Nelson
+Vanderlyns’ palace on the Giudecca. They were agreed that, for reasons
+of expediency, it might be wise to return to New York for the coming
+winter. It would keep them in view, and probably lead to fresh
+opportunities; indeed, Susy already had in mind the convenient flat that
+she was sure a migratory cousin (if tactfully handled, and assured that
+they would not overwork her cook) could certainly be induced to lend
+them. Meanwhile the need of making plans was still remote; and if there
+was one art in which young Lansing’s twenty-eight years of existence had
+perfected him it was that of living completely and unconcernedly in the
+present....
+
+If of late he had tried to look into the future more insistently than
+was his habit, it was only because of Susy. He had meant, when they
+married, to be as philosophic for her as for himself; and he knew she
+would have resented above everything his regarding their partnership as
+a reason for anxious thought. But since they had been together she had
+given him glimpses of her past that made him angrily long to shelter
+and defend her future. It was intolerable that a spirit as fine as hers
+should be ever so little dulled or diminished by the kind of compromises
+out of which their wretched lives were made. For himself, he didn’t care
+a hang: he had composed for his own guidance a rough-and-ready code,
+a short set of “mays” and “mustn’ts” which immensely simplified his
+course. There were things a fellow put up with for the sake of certain
+definite and otherwise unattainable advantages; there were other things
+he wouldn’t traffic with at any price. But for a woman, he began to
+see, it might be different. The temptations might be greater, the cost
+considerably higher, the dividing line between the “mays” and “mustn’ts”
+ more fluctuating and less sharply drawn. Susy, thrown on the world
+at seventeen, with only a weak wastrel of a father to define that
+treacherous line for her, and with every circumstance soliciting her to
+overstep it, seemed to have been preserved chiefly by an innate scorn
+of most of the objects of human folly. “Such trash as he went to pieces
+for,” was her curt comment on her parent’s premature demise: as
+though she accepted in advance the necessity of ruining one’s self for
+something, but was resolved to discriminate firmly between what was
+worth it and what wasn’t.
+
+This philosophy had at first enchanted Lansing; but now it began to
+rouse vague fears. The fine armour of her fastidiousness had preserved
+her from the kind of risks she had hitherto been exposed to; but what if
+others, more subtle, found a joint in it? Was there, among her delicate
+discriminations, any equivalent to his own rules? Might not her taste
+for the best and rarest be the very instrument of her undoing; and if
+something that wasn’t “trash” came her way, would she hesitate a second
+to go to pieces for it?
+
+He was determined to stick to the compact that they should do nothing to
+interfere with what each referred to as the other’s “chance”; but what
+if, when hers came, he couldn’t agree with her in recognizing it? He
+wanted for her, oh, so passionately, the best; but his conception of
+that best had so insensibly, so subtly been transformed in the light of
+their first month together!
+
+His lazy strokes were carrying him slowly shoreward; but the hour was so
+exquisite that a few yards from the landing he laid hold of the mooring
+rope of Streffy’s boat and floated there, following his dream.... It
+was a bore to be leaving; no doubt that was what made him turn things
+inside-out so uselessly. Venice would be delicious, of course; but
+nothing would ever again be as sweet as this. And then they had only a
+year of security before them; and of that year a month was gone.
+
+Reluctantly he swam ashore, walked up to the house, and pushed open a
+window of the cool painted drawing-room. Signs of departure were already
+visible. There were trunks in the hall, tennis rackets on the stairs; on
+the landing, the cook Giulietta had both arms around a slippery hold-all
+that refused to let itself be strapped. It all gave him a chill sense
+of unreality, as if the past month had been an act on the stage, and its
+setting were being folded away and rolled into the wings to make room
+for another play in which he and Susy had no part.
+
+By the time he came down again, dressed and hungry, to the terrace
+where coffee awaited him, he had recovered his usual pleasant sense of
+security. Susy was there, fresh and gay, a rose in her breast and the
+sun in her hair: her head was bowed over Bradshaw, but she waved a fond
+hand across the breakfast things, and presently looked up to say: “Yes,
+I believe we can just manage it.”
+
+“Manage what?”
+
+“To catch the train at Milan--if we start in the motor at ten sharp.”
+
+He stared. “The motor? What motor?”
+
+“Why, the new people’s--Streffy’s tenants. He’s never told me their
+name, and the chauffeur says he can’t pronounce it. The chauffeur’s is
+Ottaviano, anyhow; I’ve been making friends with him. He arrived last
+night, and he says they’re not due at Como till this evening. He simply
+jumped at the idea of running us over to Milan.”
+
+“Good Lord--” said Lansing, when she stopped.
+
+She sprang up from the table with a laugh. “It will be a scramble; but
+I’ll manage it, if you’ll go up at once and pitch the last things into
+your trunk.”
+
+“Yes; but look here--have you any idea what it’s going to cost?”
+
+She raised her eyebrows gaily. “Why, a good deal less than our railway
+tickets. Ottaviano’s got a sweetheart in Milan, and hasn’t seen her for
+six months. When I found that out I knew he’d be going there anyhow.”
+
+It was clever of her, and he laughed. But why was it that he had grown
+to shrink from even such harmless evidence of her always knowing how to
+“manage”? “Oh, well,” he said to himself, “she’s right: the fellow would
+be sure to be going to Milan.”
+
+Upstairs, on the way to his dressing room, he found her in a cloud of
+finery which her skilful hands were forcibly compressing into a last
+portmanteau. He had never seen anyone pack as cleverly as Susy: the way
+she coaxed reluctant things into a trunk was a symbol of the way she
+fitted discordant facts into her life. “When I’m rich,” she often said,
+“the thing I shall hate most will be to see an idiot maid at my trunks.”
+
+As he passed, she glanced over her shoulder, her face pink with the
+struggle, and drew a cigar-box from the depths. “Dearest, do put a
+couple of cigars into your pocket as a tip for Ottaviano.”
+
+Lansing stared. “Why, what on earth are you doing with Streffy’s
+cigars?”
+
+“Packing them, of course.... You don’t suppose he meant them for those
+other people?” She gave him a look of honest wonder.
+
+“I don’t know whom he meant them for--but they’re not ours....”
+
+She continued to look at him wonderingly. “I don’t see what there is to
+be solemn about. The cigars are not Streffy’s either... you may be sure
+he got them out of some bounder. And there’s nothing he’d hate more than
+to have them passed on to another.”
+
+“Nonsense. If they’re not Streffy’s they’re much less mine. Hand them
+over, please, dear.”
+
+“Just as you like. But it does seem a waste; and, of course, the other
+people will never have one of them.... The gardener and Giulietta’s
+lover will see to that!”
+
+Lansing looked away from her at the waves of lace and muslin from which
+she emerged like a rosy Nereid. “How many boxes of them are left?”
+
+“Only four.”
+
+“Unpack them, please.”
+
+Before she moved there was a pause so full of challenge that Lansing had
+time for an exasperated sense of the disproportion between his anger and
+its cause. And this made him still angrier.
+
+She held out a box. “The others are in your suitcase downstairs. It’s
+locked and strapped.”
+
+“Give me the key, then.”
+
+“We might send them back from Venice, mightn’t we? That lock is so
+nasty: it will take you half an hour.”
+
+“Give me the key, please.” She gave it.
+
+He went downstairs and battled with the lock, for the allotted
+half-hour, under the puzzled eyes of Giulietta and the sardonic grin of
+the chauffeur, who now and then, from the threshold, politely reminded
+him how long it would take to get to Milan. Finally the key turned, and
+Lansing, broken-nailed and perspiring, extracted the cigars and stalked
+with them into the deserted drawing room. The great bunches of golden
+roses that he and Susy had gathered the day before were dropping their
+petals on the marble embroidery of the floor, pale camellias floated in
+the alabaster tazzas between the windows, haunting scents of the garden
+blew in on him with the breeze from the lake. Never had Streffy’s little
+house seemed so like a nest of pleasures. Lansing laid the cigar boxes
+on a console and ran upstairs to collect his last possessions. When
+he came down again, his wife, her eyes brilliant with achievement, was
+seated in their borrowed chariot, the luggage cleverly stowed away, and
+Giulietta and the gardener kissing her hand and weeping out inconsolable
+farewells.
+
+“I wonder what she’s given them?” he thought, as he jumped in beside her
+and the motor whirled them through the nightingale-thickets to the gate.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+
+CHARLIE STREFFORD’S villa was like a nest in a rose-bush; the Nelson
+Vanderlyns’ palace called for loftier analogies.
+
+Its vastness and splendour seemed, in comparison, oppressive to Susy.
+Their landing, after dark, at the foot of the great shadowy staircase,
+their dinner at a dimly-lit table under a ceiling weighed down with
+Olympians, their chilly evening in a corner of a drawing room where
+minuets should have been danced before a throne, contrasted with the
+happy intimacies of Como as their sudden sense of disaccord contrasted
+with the mutual confidence of the day before.
+
+The journey had been particularly jolly: both Susy and Lansing had had
+too long a discipline in the art of smoothing things over not to make
+a special effort to hide from each other the ravages of their first
+disagreement. But, deep down and invisible, the disagreement remained;
+and compunction for having been its cause gnawed at Susy’s bosom as she
+sat in her tapestried and vaulted bedroom, brushing her hair before a
+tarnished mirror.
+
+“I thought I liked grandeur; but this place is really out of scale,” she
+mused, watching the reflection of a pale hand move back and forward
+in the dim recesses of the mirror. “And yet,” she continued, “Ellie
+Vanderlyn’s hardly half an inch taller than I am; and she certainly
+isn’t a bit more dignified.... I wonder if it’s because I feel so
+horribly small to-night that the place seems so horribly big.”
+
+She loved luxury: splendid things always made her feel handsome and
+high ceilings arrogant; she did not remember having ever before been
+oppressed by the evidences of wealth.
+
+She laid down the brush and leaned her chin on her clasped hands....
+Even now she could not understand what had made her take the cigars.
+She had always been alive to the value of her inherited scruples: her
+reasoned opinions were unusually free, but with regard to the things
+one couldn’t reason about she was oddly tenacious. And yet she had taken
+Streffy’s cigars! She had taken them--yes, that was the point--she
+had taken them for Nick, because the desire to please him, to make
+the smallest details of his life easy and agreeable and luxurious,
+had become her absorbing preoccupation. She had committed, for him,
+precisely the kind of little baseness she would most have scorned to
+commit for herself; and, since he hadn’t instantly felt the difference,
+she would never be able to explain it to him.
+
+She stood up with a sigh, shook out her loosened hair, and glanced
+around the great frescoed room. The maid-servant had said something
+about the Signora’s having left a letter for her; and there it lay on
+the writing-table, with her mail and Nick’s; a thick envelope addressed
+in Ellie’s childish scrawl, with a glaring “Private” dashed across the
+corner.
+
+“What on earth can she have to say, when she hates writing so,” Susy
+mused.
+
+She broke open the envelope, and four or five stamped and sealed letters
+fell from it. All were addressed, in Ellie’s hand, to Nelson Vanderlyn
+Esqre; and in the corner of each was faintly pencilled a number and a
+date: one, two, three, four--with a week’s interval between the dates.
+
+“Goodness--” gasped Susy, understanding.
+
+She had dropped into an armchair near the table, and for a long time
+she sat staring at the numbered letters. A sheet of paper covered with
+Ellie’s writing had fluttered out among them, but she let it lie;
+she knew so well what it would say! She knew all about her friend, of
+course; except poor old Nelson, who didn’t, But she had never imagined
+that Ellie would dare to use her in this way. It was unbelievable... she
+had never pictured anything so vile.... The blood rushed to her face,
+and she sprang up angrily, half minded to tear the letters in bits and
+throw them all into the fire.
+
+She heard her husband’s knock on the door between their rooms, and swept
+the dangerous packet under the blotting-book.
+
+“Oh, go away, please, there’s a dear,” she called out; “I haven’t
+finished unpacking, and everything’s in such a mess.” Gathering up
+Nick’s papers and letters, she ran across the room and thrust them
+through the door. “Here’s something to keep you quiet,” she laughed,
+shining in on him an instant from the threshold.
+
+She turned back feeling weak with shame. Ellie’s letter lay on the
+floor: reluctantly she stooped to pick it up, and one by one the
+expected phrases sprang out at her.
+
+“One good turn deserves another.... Of course you and Nick are welcome
+to stay all summer.... There won’t be a particle of expense for you--the
+servants have orders.... If you’ll just be an angel and post these
+letters yourself.... It’s been my only chance for such an age; when we
+meet I’ll explain everything. And in a month at latest I’ll be back to
+fetch Clarissa....”
+
+Susy lifted the letter to the lamp to be sure she had read aright. To
+fetch Clarissa! Then Ellie’s child was here? Here, under the roof with
+them, left to their care? She read on, raging. “She’s so delighted, poor
+darling, to know you’re coming. I’ve had to sack her beastly governess
+for impertinence, and if it weren’t for you she’d be all alone with a
+lot of servants I don’t much trust. So for pity’s sake be good to my
+child, and forgive me for leaving her. She thinks I’ve gone to take a
+cure; and she knows she’s not to tell her Daddy that I’m away, because
+it would only worry him if he thought I was ill. She’s perfectly to be
+trusted; you’ll see what a clever angel she is....” And then, at the
+bottom of the page, in a last slanting postscript: “Susy darling, if
+you’ve ever owed me anything in the way of kindness, you won’t, on your
+sacred honour, say a word of this to any one, even to Nick. And I know I
+can count on you to rub out the numbers.”
+
+Susy sprang up and tossed Mrs. Vanderlyn’s letter into the fire: then
+she came slowly back to the chair. There, at her elbow, lay the four
+fatal envelopes; and her next affair was to make up her mind what to do
+with them.
+
+To destroy them on the spot had seemed, at first thought, inevitable: it
+might be saving Ellie as well as herself. But such a step seemed to Susy
+to involve departure on the morrow, and this in turn involved notifying
+Ellie, whose letter she had vainly scanned for an address. Well--perhaps
+Clarissa’s nurse would know where one could write to her mother; it was
+unlikely that even Ellie would go off without assuring some means of
+communication with her child. At any rate, there was nothing to be done
+that night: nothing but to work out the details of their flight on the
+morrow, and rack her brains to find a substitute for the hospitality
+they were rejecting. Susy did not disguise from herself how much she had
+counted on the Vanderlyn apartment for the summer: to be able to do
+so had singularly simplified the future. She knew Ellie’s largeness of
+hand, and had been sure in advance that as long as they were her guests
+their only expense would be an occasional present to the servants. And
+what would the alternative be? She and Lansing, in their endless talks,
+had so lived themselves into the vision of indolent summer days on the
+lagoon, of flaming hours on the beach of the Lido, and evenings of music
+and dreams on their broad balcony above the Giudecca, that the idea of
+having to renounce these joys, and deprive her Nick of them, filled Susy
+with a wrath intensified by his having confided in her that when they
+were quietly settled in Venice he “meant to write.” Already nascent in
+her breast was the fierce resolve of the author’s wife to defend her
+husband’s privacy and facilitate his encounters with the Muse. It was
+abominable, simply abominable, that Ellie Vanderlyn should have drawn
+her into such a trap!
+
+Well--there was nothing for it but to make a clean breast of the whole
+thing to Nick. The trivial incident of the cigars--how trivial it now
+seemed!--showed her the kind of stand he would take, and communicated to
+her something of his own uncompromising energy. She would tell him the
+whole story in the morning, and try to find a way out with him: Susy’s
+faith in her power of finding a way out was inexhaustible. But suddenly
+she remembered the adjuration at the end of Mrs. Vanderlyn’s letter: “If
+you’re ever owed me anything in the way of kindness, you won’t, on your
+sacred honour, say a word to Nick....”
+
+It was, of course, exactly what no one had the right to ask of her: if
+indeed the word “right”, could be used in any conceivable relation to
+this coil of wrongs. But the fact remained that, in the way of kindness,
+she did owe much to Ellie; and that this was the first payment her
+friend had ever exacted. She found herself, in fact, in exactly the same
+position as when Ursula Gillow, using the same argument, had appealed
+to her to give up Nick Lansing. Yes, Susy reflected; but then Nelson
+Vanderlyn had been kind to her too; and the money Ellie had been so kind
+with was Nelson’s.... The queer edifice of Susy’s standards tottered on
+its base she honestly didn’t know where fairness lay, as between so much
+that was foul.
+
+The very depth of her perplexity puzzled her. She had been in “tight
+places” before; had indeed been in so few that were not, in one way or
+another, constricting! As she looked back on her past it lay before her
+as a very network of perpetual concessions and contrivings. But
+never before had she had such a sense of being tripped up, gagged and
+pinioned. The little misery of the cigars still galled her, and now
+this big humiliation superposed itself on the raw wound. Decidedly, the
+second month of their honey-moon was beginning cloudily....
+
+She glanced at the enamel led travelling-clock on her dressing
+table--one of the few wedding-presents she had consented to accept in
+kind--and was startled at the lateness of the hour. In a moment Nick
+would be coming; and an uncomfortable sensation in her throat warned
+her that through sheer nervousness and exasperation she might blurt out
+something ill-advised. The old habit of being always on her guard made
+her turn once more to the looking-glass. Her face was pale and haggard;
+and having, by a swift and skilful application of cosmetics, increased
+its appearance of fatigue, she crossed the room and softly opened her
+husband’s door.
+
+He too sat by a lamp, reading a letter which he put aside as she
+entered. His face was grave, and she said to herself that he was
+certainly still thinking about the cigars.
+
+“I’m very tired, dearest, and my head aches so horribly that I’ve come
+to bid you good-night.” Bending over the back of his chair, she laid
+her arms on his shoulders. He lifted his hands to clasp hers, but, as
+he threw his head back to smile up at her she noticed that his look was
+still serious, almost remote. It was as if, for the first time, a faint
+veil hung between his eyes and hers.
+
+“I’m so sorry: it’s been a long day for you,” he said absently, pressing
+his lips to her hands
+
+She felt the dreaded twitch in her throat.
+
+“Nick!” she burst out, tightening her embrace, “before I go, you’ve got
+to swear to me on your honour that you know I should never have taken
+those cigars for myself!”
+
+For a moment he stared at her, and she stared back at him with equal
+gravity; then the same irresistible mirth welled up in both, and Susy’s
+compunctions were swept away on a gale of laughter.
+
+When she woke the next morning the sun was pouring in between her
+curtains of old brocade, and its refraction from the ripples of the
+Canal was drawing a network of golden scales across the vaulted ceiling.
+The maid had just placed a tray on a slim marquetry table near the bed,
+and over the edge of the tray Susy discovered the small serious face
+of Clarissa Vanderlyn. At the sight of the little girl all her dormant
+qualms awoke.
+
+Clarissa was just eight, and small for her age: her little round chin
+was barely on a level with the tea-service, and her clear brown eyes
+gazed at Susy between the ribs of the toast-rack and the single tea-rose
+in an old Murano glass. Susy had not seen her for two years, and she
+seemed, in the interval, to have passed from a thoughtful infancy to
+complete ripeness of feminine experience. She was looking with approval
+at her mother’s guest.
+
+“I’m so glad you’ve come,” she said in a small sweet voice. “I like you
+so very much. I know I’m not to be often with you; but at least you’ll
+have an eye on me, won’t you?”
+
+“An eye on you! I shall never want to have it off you, if you say such
+nice things to me!” Susy laughed, leaning from her pillows to draw the
+little girl up to her side.
+
+Clarissa smiled and settled herself down comfortably on the silken
+bedspread. “Oh, I know I’m not to be always about, because you’re just
+married; but could you see to it that I have my meals regularly?”
+
+“Why, you poor darling! Don’t you always?”
+
+“Not when mother’s away on these cures. The servants don’t always obey
+me: you see I’m so little for my age. In a few years, of course, they’ll
+have to--even if I don’t grow much,” she added judiciously. She put out
+her hand and touched the string of pearls about Susy’s throat. “They’re
+small, but they’re very good. I suppose you don’t take the others when
+you travel?”
+
+“The others? Bless you! I haven’t any others--and never shall have,
+probably.”
+
+“No other pearls?”
+
+“No other jewels at all.”
+
+Clarissa stared. “Is that really true?” she asked, as if in the presence
+of the unprecedented.
+
+“Awfully true,” Susy confessed. “But I think I can make the servants
+obey me all the same.”
+
+This point seemed to have lost its interest for Clarissa, who was still
+gravely scrutinizing her companion. After a while she brought forth
+another question.
+
+“Did you have to give up all your jewels when you were divorced?”
+
+“Divorced--?” Susy threw her head back against the pillows and laughed.
+“Why, what are you thinking of? Don’t you remember that I wasn’t even
+married the last time you saw me?”
+
+“Yes; I do. But that was two years ago.” The little girl wound her arms
+about Susy’s neck and leaned against her caressingly. “Are you going to
+be soon, then? I’ll promise not to tell if you don’t want me to.”
+
+“Going to be divorced? Of course not! What in the world made you think
+so? ”
+
+“Because you look so awfully happy,” said Clarissa Vanderlyn simply.
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+
+IT was a trifling enough sign, but it had remained in Susy’s mind: that
+first morning in Venice Nick had gone out without first coming in to see
+her. She had stayed in bed late, chatting with Clarissa, and expecting
+to see the door open and her husband appear; and when the child left,
+and she had jumped up and looked into Nick’s room, she found it empty,
+and a line on his dressing table informed her that he had gone out to
+send a telegram.
+
+It was lover-like, and even boyish, of him to think it necessary to
+explain his absence; but why had he not simply come in and told her! She
+instinctively connected the little fact with the shade of preoccupation
+she had noticed on his face the night before, when she had gone to his
+room and found him absorbed in letter; and while she dressed she had
+continued to wonder what was in the letter, and whether the telegram he
+had hurried out to send was an answer to it.
+
+She had never found out. When he reappeared, handsome and happy as the
+morning, he proffered no explanation; and it was part of her life-long
+policy not to put uncalled-for questions. It was not only that her
+jealous regard for her own freedom was matched by an equal respect for
+that of others; she had steered too long among the social reefs and
+shoals not to know how narrow is the passage that leads to peace of
+mind, and she was determined to keep her little craft in mid-channel.
+But the incident had lodged itself in her memory, acquiring a sort of
+symbolic significance, as of a turning-point in her relations with her
+husband. Not that these were less happy, but that she now beheld them,
+as she had always formerly beheld such joys, as an unstable islet in
+a sea of storms. Her present bliss was as complete as ever, but it was
+ringed by the perpetual menace of all she knew she was hiding from Nick,
+and of all she suspected him of hiding from her....
+
+She was thinking of these things one afternoon about three weeks after
+their arrival in Venice. It was near sunset, and she sat alone on the
+balcony, watching the cross-lights on the water weave their pattern
+above the flushed reflection of old palace-basements. She was
+almost always alone at that hour. Nick had taken to writing in the
+afternoons--he had been as good as his word, and so, apparently, had the
+Muse and it was his habit to join his wife only at sunset, for a late
+row on the lagoon. She had taken Clarissa, as usual, to the Giardino
+Pubblico, where that obliging child had politely but indifferently
+“played”--Clarissa joined in the diversions of her age as if conforming
+to an obsolete tradition--and had brought her back for a music lesson,
+echoes of which now drifted down from a distant window.
+
+Susy had come to be extremely thankful for Clarissa. But for the little
+girl, her pride in her husband’s industry might have been tinged with
+a faint sense of being at times left out and forgotten; and as Nick’s
+industry was the completest justification for their being where they
+were, and for her having done what she had, she was grateful to Clarissa
+for helping her to feel less alone. Clarissa, indeed, represented the
+other half of her justification: it was as much on the child’s account
+as on Nick’s that Susy had held her tongue, remained in Venice, and
+slipped out once a week to post one of Ellie’s numbered letters. A
+day’s experience of the Palazzo Vanderlyn had convinced Susy of the
+impossibility of deserting Clarissa. Long experience had shown her that
+the most crowded households often contain the loneliest nurseries,
+and that the rich child is exposed to evils unknown to less pampered
+infancy; but hitherto such things had merely been to her one of the
+uglier bits in the big muddled pattern of life. Now she found herself
+feeling where before she had only judged: her precarious bliss came to
+her charged with a new weight of pity.
+
+She was thinking of these things, and of the approaching date of Ellie
+Vanderlyn’s return, and of the searching truths she was storing up for
+that lady’s private ear, when she noticed a gondola turning its
+prow toward the steps below the balcony. She leaned over, and a tall
+gentleman in shabby clothes, glancing up at her as he jumped out, waved
+a mouldy Panama in joyful greeting.
+
+“Streffy!” she exclaimed as joyfully; and she was half-way down the
+stairs when he ran up them followed by his luggage-laden boatman.
+
+“It’s all right, I suppose?--Ellie said I might come,” he explained in
+a shrill cheerful voice; “and I’m to have my same green room with the
+parrot-panels, because its furniture is already so frightfully stained
+with my hair-wash.”
+
+Susy was beaming on him with the deep sense of satisfaction which his
+presence always produced in his friends. There was no one in the world,
+they all agreed, half as ugly and untidy and delightful as Streffy; no
+one who combined such outspoken selfishness with such imperturbable good
+humour; no one who knew so well how to make you believe he was being
+charming to you when it was you who were being charming to him.
+
+In addition to these seductions, of which none estimated the value
+more accurately than their possessor, Strefford had for Susy another
+attraction of which he was probably unconscious. It was that of being
+the one rooted and stable being among the fluid and shifting figures
+that composed her world. Susy had always lived among people so
+denationalized that those one took for Russians generally turned out to
+be American, and those one was inclined to ascribe to New York proved to
+have originated in Rome or Bucharest. These cosmopolitan people, who, in
+countries not their own, lived in houses as big as hotels, or in
+hotels where the guests were as international as the waiters, had
+inter-married, inter-loved and inter-divorced each other over the whole
+face of Europe, and according to every code that attempts to regulate
+human ties. Strefford, too, had his home in this world, but only one
+of his homes. The other, the one he spoke of, and probably thought
+of, least often, was a great dull English country-house in a northern
+county, where a life as monotonous and self-contained as his own was
+chequered and dispersed had gone on for generation after generation;
+and it was the sense of that house, and of all it typified even to his
+vagrancy and irreverence, which, coming out now and then in his talk, or
+in his attitude toward something or somebody, gave him a firmer
+outline and a steadier footing than the other marionettes in the dance.
+Superficially so like them all, and so eager to outdo them in detachment
+and adaptability, ridiculing the prejudices he had shaken off, and the
+people to whom he belonged, he still kept, under his easy pliancy, the
+skeleton of old faiths and old fashions. “He talks every language as
+well as the rest of us,” Susy had once said of him, “but at least he
+talks one language better than the others”; and Strefford, told of the
+remark, had laughed, called her an idiot, and been pleased.
+
+As he shambled up the stairs with her, arm in arm, she was thinking of
+this quality with a new appreciation of its value. Even she and Lansing,
+in spite of their unmixed Americanism, their substantial background of
+old-fashioned cousinships in New York and Philadelphia, were as
+mentally detached, as universally at home, as touts at an International
+Exhibition. If they were usually recognized as Americans it was only
+because they spoke French so well, and because Nick was too fair to be
+“foreign,” and too sharp-featured to be English. But Charlie Strefford
+was English with all the strength of an inveterate habit; and something
+in Susy was slowly waking to a sense of the beauty of habit.
+
+Lounging on the balcony, whither he had followed her without pausing
+to remove the stains of travel, Strefford showed himself immensely
+interested in the last chapter of her history, greatly pleased at its
+having been enacted under his roof, and hugely and flippantly amused
+at the firmness with which she refused to let him see Nick till the
+latter’s daily task was over.
+
+“Writing? Rot! What’s he writing? He’s breaking you in, my dear; that’s
+what he’s doing: establishing an alibi. What’ll you bet he’s just
+sitting there smoking and reading Le Rire? Let’s go and see.”
+
+But Susy was firm. “He’s read me his first chapter: it’s wonderful. It’s
+a philosophic romance--rather like Marius, you know.”
+
+“Oh, yes--I do!” said Strefford, with a laugh that she thought idiotic.
+
+She flushed up like a child. “You’re stupid, Streffy. You forget that
+Nick and I don’t need alibis. We’ve got rid of all that hyprocrisy by
+agreeing that each will give the other a hand up when either of us wants
+a change. We’ve not married to spy and lie, and nag each other; we’ve
+formed a partnership for our mutual advantage.”
+
+“I see; that’s capital. But how can you be sure that, when Nick wants a
+change, you’ll consider it for his advantage to have one?”
+
+It was the point that had always secretly tormented Susy; she often
+wondered if it equally tormented Nick.
+
+“I hope I shall have enough common sense--” she began.
+
+“Oh, of course: common sense is what you’re both bound to base your
+argument on, whichever way you argue.”
+
+This flash of insight disconcerted her, and she said, a little
+irritably: “What should you do then, if you married?--Hush, Streffy! I
+forbid you to shout like that--all the gondolas are stopping to look!”
+
+“How can I help it?” He rocked backward and forward in his chair. “‘If
+you marry,’ she says: ‘Streffy, what have you decided to do if you
+suddenly become a raving maniac?’”
+
+“I said no such thing. If your uncle and your cousin died, you’d marry
+to-morrow; you know you would.”
+
+“Oh, now you’re talking business.” He folded his long arms and leaned
+over the balcony, looking down at the dusky ripples streaked with fire.
+“In that case I should say: ‘Susan, my dear--Susan--now that by
+the merciful intervention of Providence you have become Countess of
+Altringham in the peerage of Great Britain, and Baroness Dunsterville
+and d’Amblay in the peerages of Ireland and Scotland, I’ll thank you to
+remember that you are a member of one of the most ancient houses in the
+United Kingdom--and not to get found out.’”
+
+Susy laughed. “We know what those warnings mean! I pity my namesake.”
+
+He swung about and gave her a quick look out of his small ugly twinkling
+eyes. “Is there any other woman in the world named Susan?”
+
+“I hope so, if the name’s an essential. Even if Nick chucks me, don’t
+count on me to carry out that programme. I’ve seen it in practice too
+often.”
+
+“Oh, well: as far as I know, everybody’s in perfect health at
+Altringham.” He fumbled in his pocket and drew out a fountain pen,
+a handkerchief over which it had leaked, and a packet of dishevelled
+cigarettes. Lighting one, and restoring the other objects to his pocket,
+he continued calmly: “Tell me how did you manage to smooth things over
+with the Gillows? Ursula was running amuck when I was in Newport last
+Summer; it was just when people were beginning to say that you were
+going to marry Nick. I was afraid she’d put a spoke in your wheel; and I
+hear she put a big cheque in your hand instead.”
+
+Susy was silent. From the first moment of Strefford’s appearance she had
+known that in the course of time he would put that question. He was as
+inquisitive as a monkey, and when he had made up his mind to find out
+anything it was useless to try to divert his attention. After a moment’s
+hesitation she said: “I flirted with Fred. It was a bore but he was very
+decent.”
+
+“He would be--poor Fred. And you got Ursula thoroughly frightened!”
+
+“Well--enough. And then luckily that young Nerone Altineri turned up
+from Rome: he went over to New York to look for a job as an engineer,
+and Ursula made Fred put him in their iron works.” She paused again,
+and then added abruptly: “Streffy! If you knew how I hate that kind of
+thing. I’d rather have Nick come in now and tell me frankly, as I know
+he would, that he’s going off with--”
+
+“With Coral Hicks?” Strefford suggested.
+
+She laughed. “Poor Coral Hicks! What on earth made you think of the
+Hickses?”
+
+“Because I caught a glimpse of them the other day at Capri. They’re
+cruising about: they said they were coming in here.”
+
+“What a nuisance! I do hope they won’t find us out. They were
+awfully kind to Nick when he went to India with them, and they’re so
+simple-minded that they would expect him to be glad to see them.”
+
+Strefford aimed his cigarette-end at a tourist on a puggaree who was
+gazing up from his guidebook at the palace. “Ah,” he murmured with
+satisfaction, seeing the shot take effect; then he added: “Coral Hicks
+is growing up rather pretty.”
+
+“Oh, Streff--you’re dreaming! That lump of a girl with spectacles and
+thick ankles! Poor Mrs. Hicks used to say to Nick: ‘When Mr. Hicks and
+I had Coral educated we presumed culture was in greater demand in Europe
+than it appears to be.’”
+
+“Well, you’ll see: that girl’s education won’t interfere with her, once
+she’s started. So then: if Nick came in and told you he was going off--”
+
+“I should be so thankful if it was with a fright like Coral! But you
+know,” she added with a smile, “we’ve agreed that it’s not to happen for
+a year.”
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+
+SUSY found Strefford, after his first burst of nonsense, unusually kind
+and responsive. The interest he showed in her future and Nick’s seemed
+to proceed not so much from his habitual spirit of scientific curiosity
+as from simple friendliness. He was privileged to see Nick’s first
+chapter, of which he formed so favourable an impression that he spoke
+sternly to Susy on the importance of respecting her husband’s working
+hours; and he even carried his general benevolence to the length
+of showing a fatherly interest in Clarissa Vanderlyn. He was always
+charming to children, but fitfully and warily, with an eye on his
+independence, and on the possibility of being suddenly bored by them;
+Susy had never seen him abandon these precautions so completely as he
+did with Clarissa.
+
+“Poor little devil! Who looks after her when you and Nick are off
+together? Do you mean to tell me Ellie sacked the governess and went
+away without having anyone to take her place?”
+
+“I think she expected me to do it,” said Susy with a touch of asperity.
+There were moments when her duty to Clarissa weighed on her somewhat
+heavily; whenever she went off alone with Nick she was pursued by the
+vision of a little figure waving wistful farewells from the balcony.
+
+“Ah, that’s like Ellie: you might have known she’d get an equivalent
+when she lent you all this. But I don’t believe she thought you’d be so
+conscientious about it.”
+
+Susy considered. “I don’t suppose she did; and perhaps I shouldn’t have
+been, a year ago. But you see”--she hesitated--“Nick’s so awfully good:
+it’s made me look; at a lot of things differently....”
+
+“Oh, hang Nick’s goodness! It’s happiness that’s done it, my dear.
+You’re just one of the people with whom it happens to agree.”
+
+Susy, leaning back, scrutinized between her lashes his crooked ironic
+face.
+
+“What is it that’s agreeing with you, Streffy? I’ve never seen you so
+human. You must be getting an outrageous price for the villa.”
+
+Strefford laughed and clapped his hand on his breast-pocket. “I should
+be an ass not to: I’ve got a wire here saying they must have it for
+another month at any price.”
+
+“What luck! I’m so glad. Who are they, by the way?”
+
+He drew himself up out of the long chair in which he was disjointedly
+lounging, and looked down at her with a smile. “Another couple of
+love-sick idiots like you and Nick.... I say, before I spend it all
+let’s go out and buy something ripping for Clarissa.”
+
+The days passed so quickly and radiantly that, but for her concern
+for Clarissa, Susy would hardly have been conscious of her hostess’s
+protracted absence. Mrs. Vanderlyn had said: “Four weeks at the latest,”
+ and the four weeks were over, and she had neither arrived nor written
+to explain her non-appearance. She had, in fact, given no sign of life
+since her departure, save in the shape of a post-card which had
+reached Clarissa the day after the Lansings’ arrival, and in which Mrs.
+Vanderlyn instructed her child to be awfully good, and not to forget
+to feed the mongoose. Susy noticed that this missive had been posted in
+Milan.
+
+She communicated her apprehensions to Strefford. “I don’t trust
+that green-eyed nurse. She’s forever with the younger gondolier; and
+Clarissa’s so awfully sharp. I don’t see why Ellie hasn’t come: she was
+due last Monday.”
+
+Her companion laughed, and something in the sound of his laugh suggested
+that he probably knew as much of Ellie’s movements as she did, if not
+more. The sense of disgust which the subject always roused in her made
+her look away quickly from his tolerant smile. She would have given
+the world, at that moment, to have been free to tell Nick what she had
+learned on the night of their arrival, and then to have gone away with
+him, no matter where. But there was Clarissa--!
+
+To fortify herself against the temptation, she resolutely fixed her
+thoughts on her husband. Of Nick’s beatitude there could be no doubt.
+He adored her, he revelled in Venice, he rejoiced in his work; and
+concerning the quality of that work her judgment was as confident as
+her heart. She still doubted if he would ever earn a living by what
+he wrote, but she no longer doubted that he would write something
+remarkable. The mere fact that he was engaged on a philosophic romance,
+and not a mere novel, seemed the proof of an intrinsic superiority. And
+if she had mistrusted her impartiality Strefford’s approval would have
+reassured her. Among their friends Strefford passed as an authority on
+such matters: in summing him up his eulogists always added: “And you
+know he writes.” As a matter of fact, the paying public had remained
+cold to his few published pages; but he lived among the kind of people
+who confuse taste with talent, and are impressed by the most artless
+attempts at literary expression; and though he affected to disdain their
+judgment, and his own efforts, Susy knew he was not sorry to have it
+said of him: “Oh, if only Streffy had chosen--!”
+
+Strefford’s approval of the philosophic romance convinced her that it
+had been worth while staying in Venice for Nick’s sake; and if
+only Ellie would come back, and carry off Clarissa to St. Moritz or
+Deauville, the disagreeable episode on which their happiness was based
+would vanish like a cloud, and leave them to complete enjoyment.
+
+Ellie did not come; but the Mortimer Hickses did, and Nick Lansing was
+assailed by the scruples his wife had foreseen. Strefford, coming back
+one evening from the Lido, reported having recognized the huge outline
+of the Ibis among the pleasure craft of the outer harbour; and the very
+next evening, as the guests of Palazzo Vanderlyn were sipping their ices
+at Florian’s, the Hickses loomed up across the Piazza.
+
+Susy pleaded in vain with her husband in defence of his privacy.
+“Remember you’re here to write, dearest; it’s your duty not to let any
+one interfere with that. Why shouldn’t we tell them we’re just leaving!”
+
+“Because it’s no use: we’re sure to be always meeting them. And besides,
+I’ll be hanged if I’m going to shirk the Hickses. I spent five whole
+months on the Ibis, and if they bored me occasionally, India didn’t.”
+
+“We’ll make them take us to Aquileia anyhow,” said Strefford
+philosophically; and the next moment the Hickses were bearing down on
+the defenceless trio.
+
+They presented a formidable front, not only because of their mere
+physical bulk--Mr. and Mrs. Hicks were equally and majestically
+three-dimensional--but because they never moved abroad without the
+escort of two private secretaries (one for the foreign languages), Mr.
+Hicks’s doctor, a maiden lady known as Eldoradder Tooker, who was Mrs.
+Hicks’s cousin and stenographer, and finally their daughter, Coral
+Hicks.
+
+Coral Hicks, when Susy had last encountered the party, had been a
+fat spectacled school-girl, always lagging behind her parents, with a
+reluctant poodle in her wake. Now the poodle had gone, and his mistress
+led the procession. The fat school-girl had changed into a young lady
+of compact if not graceful outline; a long-handled eyeglass had replaced
+the spectacles, and through it, instead of a sullen glare, Miss Coral
+Hicks projected on the world a glance at once confident and critical.
+She looked so strong and so assured that Susy, taking her measure in
+a flash, saw that her position at the head of the procession was not
+fortuitous, and murmured inwardly: “Thank goodness she’s not pretty
+too!”
+
+If she was not pretty, she was well-dressed; and if she was
+overeducated, she seemed capable, as Strefford had suggested, of
+carrying off even this crowning disadvantage. At any rate, she was above
+disguising it; and before the whole party had been seated five minutes
+in front of a fresh supply of ices (with Eldorada and the secretaries
+at a table slightly in the background) she had taken up with Nick the
+question of exploration in Mesopotamia.
+
+“Queer child, Coral,” he said to Susy that night as they smoked a last
+cigarette on their balcony. “She told me this afternoon that she’d
+remembered lots of things she heard me say in India. I thought at the
+time that she cared only for caramels and picture-puzzles, but it seems
+she was listening to everything, and reading all the books she could lay
+her hands on; and she got so bitten with Oriental archaeology that she
+took a course last year at Bryn Mawr. She means to go to Bagdad next
+spring, and back by the Persian plateau and Turkestan.”
+
+Susy laughed luxuriously: she was sitting with her hand in Nick’s, while
+the late moon--theirs again--rounded its orange-coloured glory above the
+belfry of San Giorgio.
+
+“Poor Coral! How dreary--” Susy murmured
+
+“Dreary? Why? A trip like that is about as well worth doing as anything
+I know.”
+
+“Oh, I meant: dreary to do it without you or me,” she laughed, getting up
+lazily to go indoors. A broad band of moonlight, dividing her room onto
+two shadowy halves, lay on the painted Venetian bed with its folded-back
+sheet, its old damask coverlet and lace-edged pillows. She felt the
+warmth of Nick’s enfolding arm and lifted her face to his.
+
+The Hickses retained the most tender memory of Nick’s sojourn on the
+Ibis, and Susy, moved by their artless pleasure in meeting him again,
+was glad he had not followed her advice and tried to elude them. She had
+always admired Strefford’s ruthless talent for using and discarding the
+human material in his path, but now she began to hope that Nick would
+not remember her suggestion that he should mete out that measure to the
+Hickses. Even if it had been less pleasant to have a big yacht at their
+door during the long golden days and the nights of silver fire, the
+Hickses’ admiration for Nick would have made Susy suffer them gladly.
+She even began to be aware of a growing liking for them, a liking
+inspired by the very characteristics that would once have provoked her
+disapproval. Susy had had plenty of training in liking common people
+with big purses; in such cases her stock of allowances and extenuations
+was inexhaustible. But they had to be successful common people; and the
+trouble was that the Hickses, judged by her standards, were failures.
+It was not only that they were ridiculous; so, heaven knew, were many
+of their rivals. But the Hickses were both ridiculous and unsuccessful.
+They had consistently resisted the efforts of the experienced advisers
+who had first descried them on the horizon and tried to help them
+upward. They were always taking up the wrong people, giving the wrong
+kind of party, and spending millions on things that nobody who mattered
+cared about. They all believed passionately in “movements” and “causes”
+ and “ideals,” and were always attended by the exponents of their latest
+beliefs, always asking you to hear lectures by haggard women in peplums,
+and having their portraits painted by wild people who never turned out
+to be the fashion.
+
+All this would formerly have increased Susy’s contempt; now she found
+herself liking the Hickses most for their failings. She was touched by
+their simple good faith, their isolation in the midst of all their
+queer apostles and parasites, their way of drifting about an alien
+and indifferent world in a compactly clinging group of which Eldorada
+Tooker, the doctor and the two secretaries formed the outer fringe, and
+by their view of themselves as a kind of collective re-incarnation of
+some past state of princely culture, symbolised for Mrs. Hicks in what
+she called “the court of the Renaissance.” Eldorada, of course, was
+their chief prophetess; but even the intensely “bright” and modern young
+secretaries, Mr. Beck and Mr. Buttles, showed a touching tendency to
+share her view, and spoke of Mr. Hicks as “promoting art,” in the spirit
+of Pandolfino celebrating the munificence of the Medicis.
+
+“I’m getting really fond of the Hickses; I believe I should be nice to
+them even if they were staying at Danieli’s,” Susy said to Strefford.
+
+“And even if you owned the yacht?” he answered; and for once his banter
+struck her as beside the point.
+
+The Ibis carried them, during the endless June days, far and wide along
+the enchanted shores; they roamed among the Euganeans, they saw Aquileia
+and Pomposa and Ravenna. Their hosts would gladly have taken them
+farther, across the Adriatic and on into the golden network of the
+Ægean; but Susy resisted this infraction of Nick’s rules, and he
+himself preferred to stick to his task. Only now he wrote in the early
+mornings, so that on most days they could set out before noon and steam
+back late to the low fringe of lights on the lagoon. His work continued
+to progress, and as page was added to page Susy obscurely but surely
+perceived that each one corresponded with a hidden secretion of energy,
+the gradual forming within him of something that might eventually alter
+both their lives. In what sense she could not conjecture: she merely
+felt that the fact of his having chosen a job and stuck to it, if only
+through a few rosy summer weeks, had already given him a new way of
+saying “Yes” and “No.”
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+
+OF some new ferment at work in him Nick Lansing himself was equally
+aware. He was a better judge of the book he was trying to write than
+either Susy or Strefford; he knew its weaknesses, its treacheries,
+its tendency to slip through his fingers just as he thought his grasp
+tightest; but he knew also that at the very moment when it seemed to
+have failed him it would suddenly be back, beating its loud wings in his
+face.
+
+He had no delusions as to its commercial value, and had winced more than
+he triumphed when Susy produced her allusion to Marius. His book was to
+be called The Pageant of Alexander. His imagination had been enchanted
+by the idea of picturing the young conqueror’s advance through the
+fabulous landscapes of Asia: he liked writing descriptions, and vaguely
+felt that under the guise of fiction he could develop his theory of
+Oriental influences in Western art at the expense of less learning than
+if he had tried to put his ideas into an essay. He knew enough of his
+subject to know that he did not know enough to write about it; but he
+consoled himself by remembering that Wilhelm Meister has survived many
+weighty volumes on aesthetics; and between his moments of self-disgust
+he took himself at Susy’s valuation, and found an unmixed joy in his
+task.
+
+Never--no, never!--had he been so boundlessly, so confidently happy. His
+hack-work had given him the habit of application, and now habit wore the
+glow of inspiration. His previous literary ventures had been timid and
+tentative: if this one was growing and strengthening on his hands, it
+must be because the conditions were so different. He was at ease, he was
+secure, he was satisfied; and he had also, for the first time since his
+early youth, before his mother’s death, the sense of having some one to
+look after, some one who was his own particular care, and to whom he
+was answerable for himself and his actions, as he had never felt himself
+answerable to the hurried and indifferent people among whom he had
+chosen to live.
+
+Susy had the same standards as these people: she spoke their language,
+though she understood others, she required their pleasures if she did
+not revere their gods. But from the moment that she had become his
+property he had built up in himself a conception of her answering to
+some deep-seated need of veneration. She was his, he had chosen her,
+she had taken her place in the long line of Lansing women who had been
+loved, honoured, and probably deceived, by bygone Lansing men. He didn’t
+pretend to understand the logic of it; but the fact that she was his
+wife gave purpose and continuity to his scattered impulses, and a
+mysterious glow of consecration to his task.
+
+Once or twice, in the first days of his marriage, he had asked himself
+with a slight shiver what would happen if Susy should begin to bore
+him. The thing had happened to him with other women as to whom his first
+emotions had not differed in intensity from those she inspired. The part
+he had played in his previous love-affairs might indeed have been summed
+up in the memorable line: “I am the hunter and the prey,” for he had
+invariably ceased to be the first only to regard himself as the second.
+This experience had never ceased to cause him the liveliest pain, since
+his sympathy for his pursuer was only less keen than his commiseration
+for himself; but as he was always a little sorrier for himself, he had
+always ended by distancing the pursuer.
+
+All these pre-natal experiences now seemed utterly inapplicable to the
+new man he had become. He could not imagine being bored by Susy--or
+trying to escape from her if he were. He could not think of her as
+an enemy, or even as an accomplice, since accomplices are potential
+enemies: she was some one with whom, by some unheard-of miracle, joys
+above the joys of friendship were to be tasted, but who, even through
+these fleeting ecstasies, remained simply and securely his friend.
+
+These new feelings did not affect his general attitude toward life: they
+merely confirmed his faith in its ultimate “jolliness.” Never had he
+more thoroughly enjoyed the things he had always enjoyed. A good dinner
+had never been as good to him, a beautiful sunset as beautiful; he still
+rejoiced in the fact that he appreciated both with an equal acuity. He
+was as proud as ever of Susy’s cleverness and freedom from prejudice:
+she couldn’t be too “modern” for him now that she was his. He shared to
+the full her passionate enjoyment of the present, and all her feverish
+eagerness to make it last. He knew when she was thinking of ways of
+extending their golden opportunity, and he secretly thought with her,
+wondering what new means they could devise. He was thankful that Ellie
+Vanderlyn was still absent, and began to hope they might have the palace
+to themselves for the remainder of the summer. If they did, he would
+have time to finish his book, and Susy to lay up a little interest on
+their wedding cheques; and thus their enchanted year might conceivably
+be prolonged to two.
+
+Late as the season was, their presence and Strefford’s in Venice had
+already drawn thither several wandering members of their set. It was
+characteristic of these indifferent but agglutinative people that they
+could never remain long parted from each other without a dim sense of
+uneasiness. Lansing was familiar with the feeling. He had known slight
+twinges of it himself, and had often ministered to its qualms in others.
+It was hardly stronger than the faint gnawing which recalls the tea-hour
+to one who has lunched well and is sure of dining as abundantly; but it
+gave a purpose to the purposeless, and helped many hesitating spirits
+over the annual difficulty of deciding between Deauville and St. Moritz,
+Biarritz and Capri.
+
+Nick was not surprised to learn that it was becoming the fashion, that
+summer, to pop down to Venice and take a look at the Lansings. Streffy
+had set the example, and Streffy’s example was always followed. And then
+Susy’s marriage was still a subject of sympathetic speculation. People
+knew the story of the wedding cheques, and were interested in seeing
+how long they could be made to last. It was going to be the thing,
+that year, to help prolong the honey-moon by pressing houses on the
+adventurous couple. Before June was over a band of friends were basking
+with the Lansings on the Lido.
+
+Nick found himself unexpectedly disturbed by their arrival. To avoid
+comment and banter he put his book aside and forbade Susy to speak
+of it, explaining to her that he needed an interval of rest. His wife
+instantly and exaggeratedly adopted this view, guarding him from the
+temptation to work as jealously as she had discouraged him from idling;
+and he was careful not to let her find out that the change in his habits
+coincided with his having reached a difficult point in his book. But
+though he was not sorry to stop writing he found himself unexpectedly
+oppressed by the weight of his leisure. For the first time communal
+dawdling had lost its charm for him; not because his fellow dawdlers
+were less congenial than of old, but because in the interval he had
+known something so immeasurably better. He had always felt himself to be
+the superior of his habitual associates, but now the advantage was too
+great: really, in a sense, it was hardly fair to them.
+
+He had flattered himself that Susy would share this feeling; but he
+perceived with annoyance that the arrival of their friends heightened
+her animation. It was as if the inward glow which had given her a new
+beauty were now refracted upon her by the presence of the very people
+they had come to Venice to avoid.
+
+Lansing was vaguely irritated; and when he asked her how she liked being
+with their old crowd again his irritation was increased by her answering
+with a laugh that she only hoped the poor dears didn’t see too plainly
+how they bored her. The patent insincerity of the reply was a shock to
+Lansing. He knew that Susy was not really bored, and he understood that
+she had simply guessed his feelings and instinctively adopted them: that
+henceforth she was always going to think as he thought. To confirm this
+fear he said carelessly: “Oh, all the same, it’s rather jolly knocking
+about with them again for a bit;” and she answered at once, and with
+equal conviction: “Yes, isn’t it? The old darlings--all the same!”
+
+A fear of the future again laid its cold touch on Lansing. Susy’s
+independence and self-sufficiency had been among her chief attractions;
+if she were to turn into an echo their delicious duet ran the risk of
+becoming the dullest of monologues. He forgot that five minutes earlier
+he had resented her being glad to see their friends, and for a moment
+he found himself leaning dizzily over that insoluble riddle of the
+sentimental life: that to be differed with is exasperating, and to be
+agreed with monotonous.
+
+Once more he began to wonder if he were not fundamentally unfitted for
+the married state; and was saved from despair only by remembering that
+Susy’s subjection to his moods was not likely to last. But even then
+it never occurred to him to reflect that his apprehensions were
+superfluous, since their tie was avowedly a temporary one. Of the
+special understanding on which their marriage had been based not a trace
+remained in his thoughts of her; the idea that he or she might ever
+renounce each other for their mutual good had long since dwindled to the
+ghost of an old joke.
+
+It was borne in on him, after a week or two of unbroken sociability,
+that of all his old friends it was the Mortimer Hickses who bored him
+the least. The Hickses had left the Ibis for an apartment in a vast
+dilapidated palace near the Canareggio. They had hired the apartment
+from a painter (one of their newest discoveries), and they put up
+philosophically with the absence of modern conveniences in order to
+secure the inestimable advantage of “atmosphere.” In this privileged
+air they gathered about them their usual mixed company of quiet
+studious people and noisy exponents of new theories, themselves totally
+unconscious of the disparity between their different guests, and
+beamingly convinced that at last they were seated at the source of
+wisdom.
+
+In old days Lansing would have got half an hour’s amusement, followed
+by a long evening of boredom, from the sight of Mrs. Hicks, vast and
+jewelled, seated between a quiet-looking professor of archaeology and a
+large-browed composer, or the high priest of a new dance-step, while
+Mr. Hicks, beaming above his vast white waistcoat, saw to it that the
+champagne flowed more abundantly than the talk, and the bright young
+secretaries industriously “kept up” with the dizzy cross-current of
+prophecy and erudition. But a change had come over Lansing. Hitherto
+it was in contrast to his own friends that the Hickses had seemed most
+insufferable; now it was as an escape from these same friends that they
+had become not only sympathetic but even interesting. It was something,
+after all, to be with people who did not regard Venice simply as
+affording exceptional opportunities for bathing and adultery, but who
+were reverently if confusedly aware that they were in the presence of
+something unique and ineffable, and determined to make the utmost of
+their privilege.
+
+“After all,” he said to himself one evening, as his eyes wandered, with
+somewhat of a convalescent’s simple joy, from one to another of their
+large confiding faces, “after all, they’ve got a religion....” The
+phrase struck him, in the moment of using it, as indicating a new
+element in his own state of mind, and as being, in fact, the key to his
+new feeling about the Hickses. Their muddled ardour for great things
+was related to his own new view of the universe: the people who felt,
+however dimly, the wonder and weight of life must ever after be nearer
+to him than those to whom it was estimated solely by one’s balance at
+the bank. He supposed, on reflexion, that that was what he meant when he
+thought of the Hickses as having “a religion”....
+
+A few days later, his well-being was unexpectedly disturbed by the
+arrival of Fred Gillow. Lansing had always felt a tolerant liking for
+Gillow, a large smiling silent young man with an intense and serious
+desire to miss nothing attainable by one of his fortune and standing.
+What use he made of his experiences, Lansing, who had always gone into
+his own modest adventures rather thoroughly, had never been able to
+guess; but he had always suspected the prodigal Fred of being no more
+than a well-disguised looker-on. Now for the first time he began to view
+him with another eye. The Gillows were, in fact, the one uneasy point in
+Nick’s conscience. He and Susy from the first, had talked of them less
+than of any other members of their group: they had tacitly avoided the
+name from the day on which Susy had come to Lansing’s lodgings to say
+that Ursula Gillow had asked her to renounce him, till that other day,
+just before their marriage, when she had met him with the rapturous cry:
+“Here’s our first wedding present! Such a thumping big cheque from Fred
+and Ursula!”
+
+Plenty of sympathizing people were ready, Lansing knew, to tell him just
+what had happened in the interval between those two dates; but he had
+taken care not to ask. He had even affected an initiation so complete
+that the friends who burned to enlighten him were discouraged by his so
+obviously knowing more than they; and gradually he had worked himself
+around to their view, and had taken it for granted that he really did.
+
+Now he perceived that he knew nothing at all, and that the “Hullo, old
+Fred!” with which Susy hailed Gillow’s arrival might be either the usual
+tribal welcome--since they were all “old,” and all nicknamed, in their
+private jargon--or a greeting that concealed inscrutable depths of
+complicity.
+
+Susy was visibly glad to see Gillow; but she was glad of everything just
+then, and so glad to show her gladness! The fact disarmed her husband
+and made him ashamed of his uneasiness. “You ought to have thought this
+all out sooner, or else you ought to chuck thinking of it at all,”
+ was the sound but ineffectual advice he gave himself on the day after
+Gillow’s arrival; and immediately set to work to rethink the whole
+matter.
+
+Fred Gillow showed no consciousness of disturbing any one’s peace of
+mind. Day after day he sprawled for hours on the Lido sands, his arms
+folded under his head, listening to Streffy’s nonsense and watching Susy
+between sleepy lids; but he betrayed no desire to see her alone, or
+to draw her into talk apart from the others. More than ever he seemed
+content to be the gratified spectator of a costly show got up for his
+private entertainment. It was not until he heard her, one morning,
+grumble a little at the increasing heat and the menace of mosquitoes,
+that he said, quite as if they had talked the matter over long before,
+and finally settled it: “The moor will be ready any time after the first
+of August.”
+
+Nick fancied that Susy coloured a little, and drew herself up more
+defiantly than usual as she sent a pebble skimming across the dying
+ripples at their feet.
+
+“You’ll be a lot cooler in Scotland,” Fred added, with what, for him,
+was an unusual effort at explicitness.
+
+“Oh, shall we?” she retorted gaily; and added with an air of mystery
+and importance, pivoting about on her high heels: “Nick’s got work to do
+here. It will probably keep us all summer.”
+
+“Work? Rot! You’ll die of the smells.” Gillow stared perplexedly skyward
+from under his tilted hat-brim; and then brought out, as from the depth
+of a rankling grievance: “I thought it was all understood.”
+
+“Why,” Nick asked his wife that night, as they re-entered Ellie’s cool
+drawing-room after a late dinner at the Lido, “did Gillow think it was
+understood that we were going to his moor in August?” He was conscious
+of the oddness of speaking of their friend by his surname, and reddened
+at his blunder.
+
+Susy had let her lace cloak slide to her feet, and stood before him
+in the faintly-lit room, slim and shimmering-white through black
+transparencies.
+
+She raised her eyebrows carelessly. “I told you long ago he’d asked us
+there for August.”
+
+“You didn’t tell me you’d accepted.”
+
+She smiled as if he had said something as simple as Fred. “I accepted
+everything--from everybody!”
+
+What could he answer? It was the very principle on which their bargain
+had been struck. And if he were to say: “Ah, but this is different,
+because I’m jealous of Gillow,” what light would such an answer shed on
+his past? The time for being jealous--if so antiquated an attitude were
+on any ground defensible--would have been before his marriage, and before
+the acceptance of the bounties which had helped to make it possible. He
+wondered a little now that in those days such scruples had not troubled
+him. His inconsistency irritated him, and increased his irritation
+against Gillow. “I suppose he thinks he owns us!” he grumbled inwardly.
+
+He had thrown himself into an armchair, and Susy, advancing across the
+shining arabesques of the floor, slid down at his feet, pressed her
+slender length against him, and whispered with lifted face and lips
+close to his: “We needn’t ever go anywhere you don’t want to.” For
+once her submission was sweet, and folding her close he whispered back
+through his kiss: “Not there, then.”
+
+In her response to his embrace he felt the acquiescence of her whole
+happy self in whatever future he decided on, if only it gave them enough
+of such moments as this; and as they held each other fast in silence his
+doubts and distrust began to seem like a silly injustice.
+
+“Let us stay here as long as ever Ellie will let us,” he said, as if the
+shadowy walls and shining floors were a magic boundary drawn about his
+happiness.
+
+She murmured her assent and stood up, stretching her sleepy arm above
+her shoulders. “How dreadfully late it is.... Will you unhook me?... Oh,
+there’s a telegram.”
+
+She picked it up from the table, and tearing it open stared a moment at
+the message. “It’s from Ellie. She’s coming to-morrow.”
+
+She turned to the window and strayed out onto the balcony. Nick followed
+her with enlacing arm. The canal below them lay in moonless shadow,
+barred with a few lingering lights. A last snatch of gondola-music came
+from far off, carried upward on a sultry gust.
+
+“Dear old Ellie. All the same... I wish all this belonged to you and
+me.” Susy sighed.
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+
+IT was not Mrs. Vanderlyn’s fault if, after her arrival, her palace
+seemed to belong any less to the Lansings.
+
+She arrived in a mood of such general benevolence that it was impossible
+for Susy, when they finally found themselves alone, to make her view
+even her own recent conduct in any but the most benevolent light.
+
+“I knew you’d be the veriest angel about it all, darling, because I knew
+you’d understand me--especially now,” she declared, her slim hands
+in Susy’s, her big eyes (so like Clarissa’s) resplendent with past
+pleasures and future plans.
+
+The expression of her confidence was unexpectedly distasteful to Susy
+Lansing, who had never lent so cold an ear to such warm avowals. She had
+always imagined that being happy one’s self made one--as Mrs. Vanderlyn
+appeared to assume--more tolerant of the happiness of others, of however
+doubtful elements composed; and she was almost ashamed of responding so
+languidly to her friend’s outpourings. But she herself had no desire to
+confide her bliss to Ellie; and why should not Ellie observe a similar
+reticence?
+
+“It was all so perfect--you see, dearest, I was meant to be happy,”
+ that lady continued, as if the possession of so unusual a characteristic
+singled her out for special privileges.
+
+Susy, with a certain sharpness, responded that she had always supposed
+we all were.
+
+“Oh, no, dearest: not governesses and mothers-in-law and companions, and
+that sort of people. They wouldn’t know how if they tried. But you and
+I, darling--”
+
+“Oh, I don’t consider myself in any way exceptional,” Susy intervened.
+She longed to add: “Not in your way, at any rate--” but a few minutes
+earlier Mrs. Vanderlyn had told her that the palace was at her disposal
+for the rest of the summer, and that she herself was only going to perch
+there--if they’d let her!--long enough to gather up her things and
+start for St. Moritz. The memory of this announcement had the effect of
+curbing Susy’s irony, and of making her shift the conversation to the
+safer if scarcely less absorbing topic of the number of day and evening
+dresses required for a season at St. Moritz.
+
+As she listened to Mrs. Vanderlyn--no less eloquent on this theme
+than on the other--Susy began to measure the gulf between her past and
+present. “This is the life I used to lead; these are the things I used
+to live for,” she thought, as she stood before the outspread glories of
+Mrs. Vanderlyn’s wardrobe. Not that she did not still care: she could
+not look at Ellie’s laces and silks and furs without picturing herself
+in them, and wondering by what new miracle of management she could give
+herself the air of being dressed by the same consummate artists. But
+these had become minor interests: the past few months had given her a
+new perspective, and the thing that most puzzled and disconcerted her
+about Ellie was the fact that love and finery and bridge and dining-out
+were seemingly all on the same plane to her.
+
+The inspection of the dresses lasted a long time, and was marked by
+many fluctuations of mood on the part of Mrs. Vanderlyn, who passed
+from comparative hopefulness to despair at the total inadequacy of her
+wardrobe. It wouldn’t do to go to St. Moritz looking like a frump, and
+yet there was no time to get anything sent from Paris, and, whatever she
+did, she wasn’t going to show herself in any dowdy re-arrangements done
+at home. But suddenly light broke on her, and she clasped her hands
+for joy. “Why, Nelson’ll bring them--I’d forgotten all about Nelson!
+There’ll be just time if I wire to him at once.”
+
+“Is Nelson going to join you at St. Moritz?” Susy asked, surprised.
+
+“Heavens, no! He’s coming here to pick up Clarissa and take her to some
+stuffy cure in Austria with his mother. It’s too lucky: there’s just
+time to telegraph him to bring my things. I didn’t mean to wait for him;
+but it won’t delay me more than day or two.”
+
+Susy’s heart sank. She was not much afraid of Ellie alone, but Ellie and
+Nelson together formed an incalculable menace. No one could tell what
+spark of truth might dash from their collision. Susy felt that she could
+deal with the two dangers separately and successively, but not together
+and simultaneously.
+
+“But, Ellie, why should you wait for Nelson? I’m certain to find someone
+here who’s going to St. Moritz and will take your things if he brings
+them. It’s a pity to risk losing your rooms.”
+
+This argument appealed for a moment to Mrs. Vanderlyn. “That’s
+true; they say all the hotels are jammed. You dear, you’re always
+so practical!” She clasped Susy to her scented bosom. “And you know,
+darling, I’m sure you’ll be glad to get rid of me--you and Nick! Oh,
+don’t be hypocritical and say ‘Nonsense!’ You see, I understand... I
+used to think of you so often, you two... during those blessed weeks
+when we two were alone....”
+
+The sudden tears, brimming over Ellie’s lovely eyes, and threatening to
+make the blue circles below them run into the adjoining carmine, filled
+Susy with compunction.
+
+“Poor thing--oh, poor thing!” she thought; and hearing herself called
+by Nick, who was waiting to take her out for their usual sunset on the
+lagoon, she felt a wave of pity for the deluded creature who would
+never taste that highest of imaginable joys. “But all the same,” Susy
+reflected, as she hurried down to her husband, “I’m glad I persuaded her
+not to wait for Nelson.”
+
+Some days had elapsed since Susy and Nick had had a sunset to
+themselves, and in the interval Susy had once again learned the superior
+quality of the sympathy that held them together. She now viewed all the
+rest of life as no more than a show: a jolly show which it would have
+been a thousand pities to miss, but which, if the need arose, they could
+get up and leave at any moment--provided that they left it together.
+
+In the dusk, while their prow slid over inverted palaces, and through
+the scent of hidden gardens, she leaned against him and murmured, her
+mind returning to the recent scene with Ellie: “Nick, should you hate me
+dreadfully if I had no clothes?”
+
+Her husband was kindling a cigarette, and the match lit up the grin
+with which he answered: “But, my dear, have I ever shown the slightest
+symptom--?”
+
+“Oh, rubbish! When a woman says: ‘No clothes,’ she means: ‘Not the right
+clothes.’”
+
+He took a meditative puff. “Ah, you’ve been going over Ellie’s finery
+with her.”
+
+“Yes: all those trunks and trunks full. And she finds she’s got nothing
+for St. Moritz!”
+
+“Of course,” he murmured, drowsy with content, and manifesting but a
+languid interest in the subject of Mrs. Vanderlyn’s wardrobe.
+
+“Only fancy--she very nearly decided to stop over for Nelson’s arrival
+next week, so that he might bring her two or three more trunkfuls from
+Paris. But mercifully I’ve managed to persuade her that it would be
+foolish to wait.”
+
+Susy felt a hardly perceptible shifting of her husband’s lounging body,
+and was aware, through all her watchful tentacles, of a widening of his
+half-closed lids.
+
+“You ‘managed’--?” She fancied he paused on the word ironically. “But
+why?”
+
+“Why--what?”
+
+“Why on earth should you try to prevent Ellie’s waiting for Nelson, if
+for once in her life she wants to?”
+
+Susy, conscious of reddening suddenly, drew back as though the leap
+of her tell-tale heart might have penetrated the blue flannel shoulder
+against which she leaned.
+
+“Really, dearest--!” she murmured; but with a sudden doggedness he
+renewed his “Why?”
+
+“Because she’s in such a fever to get to St. Moritz--and in such a funk
+lest the hotel shouldn’t keep her rooms,” Susy somewhat breathlessly
+produced.
+
+“Ah--I see.” Nick paused again. “You’re a devoted friend, aren’t you!”
+
+“What an odd question! There’s hardly anyone I’ve reason to be more
+devoted to than Ellie,” his wife answered; and she felt his contrite
+clasp on her hand.
+
+“Darling! No; nor I--. Or more grateful to for leaving us alone in this
+heaven.”
+
+Dimness had fallen on the waters, and her lifted lips met his bending
+ones.
+
+Trailing late into dinner that evening, Ellie announced that, after all,
+she had decided it was safest to wait for Nelson.
+
+“I should simply worry myself ill if I weren’t sure of getting my
+things,” she said, in the tone of tender solicitude with which she
+always discussed her own difficulties. “After all, people who deny
+themselves everything do get warped and bitter, don’t they?” she argued
+plaintively, her lovely eyes wandering from one to the other of her
+assembled friends.
+
+Strefford remarked gravely that it was the complaint which had fatally
+undermined his own health; and in the laugh that followed the party
+drifted into the great vaulted dining-room.
+
+“Oh, I don’t mind your laughing at me, Streffy darling,” his hostess
+retorted, pressing his arm against her own; and Susy, receiving the
+shock of their rapidly exchanged glance, said to herself, with a sharp
+twinge of apprehension: “Of course Streffy knows everything; he showed
+no surprise at finding Ellie away when he arrived. And if he knows,
+what’s to prevent Nelson’s finding out?” For Strefford, in a mood of
+mischief, was no more to be trusted than a malicious child.
+
+Susy instantly resolved to risk speaking to him, if need be even
+betraying to him the secret of the letters. Only by revealing the depth
+of her own danger could she hope to secure his silence.
+
+On the balcony, late in the evening, while the others were listening
+indoors to the low modulations of a young composer who had embroidered
+his fancies on Browning’s “Toccata,” Susy found her chance. Strefford,
+unsummoned, had followed her out, and stood silently smoking at her
+side.
+
+“You see, Streff--oh, why should you and I make mysteries to each
+other?” she suddenly began.
+
+“Why, indeed: but do we?”
+
+Susy glanced back at the group around the piano. “About Ellie, I
+mean--and Nelson.”
+
+“Lord! Ellie and Nelson? You call that a mystery? I should as soon apply
+the term to one of the million candle-power advertisements that adorn
+your native thoroughfares.”
+
+“Well, yes. But--” She stopped again. Had she not tacitly promised Ellie
+not to speak?
+
+“My Susan, what’s wrong?” Strefford asked.
+
+“I don’t know....”
+
+“Well, I do, then: you’re afraid that, if Ellie and Nelson meet here,
+she’ll blurt out something--injudicious.”
+
+“Oh, she won’t!” Susy cried with conviction.
+
+“Well, then--who will! I trust that superhuman child not to. And you and
+I and Nick--”
+
+“Oh,” she gasped, interrupting him, “that’s just it. Nick doesn’t
+know... doesn’t even suspect. And if he did....”
+
+Strefford flung away his cigar and turned to scrutinize her. “I don’t
+see--hanged if I do. What business is it of any of us, after all?”
+
+That, of course, was the old view that cloaked connivance in an air of
+decency. But to Susy it no longer carried conviction, and she hesitated.
+
+“If Nick should find out that I know....”
+
+“Good Lord--doesn’t he know that you know? After all, I suppose it’s not
+the first time--”
+
+She remained silent.
+
+“The first time you’ve received confidences--from married friends. Does
+Nick suppose you’ve lived even to your tender age without... Hang it,
+what’s come over you, child?”
+
+What had, indeed, that she could make clear to him? And yet more than
+ever she felt the need of having him securely on her side. Once his word
+was pledged, he was safe: otherwise there was no limit to his capacity
+for wilful harmfulness.
+
+“Look here, Streff, you and I know that Ellie hasn’t been away for a
+cure; and that if poor Clarissa was sworn to secrecy it was not because
+it ‘worries father’ to think that mother needs to take care of her
+health.” She paused, hating herself for the ironic note she had tried to
+sound.
+
+“Well--?” he questioned, from the depths of the chair into which he had
+sunk.
+
+“Well, Nick doesn’t... doesn’t dream of it. If he knew that we owed our
+summer here to... to my knowing....”
+
+Strefford sat silent: she felt his astonished stare through the
+darkness. “Jove!” he said at last, with a low whistle Susy bent over the
+balustrade, her heart thumping against the stone rail.
+
+“What was left of soul, I wonder--?” the young composer’s voice shrilled
+through the open windows.
+
+Strefford sank into another silence, from which he roused himself only
+as Susy turned back toward the lighted threshold.
+
+“Well, my dear, we’ll see it through between us; you and I--and
+Clarissa,” he said with his rasping laugh, rising to follow her. He
+caught her hand and gave it a short pressure as they re-entered the
+drawing-room, where Ellie was saying plaintively to Fred Gillow: “I can
+never hear that thing sung without wanting to cry like a baby.”
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+
+NELSON VANDERLYN, still in his travelling clothes, paused on the
+threshold of his own dining-room and surveyed the scene with pardonable
+satisfaction.
+
+He was a short round man, with a grizzled head, small facetious eyes and
+a large and credulous smile.
+
+At the luncheon table sat his wife, between Charlie Strefford and Nick
+Lansing. Next to Strefford, perched on her high chair, Clarissa throned
+in infant beauty, while Susy Lansing cut up a peach for her. Through
+wide orange awnings the sun slanted in upon the white-clad group.
+
+“Well--well--well! So I’ve caught you at it!” cried the happy father,
+whose inveterate habit it was to address his wife and friends as if he
+had surprised them at an inopportune moment. Stealing up from behind, he
+lifted his daughter into the air, while a chorus of “Hello, old Nelson,”
+ hailed his appearance.
+
+It was two or three years since Nick Lansing had seen Mr. Vanderlyn, who
+was now the London representative of the big New York bank of Vanderlyn
+& Co., and had exchanged his sumptuous house in Fifth Avenue for
+another, more sumptuous still, in Mayfair; and the young man looked
+curiously and attentively at his host.
+
+Mr. Vanderlyn had grown older and stouter, but his face still kept
+its look of somewhat worn optimism. He embraced his wife, greeted Susy
+affectionately, and distributed cordial hand-grasps to the two men.
+
+“Hullo,” he exclaimed, suddenly noticing a pearl and coral trinket
+hanging from Clarissa’s neck. “Who’s been giving my daughter jewellery,
+I’d like to know!”
+
+“Oh, Streffy did--just think, father! Because I said I’d rather have it
+than a book, you know,” Clarissa lucidly explained, her arms tight about
+her father’s neck, her beaming eyes on Strefford.
+
+Nelson Vanderlyn’s own eyes took on the look of shrewdness which came
+into them whenever there was a question of material values.
+
+“What, Streffy? Caught you at it, eh? Upon my soul-spoiling the brat
+like that! You’d no business to, my dear chap-a lovely baroque pearl--”
+ he protested, with the half-apologetic tone of the rich man embarrassed
+by too costly a gift from an impecunious friend.
+
+“Oh, hadn’t I? Why? Because it’s too good for Clarissa, or too expensive
+for me? Of course you daren’t imply the first; and as for me--I’ve had a
+windfall, and am blowing it in on the ladies.”
+
+Strefford, Lansing had noticed, always used American slang when he was
+slightly at a loss, and wished to divert attention from the main point.
+But why was he embarrassed, whose attention did he wish to divert, It
+was plain that Vanderlyn’s protest had been merely formal: like most of
+the wealthy, he had only the dimmest notion of what money represented
+to the poor. But it was unusual for Strefford to give any one a present,
+and especially an expensive one: perhaps that was what had fixed
+Vanderlyn’s attention.
+
+“A windfall?” he gaily repeated.
+
+“Oh, a tiny one: I was offered a thumping rent for my little place at
+Como, and dashed over here to squander my millions with the rest of
+you,” said Strefford imperturbably.
+
+Vanderlyn’s look immediately became interested and sympathetic.
+“What--the scene of the honey-moon?” He included Nick and Susy in his
+friendly smile.
+
+“Just so: the reward of virtue. I say, give me a cigar, will you, old
+man, I left some awfully good ones at Como, worse luck--and I don’t mind
+telling you that Ellie’s no judge of tobacco, and that Nick’s too far
+gone in bliss to care what he smokes,” Strefford grumbled, stretching a
+hand toward his host’s cigar-case.
+
+“I do like jewellery best,” Clarissa murmured, hugging her father.
+
+Nelson Vanderlyn’s first word to his wife had been that he had
+brought her all her toggery; and she had welcomed him with appropriate
+enthusiasm. In fact, to the lookers-on her joy at seeing him seemed
+rather too patently in proportion to her satisfaction at getting her
+clothes. But no such suspicion appeared to mar Mr. Vanderlyn’s happiness
+in being, for once, and for nearly twenty-four hours, under the same
+roof with his wife and child. He did not conceal his regret at having
+promised his mother to join her the next day; and added, with a wistful
+glance at Ellie: “If only I’d known you meant to wait for me!”
+
+But being a man of duty, in domestic as well as business affairs, he did
+not even consider the possibility of disappointing the exacting old lady
+to whom he owed his being. “Mother cares for so few people,” he used to
+say, not without a touch of filial pride in the parental exclusiveness,
+“that I have to be with her rather more than if she were more sociable”;
+and with smiling resignation he gave orders that Clarissa should be
+ready to start the next evening.
+
+“And meanwhile,” he concluded, “we’ll have all the good time that’s
+going.”
+
+The ladies of the party seemed united in the desire to further this
+resolve; and it was settled that as soon as Mr. Vanderlyn had despatched
+a hasty luncheon, his wife, Clarissa and Susy should carry him off for a
+tea-picnic at Torcello. They did not even suggest that Strefford or Nick
+should be of the party, or that any of the other young men of the group
+should be summoned; as Susy said, Nelson wanted to go off alone with his
+harem. And Lansing and Strefford were left to watch the departure of the
+happy Pasha ensconced between attentive beauties.
+
+“Well--that’s what you call being married!” Strefford commented, waving
+his battered Panama at Clarissa.
+
+“Oh, no, I don’t!” Lansing laughed.
+
+“He does. But do you know--” Strefford paused and swung about on his
+companion--“do you know, when the Rude Awakening comes, I don’t care to
+be there. I believe there’ll be some crockery broken.”
+
+“Shouldn’t wonder,” Lansing answered indifferently. He wandered away to
+his own room, leaving Strefford to philosophize to his pipe.
+
+Lansing had always known about poor old Nelson: who hadn’t, except poor
+old Nelson? The case had once seemed amusing because so typical; now, it
+rather irritated Nick that Vanderlyn should be so complete an ass. But
+he would be off the next day, and so would Ellie, and then, for many
+enchanted weeks, the palace would once more be the property of Nick and
+Susy. Of all the people who came and went in it, they were the only ones
+who appreciated it, or knew how it was meant to be lived in; and that
+made it theirs in the only valid sense. In this light it became easy to
+regard the Vanderlyns as mere transient intruders.
+
+Having relegated them to this convenient distance, Lansing shut himself
+up with his book. He had returned to it with fresh energy after his few
+weeks of holiday-making, and was determined to finish it quickly. He did
+not expect that it would bring in much money; but if it were moderately
+successful it might give him an opening in the reviews and magazines,
+and in that case he meant to abandon archaeology for novels, since
+it was only as a purveyor of fiction that he could count on earning a
+living for himself and Susy.
+
+Late in the afternoon he laid down his pen and wandered out of doors.
+He loved the increasing heat of the Venetian summer, the bruised
+peach-tints of worn house-fronts, the enamelling of sunlight on dark
+green canals, the smell of half-decayed fruits and flowers thickening
+the languid air. What visions he could build, if he dared, of being
+tucked away with Susy in the attic of some tumble-down palace, above
+a jade-green waterway, with a terrace overhanging a scrap of neglected
+garden--and cheques from the publishers dropping in at convenient
+intervals! Why should they not settle in Venice if he pulled it off!
+
+He found himself before the church of the Scalzi, and pushing open the
+leathern door wandered up the nave under the whirl of rose-and-lemon
+angels in Tiepolo’s great vault. It was not a church in which one was
+likely to run across sight-seers; but he presently remarked a young lady
+standing alone near the choir, and assiduously applying her field-glass
+to the celestial vortex, from which she occasionally glanced down at an
+open manual.
+
+As Lansing’s step sounded on the pavement, the young lady, turning,
+revealed herself as Miss Hicks.
+
+“Ah--you like this too? It’s several centuries out of your line, though,
+isn’t it!” Nick asked as they shook hands.
+
+She gazed at him gravely. “Why shouldn’t one like things that are out
+of one’s line?” she answered; and he agreed, with a laugh, that it was
+often an incentive.
+
+She continued to fix her grave eyes on him, and after one or two remarks
+about the Tiepolos he perceived that she was feeling her way toward a
+subject of more personal interest.
+
+“I’m glad to see you alone,” she said at length, with an abruptness that
+might have seemed awkward had it not been so completely unconscious.
+She turned toward a cluster of straw chairs, and signed to Nick to seat
+himself beside her.
+
+“I seldom do,” she added, with the serious smile that made her heavy
+face almost handsome; and she went on, giving him no time to protest: “I
+wanted to speak to you--to explain about father’s invitation to go with
+us to Persia and Turkestan.”
+
+“To explain?”
+
+“Yes. You found the letter when you arrived here just after your
+marriage, didn’t you? You must have thought it odd, our asking you just
+then; but we hadn’t heard that you were married.”
+
+“Oh, I guessed as much: it happened very quietly, and I was remiss about
+announcing it, even to old friends.”
+
+Lansing frowned. His thoughts had wandered away to the evening when he
+had found Mrs. Hicks’s letter in the mail awaiting him at Venice.
+The day was associated in his mind with the ridiculous and mortifying
+episode of the cigars--the expensive cigars that Susy had wanted to
+carry away from Strefford’s villa. Their brief exchange of views on the
+subject had left the first blur on the perfect surface of his happiness,
+and he still felt an uncomfortable heat at the remembrance. For a few
+hours the prospect of life with Susy had seemed unendurable; and it was
+just at that moment that he had found the letter from Mrs. Hicks, with
+its almost irresistible invitation. If only her daughter had known how
+nearly he had accepted it!
+
+“It was a dreadful temptation,” he said, smiling.
+
+“To go with us? Then why--?”
+
+“Oh, everything’s different now: I’ve got to stick to my writing.”
+
+Miss Hicks still bent on him the same unblinking scrutiny. “Does that
+mean that you’re going to give up your real work?”
+
+“My real work--archaeology?” He smiled again to hide a twitch of regret.
+“Why, I’m afraid it hardly produces a living wage; and I’ve got to think
+of that.” He coloured suddenly, as if suspecting that Miss Hicks might
+consider the avowal an opening for he hardly knew what ponderous
+offer of aid. The Hicks munificence was too uncalculating not to be
+occasionally oppressive. But looking at her again he saw that her eyes
+were full of tears.
+
+“I thought it was your vocation,” she said.
+
+“So did I. But life comes along, and upsets things.”
+
+“Oh, I understand. There may be things--worth giving up all other things
+for.”
+
+“There are!” cried Nick with beaming emphasis.
+
+He was conscious that Miss Hicks’s eyes demanded of him even more than
+this sweeping affirmation.
+
+“But your novel may fail,” she said with her odd harshness.
+
+“It may--it probably will,” he agreed. “But if one stopped to consider
+such possibilities--”
+
+“Don’t you have to, with a wife?”
+
+“Oh, my dear Coral--how old are you? Not twenty?” he questioned, laying
+a brotherly hand on hers.
+
+She stared at him a moment, and sprang up clumsily from her chair. “I
+was never young... if that’s what you mean. It’s lucky, isn’t it, that
+my parents gave me such a grand education? Because, you see, art’s a
+wonderful resource.” (She pronounced it RE-source.)
+
+He continued to look at her kindly. “You won’t need it--or any
+other--when you grow young, as you will some day,” he assured her.
+
+“Do you mean, when I fall in love? But I am in love--Oh, there’s
+Eldorada and Mr. Beck!” She broke off with a jerk, signalling with her
+field-glass to the pair who had just appeared at the farther end of the
+nave. “I told them that if they’d meet me here to-day I’d try to make
+them understand Tiepolo. Because, you see, at home we never really
+have understood Tiepolo; and Mr. Beck and Eldorada are the only ones to
+realize it. Mr. Buttles simply won’t.” She turned to Lansing and held
+out her hand. “I am in love,” she repeated earnestly, “and that’s the
+reason why I find art such a RE source.”
+
+She restored her eye-glasses, opened her manual, and strode across the
+church to the expectant neophytes.
+
+Lansing, looking after her, wondered for half a moment whether Mr. Beck
+were the object of this apparently unrequited sentiment; then, with a
+queer start of introspection, abruptly decided that, no, he certainly
+was not. But then--but then--. Well, there was no use in following up
+such conjectures.... He turned home-ward, wondering if the picnickers
+had already reached Palazzo Vanderlyn.
+
+They got back only in time for a late dinner, full of chaff and
+laughter, and apparently still enchanted with each other’s society.
+Nelson Vanderlyn beamed on his wife, sent his daughter off to bed with a
+kiss, and leaning back in his armchair before the fruit-and-flower-laden
+table, declared that he’d never spent a jollier day in his life. Susy
+seemed to come in for a full share of his approbation, and Lansing
+thought that Ellie was unusually demonstrative to her friend. Strefford,
+from his hostess’s side, glanced across now and then at young Mrs.
+Lansing, and his glance seemed to Lansing a confidential comment on the
+Vanderlyn raptures. But then Strefford was always having private jokes
+with people or about them; and Lansing was irritated with himself for
+perpetually suspecting his best friends of vague complicities at his
+expense. “If I’m going to be jealous of Streffy now--!” he concluded
+with a grimace of self-derision.
+
+Certainly Susy looked lovely enough to justify the most irrational
+pangs. As a girl she had been, for some people’s taste, a trifle
+fine-drawn and sharp-edged; now, to her old lightness of line was added
+a shadowy bloom, a sort of star-reflecting depth. Her movements were
+slower, less angular; her mouth had a needing droop, her lids seemed
+weighed down by their lashes; and then suddenly the old spirit would
+reveal itself through the new languor, like the tartness at the core
+of a sweet fruit. As her husband looked at her across the flowers and
+lights he laughed inwardly at the nothingness of all things else.
+
+Vanderlyn and Clarissa left betimes the next morning; and Mrs.
+Vanderlyn, who was to start for St. Moritz in the afternoon, devoted
+her last hours to anxious conferences with her maid and Susy. Strefford,
+with Fred Gillow and the others, had gone for a swim at the Lido, and
+Lansing seized the opportunity to get back to his book.
+
+The quietness of the great echoing place gave him a foretaste of the
+solitude to come. By mid-August all their party would be scattered: the
+Hickses off on a cruise to Crete and the AEgean, Fred Gillow on the way
+to his moor, Strefford to stay with friends in Capri till his annual
+visit to Northumberland in September. One by one the others would
+follow, and Lansing and Susy be left alone in the great sun-proof
+palace, alone under the star-laden skies, alone with the great orange
+moons--still theirs!--above the bell-tower of San Giorgio. The novel, in
+that blessed quiet, would unfold itself as harmoniously as his dreams.
+
+He wrote on, forgetful of the passing hours, till the door opened and he
+heard a step behind him. The next moment two hands were clasped over his
+eyes, and the air was full of Mrs. Vanderlyn’s last new scent.
+
+“You dear thing--I’m just off, you know,” she said. “Susy told me you
+were working, and I forbade her to call you down. She and Streffy are
+waiting to take me to the station, and I’ve run up to say good-bye.”
+
+“Ellie, dear!” Full of compunction, Lansing pushed aside his writing and
+started up; but she pressed him back into his seat.
+
+“No, no! I should never forgive myself if I’d interrupted you. I
+oughtn’t to have come up; Susy didn’t want me to. But I had to tell you,
+you dear.... I had to thank you...”
+
+In her dark travelling dress and hat, so discreetly conspicuous, so
+negligent and so studied, with a veil masking her paint, and gloves
+hiding her rings, she looked younger, simpler, more natural than he had
+ever seen her. Poor Ellie such a good fellow, after all!
+
+“To thank me? For what? For being so happy here?” he laughed, taking her
+hands.
+
+She looked at him, laughed back, and flung her arms about his neck.
+
+“For helping me to be so happy elsewhere--you and Susy, you two blessed
+darlings!” she cried, with a kiss on his cheek.
+
+Their eyes met for a second; then her arms slipped slowly downward,
+dropping to her sides. Lansing sat before her like a stone.
+
+“Oh,” she gasped, “why do you stare so? Didn’t you know...?”
+
+They heard Strefford’s shrill voice on the stairs. “Ellie, where the
+deuce are you? Susy’s in the gondola. You’ll miss the train!”
+
+Lansing stood up and caught Mrs. Vanderlyn by the wrist. “What do you
+mean? What are you talking about?”
+
+“Oh, nothing... But you were both such bricks about the letters.... And
+when Nelson was here, too.... Nick, don’t hurt my wrist so! I must run!”
+
+He dropped her hand and stood motionless, staring after her and
+listening to the click of her high heels as she fled across the room and
+along the echoing corridor.
+
+When he turned back to the table he noticed that a small morocco case
+had fallen among his papers. In falling it had opened, and before him,
+on the pale velvet lining, lay a scarf-pin set with a perfect pearl. He
+picked the box up, and was about to hasten after Mrs. Vanderlyn--it
+was so like her to shed jewels on her path!--when he noticed his own
+initials on the cover.
+
+He dropped the box as if it had been a hot coal, and sat for a long
+while gazing at the gold N. L., which seemed to have burnt itself into
+his flesh.
+
+At last he roused himself and stood up.
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+
+WITH a sigh of relief Susy drew the pins from her hat and threw herself
+down on the lounge.
+
+The ordeal she had dreaded was over, and Mr. and Mrs. Vanderlyn had
+safely gone their several ways. Poor Ellie was not noted for prudence,
+and when life smiled on her she was given to betraying her gratitude too
+openly; but thanks to Susy’s vigilance (and, no doubt, to Strefford’s
+tacit co-operation), the dreaded twenty-four hours were happily over.
+Nelson Vanderlyn had departed without a shadow on his brow, and though
+Ellie’s, when she came down from bidding Nick good-bye, had seemed to
+Susy less serene than usual, she became her normal self as soon as it
+was discovered that the red morocco bag with her jewel-box was missing.
+Before it had been discovered in the depths of the gondola they had
+reached the station, and there was just time to thrust her into her
+“sleeper,” from which she was seen to wave an unperturbed farewell to
+her friends.
+
+“Well, my dear, we’ve been it through,” Strefford remarked with a deep
+breath as the St. Moritz express rolled away.
+
+“Oh,” Susy sighed in mute complicity; then, as if to cover her
+self-betrayal: “Poor darling, she does so like what she likes!”
+
+“Yes--even if it’s a rotten bounder,” Strefford agreed.
+
+“A rotten bounder? Why, I thought--”
+
+“That it was still young Davenant? Lord, no--not for the last six
+months. Didn’t she tell you--?”
+
+Susy felt herself redden. “I didn’t ask her--”
+
+“Ask her? You mean you didn’t let her!”
+
+“I didn’t let her. And I don’t let you,” Susy added sharply, as he
+helped her into the gondola.
+
+“Oh, all right: I daresay you’re right. It simplifies things,” Strefford
+placidly acquiesced.
+
+She made no answer, and in silence they glided homeward.
+
+Now, in the quiet of her own room, Susy lay and pondered on the distance
+she had travelled during the last year. Strefford had read her mind with
+his usual penetration. It was true that there had been a time when
+she would have thought it perfectly natural that Ellie should tell
+her everything; that the name of young Davenant’s successor should be
+confided to her as a matter of course. Apparently even Ellie had been
+obscurely aware of the change, for after a first attempt to force her
+confidences on Susy she had contented herself with vague expressions of
+gratitude, allusive smiles and sighs, and the pretty “surprise” of the
+sapphire bangle slipped onto her friend’s wrist in the act of their
+farewell embrace.
+
+The bangle was extremely handsome. Susy, who had an auctioneer’s eye
+for values, knew to a fraction the worth of those deep convex stones
+alternating with small emeralds and brilliants. She was glad to own the
+bracelet, and enchanted with the effect it produced on her slim wrist;
+yet, even while admiring it, and rejoicing that it was hers, she had
+already transmuted it into specie, and reckoned just how far it would go
+toward the paying of domestic necessities. For whatever came to her now
+interested her only as something more to be offered up to Nick.
+
+The door opened and Nick came in. Dusk had fallen, and she could not
+see his face; but something in the jerk of the door-handle roused her
+ever-wakeful apprehension. She hurried toward him with outstretched
+wrist.
+
+“Look, dearest--wasn’t it too darling of Ellie?”
+
+She pressed the button of the lamp that lit her dressing-table, and her
+husband’s face started unfamiliarly out of the twilight. She slipped off
+the bracelet and held it up to him.
+
+“Oh, I can go you one better,” he said with a laugh; and pulling a
+morocco case from his pocket he flung it down among the scent-bottles.
+
+Susy opened the case automatically, staring at the pearl because she was
+afraid to look again at Nick.
+
+“Ellie--gave you this?” she asked at length.
+
+“Yes. She gave me this.” There was a pause. “Would you mind telling
+me,” Lansing continued in the same dead-level tone, “exactly for what
+services we’ve both been so handsomely paid?”
+
+“The pearl is beautiful,” Susy murmured, to gain time, while her head
+spun round with unimaginable terrors.
+
+“So are your sapphires; though, on closer examination, my services would
+appear to have been valued rather higher than yours. Would you be kind
+enough to tell me just what they were?”
+
+Susy threw her head back and looked at him. “What on earth are you
+talking about, Nick! Why shouldn’t Ellie have given us these things? Do
+you forget that it’s like our giving her a pen-wiper or a button-hook?
+What is it you are trying to suggest?”
+
+It had cost her a considerable effort to hold his eyes while she put
+the questions. Something had happened between him and Ellie, that was
+evident--one of those hideous unforeseeable blunders that may cause one’s
+cleverest plans to crumble at a stroke; and again Susy shuddered at
+the frailty of her bliss. But her old training stood her in good stead.
+There had been more than one moment in her past when everything--somebody
+else’s everything--had depended on her keeping a cool head and a clear
+glance. It would have been a wonder if now, when she felt her own
+everything at stake, she had not been able to put up as good a defence.
+
+“What is it?” she repeated impatiently, as Lansing continued to remain
+silent.
+
+“That’s what I’m here to ask,” he returned, keeping his eyes as steady
+as she kept hers. “There’s no reason on earth, as you say, why Ellie
+shouldn’t give us presents--as expensive presents as she likes; and the
+pearl is a beauty. All I ask is: for what specific services were they
+given? For, allowing for all the absence of scruple that marks the
+intercourse of truly civilized people, you’ll probably agree that there
+are limits; at least up to now there have been limits....”
+
+“I really don’t know what you mean. I suppose Ellie wanted to show that
+she was grateful to us for looking after Clarissa.”
+
+“But she gave us all this in exchange for that, didn’t she?” he
+suggested, with a sweep of the hand around the beautiful shadowy room.
+“A whole summer of it if we choose.”
+
+Susy smiled. “Apparently she didn’t think that enough.”
+
+“What a doting mother! It shows the store she sets upon her child.”
+
+“Well, don’t you set store upon Clarissa?”
+
+“Clarissa is exquisite; but her mother didn’t mention her in offering me
+this recompense.”
+
+Susy lifted her head again. “Whom did she mention?”
+
+“Vanderlyn,” said Lansing.
+
+“Vanderlyn? Nelson?”
+
+“Yes--and some letters... something about letters.... What is it, my
+dear, that you and I have been hired to hide from Vanderlyn? Because I
+should like to know,” Nick broke out savagely, “if we’ve been adequately
+paid.”
+
+Susy was silent: she needed time to reckon up her forces, and study her
+next move; and her brain was in such a whirl of fear that she could at
+last only retort: “What is it that Ellie said to you?”
+
+Lansing laughed again. “That’s just what you’d like to find out--isn’t
+it?--in order to know the line to take in making your explanation.”
+
+The sneer had an effect that he could not have foreseen, and that Susy
+herself had not expected.
+
+“Oh, don’t--don’t let us speak to each other like that!” she cried; and
+sinking down by the dressing-table she hid her face in her hands.
+
+It seemed to her, now, that nothing mattered except that their love
+for each other, their faith in each other, should be saved from some
+unhealable hurt. She was willing to tell Nick everything--she wanted to
+tell him everything--if only she could be sure of reaching a responsive
+chord in him. But the scene of the cigars came back to her, and benumbed
+her. If only she could make him see that nothing was of any account as
+long as they continued to love each other!
+
+His touch fell compassionately on her shoulder. “Poor child--don’t,” he
+said.
+
+Their eyes met, but his expression checked the smile breaking through
+her tears. “Don’t you see,” he continued, “that we’ve got to have this
+thing out?”
+
+She continued to stare at him through a prism of tears. “I can’t--while
+you stand up like that,” she stammered, childishly.
+
+She had cowered down again into a corner of the lounge; but Lansing did
+not seat himself at her side. He took a chair facing her, like a caller
+on the farther side of a stately tea-tray. “Will that do?” he asked with
+a stiff smile, as if to humour her.
+
+“Nothing will do--as long as you’re not you!”
+
+“Not me?”
+
+She shook her head wearily. “What’s the use? You accept things
+theoretically--and then when they happen....”
+
+“What things? What has happened!”
+
+A sudden impatience mastered her. What did he suppose, after all--? “But
+you know all about Ellie. We used to talk about her often enough in old
+times,” she said.
+
+“Ellie and young Davenant?”
+
+“Young Davenant; or the others....”
+
+“Or the others. But what business was it of ours?”
+
+“Ah, that’s just what I think!” she cried, springing up with an
+explosion of relief. Lansing stood up also, but there was no answering
+light in his face.
+
+“We’re outside of all that; we’ve nothing to do with it, have we?” he
+pursued.
+
+“Nothing whatever.”
+
+“Then what on earth is the meaning of Ellie’s gratitude? Gratitude for
+what we’ve done about some letters--and about Vanderlyn?”
+
+“Oh, not you,” Susy cried, involuntarily.
+
+“Not I? Then you?” He came close and took her by the wrist. “Answer me.
+Have you been mixed up in some dirty business of Ellie’s?”
+
+There was a pause. She found it impossible to speak, with that burning
+grasp on the wrist where the bangle had been. At length he let her go
+and moved away. “Answer,” he repeated.
+
+“I’ve told you it was my business and not yours.”
+
+He received this in silence; then he questioned: “You’ve been sending
+letters for her, I suppose? To whom?”
+
+“Oh, why do you torment me? Nelson was not supposed to know that she’d
+been away. She left me the letters to post to him once a week. I found
+them here the night we arrived.... It was the price--for this. Oh,
+Nick, say it’s been worth it--say at least that it’s been worth it!” she
+implored him.
+
+He stood motionless, unresponding. One hand drummed on the corner of her
+dressing-table, making the jewelled bangle dance.
+
+“How many letters?”
+
+“I don’t know... four... five... What does it matter?”
+
+“And once a week, for six weeks--?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“And you took it all as a matter of course?”
+
+“No: I hated it. But what could I do?”
+
+“What could you do?”
+
+“When our being together depended on it? Oh, Nick, how could you think
+I’d give you up?”
+
+“Give me up?” he echoed.
+
+“Well--doesn’t our being together depend on--on what we can get out of
+people? And hasn’t there always got to be some give-and-take? Did you
+ever in your life get anything for nothing?” she cried with sudden
+exasperation. “You’ve lived among these people as long as I have; I
+suppose it’s not the first time--”
+
+“By God, but it is,” he exclaimed, flushing. “And that’s the
+difference--the fundamental difference.”
+
+“The difference!”
+
+“Between you and me. I’ve never in my life done people’s dirty work for
+them--least of all for favours in return. I suppose you guessed it, or
+you wouldn’t have hidden this beastly business from me.”
+
+The blood rose to Susy’s temples also. Yes, she had guessed it;
+instinctively, from the day she had first visited him in his bare
+lodgings, she had been aware of his stricter standard. But how could she
+tell him that under his influence her standard had become stricter
+too, and that it was as much to hide her humiliation from herself as to
+escape his anger that she had held her tongue?
+
+“You knew I wouldn’t have stayed here another day if I’d known,” he
+continued.
+
+“Yes: and then where in the world should we have gone?”
+
+“You mean that--in one way or another--what you call give-and-take is
+the price of our remaining together?”
+
+“Well--isn’t it,” she faltered.
+
+“Then we’d better part, hadn’t we?”
+
+He spoke in a low tone, thoughtfully and deliberately, as if this had
+been the inevitable conclusion to which their passionate argument had
+led.
+
+Susy made no answer. For a moment she ceased to be conscious of the
+causes of what had happened; the thing itself seemed to have smothered
+her under its ruins.
+
+Nick wandered away from the dressing-table and stood gazing out of the
+window at the darkening canal flecked with lights. She looked at his
+back, and wondered what would happen if she were to go up to him and
+fling her arms about him. But even if her touch could have broken the
+spell, she was not sure she would have chosen that way of breaking it.
+Beneath her speechless anguish there burned the half-conscious sense
+of having been unfairly treated. When they had entered into their
+queer compact, Nick had known as well as she on what compromises and
+concessions the life they were to live together must be based. That he
+should have forgotten it seemed so unbelievable that she wondered, with
+a new leap of fear, if he were using the wretched Ellie’s indiscretion
+as a means of escape from a tie already wearied of. Suddenly she raised
+her head with a laugh.
+
+“After all--you were right when you wanted me to be your mistress.”
+
+He turned on her with an astonished stare. “You--my mistress?”
+
+Through all her pain she thrilled with pride at the discovery that
+such a possibility had long since become unthinkable to him. But she
+insisted. “That day at the Fulmers’--have you forgotten? When you said
+it would be sheer madness for us to marry.”
+
+Lansing stood leaning in the embrasure of the window, his eyes fixed on
+the mosaic volutes of the floor.
+
+“I was right enough when I said it would be sheer madness for us to
+marry,” he rejoined at length.
+
+She sprang up trembling. “Well, that’s easily settled. Our compact--”
+
+“Oh, that compact--” he interrupted her with an impatient laugh.
+
+“Aren’t you asking me to carry it out now?”
+
+“Because I said we’d better part?” He paused. “But the compact--I’d
+almost forgotten it--was to the effect, wasn’t it, that we were to give
+each other a helping hand if either of us had a better chance? The thing
+was absurd, of course; a mere joke; from my point of view, at least. I
+shall never want any better chance... any other chance....”
+
+“Oh, Nick, oh, Nick... but then....” She was close to him, his face
+looming down through her tears; but he put her back.
+
+“It would have been easy enough, wouldn’t it,” he rejoined, “if we’d
+been as detachable as all that? As it is, it’s going to hurt horribly.
+But talking it over won’t help. You were right just now when you asked
+how else we were going to live. We’re born parasites, both, I suppose,
+or we’d have found out some way long ago. But I find there are things I
+might put up with for myself, at a pinch--and should, probably, in time
+that I can’t let you put up with for me... ever.... Those cigars at
+Como: do you suppose I didn’t know it was for me? And this too? Well, it
+won’t do... it won’t do....”
+
+He stopped, as if his courage failed him; and she moaned out: “But your
+writing--if your book’s a success....”
+
+“My poor Susy--that’s all part of the humbug. We both know that my sort
+of writing will never pay. And what’s the alternative except more of
+the same kind of baseness? And getting more and more blunted to it? At
+least, till now, I’ve minded certain things; I don’t want to go on till
+I find myself taking them for granted.”
+
+She reached out a timid hand. “But you needn’t ever, dear... if you’d
+only leave it to me....”
+
+He drew back sharply. “That seems simple to you, I suppose? Well, men
+are different.” He walked toward the dressing-table and glanced at the
+little enamelled clock which had been one of her wedding-presents.
+
+“Time to dress, isn’t it? Shall you mind if I leave you to dine with
+Streffy, and whoever else is coming? I’d rather like a long tramp, and
+no more talking just at present except with myself.”
+
+He passed her by and walked rapidly out of the room. Susy stood
+motionless, unable to lift a detaining hand or to find a final word
+of appeal. On her disordered dressing-table Mrs. Vanderlyn’s gifts
+glittered in the rosy lamp-light.
+
+Yes: men were different, as he said.
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+
+BUT there were necessary accommodations, there always had been; Nick in
+old times, had been the first to own it.... How they had laughed at the
+Perpendicular People, the people who went by on the other side (since
+you couldn’t be a good Samaritan without stooping over and poking
+into heaps of you didn’t know what)! And now Nick had suddenly become
+perpendicular....
+
+Susy, that evening, at the head of the dinner table, saw--in the breaks
+between her scudding thoughts--the nauseatingly familiar faces of the
+people she called her friends: Strefford, Fred Gillow, a giggling fool
+of a young Breckenridge, of their New York group, who had arrived that
+day, and Prince Nerone Altineri, Ursula’s Prince, who, in Ursula’s
+absence at a tiresome cure, had, quite simply and naturally, preferred
+to join her husband at Venice. Susy looked from one to the other of
+them, as if with newly-opened eyes, and wondered what life would be like
+with no faces but such as theirs to furnish it....
+
+Ah, Nick had become perpendicular!... After all, most people went
+through life making a given set of gestures, like dance-steps learned
+in advance. If your dancing manual told you at a given time to be
+perpendicular, you had to be, automatically--and that was Nick!
+
+“But what on earth, Susy,” Gillow’s puzzled voice suddenly came to her
+as from immeasurable distances, “Are you going to do in this beastly
+stifling hole for the rest of the summer?”
+
+“Ask Nick, my dear fellow,” Strefford answered for her; and: “By the
+way, where is Nick--if one may ask?” young Breckenridge interposed,
+glancing up to take belated note of his host’s absence.
+
+“Dining out,” said Susy glibly. “People turned up: blighting bores that
+I wouldn’t have dared to inflict on you.” How easily the old familiar
+fibbing came to her!
+
+“The kind to whom you say, ‘Now mind you look me up’; and then spend the
+rest of your life dodging-like our good Hickses,” Strefford amplified.
+
+The Hickses--but, of course, Nick was with the Hickses! It went through
+Susy like a knife, and the dinner she had so lightly fibbed became a
+hateful truth. She said to herself feverishly: “I’ll call him up there
+after dinner--and then he will feel silly”--but only to remember that
+the Hickses, in their mediaeval setting, had of course sternly denied
+themselves a telephone.
+
+The fact of Nick’s temporary inaccessibility--since she was now
+convinced that he was really at the Hickses’--turned her distress to a
+mocking irritation. Ah, that was where he carried his principles, his
+standards, or whatever he called the new set of rules he had suddenly
+begun to apply to the old game! It was stupid of her not to have guessed
+it at once.
+
+“Oh, the Hickses--Nick adores them, you know. He’s going to marry Coral
+next,” she laughed out, flashing the joke around the table with all her
+practiced flippancy.
+
+“Lord!” grasped Gillow, inarticulate: while the Prince displayed the
+unsurprised smile which Susy accused him of practicing every morning
+with his Mueller exercises.
+
+Suddenly Susy felt Strefford’s eyes upon her.
+
+“What’s the matter with me? Too much rouge?” she asked, passing her arm
+in his as they left the table.
+
+“No: too little. Look at yourself,” he answered in a low tone.
+
+“Oh, in these cadaverous old looking-glasses-everybody looks fished up
+from the canal!”
+
+She jerked away from him to spin down the long floor of the sala, hands
+on hips, whistling a rag-time tune. The Prince and young Breckenridge
+caught her up, and she spun back with the latter, while Gillow--it was
+believed to be his sole accomplishment--snapped his fingers in simulation
+of bones, and shuffled after the couple on stamping feet.
+
+Susy sank down on a sofa near the window, fanning herself with a
+floating scarf, and the men foraged for cigarettes, and rang for the
+gondoliers, who came in with trays of cooling drinks.
+
+“Well, what next--this ain’t all, is it?” Gillow presently queried, from
+the divan where he lolled half-asleep with dripping brow. Fred Gillow,
+like Nature, abhorred a void, and it was inconceivable to him that every
+hour of man’s rational existence should not furnish a motive for getting
+up and going somewhere else. Young Breckenridge, who took the same view,
+and the Prince, who earnestly desired to, reminded the company that
+somebody they knew was giving a dance that night at the Lido.
+
+Strefford vetoed the Lido, on the ground that he’d just come back from
+there, and proposed that they should go out on foot for a change.
+
+“Why not? What fun!” Susy was up in an instant. “Let’s pay somebody a
+surprise visit--I don’t know who! Streffy, Prince, can’t you think of
+somebody who’d be particularly annoyed by our arrival?”
+
+“Oh, the list’s too long. Let’s start, and choose our victim on the
+way,” Strefford suggested.
+
+Susy ran to her room for a light cloak, and without changing her
+high-heeled satin slippers went out with the four men. There was no
+moon--thank heaven there was no moon!--but the stars hung over them as
+close as fruit, and secret fragrances dropped on them from garden-walls.
+Susy’s heart tightened with memories of Como.
+
+They wandered on, laughing and dawdling, and yielding to the drifting
+whims of aimless people. Presently someone proposed taking a nearer look
+at the facade of San Giorgio Maggiore, and they hailed a gondola and
+were rowed out through the bobbing lanterns and twanging guitar-strings.
+When they landed again, Gillow, always acutely bored by scenery, and
+particularly resentful of midnight aesthetics, suggested a night club
+near at hand, which was said to be jolly. The Prince warmly supported
+this proposal; but on Susy’s curt refusal they started their rambling
+again, circuitously threading the vague dark lanes and making for the
+Piazza and Florian’s ices. Suddenly, at a calle-corner, unfamiliar and
+yet somehow known to her, Susy paused to stare about her with a laugh.
+
+“But the Hickses--surely that’s their palace? And the windows all lit
+up! They must be giving a party! Oh, do let’s go up and surprise them!”
+ The idea struck her as one of the drollest that she had ever originated,
+and she wondered that her companions should respond so languidly.
+
+“I can’t see anything very thrilling in surprising the Hickses,” Gillow
+protested, defrauded of possible excitements; and Strefford added: “It
+would surprise me more than them if I went.”
+
+But Susy insisted feverishly: “You don’t know. It may be awfully
+exciting! I have an idea that Coral’s announcing her engagement--her
+engagement to Nick! Come, give me a hand, Streff--and you the other,
+Fred-” she began to hum the first bars of Donna Anna’s entrance in Don
+Giovanni. “Pity I haven’t got a black cloak and a mask....”
+
+“Oh, your face will do,” said Strefford, laying his hand on her arm.
+
+She drew back, flushing crimson. Breckenridge and the Prince had sprung
+on ahead, and Gillow, lumbering after them, was already halfway up the
+stairs.
+
+“My face? My face? What’s the matter with my face? Do you know any
+reason why I shouldn’t go to the Hickses to-night?” Susy broke out in
+sudden wrath.
+
+“None whatever; except that if you do it will bore me to death,”
+ Strefford returned, with serenity.
+
+“Oh, in that case--!”
+
+“No; come on. I hear those fools banging on the door already.” He caught
+her by the hand, and they started up the stairway. But on the first
+landing she paused, twisted her hand out of his, and without a word,
+without a conscious thought, dashed down the long flight, across the
+great resounding vestibule and out into the darkness of the calle.
+
+Strefford caught up with her, and they stood a moment silent in the
+night.
+
+“Susy--what the devil’s the matter?”
+
+“The matter? Can’t you see? That I’m tired, that I’ve got a splitting
+headache--that you bore me to death, one and all of you!” She turned and
+laid a deprecating hand on his arm. “Streffy, old dear, don’t mind me:
+but for God’s sake find a gondola and send me home.”
+
+“Alone?”
+
+“Alone.”
+
+It was never any concern of Streff’s if people wanted to do things he
+did not understand, and she knew that she could count on his obedience.
+They walked on in silence to the next canal, and he picked up a passing
+gondola and put her in it.
+
+“Now go and amuse yourself,” she called after him, as the boat shot
+under the nearest bridge. Anything, anything, to be alone, away from the
+folly and futility that would be all she had left if Nick were to drop
+out of her life....
+
+“But perhaps he has dropped already--dropped for good,” she thought as
+she set her foot on the Vanderlyn threshold.
+
+The short summer night was already growing transparent: a new born
+breeze stirred the soiled surface of the water and sent it lapping
+freshly against the old palace doorways. Nearly two o’clock! Nick had no
+doubt come back long ago. Susy hurried up the stairs, reassured by the
+mere thought of his nearness. She knew that when their eyes and their
+lips met it would be impossible for anything to keep them apart.
+
+The gondolier dozing on the landing roused himself to receive her, and
+to proffer two envelopes. The upper one was a telegram for Strefford:
+she threw it down again and paused under the lantern hanging from the
+painted vault, the other envelope in her hand. The address it bore was
+in Nick’s writing. “When did the signore leave this for me? Has he gone
+out again?”
+
+Gone out again? But the signore had not come in since dinner: of that
+the gondolier was positive, as he had been on duty all the evening.
+A boy had brought the letter--an unknown boy: he had left it without
+waiting. It must have been about half an hour after the signora had
+herself gone out with her guests.
+
+Susy, hardly hearing him, fled on to her own room, and there, beside the
+very lamp which, two months before, had illuminated Ellie Vanderlyn’s
+fatal letter, she opened Nick’s.
+
+“Don’t think me hard on you, dear; but I’ve got to work this thing out
+by myself. The sooner the better--don’t you agree? So I’m taking the
+express to Milan presently. You’ll get a proper letter in a day or two.
+I wish I could think, now, of something to say that would show you I’m
+not a brute--but I can’t. N. L.”
+
+There was not much of the night left in which to sleep, even had a
+semblance of sleep been achievable. The letter fell from Susy’s hands,
+and she crept out onto the balcony and cowered there, her forehead
+pressed against the balustrade, the dawn wind stirring in her thin
+laces. Through her closed eyelids and the tightly-clenched fingers
+pressed against them, she felt the penetration of the growing light,
+the relentless advance of another day--a day without purpose and without
+meaning--a day without Nick. At length she dropped her hands, and
+staring from dry lids saw a rim of fire above the roofs across the Grand
+Canal. She sprang up, ran back into her room, and dragging the heavy
+curtains shut across the windows, stumbled over in the darkness to the
+lounge and fell among its pillows-face downward--groping, delving for a
+deeper night....
+
+She started up, stiff and aching, to see a golden wedge of sun on the
+floor at her feet. She had slept, then--was it possible?--it must
+be eight or nine o’clock already! She had slept--slept like a
+drunkard--with that letter on the table at her elbow! Ah, now she
+remembered--she had dreamed that the letter was a dream! But there,
+inexorably, it lay; and she picked it up, and slowly, painfully re-read
+it. Then she tore it into shreds hunted for a match, and kneeling before
+the empty hearth, as though she were accomplishing some funeral rite,
+she burnt every shred of it to ashes. Nick would thank her for that some
+day!
+
+After a bath and a hurried toilet she began to be aware of feeling
+younger and more hopeful. After all, Nick had merely said that he was
+going away for “a day or two.” And the letter was not cruel: there
+were tender things in it, showing through the curt words. She smiled
+at herself a little stiffly in the glass, put a dash of red on her
+colourless lips, and rang for the maid.
+
+“Coffee, Giovanna, please; and will you tell Mr. Strefford that I should
+like to see him presently.”
+
+If Nick really kept to his intention of staying away for a few days she
+must trump up some explanation of his absence; but her mind refused to
+work, and the only thing she could think of was to take Strefford into
+her confidence. She knew that he could be trusted in a real difficulty;
+his impish malice transformed itself into a resourceful ingenuity when
+his friends required it.
+
+The maid stood looking at her with a puzzled gaze, and Susy somewhat
+sharply repeated her order. “But don’t wake him on purpose,” she added,
+foreseeing the probable effect on Strefford’s temper.
+
+“But, signora, the gentleman is already out.”
+
+“Already out?” Strefford, who could hardly be routed from his bed before
+luncheon-time! “Is it so late?” Susy cried, incredulous.
+
+“After nine. And the gentleman took the eight o’clock train for England.
+Gervaso said he had received a telegram. He left word that he would
+write to the signora.”
+
+The door closed upon the maid, and Susy continued to gaze at her painted
+image in the glass, as if she had been trying to outstare an importunate
+stranger. There was no one left for her to take counsel of, then--no one
+but poor Fred Gillow! She made a grimace at the idea.
+
+But what on earth could have summoned Strefford back to England?
+
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+
+
+NICK LANSING, in the Milan express, was roused by the same bar of
+sunshine lying across his knees. He yawned, looked with disgust at his
+stolidly sleeping neighbours, and wondered why he had decided to go to
+Milan, and what on earth he should do when he got there. The difficulty
+about trenchant decisions was that the next morning they generally left
+one facing a void....
+
+When the train drew into the station at Milan, he scrambled out, got
+some coffee, and having drunk it decided to continue his journey to
+Genoa. The state of being carried passively onward postponed action and
+dulled thought; and after twelve hours of furious mental activity that
+was exactly what he wanted.
+
+He fell into a doze again, waking now and then to haggard intervals
+of more thinking, and then dropping off to the clank and rattle of the
+train. Inside his head, in his waking intervals, the same clanking and
+grinding of wheels and chains went on unremittingly. He had done all his
+lucid thinking within an hour of leaving the Palazzo Vanderlyn the
+night before; since then, his brain had simply continued to revolve
+indefatigably about the same old problem. His cup of coffee, instead of
+clearing his thoughts, had merely accelerated their pace.
+
+At Genoa he wandered about in the hot streets, bought a cheap suit-case
+and some underclothes, and then went down to the port in search of a
+little hotel he remembered there. An hour later he was sitting in the
+coffee-room, smoking and glancing vacantly over the papers while he
+waited for dinner, when he became aware of being timidly but intently
+examined by a small round-faced gentleman with eyeglasses who sat alone
+at the adjoining table.
+
+“Hullo--Buttles!” Lansing exclaimed, recognising with surprise the
+recalcitrant secretary who had resisted Miss Hicks’s endeavour to
+convert him to Tiepolo.
+
+Mr. Buttles, blushing to the roots of his scant hair, half rose and
+bowed ceremoniously.
+
+Nick Lansing’s first feeling was of annoyance at being disturbed in his
+solitary broodings; his next, of relief at having to postpone them even
+to converse with Mr. Buttles.
+
+“No idea you were here: is the yacht in harbour?” he asked, remembering
+that the Ibis must be just about to spread her wings.
+
+Mr. Buttles, at salute behind his chair, signed a mute negation: for the
+moment he seemed too embarrassed to speak.
+
+“Ah--you’re here as an advance guard? I remember now--I saw Miss Hicks
+in Venice the day before yesterday,” Lansing continued, dazed at the
+thought that hardly forty-eight hours had passed since his encounter
+with Coral in the Scalzi.
+
+Mr. Buttles, instead of speaking, had tentatively approached his table.
+“May I take this seat for a moment, Mr. Lansing? Thank you. No, I am
+not here as an advance guard--though I believe the Ibis is due some
+time to-morrow.” He cleared his throat, wiped his eyeglasses on a silk
+handkerchief, replaced them on his nose, and went on solemnly: “Perhaps,
+to clear up any possible misunderstanding, I ought to say that I am no
+longer in the employ of Mr. Hicks.”
+
+Lansing glanced at him sympathetically. It was clear that he suffered
+horribly in imparting this information, though his compact face did not
+lend itself to any dramatic display of emotion.
+
+“Really,” Nick smiled, and then ventured: “I hope it’s not owing to
+conscientious objections to Tiepolo?”
+
+Mr. Buttles’s blush became a smouldering agony. “Ah, Miss Hicks
+mentioned to you... told you...? No, Mr. Lansing. I am principled
+against the effete art of Tiepolo, and of all his contemporaries, I
+confess; but if Miss Hicks chooses to surrender herself momentarily
+to the unwholesome spell of the Italian decadence it is not for me to
+protest or to criticize. Her intellectual and aesthetic range so far
+exceeds my humble capacity that it would be ridiculous, unbecoming....”
+
+He broke off, and once more wiped a faint moisture from his eyeglasses.
+It was evident that he was suffering from a distress which he longed and
+yet dreaded to communicate. But Nick made no farther effort to bridge
+the gulf of his own preoccupations; and Mr. Buttles, after an expectant
+pause, went on: “If you see me here to-day it is only because, after
+a somewhat abrupt departure, I find myself unable to take leave of
+our friends without a last look at the Ibis--the scene of so many
+stimulating hours. But I must beg you,” he added earnestly, “should you
+see Miss Hicks--or any other member of the party--to make no allusion
+to my presence in Genoa. I wish,” said Mr. Buttles with simplicity, “to
+preserve the strictest incognito.”
+
+Lansing glanced at him kindly. “Oh, but--isn’t that a little
+unfriendly?”
+
+“No other course is possible, Mr. Lansing,” said the ex-secretary, “and
+I commit myself to your discretion. The truth is, if I am here it is not
+to look once more at the Ibis, but at Miss Hicks: once only. You will
+understand me, and appreciate what I am suffering.”
+
+He bowed again, and trotted away on his small, tightly-booted feet;
+pausing on the threshold to say: “From the first it was hopeless,”
+ before he disappeared through the glass doors.
+
+A gleam of commiseration flashed through Nick’s mind: there was
+something quaintly poignant in the sight of the brisk and efficient
+Mr. Buttles reduced to a limp image of unrequited passion. And what
+a painful surprise to the Hickses to be thus suddenly deprived of the
+secretary who possessed “the foreign languages”! Mr. Beck kept the
+accounts and settled with the hotel-keepers; but it was Mr. Buttles’s
+loftier task to entertain in their own tongues the unknown geniuses who
+flocked about the Hickses, and Nick could imagine how disconcerting his
+departure must be on the eve of their Grecian cruise which Mrs. Hicks
+would certainly call an Odyssey.
+
+The next moment the vision of Coral’s hopeless suitor had faded, and
+Nick was once more spinning around on the wheel of his own woes.
+The night before, when he had sent his note to Susy, from a little
+restaurant close to Palazzo Vanderlyn that they often patronized, he had
+done so with the firm intention of going away for a day or two in order
+to collect his wits and think over the situation. But after his letter
+had been entrusted to the landlord’s little son, who was a particular
+friend of Susy’s, Nick had decided to await the lad’s return. The
+messenger had not been bidden to ask for an answer; but Nick, knowing
+the friendly and inquisitive Italian mind, was almost sure that the boy,
+in the hope of catching a glimpse of Susy, would linger about while the
+letter was carried up. And he pictured the maid knocking at his wife’s
+darkened room, and Susy dashing some powder on her tear-stained face
+before she turned on the light--poor foolish child!
+
+The boy had returned rather sooner than Nick expected, and he had
+brought no answer, but merely the statement that the signora was out:
+that everybody was out.
+
+“Everybody?”
+
+“The signora and the four gentlemen who were dining at the palace. They
+all went out together on foot soon after dinner. There was no one to
+whom I could give the note but the gondolier on the landing, for the
+signora had said she would be very late, and had sent the maid to bed;
+and the maid had, of course, gone out immediately with her innamorato.”
+
+“Ah--” said Nick, slipping his reward into the boy’s hand, and walking
+out of the restaurant.
+
+Susy had gone out--gone out with their usual band, as she did every
+night in these sultry summer weeks, gone out after her talk with Nick,
+as if nothing had happened, as if his whole world and hers had not
+crashed in ruins at their feet. Ah, poor Susy! After all, she had merely
+obeyed the instinct of self preservation, the old hard habit of keeping
+up, going ahead and hiding her troubles; unless indeed the habit had
+already engendered indifference, and it had become as easy for her as
+for most of her friends to pass from drama to dancing, from sorrow to
+the cinema. What of soul was left, he wondered--?
+
+His train did not start till midnight, and after leaving the restaurant
+Nick tramped the sultry by-ways till his tired legs brought him to a
+standstill under the vine-covered pergola of a gondolier’s wine-shop at
+a landing close to the Piazzetta. There he could absorb cooling drinks
+until it was time to go to the station.
+
+It was after eleven, and he was beginning to look about for a boat, when
+a black prow pushed up to the steps, and with much chaff and laughter a
+party of young people in evening dress jumped out. Nick, from under the
+darkness of the vine, saw that there was only one lady among them, and
+it did not need the lamp above the landing to reveal her identity. Susy,
+bareheaded and laughing, a light scarf slipping from her bare shoulders,
+a cigarette between her fingers, took Strefford’s arm and turned in the
+direction of Florian’s, with Gillow, the Prince and young Breckenridge
+in her wake....
+
+Nick had relived this rapid scene hundreds of times during his hours
+in the train and his aimless trampings through the streets of Genoa. In
+that squirrel-wheel of a world of his and Susy’s you had to keep going
+or drop out--and Susy, it was evident, had chosen to keep going. Under
+the lamp-flare on the landing he had had a good look at her face, and
+had seen that the mask of paint and powder was carefully enough adjusted
+to hide any ravages the scene between them might have left. He even
+fancied that she had dropped a little atropine into her eyes....
+
+There was no time to spare if he meant to catch the midnight train, and
+no gondola in sight but that which his wife had just left. He sprang
+into it, and bade the gondolier carry him to the station. The cushions,
+as he leaned back, gave out a breath of her scent; and in the glare of
+electric light at the station he saw at his feet a rose which had fallen
+from her dress. He ground his heel into it as he got out.
+
+There it was, then; that was the last picture he was to have of her. For
+he knew now that he was not going back; at least not to take up their
+life together. He supposed he should have to see her once, to talk
+things over, settle something for their future. He had been sincere in
+saying that he bore her no ill-will; only he could never go back into
+that slough again. If he did, he knew he would inevitably be drawn
+under, slipping downward from concession to concession....
+
+The noises of a hot summer night in the port of Genoa would have kept
+the most care-free from slumber; but though Nick lay awake he did
+not notice them, for the tumult in his brain was more deafening. Dawn
+brought a negative relief, and out of sheer weariness he dropped into a
+heavy sleep. When he woke it was nearly noon, and from his window he saw
+the well-known outline of the Ibis standing up dark against the glitter
+of the harbour. He had no fear of meeting her owners, who had doubtless
+long since landed and betaken themselves to cooler and more fashionable
+regions: oddly enough, the fact seemed to accentuate his loneliness, his
+sense of having no one on earth to turn to. He dressed, and wandered out
+disconsolately to pick up a cup of coffee in some shady corner.
+
+As he drank his coffee his thoughts gradually cleared. It became
+obvious to him that he had behaved like a madman or a petulant child--he
+preferred to think it was like a madman. If he and Susy were to separate
+there was no reason why it should not be done decently and quietly, as
+such transactions were habitually managed among people of their kind.
+It seemed grotesque to introduce melodrama into their little world
+of unruffled Sybarites, and he felt inclined, now, to smile at the
+incongruity of his gesture.... But suddenly his eyes filled with tears.
+The future without Susy was unbearable, inconceivable. Why, after all,
+should they separate? At the question, her soft face seemed close
+to his, and that slight lift of the upper lip that made her smile so
+exquisite. Well--he would go back. But not with any presence of going to
+talk things over, come to an agreement, wind up their joint life like
+a business association. No--if he went back he would go without
+conditions, for good, forever....
+
+Only, what about the future? What about the not far-distant day when
+the wedding cheques would have been spent, and Granny’s pearls sold,
+and nothing left except unconcealed and unconditional dependence on rich
+friends, the role of the acknowledged hangers-on? Was there no other
+possible solution, no new way of ordering their lives? No--there
+was none: he could not picture Susy out of her setting of luxury and
+leisure, could not picture either of them living such a life as the Nat
+Fulmers, for instance! He remembered the shabby untidy bungalow in
+New Hampshire, the slatternly servants, uneatable food and ubiquitous
+children. How could he ask Susy to share such a life with him? If he
+did, she would probably have the sense to refuse. Their alliance had
+been based on a moment’s midsummer madness; now the score must be
+paid....
+
+He decided to write. If they were to part he could not trust himself to
+see her. He called a waiter, asked for pen and paper, and pushed aside
+a pile of unread newspapers on the corner of the table where his coffee
+had been served. As he did so, his eye lit on a Daily Mail of two days
+before. As a pretext for postponing his letter, he took up the paper and
+glanced down the first page. He read:
+
+“Tragic Yachting Accident in the Solent. The Earl of Altringham and
+his son Viscount d’Amblay drowned in midnight collision. Both bodies
+recovered.”
+
+He read on. He grasped the fact that the disaster had happened the
+night before he had left Venice and that, as the result of a fog in
+the Solent, their old friend Strefford was now Earl of Altringham, and
+possessor of one of the largest private fortunes in England. It was
+vertiginous to think of their old impecunious Streff as the hero of such
+an adventure. And what irony in that double turn of the wheel which, in
+one day, had plunged him, Nick Lansing, into nethermost misery, while it
+tossed the other to the stars!
+
+With an intenser precision he saw again Susy’s descent from the gondola
+at the calle steps, the sound of her laughter and of Strefford’s chaff,
+the way she had caught his arm and clung to it, sweeping the other men
+on in her train. Strefford--Susy and Strefford!... More than once, Nick
+had noticed the softer inflections of his friend’s voice when he spoke
+to Susy, the brooding look in his lazy eyes when they rested on her. In
+the security of his wedded bliss Nick had made light of those signs. The
+only real jealousy he had felt had been of Fred Gillow, because of his
+unlimited power to satisfy a woman’s whims. Yet Nick knew that such
+material advantages would never again suffice for Susy. With Strefford
+it was different. She had delighted in his society while he was
+notoriously ineligible; might not she find him irresistible now?
+
+The forgotten terms of their bridal compact came back to Nick: the
+absurd agreement on which he and Susy had solemnly pledged their faith.
+But was it so absurd, after all? It had been Susy’s suggestion (not his,
+thank God!); and perhaps in making it she had been more serious than he
+imagined. Perhaps, even if their rupture had not occurred, Strefford’s
+sudden honours might have caused her to ask for her freedom....
+
+Money, luxury, fashion, pleasure: those were the four cornerstones
+of her existence. He had always known it--she herself had always
+acknowledged it, even in their last dreadful talk together; and once he
+had gloried in her frankness. How could he ever have imagined that, to
+have her fill of these things, she would not in time stoop lower than
+she had yet stooped? Perhaps in giving her up to Strefford he might be
+saving her. At any rate, the taste of the past was now so bitter to him
+that he was moved to thank whatever gods there were for pushing that
+mortuary paragraph under his eye....
+
+“Susy, dear [he wrote], the fates seem to have taken our future in hand,
+and spared us the trouble of unravelling it. If I have sometimes been
+selfish enough to forget the conditions on which you agreed to marry
+me, they have come back to me during these two days of solitude. You’ve
+given me the best a man can have, and nothing else will ever be worth
+much to me. But since I haven’t the ability to provide you with what you
+want, I recognize that I’ve no right to stand in your way. We must owe
+no more Venetian palaces to underhand services. I see by the newspapers
+that Streff can now give you as many palaces as you want. Let him have
+the chance--I fancy he’ll jump at it, and he’s the best man in sight. I
+wish I were in his shoes.
+
+“I’ll write again in a day or two, when I’ve collected my wits, and can
+give you an address. NICK.”
+
+He added a line on the subject of their modest funds, put the letter
+into an envelope, and addressed it to Mrs. Nicholas Lansing. As he did
+so, he reflected that it was the first time he had ever written his
+wife’s married name.
+
+“Well--by God, no other woman shall have it after her,” he vowed, as he
+groped in his pocketbook for a stamp.
+
+He stood up with a stretch of weariness--the heat was stifling!--and put
+the letter in his pocket.
+
+“I’ll post it myself, it’s safer,” he thought; “and then what in the
+name of goodness shall I do next, I wonder?” He jammed his hat down on
+his head and walked out into the sun-blaze.
+
+As he was turning away from the square by the general Post Office, a
+white parasol waved from a passing cab, and Coral Hicks leaned forward
+with outstretched hand. “I knew I’d find you,” she triumphed. “I’ve
+been driving up and down in this broiling sun for hours, shopping and
+watching for you at the same time.”
+
+He stared at her blankly, too bewildered even to wonder how she knew he
+was in Genoa; and she continued, with the kind of shy imperiousness that
+always made him feel, in her presence, like a member of an orchestra
+under a masterful baton; “Now please get right into this carriage, and
+don’t keep me roasting here another minute.” To the cabdriver she called
+out: “Al porto.”
+
+Nick Lansing sank down beside her. As he did so he noticed a heap of
+bundles at her feet, and felt that he had simply added one more to the
+number. He supposed that she was taking her spoils to the Ibis, and
+that he would be carried up to the deck-house to be displayed with the
+others. Well, it would all help to pass the day--and by night he would
+have reached some kind of a decision about his future.
+
+On the third day after Nick’s departure the post brought to the Palazzo
+Vanderlyn three letters for Mrs. Lansing.
+
+The first to arrive was a word from Strefford, scribbled in the train
+and posted at Turin. In it he briefly said that he had been called home
+by the dreadful accident of which Susy had probably read in the daily
+papers. He added that he would write again from England, and then--in
+a blotted postscript--: “I wanted uncommonly badly to see you for
+good-bye, but the hour was impossible. Regards to Nick. Do write me just
+a word to Altringham.”
+
+The other two letters, which came together in the afternoon, were both
+from Genoa. Susy scanned the addresses and fell upon the one in her
+husband’s writing. Her hand trembled so much that for a moment she could
+not open the envelope. When she had done so, she devoured the letter in
+a flash, and then sat and brooded over the outspread page as it lay on
+her knee. It might mean so many things--she could read into it so
+many harrowing alternatives of indifference and despair, of irony and
+tenderness! Was he suffering tortures when he wrote it, or seeking
+only to inflict them upon her? Or did the words represent his actual
+feelings, no more and no less, and did he really intend her to
+understand that he considered it his duty to abide by the letter of
+their preposterous compact? He had left her in wrath and indignation,
+yet, as a closer scrutiny revealed, there was not a word of reproach in
+his brief lines. Perhaps that was why, in the last issue, they seemed so
+cold to her.... She shivered and turned to the other envelope.
+
+The large stilted characters, though half-familiar, called up no
+definite image. She opened the envelope and discovered a post-card of
+the Ibis, canvas spread, bounding over a rippled sea. On the back was
+written:
+
+“So awfully dear of you to lend us Mr. Lansing for a little cruise. You
+may count on our taking the best of care of him.
+
+“CORAL”
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+XIII
+
+WHEN Violet Melrose had said to Susy Branch, the winter before in New
+York: “But why on earth don’t you and Nick go to my little place at
+Versailles for the honeymoon? I’m off to China, and you could have it to
+yourselves all summer,” the offer had been tempting enough to make the
+lovers waver.
+
+It was such an artless ingenuous little house, so full of the
+demoralizing simplicity of great wealth, that it seemed to Susy just the
+kind of place in which to take the first steps in renunciation. But Nick
+had objected that Paris, at that time of year, would be swarming with
+acquaintances who would hunt them down at all hours; and Susy’s own
+experience had led her to remark that there was nothing the very rich
+enjoyed more than taking pot-luck with the very poor. They therefore
+gave Strefford’s villa the preference, with an inward proviso (on Susy’s
+part) that Violet’s house might very conveniently serve their purpose at
+another season.
+
+These thoughts were in her mind as she drove up to Mrs. Melrose’s door
+on a rainy afternoon late in August, her boxes piled high on the roof of
+the cab she had taken at the station. She had travelled straight through
+from Venice, stopping in Milan just long enough to pick up a reply
+to the telegram she had despatched to the perfect housekeeper whose
+permanent presence enabled Mrs. Melrose to say: “Oh, when I’m sick
+of everything I just rush off without warning to my little shanty at
+Versailles, and live there all alone on scrambled eggs.”
+
+The perfect house-keeper had replied to Susy’s enquiry: “Am sure Mrs.
+Melrose most happy”; and Susy, without further thought, had jumped
+into a Versailles train, and now stood in the thin rain before the
+sphinx-guarded threshold of the pavilion.
+
+The revolving year had brought around the season at which Mrs. Melrose’s
+house might be convenient: no visitors were to be feared at Versailles
+at the end of August, and though Susy’s reasons for seeking solitude
+were so remote from those she had once prefigured, they were none the
+less cogent. To be alone--alone! After those first exposed days when,
+in the persistent presence of Fred Gillow and his satellites, and in the
+mocking radiance of late summer on the lagoons, she had fumed and turned
+about in her agony like a trapped animal in a cramping cage, to be alone
+had seemed the only respite, the one craving: to be alone somewhere in a
+setting as unlike as possible to the sensual splendours of Venice, under
+skies as unlike its azure roof. If she could have chosen she would have
+crawled away into a dingy inn in a rainy northern town, where she had
+never been and no one knew her. Failing that unobtainable luxury, here
+she was on the threshold of an empty house, in a deserted place, under
+lowering skies. She had shaken off Fred Gillow, sulkily departing for
+his moor (where she had half-promised to join him in September); the
+Prince, young Breckenridge, and the few remaining survivors of the
+Venetian group, had dispersed in the direction of the Engadine or
+Biarritz; and now she could at least collect her wits, take stock of
+herself, and prepare the countenance with which she was to face the next
+stage in her career. Thank God it was raining at Versailles!
+
+The door opened, she heard voices in the drawing-room, and a slender
+languishing figure appeared on the threshold.
+
+“Darling!” Violet Melrose cried in an embrace, drawing her into the
+dusky perfumed room.
+
+“But I thought you were in China!” Susy stammered.
+
+“In China... in China,” Mrs. Melrose stared with dreamy eyes, and Susy
+remembered her drifting disorganised life, a life more planless, more
+inexplicable than that of any of the other ephemeral beings blown about
+upon the same winds of pleasure.
+
+“Well, Madam, I thought so myself till I got a wire from Mrs. Melrose
+last evening,” remarked the perfect house-keeper, following with Susy’s
+handbag.
+
+Mrs. Melrose clutched her cavernous temples in her attenuated hands. “Of
+course, of course! I had meant to go to China--no, India.... But I’ve
+discovered a genius... and Genius, you know....” Unable to complete
+her thought, she sank down upon a pillowy divan, stretched out an arm,
+cried: “Fulmer! Fulmer!” and, while Susy Lansing stood in the middle
+of the room with widening eyes, a man emerged from the more deeply
+cushioned and scented twilight of some inner apartment, and she saw with
+surprise Nat Fulmer, the good Nat Fulmer of the New Hampshire bungalow
+and the ubiquitous progeny, standing before her in lordly ease, his
+hands in his pockets, a cigarette between his lips, his feet solidly
+planted in the insidious depths of one of Violet Melrose’s white leopard
+skins.
+
+“Susy!” he shouted with open arms; and Mrs. Melrose murmured: “You
+didn’t know, then? You hadn’t heard of his masterpieces?”
+
+In spite of herself, Susy burst into a laugh. “Is Nat your genius?”
+
+Mrs. Melrose looked at her reproachfully.
+
+Fulmer laughed. “No; I’m Grace’s. But Mrs. Melrose has been our
+Providence, and....”
+
+“Providence?” his hostess interrupted. “Don’t talk as if you were at
+a prayer-meeting! He had an exhibition in New York... it was the most
+fabulous success. He’s come abroad to make studies for the decoration of
+my music-room in New York. Ursula Gillow has given him her garden-house
+at Roslyn to do. And Mrs. Bockheimer’s ball-room--oh, Fulmer, where are
+the cartoons?” She sprang up, tossed about some fashion-papers heaped on
+a lacquer table, and sank back exhausted by the effort. “I’d got as far
+as Brindisi. I’ve travelled day and night to be here to meet him,” she
+declared. “But, you darling,” and she held out a caressing hand to Susy,
+“I’m forgetting to ask if you’ve had tea?”
+
+An hour later, over the tea-table, Susy already felt herself
+mysteriously reabsorbed into what had so long been her native element.
+Ellie Vanderlyn had brought a breath of it to Venice; but Susy was then
+nourished on another air, the air of Nick’s presence and personality;
+now that she was abandoned, left again to her own devices, she felt
+herself suddenly at the mercy of the influences from which she thought
+she had escaped.
+
+In the queer social whirligig from which she had so lately fled, it
+seemed natural enough that a shake of the box should have tossed Nat
+Fulmer into celebrity, and sent Violet Melrose chasing back from the
+ends of the earth to bask in his success. Susy knew that Mrs. Melrose
+belonged to the class of moral parasites; for in that strange world the
+parts were sometimes reversed, and the wealthy preyed upon the pauper.
+Wherever there was a reputation to batten on, there poor Violet
+appeared, a harmless vampire in pearls who sought only to feed on the
+notoriety which all her millions could not create for her. Any one less
+versed than Susy in the shallow mysteries of her little world would have
+seen in Violet Melrose a baleful enchantress, in Nat Fulmer her helpless
+victim. Susy knew better. Violet, poor Violet, was not even that. The
+insignificant Ellie Vanderlyn, with her brief trivial passions, her
+artless mixture of amorous and social interests, was a woman with
+a purpose, a creature who fulfilled herself; but Violet was only a
+drifting interrogation.
+
+And what of Fulmer? Mustering with new eyes his short sturdily-built
+figure, his nondescript bearded face, and the eyes that dreamed and
+wandered, and then suddenly sank into you like claws, Susy seemed to
+have found the key to all his years of dogged toil, his indifference
+to neglect, indifference to poverty, indifference to the needs of
+his growing family.... Yes: for the first time she saw that he looked
+commonplace enough to be a genius--was a genius, perhaps, even though
+it was Violet Melrose who affirmed it! Susy looked steadily at Fulmer,
+their eyes met, and he smiled at her faintly through his beard.
+
+“Yes, I did discover him--I did,” Mrs. Melrose was insisting, from the
+depths of the black velvet divan in which she lay sunk like a wan Nereid
+in a midnight sea. “You mustn’t believe a word that Ursula Gillow tells
+you about having pounced on his ‘Spring Snow Storm’ in a dark corner of
+the American Artists’ exhibition--skied, if you please! They skied him
+less than a year ago! And naturally Ursula never in her life looked
+higher than the first line at a picture-show. And now she actually
+pretends... oh, for pity’s sake don’t say it doesn’t matter, Fulmer!
+Your saying that just encourages her, and makes people think she
+did. When, in reality, any one who saw me at the exhibition on
+varnishing-day.... Who? Well, Eddy Breckenridge, for instance. He was
+in Egypt, you say? Perhaps he was! As if one could remember the people
+about one, when suddenly one comes upon a great work of art, as St.
+Paul did--didn’t he?--and the scales fell from his eyes. Well... that’s
+exactly what happened to me that day... and Ursula, everybody knows, was
+down at Roslyn at the time, and didn’t come up for the opening of the
+exhibition at all. And Fulmer sits there and laughs, and says it
+doesn’t matter, and that he’ll paint another picture any day for me to
+discover!”
+
+Susy had rung the door-bell with a hand trembling with
+eagerness--eagerness to be alone, to be quiet, to stare her situation in
+the face, and collect herself before she came out again among her kind.
+She had stood on the door-step, cowering among her bags, counting the
+instants till a step sounded and the door-knob turned, letting her in
+from the searching glare of the outer world.... And now she had sat for
+an hour in Violet’s drawing-room, in the very house where her honey-moon
+might have been spent; and no one had asked her where she had come from,
+or why she was alone, or what was the key to the tragedy written on her
+shrinking face....
+
+That was the way of the world they lived in. Nobody questioned, nobody
+wondered any more--because nobody had time to remember. The old risk of
+prying curiosity, of malicious gossip, was virtually over: one was left
+with one’s drama, one’s disaster, on one’s hands, because there was
+nobody to stop and notice the little shrouded object one was carrying.
+As Susy watched the two people before her, each so frankly unaffected
+by her presence, Violet Melrose so engrossed in her feverish pursuit of
+notoriety, Fulmer so plunged in the golden sea of his success, she felt
+like a ghost making inaudible and imperceptible appeals to the grosser
+senses of the living.
+
+“If I wanted to be alone,” she thought, “I’m alone enough, in all
+conscience.” There was a deathly chill in such security. She turned to
+Fulmer.
+
+“And Grace?”
+
+He beamed back without sign of embarrassment. “Oh, she’s here,
+naturally--we’re in Paris, kids and all. In a pension, where we can
+polish up the lingo. But I hardly ever lay eyes on her, because she’s
+as deep in music as I am in paint; it was as big a chance for her as for
+me, you see, and she’s making the most of it, fiddling and listening to
+the fiddlers. Well, it’s a considerable change from New Hampshire.” He
+looked at her dreamily, as if making an intense effort to detach himself
+from his dream, and situate her in the fading past. “Remember the
+bungalow? And Nick--ah, how’s Nick?” he brought out triumphantly.
+
+“Oh, yes--darling Nick?” Mrs. Melrose chimed in; and Susy, her head
+erect, her cheeks aflame, declared with resonance: “Most awfully
+well--splendidly!”
+
+“He’s not here, though?” from Fulmer.
+
+“No. He’s off travelling--cruising.”
+
+Mrs. Melrose’s attention was faintly roused. “With anybody interesting?”
+
+“No; you wouldn’t know them. People we met....” She did not have to
+continue, for her hostess’s gaze had again strayed.
+
+“And you’ve come for your clothes, I suppose, darling? Don’t listen
+to people who say that skirts are to be wider. I’ve discovered a new
+woman--a Genius--and she absolutely swathes you.... Her name’s my
+secret; but we’ll go to her together.”
+
+Susy rose from her engulphing armchair. “Do you mind if I go up to my
+room? I’m rather tired--coming straight through.”
+
+“Of course, dear. I think there are some people coming to dinner... Mrs.
+Match will tell you. She has such a memory.... Fulmer, where on earth
+are those cartoons of the music-room?”
+
+Their voices pursued Susy upstairs, as, in Mrs. Match’s perpendicular
+wake, she mounted to the white-panelled room with its gay linen hangings
+and the low bed heaped with more cushions.
+
+“If we’d come here,” she thought, “everything might have been
+different.” And she shuddered at the sumptuous memories of the Palazzo
+Vanderlyn, and the great painted bedroom where she had met her doom.
+
+Mrs. Match, hoping she would find everything, and mentioning that dinner
+was not till nine, shut her softly in among her terrors.
+
+“Find everything?” Susy echoed the phrase. Oh, yes, she would always
+find everything: every time the door shut on her now, and the sound of
+voices ceased, her memories would be there waiting for her, every one
+of them, waiting quietly, patiently, obstinately, like poor people in a
+doctor’s office, the people who are always last to be attended to,
+but whom nothing will discourage or drive away, people to whom time is
+nothing, fatigue nothing, hunger nothing, other engagements nothing: who
+just wait.... Thank heaven, after all, that she had not found the
+house empty, if, whenever she returned to her room, she was to meet her
+memories there!
+
+It was just a week since Nick had left her. During that week, crammed
+with people, questions, packing, explaining, evading, she had believed
+that in solitude lay her salvation. Now she understood that there was
+nothing she was so unprepared for, so unfitted for. When, in all her
+life, had she ever been alone? And how was she to bear it now, with all
+these ravening memories besetting her!
+
+Dinner not till nine? What on earth was she to do till nine o’clock? She
+knelt before her boxes, and feverishly began to unpack.
+
+Gradually, imperceptibly, the subtle influences of her old life were
+stealing into her. As she pulled out her tossed and crumpled dresses she
+remembered Violet’s emphatic warning: “Don’t believe the people who tell
+you that skirts are going to be wider.” Were hers, perhaps, too wide
+as it was? She looked at her limp raiment, piling itself up on bed and
+sofa, and understood that, according to Violet’s standards, and that
+of all her set, those dresses, which Nick had thought so original and
+exquisite, were already commonplace and dowdy, fit only to be passed on
+to poor relations or given to one’s maid. And Susy would have to go on
+wearing them till they fell to bits--or else.... Well, or else begin the
+old life again in some new form....
+
+She laughed aloud at the turn of her thoughts. Dresses? How little they
+had mattered a few short weeks ago! And now, perhaps, they would again
+be one of the foremost considerations in her life. How could it be
+otherwise, if she were to return again to her old dependence on Ellie
+Vanderlyn, Ursula Gillow, Violet Melrose? And beyond that, only the
+Bockheimers and their kind awaited her....
+
+A knock on the door--what a relief! It was Mrs. Match again, with a
+telegram. To whom had Susy given her new address? With a throbbing heart
+she tore open the envelope and read:
+
+“Shall be in Paris Friday for twenty-four hours where can I see you
+write Nouveau Luxe.”
+
+Ah, yes--she remembered now: she had written to Strefford! And this was
+his answer: he was coming. She dropped into a chair, and tried to think.
+What on earth had she said in her letter? It had been mainly, of course,
+one of condolence; but now she remembered having added, in a precipitate
+postscript: “I can’t give your message to Nick, for he’s gone off with
+the Hickses--I don’t know where, or for how long. It’s all right, of
+course: it was in our bargain.”
+
+She had not meant to put in that last phrase; but as she sealed her
+letter to Strefford her eye had fallen on Nick’s missive, which lay
+beside it. Nothing in her husband’s brief lines had embittered her as
+much as the allusion to Strefford. It seemed to imply that Nick’s own
+plans were made, that his own future was secure, and that he could
+therefore freely and handsomely take thought for hers, and give her a
+pointer in the right direction. Sudden rage had possessed her at the
+thought: where she had at first read jealousy she now saw only a cold
+providence, and in a blur of tears she had scrawled her postscript to
+Strefford. She remembered that she had not even asked him to keep her
+secret. Well--after all, what would it matter if people should already
+know that Nick had left her? Their parting could not long remain a
+mystery, and the fact that it was known might help her to keep up a
+presence of indifference.
+
+“It was in the bargain--in the bargain,” rang through her brain as she
+re-read Strefford’s telegram. She understood that he had snatched the
+time for this hasty trip solely in the hope of seeing her, and her eyes
+filled. The more bitterly she thought of Nick the more this proof of
+Strefford’s friendship moved her.
+
+The clock, to her relief, reminded her that it was time to dress for
+dinner. She would go down presently, chat with Violet and Fulmer, and
+with Violet’s other guests, who would probably be odd and amusing, and
+too much out of her world to embarrass her by awkward questions. She
+would sit at a softly-lit table, breathe delicate scents, eat exquisite
+food (trust Mrs. Match!), and be gradually drawn again under the spell
+of her old associations. Anything, anything but to be alone....
+
+She dressed with even more than her habitual care, reddened her lips
+attentively, brushed the faintest bloom of pink over her drawn cheeks,
+and went down--to meet Mrs. Match coming up with a tray.
+
+“Oh, Madam, I thought you were too tired.... I was bringing it up to you
+myself--just a little morsel of chicken.”
+
+Susy, glancing past her, saw, through the open door, that the lamps were
+not lit in the drawing-room.
+
+“Oh, no, I’m not tired, thank you. I thought Mrs. Melrose expected
+friends at dinner!”
+
+“Friends at dinner-to-night?” Mrs. Match heaved a despairing sigh.
+Sometimes, the sigh seemed to say, her mistress put too great a strain
+upon her. “Why, Mrs. Melrose and Mr. Fulmer were engaged to dine in
+Paris. They left an hour ago. Mrs. Melrose told me she’d told you,” the
+house-keeper wailed.
+
+Susy kept her little fixed smile. “I must have misunderstood. In that
+case... well, yes, if it’s no trouble, I believe I will have my tray
+upstairs.”
+
+Slowly she turned, and followed the housekeeper up into the dread
+solitude she had just left.
+
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+
+
+THE next day a lot of people turned up unannounced for luncheon. They
+were not of the far-fetched and the exotic, in whom Mrs. Melrose now
+specialized, but merely commonplace fashionable people belonging to
+Susy’s own group, people familiar with the amusing romance of her
+penniless marriage, and to whom she had to explain (though none of them
+really listened to the explanation) that Nick was not with her just
+now but had gone off cruising... cruising in the AEgean with friends...
+getting up material for his book (this detail had occurred to her in the
+night).
+
+It was the kind of encounter she had most dreaded; but it proved, after
+all, easy enough to go through compared with those endless hours of
+turning to and fro, the night before, in the cage of her lonely room.
+Anything, anything, but to be alone....
+
+Gradually, from the force of habit, she found herself actually in tune
+with the talk of the luncheon table, interested in the references to
+absent friends, the light allusions to last year’s loves and quarrels,
+scandals and absurdities. The women, in their pale summer dresses,
+were so graceful, indolent and sure of themselves, the men so easy and
+good-humoured! Perhaps, after all, Susy reflected, it was the world she
+was meant for, since the other, the brief Paradise of her dreams, had
+already shut its golden doors upon her. And then, as they sat on the
+terrace after luncheon, looking across at the yellow tree-tops of the
+park, one of the women said something--made just an allusion--that Susy
+would have let pass unnoticed in the old days, but that now filled her
+with a sudden deep disgust.... She stood up and wandered away, away from
+them all through the fading garden.
+
+Two days later Susy and Strefford sat on the terrace of the Tuileries
+above the Seine. She had asked him to meet her there, with the desire to
+avoid the crowded halls and drawing-room of the Nouveau Luxe where, even
+at that supposedly “dead” season, people one knew were always
+drifting to and fro; and they sat on a bench in the pale sunlight,
+the discoloured leaves heaped at their feet, and no one to share their
+solitude but a lame working-man and a haggard woman who were lunching
+together mournfully at the other end of the majestic vista.
+
+Strefford, in his new mourning, looked unnaturally prosperous and
+well-valeted; but his ugly untidy features remained as undisciplined,
+his smile as whimsical, as of old. He had been on cool though friendly
+terms with the pompous uncle and the poor sickly cousin whose joint
+disappearance had so abruptly transformed his future; and it was his
+way to understate his feelings rather than to pretend more than he
+felt. Nevertheless, beneath his habitual bantering tone Susy discerned
+a change. The disaster had shocked him profoundly; already, in his brief
+sojourn among his people and among the great possessions so tragically
+acquired, old instincts had awakened, forgotten associations had spoken
+in him. Susy listened to him wistfully, silenced by her imaginative
+perception of the distance that these things had put between them.
+
+“It was horrible... seeing them both there together, laid out in that
+hideous Pugin chapel at Altringham... the poor boy especially. I
+suppose that’s really what’s cutting me up now,” he murmured, almost
+apologetically.
+
+“Oh, it’s more than that--more than you know,” she insisted; but he
+jerked back: “Now, my dear, don’t be edifying, please,” and fumbled for
+a cigarette in the pocket which was already beginning to bulge with his
+miscellaneous properties.
+
+“And now about you--for that’s what I came for,” he continued, turning
+to her with one of his sudden movements. “I couldn’t make head or tail
+of your letter.”
+
+She paused a moment to steady her voice. “Couldn’t you? I suppose you’d
+forgotten my bargain with Nick. He hadn’t--and he’s asked me to fulfil
+it.”
+
+Strefford stared. “What--that nonsense about your setting each other
+free if either of you had the chance to make a good match?”
+
+She signed “Yes.”
+
+“And he’s actually asked you--?”
+
+“Well: practically. He’s gone off with the Hickses. Before going he
+wrote me that we’d better both consider ourselves free. And Coral sent
+me a postcard to say that she would take the best of care of him.”
+
+Strefford mused, his eyes upon his cigarette. “But what the deuce led up
+to all this? It can’t have happened like that, out of a clear sky.”
+
+Susy flushed, hesitated, looked away. She had meant to tell Strefford
+the whole story; it had been one of her chief reasons for wishing to see
+him again, and half-unconsciously, perhaps, she had hoped, in his laxer
+atmosphere, to recover something of her shattered self-esteem. But now
+she suddenly felt the impossibility of confessing to anyone the depths
+to which Nick’s wife had stooped. She fancied that her companion guessed
+the nature of her hesitation.
+
+“Don’t tell me anything you don’t want to, you know, my dear.”
+
+“No; I do want to; only it’s difficult. You see--we had so very little
+money....”
+
+“Yes?”
+
+“And Nick--who was thinking of his book, and of all sorts of big things,
+fine things--didn’t realise... left it all to me... to manage....”
+
+She stumbled over the word, remembering how Nick had always winced
+at it. But Strefford did not seem to notice her, and she hurried on,
+unfolding in short awkward sentences the avowal of their pecuniary
+difficulties, and of Nick’s inability to understand that, to keep
+on with the kind of life they were leading, one had to put up with
+things... accept favours....
+
+“Borrow money, you mean?”
+
+“Well--yes; and all the rest.” No--decidedly she could not reveal
+to Strefford the episode of Ellie’s letters. “Nick suddenly felt, I
+suppose, that he couldn’t stand it,” she continued; “and instead of
+asking me to try--to try to live differently, go off somewhere with him
+and live, like work-people, in two rooms, without a servant, as I was
+ready to do; well, instead he wrote me that it had all been a mistake
+from the beginning, that we couldn’t keep it up, and had better
+recognize the fact; and he went off on the Hickses’ yacht. The last
+evening that you were in Venice--the day he didn’t come back to
+dinner--he had gone off to Genoa to meet them. I suppose he intends to
+marry Coral.”
+
+Strefford received this in silence. “Well--it was your bargain, wasn’t
+it?” he said at length.
+
+“Yes; but--”
+
+“Exactly: I always told you so. You weren’t ready to have him go
+yet--that’s all.”
+
+She flushed to the forehead. “Oh, Streff--is it really all?”
+
+“A question of time? If you doubt it, I’d like to see you try, for a
+while, in those two rooms without a servant; and then let me hear from
+you. Why, my dear, it’s only a question of time in a palace, with
+a steam yacht lying off the door-step, and a flock of motors in the
+garage; look around you and see. And did you ever imagine that you and
+Nick, of all people, were going to escape the common doom, and survive
+like Mr. and Mrs. Tithonus, while all about you the eternal passions
+were crumbling to pieces, and your native Divorce-states piling up their
+revenues?”
+
+She sat with bent head, the weight of the long years to come pressing
+like a leaden load on her shoulders.
+
+“But I’m so young... life’s so long. What does last, then?”
+
+“Ah, you’re too young to believe me, if I were to tell you; though
+you’re intelligent enough to understand.”
+
+“What does, then?”
+
+“Why, the hold of the things we all think we could do without.
+Habits--they outstand the Pyramids. Comforts, luxuries, the atmosphere
+of ease... above all, the power to get away from dulness and monotony,
+from constraints and uglinesses. You chose that power, instinctively,
+before you were even grown up; and so did Nick. And the only difference
+between you is that he’s had the sense to see sooner than you that those
+are the things that last, the prime necessities.”
+
+“I don’t believe it!”
+
+“Of course you don’t: at your age one doesn’t reason one’s materialism.
+And besides you’re mortally hurt that Nick has found out sooner than
+you, and hasn’t disguised his discovery under any hypocritical phrases.”
+
+“But surely there are people--”
+
+“Yes--saints and geniuses and heroes: all the fanatics! To which of
+their categories do you suppose we soft people belong? And the heroes
+and the geniuses--haven’t they their enormous frailties and their giant
+appetites? And how should we escape being the victims of our little
+ones?”
+
+She sat for a while without speaking. “But, Streff, how can you say such
+things, when I know you care: care for me, for instance!”
+
+“Care?” He put his hand on hers. “But, my dear, it’s just the
+fugitiveness of mortal caring that makes it so exquisite! It’s because
+we know we can’t hold fast to it, or to each other, or to anything....”
+
+“Yes... yes... but hush, please! Oh, don’t say it!” She stood up, the
+tears in her throat, and he rose also.
+
+“Come along, then; where do we lunch?” he said with a smile, slipping
+his hand through her arm.
+
+“Oh, I don’t know. Nowhere. I think I’m going back to Versailles.”
+
+“Because I’ve disgusted you so deeply? Just my luck--when I came over to
+ask you to marry me!”
+
+She laughed, but he had become suddenly grave. “Upon my soul, I did.”
+
+“Dear Streff! As if--now--”
+
+“Oh, not now--I know. I’m aware that even with your accelerated divorce
+methods--”
+
+“It’s not that. I told you it was no use, Streff--I told you long ago,
+in Venice.”
+
+He shrugged ironically. “It’s not Streff who’s asking you now. Streff
+was not a marrying man: he was only trifling with you. The present offer
+comes from an elderly peer of independent means. Think it over, my dear:
+as many days out as you like, and five footmen kept. There’s not the
+least hurry, of course; but I rather think Nick himself would advise
+it.”
+
+She flushed to the temples, remembering that Nick had; and the
+remembrance made Strefford’s sneering philosophy seem less unbearable.
+Why should she not lunch with him, after all? In the first days of his
+mourning he had come to Paris expressly to see her, and to offer her
+one of the oldest names and one of the greatest fortunes in England.
+She thought of Ursula Gillow, Ellie Vanderlyn, Violet Melrose, of their
+condescending kindnesses, their last year’s dresses, their Christmas
+cheques, and all the careless bounties that were so easy to bestow and
+so hard to accept. “I should rather enjoy paying them back,” something
+in her maliciously murmured.
+
+She did not mean to marry Strefford--she had not even got as far as
+contemplating the possibility of a divorce but it was undeniable that
+this sudden prospect of wealth and freedom was like fresh air in her
+lungs. She laughed again, but now without bitterness.
+
+“Very good, then; we’ll lunch together. But it’s Streff I want to lunch
+with to-day.”
+
+“Ah, well,” her companion agreed, “I rather think that for a tête-à-tête
+he’s better company.”
+
+During their repast in a little restaurant over the Seine, where she
+insisted on the cheapest dishes because she was lunching with “Streff,”
+ he became again his old whimsical companionable self. Once or twice she
+tried to turn the talk to his altered future, and the obligations and
+interests that lay before him; but he shrugged away from the subject,
+questioning her instead about the motley company at Violet Melrose’s,
+and fitting a droll or malicious anecdote to each of the people she
+named.
+
+It was not till they had finished their coffee, and she was glancing at
+her watch with a vague notion of taking the next train, that he asked
+abruptly: “But what are you going to do? You can’t stay forever at
+Violet’s.”
+
+“Oh, no!” she cried with a shiver.
+
+“Well, then--you’ve got some plan, I suppose?”
+
+“Have I?” she wondered, jerked back into grim reality from the soothing
+interlude of their hour together.
+
+“You can’t drift indefinitely, can you? Unless you mean to go back to
+the old sort of life once for all.”
+
+She reddened and her eyes filled. “I can’t do that, Streff--I know I
+can’t!”
+
+“Then what--?”
+
+She hesitated, and brought out with lowered head: “Nick said he would
+write again--in a few days. I must wait--”
+
+“Oh, naturally. Don’t do anything in a hurry.” Strefford also glanced at
+his watch. “Garcon, l’addition! I’m taking the train back to-night, and
+I’ve a lot of things left to do. But look here, my dear--when you come
+to a decision one way or the other let me know, will you? Oh, I don’t
+mean in the matter I’ve most at heart; we’ll consider that closed for
+the present. But at least I can be of use in other ways--hang it, you
+know, I can even lend you money. There’s a new sensation for our jaded
+palates!”
+
+“Oh, Streff... Streff!” she could only falter; and he pressed on gaily:
+“Try it, now do try it--I assure you there’ll be no interest to pay, and
+no conditions attached. And promise to let me know when you’ve decided
+anything.”
+
+She looked into his humorously puckered eyes, answering. Their friendly
+smile with hers.
+
+“I promise!” she said.
+
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+
+
+THAT hour with Strefford had altered her whole perspective. Instead of
+possible dependence, an enforced return to the old life of connivances
+and concessions, she saw before her--whenever she chose to take
+them--freedom, power and dignity. Dignity! It was odd what weight that
+word had come to have for her. She had dimly felt its significance,
+felt the need of its presence in her inmost soul, even in the young
+thoughtless days when she had seemed to sacrifice so little to the
+austere divinities. And since she had been Nick Lansing’s wife she had
+consciously acknowledged it, had suffered and agonized when she fell
+beneath its standard. Yes: to marry Strefford would give her that
+sense of self-respect which, in such a world as theirs, only wealth and
+position could ensure. If she had not the mental or moral training to
+attain independence in any other way, was she to blame for seeking it on
+such terms?
+
+Of course there was always the chance that Nick would come back, would
+find life without her as intolerable as she was finding it without him.
+If that happened--ah, if that happened! Then she would cease to strain
+her eyes into the future, would seize upon the present moment and plunge
+into it to the very bottom of oblivion. Nothing on earth would matter
+then--money or freedom or pride, or her precious moral dignity, if only
+she were in Nick’s arms again!
+
+But there was Nick’s icy letter, there was Coral Hicks’s insolent
+post-card, to show how little chance there was of such a solution. Susy
+understood that, even before the discovery of her transaction with Ellie
+Vanderlyn, Nick had secretly wearied, if not of his wife, at least of
+the life that their marriage compelled him to lead. His passion was not
+strong enough--had never been strong enough--to outweigh his prejudices,
+scruples, principles, or whatever one chose to call them. Susy’s dignity
+might go up like tinder in the blaze of her love; but his was made of a
+less combustible substance. She had felt, in their last talk together,
+that she had forever destroyed the inner harmony between them.
+
+Well--there it was, and the fault was doubtless neither hers nor his,
+but that of the world they had grown up in, of their own moral contempt
+for it and physical dependence on it, of his half-talents and her
+half-principles, of the something in them both that was not stout enough
+to resist nor yet pliant enough to yield. She stared at the fact on the
+journey back to Versailles, and all that sleepless night in her room;
+and the next morning, when the housemaid came in with her breakfast
+tray, she felt the factitious energy that comes from having decided,
+however half-heartedly, on a definite course.
+
+She had said to herself: “If there’s no letter from Nick this time next
+week I’ll write to Streff--” and the week had passed, and there was no
+letter.
+
+It was now three weeks since he had left her, and she had had no
+word but his note from Genoa. She had concluded that, foreseeing the
+probability of her leaving Venice, he would write to her in care of
+their Paris bank. But though she had immediately notified the bank of
+her change of address no communication from Nick had reached her; and
+she smiled with a touch of bitterness at the difficulty he was doubtless
+finding in the composition of the promised letter. Her own scrap-basket,
+for the first days, had been heaped with the fragments of the letters
+she had begun; and she told herself that, since they both found it so
+hard to write, it was probably because they had nothing left to say to
+each other.
+
+Meanwhile the days at Mrs. Melrose’s drifted by as they had been wont
+to drift when, under the roofs of the rich, Susy Branch had marked
+time between one episode and the next of her precarious existence.
+Her experience of such sojourns was varied enough to make her acutely
+conscious of their effect on her temporary hosts; and in the present
+case she knew that Violet was hardly aware of her presence. But if no
+more than tolerated she was at least not felt to be an inconvenience;
+when your hostess forgot about you it proved that at least you were not
+in her way.
+
+Violet, as usual, was perpetually on the wing, for her profound
+indolence expressed itself in a disordered activity. Nat Fulmer had
+returned to Paris; but Susy guessed that his benefactress was still
+constantly in his company, and that when Mrs. Melrose was whirled away
+in her noiseless motor it was generally toward the scene of some new
+encounter between Fulmer and the arts. On these occasions she sometimes
+offered to carry Susy to Paris, and they devoted several long and
+hectic mornings to the dress-makers, where Susy felt herself gradually
+succumbing to the familiar spell of heaped-up finery. It seemed
+impossible, as furs and laces and brocades were tossed aside, brought
+back, and at last carelessly selected from, that anything but the whim
+of the moment need count in deciding whether one should take all or
+none, or that any woman could be worth looking at who did not possess
+the means to make her choice regardless of cost.
+
+Once alone, and in the street again, the evil fumes would evaporate,
+and daylight re-enter Susy’s soul; yet she felt that the old poison was
+slowly insinuating itself into her system. To dispel it she decided
+one day to look up Grace Fulmer. She was curious to know how the
+happy-go-lucky companion of Fulmer’s evil days was bearing the weight of
+his prosperity, and she vaguely felt that it would be refreshing to see
+some one who had never been afraid of poverty.
+
+The airless pension sitting-room, where she waited while a reluctant
+maid-servant screamed about the house for Mrs. Fulmer, did not have
+the hoped-for effect. It was one thing for Grace to put up with such
+quarters when she shared them with Fulmer; but to live there while he
+basked in the lingering radiance of Versailles, or rolled from chateau
+to picture gallery in Mrs. Melrose’s motor, showed a courage that Susy
+felt unable to emulate.
+
+“My dear! I knew you’d look me up,” Grace’s joyous voice ran down the
+stairway; and in another moment she was clasping Susy to her tumbled
+person.
+
+“Nat couldn’t remember if he’d given you our address, though he promised
+me he would, the last time he was here.” She held Susy at arms’
+length, beaming upon her with blinking short-sighted eyes: the same
+old dishevelled Grace, so careless of her neglected beauty and her
+squandered youth, so amused and absent-minded and improvident, that the
+boisterous air of the New Hampshire bungalow seemed to enter with her
+into the little air-tight salon.
+
+While she poured out the tale of Nat’s sudden celebrity, and its
+unexpected consequences, Susy marvelled and dreamed. Was the secret
+of his triumph perhaps due to those long hard unrewarded years, the
+steadfast scorn of popularity, the indifference to every kind of
+material ease in which his wife had so gaily abetted him? Had it been
+bought at the cost of her own freshness and her own talent, of the
+children’s “advantages,” of everything except the closeness of the tie
+between husband and wife? Well--it was worth the price, no doubt; but
+what if, now that honours and prosperity had come, the tie were snapped,
+and Grace were left alone among the ruins?
+
+There was nothing in her tone or words to suggest such a possibility.
+Susy noticed that her ill-assorted raiment was costlier in quality and
+more professional in cut than the home-made garments which had draped
+her growing bulk at the bungalow: it was clear that she was trying to
+dress up to Nat’s new situation. But, above all, she was rejoicing in
+it, filling her hungry lungs with the strong air of his success. It had
+evidently not occurred to her as yet that those who consent to share the
+bread of adversity may want the whole cake of prosperity for themselves.
+
+“My dear, it’s too wonderful! He’s told me to take as many concert and
+opera tickets as I like; he lets me take all the children with me. The
+big concerts don’t begin till later; but of course the Opera is always
+going. And there are little things--there’s music in Paris at all
+seasons. And later it’s just possible we may get to Munich for a
+week--oh, Susy!” Her hands clasped, her eyes brimming, she drank the new
+wine of life almost sacramentally.
+
+“Do you remember, Susy, when you and Nick came to stay at the bungalow?
+Nat said you’d be horrified by our primitiveness--but I knew better! And
+I was right, wasn’t I? Seeing us so happy made you and Nick decide to
+follow our example, didn’t it?” She glowed with the remembrance. “And
+now, what are your plans? Is Nick’s book nearly done? I suppose you’ll
+have to live very economically till he finds a publisher. And the baby,
+darling--when is that to be? If you’re coming home soon I could let you
+have a lot of the children’s little old things.”
+
+“You’re always so dear, Grace. But we haven’t any special plans
+as yet--not even for a baby. And I wish you’d tell me all of yours
+instead.”
+
+Mrs. Fulmer asked nothing better: Susy perceived that, so far, the
+greater part of her European experience had consisted in talking about
+what it was to be. “Well, you see, Nat is so taken up all day with
+sight-seeing and galleries and meeting important people that he hasn’t
+had time to go about with us; and as so few theatres are open, and
+there’s so little music, I’ve taken the opportunity to catch up with
+my mending. Junie helps me with it now--she’s our eldest, you remember?
+She’s grown into a big girl since you saw her. And later, perhaps,
+we’re to travel. And the most wonderful thing of all--next to Nat’s
+recognition, I mean--is not having to contrive and skimp, and give up
+something every single minute. Just think--Nat has even made special
+arrangements here in the pension, so that the children all have second
+helpings to everything. And when I go up to bed I can think of my music,
+instead of lying awake calculating and wondering how I can make things
+come out at the end of the month. Oh, Susy, that’s simply heaven!”
+
+Susy’s heart contracted. She had come to her friend to be taught again
+the lesson of indifference to material things, and instead she was
+hearing from Grace Fulmer’s lips the long-repressed avowal of their
+tyranny. After all, that battle with poverty on the New Hampshire
+hillside had not been the easy smiling business that Grace and Nat had
+made it appear. And yet ... and yet....
+
+Susy stood up abruptly, and straightened the expensive hat which hung
+irresponsibly over Grace’s left ear.
+
+“What’s wrong with it? Junie helped me choose it, and she generally
+knows,” Mrs. Fulmer wailed with helpless hands.
+
+“It’s the way you wear it, dearest--and the bow is rather top-heavy. Let
+me have it a minute, please.” Susy lifted the hat from her friend’s
+head and began to manipulate its trimming. “This is the way Maria Guy or
+Suzanne would do it.... And now go on about Nat....”
+
+She listened musingly while Grace poured forth the tale of her husband’s
+triumph, of the notices in the papers, the demand for his work, the
+fine ladies’ battles over their priority in discovering him, and the
+multiplied orders that had resulted from their rivalry.
+
+“Of course they’re simply furious with each other--Mrs. Melrose and Mrs.
+Gillow especially--because each one pretends to have been the first to
+notice his ‘Spring Snow-Storm,’ and in reality it wasn’t either of them,
+but only poor Bill Haslett, an art-critic we’ve known for years, who
+chanced on the picture, and rushed off to tell a dealer who was looking
+for a new painter to push.” Grace suddenly raised her soft myopic eyes
+to Susy’s face. “But, do you know, the funny thing is that I believe Nat
+is beginning to forget this, and to believe that it was Mrs. Melrose who
+stopped short in front of his picture on the opening day, and screamed
+out: ‘This is genius!’ It seems funny he should care so much, when I’ve
+always known he had genius--and he has known it too. But they’re all so
+kind to him; and Mrs. Melrose especially. And I suppose it makes a thing
+sound new to hear it said in a new voice.”
+
+Susy looked at her meditatively. “And how should you feel if Nat liked
+too much to hear Mrs. Melrose say it? Too much, I mean, to care any
+longer what you felt or thought?”
+
+Her friend’s worn face flushed quickly, and then paled: Susy almost
+repented the question. But Mrs. Fulmer met it with a tranquil dignity.
+“You haven’t been married long enough, dear, to understand... how people
+like Nat and me feel about such things... or how trifling they seem, in
+the balance... the balance of one’s memories.”
+
+Susy stood up again, and flung her arms about her friend. “Oh, Grace,”
+ she laughed with wet eyes, “how can you be as wise as that, and yet not
+have sense enough to buy a decent hat?” She gave Mrs. Fulmer a quick
+embrace and hurried away. She had learned her lesson after all; but it
+was not exactly the one she had come to seek.
+
+The week she had allowed herself had passed, and still there was no word
+from Nick. She allowed herself yet another day, and that too went by
+without a letter. She then decided on a step from which her pride
+had hitherto recoiled; she would call at the bank and ask for Nick’s
+address. She called, embarrassed and hesitating; and was told, after
+enquiries in the post-office department, that Mr. Nicholas Lansing
+had given no address since that of the Palazzo Vanderlyn, three months
+previously. She went back to Versailles that afternoon with the definite
+intention of writing to Strefford unless the next morning’s post brought
+a letter.
+
+The next morning brought nothing from Nick, but a scribbled message from
+Mrs. Melrose: would Susy, as soon as possible, come into her room for
+a word, Susy jumped up, hurried through her bath, and knocked at her
+hostess’s door. In the immense low bed that faced the rich umbrage
+of the park Mrs. Melrose lay smoking cigarettes and glancing over her
+letters. She looked up with her vague smile, and said dreamily: “Susy
+darling, have you any particular plans--for the next few months, I
+mean?”
+
+Susy coloured: she knew the intonation of old, and fancied she
+understood what it implied.
+
+“Plans, dearest? Any number... I’m tearing myself away the day after
+to-morrow... to the Gillows’ moor, very probably,” she hastened to
+announce.
+
+Instead of the relief she had expected to read on Mrs. Melrose’s
+dramatic countenance she discovered there the blankest disappointment.
+
+“Oh, really? That’s too bad. Is it absolutely settled--?”
+
+“As far as I’m concerned,” said Susy crisply.
+
+The other sighed. “I’m too sorry. You see, dear, I’d meant to ask you
+to stay on here quietly and look after the Fulmer children. Fulmer and
+I are going to Spain next week--I want to be with him when he makes his
+studies, receives his first impressions; such a marvellous experience,
+to be there when he and Velasquez meet!” She broke off, lost in
+prospective ecstasy. “And, you see, as Grace Fulmer insists on coming
+with us--”
+
+“Ah, I see.”
+
+“Well, there are the five children--such a problem,” sighed the
+benefactress. “If you were at a loose end, you know, dear, while Nick’s
+away with his friends, I could really make it worth your while....”
+
+“So awfully good of you, Violet; only I’m not, as it happens.”
+
+Oh the relief of being able to say that, gaily, firmly and even
+truthfully! Take charge of the Fulmer children, indeed! Susy remembered
+how Nick and she had fled from them that autumn afternoon in New
+Hampshire. The offer gave her a salutary glimpse of the way in which, as
+the years passed, and she lost her freshness and novelty, she would more
+and more be used as a convenience, a stop-gap, writer of notes, runner
+of errands, nursery governess or companion. She called to mind several
+elderly women of her acquaintance, pensioners of her own group, who
+still wore its livery, struck its attitudes and chattered its jargon,
+but had long since been ruthlessly relegated to these slave-ant offices.
+Never in the world would she join their numbers.
+
+Mrs. Melrose’s face fell, and she looked at Susy with the plaintive
+bewilderment of the wielder of millions to whom everything that cannot
+be bought is imperceptible.
+
+“But I can’t see why you can’t change your plans,” she murmured with a
+soft persistency.
+
+“Ah, well, you know”--Susy paused on a slow inward smile--“they’re not
+mine only, as it happens.”
+
+Mrs. Melrose’s brow clouded. The unforeseen complication of Mrs.
+Fulmer’s presence on the journey had evidently tried her nerves, and
+this new obstacle to her arrangements shook her faith in the divine
+order of things.
+
+“Your plans are not yours only? But surely you won’t let Ursula Gillow
+dictate to you?... There’s my jade pendant; the one you said you liked
+the other day.... The Fulmers won’t go with me, you understand, unless
+they’re satisfied about the children; the whole plan will fall
+through. Susy darling, you were always too unselfish; I hate to see you
+sacrificed to Ursula.”
+
+Susy’s smile lingered. Time was when she might have been glad to add
+the jade pendant to the collection already enriched by Ellie Vanderlyn’s
+sapphires; more recently, she would have resented the offer as an insult
+to her newly-found principles. But already the mere fact that she
+might henceforth, if she chose, be utterly out of reach of such bribes,
+enabled her to look down on them with tolerance. Oh, the blessed moral
+freedom that wealth conferred! She recalled Mrs. Fulmer’s uncontrollable
+cry: “The most wonderful thing of all is not having to contrive and
+skimp, and give up something every single minute!” Yes; it was only on
+such terms that one could call one’s soul one’s own. The sense of it
+gave Susy the grace to answer amicably: “If I could possibly help you
+out, Violet, I shouldn’t want a present to persuade me. And, as you say,
+there’s no reason why I should sacrifice myself to Ursula--or to anybody
+else. Only, as it happens”--she paused and took the plunge--“I’m going
+to England because I’ve promised to see a friend.” That night she wrote
+to Strefford.
+
+
+
+
+
+XVI.
+
+
+
+STRETCHED out under an awning on the deck of the Ibis, Nick Lansing
+looked up for a moment at the vanishing cliffs of Malta and then plunged
+again into his book.
+
+He had had nearly three weeks of drug-taking on the Ibis. The drugs he
+had absorbed were of two kinds: visions of fleeing landscapes, looming
+up from the blue sea to vanish into it again, and visions of study
+absorbed from the volumes piled up day and night at his elbow. For the
+first time in months he was in reach of a real library, just the kind
+of scholarly yet miscellaneous library, that his restless and impatient
+spirit craved. He was aware that the books he read, like the fugitive
+scenes on which he gazed, were merely a form of anesthetic: he swallowed
+them with the careless greed of the sufferer who seeks only to still
+pain and deaden memory. But they were beginning to produce in him a
+moral languor that was not disagreeable, that, indeed, compared with the
+fierce pain of the first days, was almost pleasurable. It was exactly
+the kind of drug that he needed.
+
+There is probably no point on which the average man has more definite
+views than on the uselessness of writing a letter that is hard to write.
+In the line he had sent to Susy from Genoa Nick had told her that she
+would hear from him again in a few days; but when the few days had
+passed, and he began to consider setting himself to the task, he found
+fifty reasons for postponing it.
+
+Had there been any practical questions to write about it would have been
+different; he could not have borne for twenty-four hours the idea that
+she was in uncertainty as to money. But that had all been settled
+long ago. From the first she had had the administering of their modest
+fortune. On their marriage Nick’s own meagre income, paid in, none too
+regularly, by the agent who had managed for years the dwindling family
+properties, had been transferred to her: it was the only wedding present
+he could make. And the wedding cheques had of course all been
+deposited in her name. There were therefore no “business” reasons for
+communicating with her; and when it came to reasons of another order the
+mere thought of them benumbed him.
+
+For the first few days he reproached himself for his inertia; then he
+began to seek reasons for justifying it. After all, for both their sakes
+a waiting policy might be the wisest he could pursue. He had left Susy
+because he could not tolerate the conditions on which he had discovered
+their life together to be based; and he had told her so. What more was
+there to say?
+
+Nothing was changed in their respective situations; if they came
+together it could be only to resume the same life; and that, as the days
+went by, seemed to him more and more impossible. He had not yet reached
+the point of facing a definite separation; but whenever his thoughts
+travelled back over their past life he recoiled from any attempt to
+return to it. As long as this state of mind continued there seemed
+nothing to add to the letter he had already written, except indeed the
+statement that he was cruising with the Hickses. And he saw no pressing
+reason for communicating that.
+
+To the Hickses he had given no hint of his situation. When Coral Hicks,
+a fortnight earlier, had picked him up in the broiling streets of Genoa,
+and carried him off to the Ibis, he had thought only of a cool dinner
+and perhaps a moonlight sail. Then, in reply to their friendly urging,
+he had confessed that he had not been well--had indeed gone off
+hurriedly for a few days’ change of air--and that left him without
+defence against the immediate proposal that he should take his change
+of air on the Ibis. They were just off to Corsica and Sardinia, and from
+there to Sicily: he could rejoin the railway at Naples, and be back at
+Venice in ten days.
+
+Ten days of respite--the temptation was irresistible. And he really
+liked the kind uncomplicated Hickses. A wholesome honesty and simplicity
+breathed through all their opulence, as if the rich trappings of their
+present life still exhaled the fragrance of their native prairies. The
+mere fact of being with such people was like a purifying bath. When the
+yacht touched at Naples he agreed since they were so awfully kind--to go
+on to Sicily. And when the chief steward, going ashore at Naples for
+the last time before they got up steam, said: “Any letters for the post,
+sir?” he answered, as he had answered at each previous halt: “No, thank
+you: none.”
+
+Now they were heading for Rhodes and Crete--Crete, where he had never
+been, where he had so often longed to go. In spite of the lateness of
+the season the weather was still miraculously fine: the short waves
+danced ahead under a sky without a cloud, and the strong bows of the
+Ibis hardly swayed as she flew forward over the flying crests.
+
+Only his hosts and their daughter were on the yacht--of course with
+Eldorada Tooker and Mr. Beck in attendance. An eminent archaeologist,
+who was to have joined them at Naples, had telegraphed an excuse at the
+last moment; and Nick noticed that, while Mrs. Hicks was perpetually
+apologizing for the great man’s absence, Coral merely smiled and said
+nothing.
+
+As a matter of fact, Mr. and Mrs. Hicks were never as pleasant as
+when one had them to one’s self. In company, Mr. Hicks ran the risk of
+appearing over-hospitable, and Mrs. Hicks confused dates and names in
+the desire to embrace all culture in her conversation. But alone with
+Nick, their old travelling-companion, they shone out in their native
+simplicity, and Mr. Hicks talked soundly of investments, and Mrs. Hicks
+recalled her early married days in Apex City, when, on being brought
+home to her new house in Aeschylus Avenue, her first thought had been:
+“How on earth shall I get all those windows washed?”
+
+The loss of Mr. Buttles had been as serious to them as Nick had
+supposed: Mr. Beck could never hope to replace him. Apart from his
+mysterious gift of languages, and his almost superhuman faculty for
+knowing how to address letters to eminent people, and in what terms to
+conclude them, he had a smattering of archaeology and general culture on
+which Mrs. Hicks had learned to depend--her own memory being, alas, so
+inadequate to the range of her interests.
+
+Her daughter might perhaps have helped her; but it was not Miss Hicks’s
+way to mother her parents. She was exceedingly kind to them, but left
+them, as it were, to bring themselves up as best they could, while she
+pursued her own course of self-development. A sombre zeal for knowledge
+filled the mind of this strange girl: she appeared interested only
+in fresh opportunities of adding to her store of facts. They were
+illuminated by little imagination and less poetry; but, carefully
+catalogued and neatly sorted in her large cool brain, they were always
+as accessible as the volumes in an up-to-date public library.
+
+To Nick there was something reposeful in this lucid intellectual
+curiosity. He wanted above all things to get away from sentiment, from
+seduction, from the moods and impulses and flashing contradictions that
+were Susy. Susy was not a great reader: her store of facts was small,
+and she had grown up among people who dreaded ideas as much as if they
+had been a contagious disease. But, in the early days especially,
+when Nick had put a book in her hand, or read a poem to her, her
+swift intelligence had instantly shed a new light on the subject, and,
+penetrating to its depths, had extracted from them whatever belonged
+to her. What a pity that this exquisite insight, this intuitive
+discrimination, should for the most part have been spent upon reading
+the thoughts of vulgar people, and extracting a profit from them--should
+have been wasted, since her childhood, on all the hideous intricacies of
+“managing”!
+
+And visible beauty--how she cared for that too! He had not guessed it,
+or rather he had not been sure of it, till the day when, on their way
+through Paris, he had taken her to the Louvre, and they had stood before
+the little Crucifixion of Mantegna. He had not been looking at the
+picture, or watching to see what impression it produced on Susy. His
+own momentary mood was for Correggio and Fragonard, the laughter of the
+Music Lesson and the bold pagan joys of the Antiope; and then he
+had missed her from his side, and when he came to where she stood,
+forgetting him, forgetting everything, had seen the glare of that tragic
+sky in her face, her trembling lip, the tears on her lashes. That was
+Susy....
+
+Closing his book he stole a glance at Coral Hicks’s profile, thrown back
+against the cushions of the deck-chair at his side. There was something
+harsh and bracing in her blunt primitive build, in the projection of
+the black eyebrows that nearly met over her thick straight nose, and
+the faint barely visible black down on her upper lip. Some miracle of
+will-power, combined with all the artifices that wealth can buy, had
+turned the fat sallow girl he remembered into this commanding young
+woman, almost handsome at times indisputably handsome--in her big
+authoritative way. Watching the arrogant lines of her profile against
+the blue sea, he remembered, with a thrill that was sweet to his vanity,
+how twice--under the dome of the Scalzi and in the streets of Genoa--he
+had seen those same lines soften at his approach, turn womanly, pleading
+and almost humble. That was Coral....
+
+Suddenly she said, without turning toward him: “You’ve had no letters
+since you’ve been on board.”
+
+He looked at her, surprised. “No--thank the Lord!” he laughed.
+
+“And you haven’t written one either,” she continued in her hard
+statistical tone.
+
+“No,” he again agreed, with the same laugh.
+
+“That means that you really are free--”
+
+“Free?”
+
+He saw the cheek nearest him redden. “Really off on a holiday, I mean;
+not tied down.” After a pause he rejoined: “No, I’m not particularly
+tied down.”
+
+“And your book?”
+
+“Oh, my book--” He stopped and considered. He had thrust The Pageant of
+Alexander into his handbag on the night of his Bight from Venice; but
+since then he had never looked at it. Too many memories and illusions
+were pressed between its pages; and he knew just at what page he had
+felt Ellie Vanderlyn bending over him from behind, caught a whiff of her
+scent, and heard her breathless “I had to thank you!”
+
+“My book’s hung up,” he said impatiently, annoyed with Miss Hicks’s lack
+of tact. There was a girl who never put out feelers....
+
+“Yes; I thought it was,” she went on quietly, and he gave her a startled
+glance. What the devil else did she think, he wondered? He had never
+supposed her capable of getting far enough out of her own thick carapace
+of self-sufficiency to penetrate into any one else’s feelings.
+
+“The truth is,” he continued, embarrassed, “I suppose I dug away at
+it rather too continuously; that’s probably why I felt the need of a
+change. You see I’m only a beginner.”
+
+She still continued her relentless questioning. “But later--you’ll go on
+with it, of course?”
+
+“Oh, I don’t know.” He paused, glanced down the glittering deck, and
+then out across the glittering water. “I’ve been dreaming dreams, you
+see. I rather think I shall have to drop the book altogether, and try
+to look out for a job that will pay. To indulge in my kind of literature
+one must first have an assured income.”
+
+He was instantly annoyed with himself for having spoken. Hitherto in his
+relations with the Hickses he had carefully avoided the least allusion
+that might make him feel the heavy hand of their beneficence. But the
+idle procrastinating weeks had weakened him and he had yielded to the
+need of putting into words his vague intentions. To do so would perhaps
+help to make them more definite.
+
+To his relief Miss Hicks made no immediate reply; and when she spoke it
+was in a softer voice and with an unwonted hesitation.
+
+“It seems a shame that with gifts like yours you shouldn’t find some
+kind of employment that would leave you leisure enough to do your real
+work....”
+
+He shrugged ironically. “Yes--there are a goodish number of us hunting
+for that particular kind of employment.”
+
+Her tone became more business-like. “I know it’s hard to find--almost
+impossible. But would you take it, I wonder, if it were offered to
+you--?”
+
+She turned her head slightly, and their eyes met. For an instant blank
+terror loomed upon him; but before he had time to face it she continued,
+in the same untroubled voice: “Mr. Buttles’s place, I mean. My parents
+must absolutely have some one they can count on. You know what an easy
+place it is.... I think you would find the salary satisfactory.”
+
+Nick drew a deep breath of relief. For a moment her eyes had looked as
+they had in the Scalzi--and he liked the girl too much not to shrink
+from reawakening that look. But Mr. Buttles’s place: why not?
+
+“Poor Buttles!” he murmured, to gain time.
+
+“Oh,” she said, “you won’t find the same reasons as he did for throwing
+up the job. He was the martyr of his artistic convictions.”
+
+He glanced at her sideways, wondering. After all she did not know of
+his meeting with Mr. Buttles in Genoa, nor of the latter’s confidences;
+perhaps she did not even know of Mr. Buttles’s hopeless passion. At any
+rate her face remained calm.
+
+“Why not consider it--at least just for a few months? Till after our
+expedition to Mesopotamia?” she pressed on, a little breathlessly.
+
+“You’re awfully kind: but I don’t know--”
+
+She stood up with one of her abrupt movements. “You needn’t, all
+at once. Take time think it over. Father wanted me to ask you,” she
+appended.
+
+He felt the inadequacy of his response. “It tempts me awfully, of
+course. But I must wait, at any rate--wait for letters. The fact is
+I shall have to wire from Rhodes to have them sent. I had chucked
+everything, even letters, for a few weeks.”
+
+“Ah, you are tired,” she murmured, giving him a last downward glance as
+she turned away.
+
+From Rhodes Nick Lansing telegraphed to his Paris bank to send his
+letters to Candia; but when the Ibis reached Candia, and the mail was
+brought on board, the thick envelope handed to him contained no letter
+from Susy.
+
+Why should it, since he had not yet written to her?
+
+He had not written, no: but in sending his address to the bank he knew
+he had given her the opportunity of reaching him if she wished to. And
+she had made no sign.
+
+Late that afternoon, when they returned to the yacht from their first
+expedition, a packet of newspapers lay on the deck-house table. Nick
+picked up one of the London journals, and his eye ran absently down the
+list of social events.
+
+He read:
+
+“Among the visitors expected next week at Ruan Castle (let for the
+season to Mr. Frederick J. Gillow of New York) are Prince Altineri of
+Rome, the Earl of Altringham and Mrs. Nicholas Lansing, who arrived in
+London last week from Paris.” Nick threw down the paper. It was just a
+month since he had left the Palazzo Vanderlyn and flung himself into the
+night express for Milan. A whole month--and Susy had not written. Only a
+month--and Susy and Strefford were already together!
+
+
+
+
+
+XVII.
+
+
+
+SUSY had decided to wait for Strefford in London.
+
+The new Lord Altringham was with his family in the north, and though she
+found a telegram on arriving, saying that he would join her in town the
+following week, she had still an interval of several days to fill.
+
+London was a desert; the rain fell without ceasing, and alone in the
+shabby family hotel which, even out of season, was the best she could
+afford, she sat at last face to face with herself.
+
+From the moment when Violet Melrose had failed to carry out her plan
+for the Fulmer children her interest in Susy had visibly waned. Often
+before, in the old days, Susy Branch had felt the same abrupt change of
+temperature in the manner of the hostess of the moment; and often--how
+often--had yielded, and performed the required service, rather than risk
+the consequences of estrangement. To that, at least, thank heaven, she
+need never stoop again.
+
+But as she hurriedly packed her trunks at Versailles, scraped together
+an adequate tip for Mrs. Match, and bade good-bye to Violet (grown
+suddenly fond and demonstrative as she saw her visitor safely headed
+for the station)--as Susy went through the old familiar mummery of the
+enforced leave-taking, there rose in her so deep a disgust for the
+life of makeshifts and accommodations, that if at that moment Nick had
+reappeared and held out his arms to her, she was not sure she would have
+had the courage to return to them.
+
+In her London solitude the thirst for independence grew fiercer.
+Independence with ease, of course. Oh, her hateful useless love of
+beauty... the curse it had always been to her, the blessing it might
+have been if only she had had the material means to gratify and to
+express it! And instead, it only gave her a morbid loathing of that
+hideous hotel bedroom drowned in yellow rain-light, of the smell of soot
+and cabbage through the window, the blistered wall-paper, the dusty wax
+bouquets under glass globes, and the electric lighting so contrived that
+as you turned on the feeble globe hanging from the middle of the ceiling
+the feebler one beside the bed went out!
+
+What a sham world she and Nick had lived in during their few months
+together! What right had either of them to those exquisite settings
+of the life of leisure: the long white house hidden in camellias and
+cypresses above the lake, or the great rooms on the Giudecca with the
+shimmer of the canal always playing over their frescoed ceilings! Yet
+she had come to imagine that these places really belonged to them, that
+they would always go on living, fondly and irreproachably, in the frame
+of other people’s wealth.... That, again, was the curse of her love of
+beauty, the way she always took to it as if it belonged to her!
+
+Well, the awakening was bound to come, and it was perhaps better that
+it should have come so soon. At any rate there was no use in letting her
+thoughts wander back to that shattered fool’s paradise of theirs. Only,
+as she sat there and reckoned up the days till Strefford arrived, what
+else in the world was there to think of?
+
+Her future and his?
+
+But she knew that future by heart already! She had not spent her life
+among the rich and fashionable without having learned every detail of
+the trappings of a rich and fashionable marriage. She had calculated
+long ago just how many dinner-dresses, how many tea-gowns and how much
+lacy lingerie would go to make up the outfit of the future Countess of
+Altringham. She had even decided to which dressmaker she would go for
+her chinchilla cloak--for she meant to have one, and down to her feet,
+and softer and more voluminous and more extravagantly sumptuous than
+Violet’s or Ursula’s... not to speak of silver foxes and sables... nor
+yet of the Altringham jewels.
+
+She knew all this by heart; had always known it. It all belonged to the
+make-up of the life of elegance: there was nothing new about it. What
+had been new to her was just that short interval with Nick--a life
+unreal indeed in its setting, but so real in its essentials: the one
+reality she had ever known. As she looked back on it she saw how much
+it had given her besides the golden flush of her happiness, the sudden
+flowering of sensuous joy in heart and body. Yes--there had been the
+flowering too, in pain like birth-pangs, of something graver, stronger,
+fuller of future power, something she had hardly heeded in her first
+light rapture, but that always came back and possessed her stilled soul
+when the rapture sank: the deep disquieting sense of something that
+Nick and love had taught her, but that reached out even beyond love and
+beyond Nick.
+
+Her nerves were racked by the ceaseless swish, swish of the rain on the
+dirty panes and the smell of cabbage and coal that came in under the
+door when she shut the window. This nauseating foretaste of the luncheon
+she must presently go down to was more than she could bear. It brought
+with it a vision of the dank coffee-room below, the sooty Smyrna rug,
+the rain on the sky-light, the listless waitresses handing about food
+that tasted as if it had been rained on too. There was really no reason
+why she should let such material miseries add to her depression....
+
+She sprang up, put on her hat and jacket, and calling for a taxi drove
+to the London branch of the Nouveau Luxe hotel. It was just one o’clock
+and she was sure to pick up a luncheon, for though London was empty
+that great establishment was not. It never was. Along those sultry
+velvet-carpeted halls, in that great flowered and scented dining-room,
+there was always a come-and-go of rich aimless people, the busy people
+who, having nothing to do, perpetually pursue their inexorable task from
+one end of the earth to the other.
+
+Oh, the monotony of those faces--the faces one always knew, whether one
+knew the people they belonged to or not! A fresh disgust seized her at
+the sight of them: she wavered, and then turned and fled. But on the
+threshold a still more familiar figure met her: that of a lady in
+exaggerated pearls and sables, descending from an exaggerated motor,
+like the motors in magazine advertisements, the huge arks in which
+jewelled beauties and slender youths pause to gaze at snowpeaks from an
+Alpine summit.
+
+It was Ursula Gillow--dear old Ursula, on her way to Scotland--and she
+and Susy fell on each other’s necks. It appeared that Ursula, detained
+till the next evening by a dress-maker’s delay, was also out of a job
+and killing time, and the two were soon smiling at each other over
+the exquisite preliminaries of a luncheon which the head-waiter had
+authoritatively asked Mrs. Gillow to “leave to him, as usual.”
+
+Ursula was in a good humour. It did not often happen; but when it did
+her benevolence knew no bounds.
+
+Like Mrs. Melrose, like all her tribe in fact, she was too much absorbed
+in her own affairs to give more than a passing thought to any one
+else’s; but she was delighted at the meeting with Susy, as her wandering
+kind always were when they ran across fellow-wanderers, unless the
+meeting happened to interfere with choicer pleasures. Not to be alone
+was the urgent thing; and Ursula, who had been forty-eight hours alone
+in London, at once exacted from her friend a promise that they should
+spend the rest of the day together. But once the bargain struck her mind
+turned again to her own affairs, and she poured out her confidences
+to Susy over a succession of dishes that manifested the head-waiter’s
+understanding of the case.
+
+Ursula’s confidences were always the same, though they were usually
+about a different person. She demolished and rebuilt her sentimental
+life with the same frequency and impetuosity as that with which she
+changed her dress-makers, did over her drawing-rooms, ordered new
+motors, altered the mounting of her jewels, and generally renewed the
+setting of her life. Susy knew in advance what the tale would be; but
+to listen to it over perfect coffee, an amber-scented cigarette at
+her lips, was pleasanter than consuming cold mutton alone in a mouldy
+coffee-room. The contrast was so soothing that she even began to take a
+languid interest in her friend’s narrative.
+
+After luncheon they got into the motor together and began a systematic
+round of the West End shops: furriers, jewellers and dealers in old
+furniture. Nothing could be more unlike Violet Melrose’s long hesitating
+sessions before the things she thought she wanted till the moment came
+to decide. Ursula pounced on silver foxes and old lacquer as promptly
+and decisively as on the objects of her surplus sentimentality: she knew
+at once what she wanted, and valued it more after it was hers.
+
+“And now--I wonder if you couldn’t help me choose a grand piano?” she
+suggested, as the last antiquarian bowed them out.
+
+“A piano?”
+
+“Yes: for Ruan. I’m sending one down for Grace Fulmer. She’s coming to
+stay... did I tell you? I want people to hear her. I want her to get
+engagements in London. My dear, she’s a Genius.”
+
+“A Genius--Grace!” Susy gasped. “I thought it was Nat....”
+
+“Nat--Nat Fulmer?” Ursula laughed derisively. “Ah, of course--you’ve been
+staying with that silly Violet! The poor thing is off her head about
+Nat--it’s really pitiful. Of course he has talent: I saw that long
+before Violet had ever heard of him. Why, on the opening day of the
+American Artists’ exhibition, last winter, I stopped short before his
+‘Spring Snow-Storm’ (which nobody else had noticed till that moment),
+and said to the Prince, who was with me: ‘The man has talent.’ But
+genius--why, it’s his wife who has genius! Have you never heard Grace
+play the violin? Poor Violet, as usual, is off on the wrong tack. I’ve
+given Fulmer my garden-house to do--no doubt Violet told you--because
+I wanted to help him. But Grace is my discovery, and I’m determined to
+make her known, and to have every one understand that she is the genius
+of the two. I’ve told her she simply must come to Ruan, and bring the
+best accompanyist she can find. You know poor Nerone is dreadfully bored
+by sport, though of course he goes out with the guns. And if one didn’t
+have a little art in the evening.... Oh, Susy, do you mean to tell me
+you don’t know how to choose a piano? I thought you were so fond of
+music!”
+
+“I am fond of it; but without knowing anything about it--in the way
+we’re all of us fond of the worthwhile things in our stupid set,”
+ she added to herself--since it was obviously useless to impart such
+reflections to Ursula.
+
+“But are you sure Grace is coming?” she questioned aloud.
+
+“Quite sure. Why shouldn’t she? I wired to her yesterday. I’m giving her
+a thousand dollars and all her expenses.”
+
+It was not till they were having tea in a Piccadilly tea-room that Mrs.
+Gillow began to manifest some interest in her companion’s plans. The
+thought of losing Susy became suddenly intolerable to her. The Prince,
+who did not see why he should be expected to linger in London out of
+season, was already at Ruan, and Ursula could not face the evening and
+the whole of the next day by herself.
+
+“But what are you doing in town, darling, I don’t remember if I’ve asked
+you,” she said, resting her firm elbows on the tea-table while she took
+a light from Susy’s cigarette.
+
+Susy hesitated. She had foreseen that the time must soon come when she
+should have to give some account of herself; and why should she not
+begin by telling Ursula?
+
+But telling her what?
+
+Her silence appeared to strike Mrs. Gillow as a reproach, and she
+continued with compunction: “And Nick? Nick’s with you? How is he, I
+thought you and he still were in Venice with Ellie Vanderlyn.”
+
+“We were, for a few weeks.” She steadied her voice. “It was delightful.
+But now we’re both on our own again--for a while.”
+
+Mrs. Gillow scrutinized her more searchingly. “Oh, you’re alone here,
+then; quite alone?”
+
+“Yes: Nick’s cruising with some friends in the Mediterranean.”
+
+Ursula’s shallow gaze deepened singularly. “But, Susy darling, then if
+you’re alone--and out of a job, just for the moment?”
+
+Susy smiled. “Well, I’m not sure.”
+
+“Oh, but if you are, darling, and you would come to Ruan! I know Fred
+asked you didn’t he? And he told me that both you and Nick had refused.
+He was awfully huffed at your not coming; but I suppose that was because
+Nick had other plans. We couldn’t have him now, because there’s no room
+for another gun; but since he’s not here, and you’re free, why you
+know, dearest, don’t you, how we’d love to have you? Fred would be too
+glad--too outrageously glad--but you don’t much mind Fred’s love-making,
+do you? And you’d be such a help to me--if that’s any argument! With
+that big house full of men, and people flocking over every night to
+dine, and Fred caring only for sport, and Nerone simply loathing it and
+ridiculing it, and not a minute to myself to try to keep him in a good
+humour.... Oh, Susy darling, don’t say no, but let me telephone at once
+for a place in the train to-morrow night!”
+
+Susy leaned back, letting the ash lengthen on her cigarette. How
+familiar, how hatefully familiar, was that old appeal! Ursula felt the
+pressing need of someone to flirt with Fred for a few weeks... and here
+was the very person she needed. Susy shivered at the thought. She had
+never really meant to go to Ruan. She had simply used the moor as a
+pretext when Violet Melrose had gently put her out of doors. Rather than
+do what Ursula asked she would borrow a few hundred pounds of Strefford,
+as he had suggested, and then look about for some temporary occupation
+until--
+
+Until she became Lady Altringham? Well, perhaps. At any rate, she was
+not going back to slave for Ursula.
+
+She shook her head with a faint smile. “I’m so sorry, Ursula: of course
+I want awfully to oblige you--”
+
+Mrs. Gillow’s gaze grew reproachful. “I should have supposed you would,”
+ she murmured. Susy, meeting her eyes, looked into them down a long vista
+of favours bestowed, and perceived that Ursula was not the woman to
+forget on which side the obligation lay between them.
+
+Susy hesitated: she remembered the weeks of ecstasy she had owed to the
+Gillows’ wedding cheque, and it hurt her to appear ungrateful.
+
+“If I could, Ursula... but really... I’m not free at the moment.” She
+paused, and then took an abrupt decision. “The fact is, I’m waiting here
+to see Strefford.”
+
+“Strefford’ Lord Altringham?” Ursula stared. “Ah, yes—I remember. You
+and he used to be great friends, didn’t you?” Her roving attention
+deepened.... But if Susy were waiting to see Lord Altringham--one of the
+richest men in England! Suddenly Ursula opened her gold-meshed bag and
+snatched a miniature diary from it.
+
+“But wait a moment--yes, it is next week! I knew it was next week he’s
+coming to Ruan! But, you darling, that makes everything all right.
+You’ll send him a wire at once, and come with me to-morrow, and meet him
+there instead of in this nasty sloppy desert.... Oh, Susy, if you knew
+how hard life is for me in Scotland between the Prince and Fred you
+couldn’t possibly say no!”
+
+Susy still wavered; but, after all, if Strefford were really bound
+for Ruan, why not see him there, agreeably and at leisure, instead of
+spending a dreary day with him in roaming the wet London streets, or
+screaming at him through the rattle of a restaurant orchestra? She knew
+he would not be likely to postpone his visit to Ruan in order to linger
+in London with her: such concessions had never been his way, and were
+less than ever likely to be, now that he could do so thoroughly and
+completely as he pleased.
+
+For the first time she fully understood how different his destiny had
+become. Now of course all his days and hours were mapped out in advance:
+invitations assailed him, opportunities pressed on him, he had only to
+choose.... And the women! She had never before thought of the women. All
+the girls in England would be wanting to marry him, not to mention her
+own enterprising compatriots. And there were the married women, who were
+even more to be feared. Streff might, for the time, escape marriage;
+though she could guess the power of persuasion, family pressure, all the
+converging traditional influences he had so often ridiculed, yet, as
+she knew, had never completely thrown off.... Yes, those quiet invisible
+women at Altringham--his uncle’s widow, his mother, the spinster
+sisters--it was not impossible that, with tact and patience--and the
+stupidest women could be tactful and patient on such occasions--they
+might eventually persuade him that it was his duty, they might put just
+the right young loveliness in his way.... But meanwhile, now, at
+once, there were the married women. Ah, they wouldn’t wait, they were
+doubtless laying their traps already! Susy shivered at the thought. She
+knew too much about the way the trick was done, had followed, too often,
+all the sinuosities of such approaches. Not that they were very sinuous
+nowadays: more often there was just a swoop and a pounce when the time
+came; but she knew all the arts and the wiles that led up to it. She
+knew them, oh, how she knew them--though with Streff, thank heaven, she
+had never been called upon to exercise them! His love was there for the
+asking: would she not be a fool to refuse it?
+
+Perhaps; though on that point her mind still wavered. But at any
+rate she saw that, decidedly, it would be better to yield to Ursula’s
+pressure; better to meet him at Ruan, in a congenial setting, where she
+would have time to get her bearings, observe what dangers threatened
+him, and make up her mind whether, after all, it was to be her mission
+to save him from the other women.
+
+“Well, if you like, then, Ursula....”
+
+“Oh, you angel, you! I’m so glad! We’ll go to the nearest post office,
+and send off the wire ourselves.”
+
+As they got into the motor Mrs. Gillow seized Susy’s arm with a pleading
+pressure. “And you will let Fred make love to you a little, won’t you,
+darling?”
+
+
+
+
+
+XVIII.
+
+
+
+“BUT I can’t think,” said Ellie Vanderlyn earnestly, “why you don’t
+announce your engagement before waiting for your divorce. People are
+beginning to do it, I assure you--it’s so much safer!”
+
+Mrs. Vanderlyn, on the way back from St. Moritz to England, had paused
+in Paris to renew the depleted wardrobe which, only two months earlier,
+had filled so many trunks to bursting. Other ladies, flocking there
+from all points of the globe for the same purpose, disputed with her
+the Louis XVI suites of the Nouveau Luxe, the pink-candled tables in
+the restaurant, the hours for trying-on at the dressmakers’; and just
+because they were so many, and all feverishly fighting to get the same
+things at the same time, they were all excited, happy and at ease. It
+was the most momentous period of the year: the height of the “dress
+makers’ season.”
+
+Mrs. Vanderlyn had run across Susy Lansing at one of the Rue de la Paix
+openings, where rows of ladies wan with heat and emotion sat for hours
+in rapt attention while spectral apparitions in incredible raiment
+tottered endlessly past them on aching feet.
+
+Distracted from the regal splendours of a chinchilla cloak by the
+sense that another lady was also examining it, Mrs. Vanderlyn turned in
+surprise at sight of Susy, whose head was critically bent above the fur.
+
+“Susy! I’d no idea you were here! I saw in the papers that you were with
+the Gillows.” The customary embraces followed; then Mrs. Vanderlyn,
+her eyes pursuing the matchless cloak as it disappeared down a vista of
+receding mannequins, interrogated sharply: “Are you shopping for Ursula?
+If you mean to order that cloak for her I’d rather know.”
+
+Susy smiled, and paused a moment before answering. During the pause
+she took in all the exquisite details of Ellie Vanderlyn’s perpetually
+youthful person, from the plumed crown of her head to the perfect arch
+of her patent-leather shoes. At last she said quietly: “No--to-day I’m
+shopping for myself.”
+
+“Yourself? Yourself?” Mrs. Vanderlyn echoed with a stare of incredulity.
+
+“Yes; just for a change,” Susy serenely acknowledged.
+
+“But the cloak--I meant the chinchilla cloak... the one with the ermine
+lining....”
+
+“Yes; it is awfully good, isn’t it? But I mean to look elsewhere before
+I decide.”
+
+Ah, how often she had heard her friends use that phrase; and how amusing
+it was, now, to see Ellie’s amazement as she heard it tossed off in
+her own tone of contemptuous satiety! Susy was becoming more and more
+dependent on such diversions; without them her days, crowded as they
+were, would nevertheless have dragged by heavily. But it still amused
+her to go to the big dressmakers’, watch the mannequins sweep by, and
+be seen by her friends superciliously examining all the most expensive
+dresses in the procession. She knew the rumour was abroad that she and
+Nick were to be divorced, and that Lord Altringham was “devoted” to her.
+She neither confirmed nor denied the report: she just let herself be
+luxuriously carried forward on its easy tide. But although it was now
+three months since Nick had left the Palazzo Vanderlyn she had not yet
+written to him--nor he to her.
+
+Meanwhile, in spite of all that she packed into them, the days passed
+more and more slowly, and the excitements she had counted on no longer
+excited her. Strefford was hers: she knew that he would marry her as
+soon as she was free. They had been together at Ruan for ten days, and
+after that she had motored south with him, stopping on the way to see
+Altringham, from which, at the moment, his mourning relatives were
+absent.
+
+At Altringham they had parted; and after one or two more visits in
+England she had come back to Paris, where he was now about to join her.
+After her few hours at Altringham she had understood that he would wait
+for her as long as was necessary: the fear of the “other women” had
+ceased to trouble her. But, perhaps for that very reason, the future
+seemed less exciting than she had expected. Sometimes she thought it
+was the sight of that great house which had overwhelmed her: it was
+too vast, too venerable, too like a huge monument built of ancient
+territorial traditions and obligations. Perhaps it had been lived in for
+too long by too many serious-minded and conscientious women: somehow she
+could not picture it invaded by bridge and debts and adultery. And yet
+that was what would have to be, of course... she could hardly picture
+either Strefford or herself continuing there the life of heavy county
+responsibilities, dull parties, laborious duties, weekly church-going,
+and presiding over local committees.... What a pity they couldn’t sell
+it and have a little house on the Thames!
+
+Nevertheless she was not sorry to let it be known that Altringham was
+hers when she chose to take it. At times she wondered whether Nick
+knew... whether rumours had reached him. If they had, he had only his
+own letter to thank for it. He had told her what course to pursue; and
+she was pursuing it.
+
+For a moment the meeting with Ellie Vanderlyn had been a shock to her;
+she had hoped never to see Ellie again. But now that they were actually
+face to face Susy perceived how dulled her sensibilities were. In a
+few moments she had grown used to Ellie, as she was growing used to
+everybody and to everything in the old life she had returned to. What
+was the use of making such a fuss about things? She and Mrs. Vanderlyn
+left the dress-maker’s together, and after an absorbing session at a new
+milliner’s were now taking tea in Ellie’s drawing-room at the Nouveau
+Luxe.
+
+Ellie, with her spoiled child’s persistency, had come back to the
+question of the chinchilla cloak. It was the only one she had seen that
+she fancied in the very least, and as she hadn’t a decent fur garment
+left to her name she was naturally in somewhat of a hurry... but, of
+course, if Susy had been choosing that model for a friend....
+
+Susy, leaning back against her cushions, examined through half-closed
+lids Mrs. Vanderlyn’s small delicately-restored countenance, which wore
+the same expression of childish eagerness as when she discoursed of the
+young Davenant of the moment. Once again Susy remarked that, in Ellie’s
+agitated existence, every interest appeared to be on exactly the same
+plane.
+
+“The poor shivering dear,” she answered laughing, “of course it shall
+have its nice warm winter cloak, and I’ll choose another one instead.”
+
+“Oh, you darling, you! If you would! Of course, whoever you were
+ordering it for need never know....”
+
+“Ah, you can’t comfort yourself with that, I’m afraid. I’ve already told
+you that I was ordering it for myself.” Susy paused to savour to the
+full Ellie’s look of blank bewilderment; then her amusement was checked
+by an indefinable change in her friend’s expression.
+
+“Oh, dearest--seriously? I didn’t know there was someone....”
+
+Susy flushed to the forehead. A horror of humiliation overwhelmed her.
+That Ellie should dare to think that of her--that anyone should dare to!
+
+“Someone buying chinchilla cloaks for me? Thanks!” she flared out. “I
+suppose I ought to be glad that the idea didn’t immediately occur to
+you. At least there was a decent interval of doubt....” She stood up,
+laughing again, and began to wander about the room. In the mirror above
+the mantel she caught sight of her flushed angry face, and of Mrs.
+Vanderlyn’s disconcerted stare. She turned toward her friend.
+
+“I suppose everybody else will think it if you do; so perhaps I’d better
+explain.” She paused, and drew a quick breath. “Nick and I mean to
+part--have parted, in fact. He’s decided that the whole thing was a
+mistake. He will probably; marry again soon--and so shall I.”
+
+She flung the avowal out breathlessly, in her nervous dread of letting
+Ellie Vanderlyn think for an instant longer that any other explanation
+was conceivable. She had not meant to be so explicit; but once the words
+were spoken she was not altogether sorry. Of course people would soon
+begin to wonder why she was again straying about the world alone; and
+since it was by Nick’s choice, why should she not say so? Remembering
+the burning anguish of those last hours in Venice she asked herself what
+possible consideration she owed to the man who had so humbled her.
+
+Ellie Vanderlyn glanced at her in astonishment. “You? You and Nick--are
+going to part?” A light appeared to dawn on her. “Ah--then that’s why he
+sent me back my pin, I suppose?”
+
+“Your pin?” Susy wondered, not at once remembering.
+
+“The poor little scarf-pin I gave him before I left Venice. He sent it
+back almost at once, with the oddest note--just: ‘I haven’t earned it,
+really.’ I couldn’t think why he didn’t care for the pin. But, now I
+suppose it was because you and he had quarrelled; though really, even
+so, I can’t see why he should bear me a grudge....”
+
+Susy’s quick blood surged up. Nick had sent back the pin--the fatal pin!
+And she, Susy, had kept the bracelet--locked it up out of sight, shrunk
+away from the little packet whenever her hand touched it in packing or
+unpacking--but never thought of returning it, no, not once! Which of the
+two, she wondered, had been right? Was it not an indirect slight to her
+that Nick should fling back the gift to poor uncomprehending Ellie? Or
+was it not rather another proof of his finer moral sensitiveness!...
+And how could one tell, in their bewildering world, “It was not because
+we’ve quarrelled; we haven’t quarrelled,” she said slowly, moved by the
+sudden desire to defend her privacy and Nick’s, to screen from every
+eye their last bitter hour together. “We’ve simply decided that our
+experiment was impossible--for two paupers.”
+
+“Ah, well--of course we all felt that at the time. And now somebody else
+wants to marry you! And it’s your trousseau you were choosing that cloak
+for?” Ellie cried in incredulous rapture; then she flung her arms about
+Susy’s shrinking shoulders. “You lucky lucky girl! You clever clever
+darling! But who on earth can he be?”
+
+And it was then that Susy, for the first time, had pronounced the name
+of Lord Altringham.
+
+“Streff--Streff? Our dear old Streff, You mean to say he wants to marry
+you?” As the news took possession of her mind Ellie became dithyrambic.
+“But, my dearest, what a miracle of luck! Of course I always knew he
+was awfully gone on you: Fred Davenant used to say so, I remember... and
+even Nelson, who’s so stupid about such things, noticed it in Venice....
+But then it was so different. No one could possibly have thought of
+marrying him then; whereas now of course every woman is trying for him.
+Oh, Susy, whatever you do, don’t miss your chance! You can’t conceive
+of the wicked plotting and intriguing there will be to get him--on all
+sides, and even where one least suspects it. You don’t know what horrors
+women will do--and even girls!” A shudder ran through her at the thought,
+and she caught Susy’s wrists in vehement fingers. “But I can’t think,
+my dear, why you don’t announce your engagement at once. People are
+beginning to do it, I assure you--it’s so much safer!”
+
+Susy looked at her, wondering. Not a word of sympathy for the ruin of
+her brief bliss, not even a gleam of curiosity as to its cause! No
+doubt Ellie Vanderlyn, like all Susy’s other friends, had long since
+“discounted” the brevity of her dream, and perhaps planned a sequel to
+it before she herself had seen the glory fading. She and Nick had spent
+the greater part of their few weeks together under Ellie Vanderlyn’s
+roof; but to Ellie, obviously, the fact meant no more than her own
+escapade, at the same moment, with young Davenant’s supplanter--the
+“bounder” whom Strefford had never named. Her one thought for her friend
+was that Susy should at last secure her prize--her incredible prize. And
+therein at any rate Ellie showed the kind of cold disinterestedness that
+raised her above the smiling perfidy of the majority of her kind. At
+least her advice was sincere; and perhaps it was wise. Why should Susy
+not let every one know that she meant to marry Strefford as soon as the
+“formalities” were fulfilled?
+
+She did not immediately answer Mrs. Vanderlyn’s question; and the
+latter, repeating it, added impatiently: “I don’t understand you; if
+Nick agrees--”
+
+“Oh, he agrees,” said Susy.
+
+“Then what more do you want! Oh, Susy, if you’d only follow my example!”
+
+“Your example?” Susy paused, weighed the word, was struck by something
+embarrassed, arch yet half-apologetic in her friend’s expression. “Your
+example?” she repeated. “Why, Ellie, what on earth do you mean? Not that
+you’re going to part from poor Nelson?”
+
+Mrs. Vanderlyn met her reproachful gaze with a crystalline glance. “I
+don’t want to, heaven knows--poor dear Nelson! I assure you I simply
+hate it. He’s always such an angel to Clarissa... and then we’re used
+to each other. But what in the world am I to do? Algie’s so rich, so
+appallingly rich, that I have to be perpetually on the watch to keep
+other women away from him--and it’s too exhausting....”
+
+“Algie?”
+
+Mrs. Vanderlyn’s lovely eyebrows rose. “Algie: Algie Bockheimer. Didn’t
+you know, I think he said you’ve dined with his parents. Nobody else in
+the world is as rich as the Bockheimers; and Algie’s their only
+child. Yes, it was with him... with him I was so dreadfully happy last
+spring... and now I’m in mortal terror of losing him. And I do assure
+you there’s no other way of keeping them, when they’re as hideously rich
+as that!”
+
+Susy rose to her feet. A little shudder ran over her. She remembered,
+now, having seen Algie Bockheimer at one of his parents’ first
+entertainments, in their newly-inaugurated marble halls in Fifth Avenue.
+She recalled his too faultless clothes and his small glossy furtive
+countenance. She looked at Ellie Vanderlyn with sudden scorn.
+
+“I think you’re abominable,” she exclaimed.
+
+The other’s perfect little face collapsed. “A-bo-minable? A-bo-mi-nable?
+Susy!”
+
+“Yes... with Nelson... and Clarissa... and your past together... and all
+the money you can possibly want... and that man! Abominable.”
+
+Ellie stood up trembling: she was not used to scenes, and they
+disarranged her thoughts as much as her complexion.
+
+“You’re very cruel, Susy--so cruel and dreadful that I hardly know how
+to answer you,” she stammered. “But you simply don’t know what you’re
+talking about. As if anybody ever had all the money they wanted!” She
+wiped her dark-rimmed eyes with a cautious handkerchief, glanced at
+herself in the mirror, and added magnanimously: “But I shall try to
+forget what you’ve said.”
+
+
+
+
+
+XIX.
+
+
+
+JUST such a revolt as she had felt as a girl, such a disgusted recoil
+from the standards and ideals of everybody about her as had flung her
+into her mad marriage with Nick, now flamed in Susy Lansing’s bosom.
+
+How could she ever go back into that world again? How echo its
+appraisals of life and bow down to its judgments? Alas, it was only
+by marrying according to its standards that she could escape such
+subjection. Perhaps the same thought had actuated Nick: perhaps he had
+understood sooner than she that to attain moral freedom they must both
+be above material cares. Perhaps...
+
+Her talk with Ellie Vanderlyn had left Susy so oppressed and humiliated
+that she almost shrank from her meeting with Altringham the next day.
+She knew that he was coming to Paris for his final answer; he would wait
+as long as was necessary if only she would consent to take immediate
+steps for a divorce. She was staying at a modest hotel in the Faubourg
+St. Germain, and had once more refused his suggestion that they should
+lunch at the Nouveau Luxe, or at some fashionable restaurant of the
+Boulevards. As before, she insisted on going to an out-of-the-way place
+near the Luxembourg, where the prices were moderate enough for her own
+purse.
+
+“I can’t understand,” Strefford objected, as they turned from her hotel
+door toward this obscure retreat, “why you insist on giving me bad food,
+and depriving me of the satisfaction of being seen with you. Why must we
+be so dreadfully clandestine? Don’t people know by this time that we’re
+to be married?”
+
+Susy winced a little: she wondered if the word would always sound so
+unnatural on his lips.
+
+“No,” she said, with a laugh, “they simply think, for the present, that
+you’re giving me pearls and chinchilla cloaks.”
+
+He wrinkled his brows good-humouredly. “Well, so I would, with joy--at
+this particular minute. Don’t you think perhaps you’d better take
+advantage of it? I don’t wish to insist--but I foresee that I’m much too
+rich not to become stingy.”
+
+She gave a slight shrug. “At present there’s nothing I loathe more than
+pearls and chinchilla, or anything else in the world that’s expensive
+and enviable....”
+
+Suddenly she broke off, colouring with the consciousness that she had
+said exactly the kind of thing that all the women who were trying for
+him (except the very cleverest) would be sure to say; and that he
+would certainly suspect her of attempting the conventional comedy of
+disinterestedness, than which nothing was less likely to deceive or to
+flatter him.
+
+His twinkling eyes played curiously over her face, and she went on,
+meeting them with a smile: “But don’t imagine, all the same, that if I
+should... decide... it would be altogether for your beaux yeux....”
+
+He laughed, she thought, rather drily. “No,” he said, “I don’t suppose
+that’s ever likely to happen to me again.”
+
+“Oh, Streff--” she faltered with compunction. It was odd--once upon a
+time she had known exactly what to say to the man of the moment, whoever
+he was, and whatever kind of talk he required; she had even, in the
+difficult days before her marriage, reeled off glibly enough the sort
+of lime-light sentimentality that plunged poor Fred Gillow into such
+speechless beatitude. But since then she had spoken the language of real
+love, looked with its eyes, embraced with its hands; and now the other
+trumpery art had failed her, and she was conscious of bungling and
+groping like a beginner under Strefford’s ironic scrutiny.
+
+They had reached their obscure destination and he opened the door and
+glanced in.
+
+“It’s jammed--not a table. And stifling! Where shall we go? Perhaps they
+could give us a room to ourselves--” he suggested.
+
+She assented, and they were led up a cork-screw staircase to a
+squat-ceilinged closet lit by the arched top of a high window, the lower
+panes of which served for the floor below. Strefford opened the window,
+and Susy, throwing her cloak on the divan, leaned on the balcony while
+he ordered luncheon.
+
+On the whole she was glad they were to be alone. Just because she
+felt so sure of Strefford it seemed ungenerous to keep him longer in
+suspense. The moment had come when they must have a decisive talk, and
+in the crowded rooms below it would have been impossible.
+
+Strefford, when the waiter had brought the first course and left them
+to themselves, made no effort to revert to personal matters. He turned
+instead to the topic always most congenial to him: the humours and
+ironies of the human comedy, as presented by his own particular group.
+His malicious commentary on life had always amused Susy because of the
+shrewd flashes of philosophy he shed on the social antics they had
+so often watched together. He was in fact the one person she knew
+(excepting Nick) who was in the show and yet outside of it; and she was
+surprised, as the talk proceeded, to find herself so little interested
+in his scraps of gossip, and so little amused by his comments on them.
+
+With an inward shrug of discouragement she said to herself that probably
+nothing would ever really amuse her again; then, as she listened, she
+began to understand that her disappointment arose from the fact that
+Strefford, in reality, could not live without these people whom he
+saw through and satirized, and that the rather commonplace scandals he
+narrated interested him as much as his own racy considerations on them;
+and she was filled with terror at the thought that the inmost core of
+the richly-decorated life of the Countess of Altringham would be just
+as poor and low-ceilinged a place as the little room in which he and she
+now sat, elbow to elbow yet so unapproachably apart.
+
+If Strefford could not live without these people, neither could she and
+Nick; but for reasons how different! And if his opportunities had
+been theirs, what a world they would have created for themselves! Such
+imaginings were vain, and she shrank back from them into the present.
+After all, as Lady Altringham she would have the power to create that
+world which she and Nick had dreamed... only she must create it alone.
+Well, that was probably the law of things. All human happiness was thus
+conditioned and circumscribed, and hers, no doubt, must always be of the
+lonely kind, since material things did not suffice for it, even though
+it depended on them as Grace Fulmer’s, for instance, never had. Yet even
+Grace Fulmer had succumbed to Ursula’s offer, and had arrived at Ruan
+the day before Susy left, instead of going to Spain with her husband
+and Violet Melrose. But then Grace was making the sacrifice for her
+children, and somehow one had the feeling that in giving up her liberty
+she was not surrendering a tittle of herself. All the difference was
+there....
+
+“How I do bore you!” Susy heard Strefford exclaim. She became aware
+that she had not been listening: stray echoes of names of places and
+people--Violet Melrose, Ursula, Prince Altineri, others of their group
+and persuasion--had vainly knocked at her barricaded brain; what had he
+been telling her about them? She turned to him and their eyes met; his
+were full of a melancholy irony.
+
+“Susy, old girl, what’s wrong?”
+
+She pulled herself together. “I was thinking, Streff, just now--when I
+said I hated the very sound of pearls and chinchilla--how impossible
+it was that you should believe me; in fact, what a blunder I’d made in
+saying it.”
+
+He smiled. “Because it was what so many other women might be likely to
+say so awfully unoriginal, in fact?”
+
+She laughed for sheer joy at his insight. “It’s going to be easier than
+I imagined,” she thought. Aloud she rejoined: “Oh, Streff--how you’re
+always going to find me out! Where on earth shall I ever hide from you?”
+
+“Where?” He echoed her laugh, laying his hand lightly on hers. “In my
+heart, I’m afraid.”
+
+In spite of the laugh his accent shook her: something about it took
+all the mockery from his retort, checked on her lips the: “What? A
+valentine!” and made her suddenly feel that, if he were afraid, so was
+she. Yet she was touched also, and wondered half exultingly if any
+other woman had ever caught that particular deep inflexion of his shrill
+voice. She had never liked him as much as at that moment; and she said
+to herself, with an odd sense of detachment, as if she had been rather
+breathlessly observing the vacillations of someone whom she longed to
+persuade but dared not: “Now--NOW, if he speaks, I shall say yes!”
+
+He did not speak; but abruptly, and as startlingly to her as if she
+had just dropped from a sphere whose inhabitants had other methods of
+expressing their sympathy, he slipped his arm around her and bent his
+keen ugly melting face to hers....
+
+It was the lightest touch--in an instant she was free again. But
+something within her gasped and resisted long after his arm and his lips
+were gone, and he was proceeding, with a too-studied ease, to light a
+cigarette and sweeten his coffee.
+
+He had kissed her.... Well, naturally: why not? It was not the first
+time she had been kissed. It was true that one didn’t habitually
+associate Streff with such demonstrations; but she had not that excuse
+for surprise, for even in Venice she had begun to notice that he looked
+at her differently, and avoided her hand when he used to seek it.
+
+No--she ought not to have been surprised; nor ought a kiss to have been
+so disturbing. Such incidents had punctuated the career of Susy Branch:
+there had been, in particular, in far-off discarded times, Fred Gillow’s
+large but artless embraces. Well--nothing of that kind had seemed of
+any more account than the click of a leaf in a woodland walk. It had
+all been merely epidermal, ephemeral, part of the trivial accepted
+“business” of the social comedy. But this kiss of Strefford’s was what
+Nick’s had been, under the New Hampshire pines, on the day that had
+decided their fate. It was a kiss with a future in it: like a
+ring slipped upon her soul. And now, in the dreadful pause that
+followed--while Strefford fidgeted with his cigarette-case and rattled
+the spoon in his cup, Susy remembered what she had seen through the
+circle of Nick’s kiss: that blue illimitable distance which was at once
+the landscape at their feet and the future in their souls....
+
+Perhaps that was what Strefford’s sharply narrowed eyes were seeing now,
+that same illimitable distance that she had lost forever--perhaps he was
+saying to himself, as she had said to herself when her lips left Nick’s:
+“Each time we kiss we shall see it all again....” Whereas all she
+herself had felt was the gasping recoil from Strefford’s touch, and an
+intenser vision of the sordid room in which he and she sat, and of their
+two selves, more distant from each other than if their embrace had been
+a sudden thrusting apart....
+
+The moment prolonged itself, and they sat numb. How long had it lasted?
+How long ago was it that she had thought: “It’s going to be easier than
+I imagined”? Suddenly she felt Strefford’s queer smile upon her, and saw
+in his eyes a look, not of reproach or disappointment, but of deep and
+anxious comprehension. Instead of being angry or hurt, he had seen, he
+had understood, he was sorry for her!
+
+Impulsively she slipped her hand into his, and they sat silent for
+another moment. Then he stood up and took her cloak from the divan.
+“Shall we go now! I’ve got cards for the private view of the Reynolds
+exhibition at the Petit Palais. There are some portraits from
+Altringham. It might amuse you.”
+
+In the taxi she had time, through their light rattle of talk, to
+readjust herself and drop back into her usual feeling of friendly ease
+with him. He had been extraordinarily considerate, for anyone who always
+so undisguisedly sought his own satisfaction above all things; and
+if his considerateness were just an indirect way of seeking that
+satisfaction now, well, that proved how much he cared for her, how
+necessary to his happiness she had become. The sense of power was
+undeniably pleasant; pleasanter still was the feeling that someone
+really needed her, that the happiness of the man at her side depended
+on her yes or no. She abandoned herself to the feeling, forgetting the
+abysmal interval of his caress, or at least saying to herself that in
+time she would forget it, that really there was nothing to make a fuss
+about in being kissed by anyone she liked as much as Streff....
+
+She had guessed at once why he was taking her to see the Reynoldses.
+Fashionable and artistic Paris had recently discovered English
+eighteenth century art. The principal collections of England had yielded
+up their best examples of the great portrait painter’s work, and the
+private view at the Petit Palais was to be the social event of the
+afternoon. Everybody--Strefford’s everybody and Susy’s--was sure to
+be there; and these, as she knew, were the occasions that revived
+Strefford’s intermittent interest in art. He really liked picture shows
+as much as the races, if one could be sure of seeing as many people
+there. With Nick how different it would have been! Nick hated openings
+and varnishing days, and worldly aesthetics in general; he would have
+waited till the tide of fashion had ebbed, and slipped off with Susy to
+see the pictures some morning when they were sure to have the place to
+themselves.
+
+But Susy divined that there was another reason for Strefford’s
+suggestion. She had never yet shown herself with him publicly, among
+their own group of people: now he had determined that she should do
+so, and she knew why. She had humbled his pride; he had understood, and
+forgiven her. But she still continued to treat him as she had always
+treated the Strefford of old, Charlie Strefford, dear old negligible
+impecunious Streff; and he wanted to show her, ever so casually and
+adroitly, that the man who had asked her to marry him was no longer
+Strefford, but Lord Altringham.
+
+At the very threshold, his Ambassador’s greeting marked the difference:
+it was followed, wherever they turned, by ejaculations of welcome from
+the rulers of the world they moved in. Everybody rich enough or titled
+enough, or clever enough or stupid enough, to have forced a way into the
+social citadel, was there, waving and flag-flying from the battlements;
+and to all of them Lord Altringham had become a marked figure. During
+their slow progress through the dense mass of important people who made
+the approach to the pictures so well worth fighting for, he never left
+Susy’s side, or failed to make her feel herself a part of his triumphal
+advance. She heard her name mentioned: “Lansing--a Mrs. Lansing--an
+American... Susy Lansing? Yes, of course.... You remember her? At
+Newport, At St. Moritz? Exactly.... Divorced already? They say so...
+Susy darling! I’d no idea you were here... and Lord Altringham! You’ve
+forgotten me, I know, Lord Altringham.... Yes, last year, in Cairo... or
+at Newport... or in Scotland ... Susy, dearest, when will you bring Lord
+Altringham to dine? Any night that you and he are free I’ll arrange to
+be....”
+
+“You and he”: they were “you and he” already!
+
+“Ah, there’s one of them--of my great-grandmothers,” Strefford
+explained, giving a last push that drew him and Susy to the front rank,
+before a tall isolated portrait which, by sheer majesty of presentment,
+sat in its great carved golden frame as on a throne above the other
+pictures.
+
+Susy read on the scroll beneath it: “The Hon’ble Diana Lefanu, fifteenth
+Countess of Altringham”--and heard Strefford say: “Do you remember? It
+hangs where you noticed the empty space above the mantel-piece, in the
+Vandyke room. They say Reynolds stipulated that it should be put with
+the Vandykes.”
+
+She had never before heard him speak of his possessions, whether
+ancestral or merely material, in just that full and satisfied tone of
+voice: the rich man’s voice. She saw that he was already feeling the
+influence of his surroundings, that he was glad the portrait of a
+Countess of Altringham should occupy the central place in the principal
+room of the exhibition, that the crowd about it should be denser there
+than before any of the other pictures, and that he should be standing
+there with Susy, letting her feel, and letting all the people about
+them guess, that the day she chose she could wear the same name as his
+pictured ancestress.
+
+On the way back to her hotel, Strefford made no farther allusion to
+their future; they chatted like old comrades in their respective corners
+of the taxi. But as the carriage stopped at her door he said: “I must go
+back to England the day after to-morrow, worse luck! Why not dine with
+me to-night at the Nouveau Luxe? I’ve got to have the Ambassador and
+Lady Ascot, with their youngest girl and my old Dunes aunt, the Dowager
+Duchess, who’s over here hiding from her creditors; but I’ll try to get
+two or three amusing men to leaven the lump. We might go on to a boite
+afterward, if you’re bored. Unless the dancing amuses you more....”
+
+She understood that he had decided to hasten his departure rather than
+linger on in uncertainty; she also remembered having heard the Ascots’
+youngest daughter, Lady Joan Senechal, spoken of as one of the prettiest
+girls of the season; and she recalled the almost exaggerated warmth of
+the Ambassador’s greeting at the private view.
+
+“Of course I’ll come, Streff dear!” she cried, with an effort at gaiety
+that sounded successful to her own strained ears, and reflected itself
+in the sudden lighting up of his face.
+
+She waved a good-bye from the step, saying to herself, as she looked
+after him: “He’ll drive me home to-night, and I shall say ‘yes’; and
+then he’ll kiss me again. But the next time it won’t be nearly as
+disagreeable.”
+
+She turned into the hotel, glanced automatically at the empty
+pigeon-hole for letters under her key-hook, and mounted the stairs
+following the same train of images. “Yes, I shall say ‘yes’ to-night,”
+ she repeated firmly, her hand on the door of her room. “That is, unless,
+they’ve brought up a letter....” She never re-entered the hotel without
+imagining that the letter she had not found below had already been
+brought up.
+
+Opening the door, she turned on the light and sprang to the table on
+which her correspondence sometimes awaited her.
+
+There was no letter; but the morning papers, still unread, lay at hand,
+and glancing listlessly down the column which chronicles the doings of
+society, she read:
+
+“After an extended cruise in the AEgean and the Black Sea on their
+steam-yacht Ibis, Mr. and Mrs. Mortimer Hicks and their daughter are
+established at the Nouveau Luxe in Rome. They have lately had the honour
+of entertaining at dinner the Reigning Prince of Teutoburger-Waldhain
+and his mother the Princess Dowager, with their suite. Among those
+invited to meet their Serene Highnesses were the French and Spanish
+Ambassadors, the Duchesse de Vichy, Prince and Princess Bagnidilucca,
+Lady Penelope Pantiles--” Susy’s eye flew impatiently on over the long
+list of titles--“and Mr. Nicholas Lansing of New York, who has been
+cruising with Mr. and Mrs. Hicks on the Ibis for the last few months.”
+
+
+
+
+
+XX.
+
+
+
+THE Mortimer Hickses were in Rome; not, as they would in former times
+have been, in one of the antiquated hostelries of the Piazza di Spagna
+or the Porta del Popolo, where of old they had so gaily defied fever
+and nourished themselves on local colour; but spread out, with all the
+ostentation of philistine millionaires, under the piano nobile ceilings
+of one of the high-perched “Palaces,” where, as Mrs. Hicks shamelessly
+declared, they could “rely on the plumbing,” and “have the privilege of
+over-looking the Queen Mother’s Gardens.”
+
+It was that speech, uttered with beaming aplomb at a dinner-table
+surrounded by the cosmopolitan nobility of the Eternal City, that had
+suddenly revealed to Lansing the profound change in the Hicks point of
+view.
+
+As he looked back over the four months since he had so unexpectedly
+joined the Ibis at Genoa, he saw that the change, at first insidious
+and unperceived, dated from the ill-fated day when the Hickses had run
+across a Reigning Prince on his travels.
+
+Hitherto they had been proof against such perils: both Mr. and Mrs.
+Hicks had often declared that the aristocracy of the intellect was the
+only one which attracted them. But in this case the Prince possessed an
+intellect, in addition to his few square miles of territory, and to one
+of the most beautiful Field Marshal’s uniforms that had ever encased a
+royal warrior. The Prince was not a warrior, however; he was stooping,
+pacific and spectacled, and his possession of the uniform had been
+revealed to Mrs. Hicks only by the gift of a full-length photograph in
+a Bond Street frame, with Anastasius written slantingly across its
+legs. The Prince--and herein lay the Hickses’ undoing--the Prince was
+an archaeologist: an earnest anxious enquiring and scrupulous
+archaeologist. Delicate health (so his suite hinted) banished him for
+a part of each year from his cold and foggy principality; and in the
+company of his mother, the active and enthusiastic Dowager Princess, he
+wandered from one Mediterranean shore to another, now assisting at
+the exhumation of Ptolemaic mummies, now at the excavation of Delphic
+temples or of North African basilicas. The beginning of winter usually
+brought the Prince and his mother to Rome or Nice, unless indeed they
+were summoned by family duties to Berlin, Vienna or Madrid; for an
+extended connection with the principal royal houses of Europe compelled
+them, as the Princess Mother said, to be always burying or marrying a
+cousin. At other moments they were seldom seen in the glacial atmosphere
+of courts, preferring to royal palaces those of the other, and more
+modern type, in one of which the Hickses were now lodged.
+
+Yes: the Prince and his mother (they gaily avowed it) revelled in Palace
+Hotels; and, being unable to afford the luxury of inhabiting them,
+they liked, as often as possible, to be invited to dine there by their
+friends--“or even to tea, my dear,” the Princess laughingly avowed,
+“for I’m so awfully fond of buttered scones; and Anastasius gives me so
+little to eat in the desert.”
+
+The encounter with these ambulant Highnesses had been fatal--Lansing
+now perceived it--to Mrs. Hicks’s principles. She had known a great many
+archaeologists, but never one as agreeable as the Prince, and above
+all never one who had left a throne to camp in the desert and delve in
+Libyan tombs. And it seemed to her infinitely pathetic that these two
+gifted beings, who grumbled when they had to go to “marry a cousin” at
+the Palace of St. James or of Madrid, and hastened back breathlessly to
+the far-off point where, metaphorically speaking, pick-axe and spade had
+dropped from their royal hands--that these heirs of the ages should be
+unable to offer themselves the comforts of up-to-date hotel life, and
+should enjoy themselves “like babies” when they were invited to the
+other kind of “Palace,” to feast on buttered scones and watch the tango.
+
+She simply could not bear the thought of their privations; and neither,
+after a time, could Mr. Hicks, who found the Prince more democratic than
+anyone he had ever known at Apex City, and was immensely interested by
+the fact that their spectacles came from the same optician.
+
+But it was, above all, the artistic tendencies of the Prince and his
+mother which had conquered the Hickses. There was fascination in the
+thought that, among the rabble of vulgar uneducated royalties who
+overran Europe from Biarritz to the Engadine, gambling, tangoing,
+and sponging on no less vulgar plebeians, they, the unobtrusive
+and self-respecting Hickses, should have had the luck to meet this
+cultivated pair, who joined them in gentle ridicule of their own
+frivolous kinsfolk, and whose tastes were exactly those of the
+eccentric, unreliable and sometimes money-borrowing persons who had
+hitherto represented the higher life to the Hickses.
+
+Now at last Mrs. Hicks saw the possibility of being at once artistic and
+luxurious, of surrendering herself to the joys of modern plumbing and
+yet keeping the talk on the highest level. “If the poor dear Princess
+wants to dine at the Nouveau Luxe why shouldn’t we give her that
+pleasure?” Mrs. Hicks smilingly enquired; “and as for enjoying her
+buttered scones like a baby, as she says, I think it’s the sweetest
+thing about her.”
+
+Coral Hicks did not join in this chorus; but she accepted, with her
+curious air of impartiality, the change in her parents’ manner of life,
+and for the first time (as Nick observed) occupied herself with her
+mother’s toilet, with the result that Mrs. Hicks’s outline became
+firmer, her garments soberer in hue and finer in material; so that,
+should anyone chance to detect the daughter’s likeness to her mother,
+the result was less likely to be disturbing.
+
+Such precautions were the more needful--Lansing could not but note
+because of the different standards of the society in which the Hickses
+now moved. For it was a curious fact that admission to the intimacy of
+the Prince and his mother--who continually declared themselves to be
+the pariahs, the outlaws, the Bohemians among crowned heads nevertheless
+involved not only living in Palace Hotels but mixing with those who
+frequented them. The Prince’s aide-de-camp--an agreeable young man of
+easy manners--had smilingly hinted that their Serene Highnesses, though
+so thoroughly democratic and unceremonious, were yet accustomed to
+inspecting in advance the names of the persons whom their hosts wished
+to invite with them; and Lansing noticed that Mrs. Hicks’s lists,
+having been “submitted,” usually came back lengthened by the addition of
+numerous wealthy and titled guests. Their Highnesses never struck out
+a name; they welcomed with enthusiasm and curiosity the Hickses’ oddest
+and most inexplicable friends, at most putting off some of them to a
+later day on the plea that it would be “cosier” to meet them on a more
+private occasion; but they invariably added to the list any friends of
+their own, with the gracious hint that they wished these latter (though
+socially so well-provided for) to have the “immense privilege” of
+knowing the Hickses. And thus it happened that when October gales
+necessitated laying up the Ibis, the Hickses, finding again in Rome
+the august travellers from whom they had parted the previous month in
+Athens, also found their visiting-list enlarged by all that the capital
+contained of fashion.
+
+It was true enough, as Lansing had not failed to note, that the Princess
+Mother adored prehistoric art, and Russian music, and the paintings of
+Gauguin and Matisse; but she also, and with a beaming unconsciousness
+of perspective, adored large pearls and powerful motors, caravan tea and
+modern plumbing, perfumed cigarettes and society scandals; and her son,
+while apparently less sensible to these forms of luxury, adored his
+mother, and was charmed to gratify her inclinations without cost to
+himself--“Since poor Mamma,” as he observed, “is so courageous when we
+are roughing it in the desert.”
+
+The smiling aide-de-camp, who explained these things to Lansing,
+added with an intenser smile that the Prince and his mother were under
+obligations, either social or cousinly, to most of the titled persons
+whom they begged Mrs. Hicks to invite; “and it seems to their Serene
+Highnesses,” he added, “the most flattering return they can make for
+the hospitality of their friends to give them such an intellectual
+opportunity.”
+
+The dinner-table at which their Highnesses’ friends were seated on
+the evening in question represented, numerically, one of the greatest
+intellectual opportunities yet afforded them. Thirty guests were grouped
+about the flower-wreathed board, from which Eldorada and Mr. Beck had
+been excluded on the plea that the Princess Mother liked cosy parties
+and begged her hosts that there should never be more than thirty
+at table. Such, at least, was the reason given by Mrs. Hicks to her
+faithful followers; but Lansing had observed that, of late, the same
+skilled hand which had refashioned the Hickses’ social circle usually
+managed to exclude from it the timid presences of the two secretaries.
+Their banishment was the more displeasing to Lansing from the fact that,
+for the last three months, he had filled Mr. Buttles’s place, and was
+himself their salaried companion. But since he had accepted the post,
+his obvious duty was to fill it in accordance with his employers’
+requirements; and it was clear even to Eldorada and Mr. Beck that
+he had, as Eldorada ungrudgingly said, “Something of Mr. Buttles’s
+marvellous social gifts.”
+
+During the cruise his task had not been distasteful to him. He was glad
+of any definite duties, however trivial, he felt more independent as the
+Hickses’ secretary than as their pampered guest, and the large cheque
+which Mr. Hicks handed over to him on the first of each month refreshed
+his languishing sense of self-respect.
+
+He considered himself absurdly over-paid, but that was the Hickses’
+affair; and he saw nothing humiliating in being in the employ of people
+he liked and respected. But from the moment of the ill-fated encounter
+with the wandering Princes, his position had changed as much as that
+of his employers. He was no longer, to Mr. and Mrs. Hicks, a useful and
+estimable assistant, on the same level as Eldorada and Mr. Beck; he had
+become a social asset of unsuspected value, equalling Mr. Buttles in
+his capacity for dealing with the mysteries of foreign etiquette, and
+surpassing him in the art of personal attraction. Nick Lansing, the
+Hickses found, already knew most of the Princess Mother’s rich and
+aristocratic friends. Many of them hailed him with enthusiastic “Old
+Nicks”, and he was almost as familiar as His Highness’s own aide-de-camp
+with all those secret ramifications of love and hate that made
+dinner-giving so much more of a science in Rome than at Apex City.
+
+Mrs. Hicks, at first, had hopelessly lost her way in this labyrinth of
+subterranean scandals, rivalries and jealousies; and finding Lansing’s
+hand within reach she clung to it with pathetic tenacity. But if
+the young man’s value had risen in the eyes of his employers it had
+deteriorated in his own. He was condemned to play a part he had
+not bargained for, and it seemed to him more degrading when paid in
+bank-notes than if his retribution had consisted merely in good dinners
+and luxurious lodgings. The first time the smiling aide-de-camp had
+caught his eye over a verbal slip of Mrs. Hicks’s, Nick had flushed to
+the forehead and gone to bed swearing that he would chuck his job the
+next day.
+
+Two months had passed since then, and he was still the paid secretary.
+He had contrived to let the aide-de-camp feel that he was too deficient
+in humour to be worth exchanging glances with; but even this had not
+restored his self-respect, and on the evening in question, as he looked
+about the long table, he said to himself for the hundredth time that he
+would give up his position on the morrow.
+
+Only--what was the alternative? The alternative, apparently, was Coral
+Hicks. He glanced down the line of diners, beginning with the tall lean
+countenance of the Princess Mother, with its small inquisitive eyes
+perched as high as attic windows under a frizzled thatch of hair and a
+pediment of uncleaned diamonds; passed on to the vacuous and overfed
+or fashionably haggard masks of the ladies next in rank; and finally
+caught, between branching orchids, a distant glimpse of Miss Hicks.
+
+In contrast with the others, he thought, she looked surprisingly noble.
+Her large grave features made her appear like an old monument in a
+street of Palace Hotels; and he marvelled at the mysterious law which
+had brought this archaic face out of Apex City, and given to the oldest
+society of Europe a look of such mixed modernity.
+
+Lansing perceived that the aide-de-camp, who was his neighbour, was also
+looking at Miss Hicks. His expression was serious, and even thoughtful;
+but as his eyes met Lansing’s he readjusted his official smile.
+
+“I was admiring our hostess’s daughter. Her absence of jewels is--er--an
+inspiration,” he remarked in the confidential tone which Lansing had
+come to dread.
+
+“Oh, Miss Hicks is full of inspirations,” he returned curtly, and the
+aide-de-camp bowed with an admiring air, as if inspirations were rarer
+than pearls, as in his milieu they undoubtedly were. “She is the equal
+of any situation, I am sure,” he replied; and then abandoned the subject
+with one of his automatic transitions.
+
+After dinner, in the embrasure of a drawing-room window, he surprised
+Nick by returning to the same topic, and this time without thinking it
+needful to readjust his smile. His face remained serious, though his
+manner was studiously informal.
+
+“I was admiring, at dinner, Miss Hicks’s invariable sense of
+appropriateness. It must permit her friends to foresee for her almost
+any future, however exalted.”
+
+Lansing hesitated, and controlled his annoyance. Decidedly he wanted to
+know what was in his companion’s mind.
+
+“What do you mean by exalted?” he asked, with a smile of faint
+amusement.
+
+“Well--equal to her marvellous capacity for shining in the public eye.”
+
+Lansing still smiled. “The question is, I suppose, whether her desire to
+shine equals her capacity.”
+
+The aide-de-camp stared. “You mean, she’s not ambitious?”
+
+“On the contrary; I believe her to be immeasurably ambitious.”
+
+“Immeasurably?” The aide-de-camp seemed to try to measure it. “But not,
+surely, beyond--beyond what we can offer,” his eyes completed the
+sentence; and it was Lansing’s turn to stare. The aide-de-camp faced the
+stare. “Yes,” his eyes concluded in a flash, while his lips let fall:
+“The Princess Mother admires her immensely.” But at that moment a wave
+of Mrs. Hicks’s fan drew them hurriedly from their embrasure.
+
+“Professor Darchivio had promised to explain to us the difference
+between the Sassanian and Byzantine motives in Carolingian art; but the
+Manager has sent up word that the two new Creole dancers from Paris have
+arrived, and her Serene Highness wants to pop down to the ball-room and
+take a peep at them.... She’s sure the Professor will understand....”
+
+“And accompany us, of course,” the Princess irresistibly added.
+
+Lansing’s brief colloquy in the Nouveau Luxe window had lifted the
+scales from his eyes. Innumerable dim corners of memory had been flooded
+with light by that one quick glance of the aide-de-camp’s: things he
+had heard, hints he had let pass, smiles, insinuations, cordialities,
+rumours of the improbability of the Prince’s founding a family,
+suggestions as to the urgent need of replenishing the Teutoburger
+treasury....
+
+Miss Hicks, perforce, had accompanied her parents and their princely
+guests to the ballroom; but as she did not dance, and took little
+interest in the sight of others so engaged, she remained aloof from the
+party, absorbed in an archaeological discussion with the baffled but
+smiling savant who was to have enlightened the party on the difference
+between Sassanian and Byzantine ornament.
+
+Lansing, also aloof, had picked out a post from which he could observe
+the girl: she wore a new look to him since he had seen her as the centre
+of all these scattered threads of intrigue. Yes; decidedly she was
+growing handsomer; or else she had learned how to set off her massive
+lines instead of trying to disguise them. As she held up her long
+eye-glass to glance absently at the dancers he was struck by the large
+beauty of her arm and the careless assurance of the gesture. There was
+nothing nervous or fussy about Coral Hicks; and he was not surprised
+that, plastically at least, the Princess Mother had discerned her
+possibilities.
+
+Nick Lansing, all that night, sat up and stared at his future. He knew
+enough of the society into which the Hickses had drifted to guess that,
+within a very short time, the hint of the Prince’s aide-de-camp would
+reappear in the form of a direct proposal. Lansing himself would
+probably--as the one person in the Hicks entourage with whom one
+could intelligibly commune--be entrusted with the next step in the
+negotiations: he would be asked, as the aide-de-camp would have said,
+“to feel the ground.” It was clearly part of the state policy of
+Teutoburg to offer Miss Hicks, with the hand of its sovereign, an
+opportunity to replenish its treasury.
+
+What would the girl do? Lansing could not guess; yet he dimly felt that
+her attitude would depend in a great degree upon his own. And he knew
+no more what his own was going to be than on the night, four months
+earlier, when he had flung out of his wife’s room in Venice to take the
+midnight express for Genoa.
+
+The whole of his past, and above all the tendency, on which he had once
+prided himself, to live in the present and take whatever chances it
+offered, now made it harder for him to act. He began to see that he
+had never, even in the closest relations of life, looked ahead of his
+immediate satisfaction. He had thought it rather fine to be able to give
+himself so intensely to the fullness of each moment instead of hurrying
+past it in pursuit of something more, or something else, in the manner
+of the over-scrupulous or the under-imaginative, whom he had always
+grouped together and equally pitied. It was not till he had linked his
+life with Susy’s that he had begun to feel it reaching forward into a
+future he longed to make sure of, to fasten upon and shape to his own
+wants and purposes, till, by an imperceptible substitution, that future
+had become his real present, his all-absorbing moment of time.
+
+Now the moment was shattered, and the power to rebuild it failed him.
+He had never before thought about putting together broken bits: he felt
+like a man whose house has been wrecked by an earthquake, and who, for
+lack of skilled labour, is called upon for the first time to wield a
+trowel and carry bricks. He simply did not know how.
+
+Will-power, he saw, was not a thing one could suddenly decree oneself
+to possess. It must be built up imperceptibly and laboriously out of a
+succession of small efforts to meet definite objects, out of the facing
+of daily difficulties instead of cleverly eluding them, or shifting
+their burden on others. The making of the substance called character was
+a process about as slow and arduous as the building of the Pyramids; and
+the thing itself, like those awful edifices, was mainly useful to lodge
+one’s descendants in, after they too were dust. Yet the Pyramid-instinct
+was the one which had made the world, made man, and caused his fugitive
+joys to linger like fading frescoes on imperishable walls....
+
+
+
+
+
+XXI.
+
+
+
+ON the drive back from her dinner at the Nouveau Luxe, events had
+followed the course foreseen by Susy.
+
+She had promised Strefford to seek legal advice about her divorce, and
+he had kissed her; and the promise had been easier to make than she had
+expected, the kiss less difficult to receive.
+
+She had gone to the dinner a-quiver with the mortification of learning
+that her husband was still with the Hickses. Morally sure of it though
+she had been, the discovery was a shock, and she measured for the
+first time the abyss between fearing and knowing. No wonder he had not
+written--the modern husband did not have to: he had only to leave it to
+time and the newspapers to make known his intentions. Susy could imagine
+Nick’s saying to himself, as he sometimes used to say when she reminded
+him of an unanswered letter: “But there are lots of ways of answering a
+letter--and writing doesn’t happen to be mine.”
+
+Well--he had done it in his way, and she was answered. For a minute, as
+she laid aside the paper, darkness submerged her, and she felt herself
+dropping down into the bottomless anguish of her dreadful vigil in the
+Palazzo Vanderlyn. But she was weary of anguish: her healthy body and
+nerves instinctively rejected it. The wave was spent, and she felt
+herself irresistibly struggling back to light and life and youth. He
+didn’t want her! Well, she would try not to want him! There lay all the
+old expedients at her hand--the rouge for her white lips, the atropine
+for her blurred eyes, the new dress on her bed, the thought of Strefford
+and his guests awaiting her, and of the conclusions that the diners of
+the Nouveau Luxe would draw from seeing them together. Thank heaven no
+one would say: “Poor old Susy--did you know Nick had chucked her?” They
+would all say: “Poor old Nick! Yes, I daresay she was sorry to chuck
+him; but Altringham’s mad to marry her, and what could she do?”
+
+And once again events had followed the course she had foreseen. Seeing
+her at Lord Altringham’s table, with the Ascots and the old Duchess
+of Dunes, the interested spectators could not but regard the dinner as
+confirming the rumour of her marriage. As Ellie said, people didn’t
+wait nowadays to announce their “engagements” till the tiresome divorce
+proceedings were over. Ellie herself, prodigally pearled and ermined,
+had floated in late with Algie Bockheimer in her wake, and sat, in
+conspicuous tête-à-tête, nodding and signalling her sympathy to Susy.
+Approval beamed from every eye: it was awfully exciting, they all seemed
+to say, seeing Susy Lansing pull it off! As the party, after dinner,
+drifted from the restaurant back into the hall, she caught, in the
+smiles and hand-pressures crowding about her, the scarcely-repressed
+hint of official congratulations; and Violet Melrose, seated in a corner
+with Fulmer, drew her down with a wan jade-circled arm, to whisper
+tenderly: “It’s most awfully clever of you, darling, not to be wearing
+any jewels.”
+
+In all the women’s eyes she read the reflected lustre of the jewels she
+could wear when she chose: it was as though their glitter reached
+her from the far-off bank where they lay sealed up in the Altringham
+strong-box. What a fool she had been to think that Strefford would ever
+believe she didn’t care for them!
+
+The Ambassadress, a blank perpendicular person, had been a shade less
+affable than Susy could have wished; but then there was Lady Joan--and
+the girl was handsome, alarmingly handsome to account for that: probably
+every one in the room had guessed it. And the old Duchess of Dunes was
+delightful. She looked rather like Strefford in a wig and false pearls
+(Susy was sure they were as false as her teeth); and her cordiality
+was so demonstrative that the future bride found it more difficult to
+account for than Lady Ascot’s coldness, till she heard the old lady, as
+they passed into the hall, breathe in a hissing whisper to her nephew:
+“Streff, dearest, when you have a minute’s time, and can drop in at
+my wretched little pension, I know you can explain in two words what
+I ought to do to pacify those awful money-lenders.... And you’ll bring
+your exquisite American to see me, won’t you!... No, Joan Senechal’s too
+fair for my taste.... Insipid....”
+
+Yes: the taste of it all was again sweet on her lips. A few days later
+she began to wonder how the thought of Strefford’s endearments could
+have been so alarming. To be sure he was not lavish of them; but when he
+did touch her, even when he kissed her, it no longer seemed to matter.
+An almost complete absence of sensation had mercifully succeeded to the
+first wild flurry of her nerves.
+
+And so it would be, no doubt, with everything else in her new life. If
+it failed to provoke any acute reactions, whether of pain or pleasure,
+the very absence of sensation would make for peace. And in the meanwhile
+she was tasting what, she had begun to suspect, was the maximum of
+bliss to most of the women she knew: days packed with engagements, the
+exhilaration of fashionable crowds, the thrill of snapping up a jewel
+or a bibelot or a new “model” that one’s best friend wanted, or of being
+invited to some private show, or some exclusive entertainment, that
+one’s best friend couldn’t get to. There was nothing, now, that she
+couldn’t buy, nowhere that she couldn’t go: she had only to choose and
+to triumph. And for a while the surface-excitement of her life gave her
+the illusion of enjoyment.
+
+Strefford, as she had expected, had postponed his return to England,
+and they had now been for nearly three weeks together in their new, and
+virtually avowed, relation. She had fancied that, after all, the easiest
+part of it would be just the being with Strefford--the falling back
+on their old tried friendship to efface the sense of strangeness. But,
+though she had so soon grown used to his caresses, he himself remained
+curiously unfamiliar: she was hardly sure, at times, that it was the
+old Strefford she was talking to. It was not that his point of view had
+changed, but that new things occupied and absorbed him. In all the small
+sides of his great situation he took an almost childish satisfaction;
+and though he still laughed at both its privileges and its obligations,
+it was now with a jealous laughter.
+
+It amused him inexhaustibly, for instance, to be made up to by all the
+people who had always disapproved of him, and to unite at the same table
+persons who had to dissemble their annoyance at being invited together
+lest they should not be invited at all. Equally exhilarating was
+the capricious favouring of the dull and dowdy on occasions when the
+brilliant and disreputable expected his notice. It enchanted him, for
+example, to ask the old Duchess of Dunes and Violet Melrose to dine
+with the Vicar of Altringham, on his way to Switzerland for a month’s
+holiday, and to watch the face of the Vicar’s wife while the Duchess
+narrated her last difficulties with book-makers and money-lenders, and
+Violet proclaimed the rights of Love and Genius to all that had once
+been supposed to belong exclusively to Respectability and Dulness.
+
+Susy had to confess that her own amusements were hardly of a higher
+order; but then she put up with them for lack of better, whereas
+Strefford, who might have had what he pleased, was completely satisfied
+with such triumphs.
+
+Somehow, in spite of his honours and his opportunities, he seemed to
+have shrunk. The old Strefford had certainly been a larger person,
+and she wondered if material prosperity were always a beginning of
+ossification. Strefford had been much more fun when he lived by his
+wits. Sometimes, now, when he tried to talk of politics, or assert
+himself on some question of public interest, she was startled by his
+limitations. Formerly, when he was not sure of his ground, it had been
+his way to turn the difficulty by glib nonsense or easy irony; now he
+was actually dull, at times almost pompous. She noticed too, for the
+first time, that he did not always hear clearly when several people were
+talking at once, or when he was at the theatre; and he developed a habit
+of saying over and over again: “Does so-and-so speak indistinctly? Or am
+I getting deaf, I wonder?” which wore on her nerves by its suggestion of
+a corresponding mental infirmity.
+
+These thoughts did not always trouble her. The current of idle activity
+on which they were both gliding was her native element as well as his;
+and never had its tide been as swift, its waves as buoyant. In his
+relation to her, too, he was full of tact and consideration. She saw
+that he still remembered their frightened exchange of glances after
+their first kiss; and the sense of this little hidden spring of
+imagination in him was sometimes enough for her thirst.
+
+She had always had a rather masculine punctuality in keeping her word,
+and after she had promised Strefford to take steps toward a divorce
+she had promptly set about doing it. A sudden reluctance prevented her
+asking the advice of friends like Ellie Vanderlyn, whom she knew to be
+in the thick of the same negotiations, and all she could think of was to
+consult a young American lawyer practicing in Paris, with whom she felt
+she could talk the more easily because he was not from New York, and
+probably unacquainted with her history.
+
+She was so ignorant of the procedure in such matters that she was
+surprised and relieved at his asking few personal questions; but it was
+a shock to learn that a divorce could not be obtained, either in New
+York or Paris, merely on the ground of desertion or incompatibility.
+
+“I thought nowadays... if people preferred to live apart... it could
+always be managed,” she stammered, wondering at her own ignorance, after
+the many conjugal ruptures she had assisted at.
+
+The young lawyer smiled, and coloured slightly. His lovely client
+evidently intimidated him by her grace, and still more by her
+inexperience.
+
+“It can be--generally,” he admitted; “and especially so if... as I
+gather is the case... your husband is equally anxious....”
+
+“Oh, quite!” she exclaimed, suddenly humiliated by having to admit it.
+
+“Well, then--may I suggest that, to bring matters to a point, the best
+way would be for you to write to him?”
+
+She recoiled slightly. It had never occurred to her that the lawyers
+would not “manage it” without her intervention.
+
+“Write to him... but what about?”
+
+“Well, expressing your wish... to recover your freedom.... The rest, I
+assume,” said the young lawyer, “may be left to Mr. Lansing.”
+
+She did not know exactly what he meant, and was too much perturbed by
+the idea of having to communicate with Nick to follow any other train
+of thought. How could she write such a letter? And yet how could she
+confess to the lawyer that she had not the courage to do so? He
+would, of course, tell her to go home and be reconciled. She hesitated
+perplexedly.
+
+“Wouldn’t it be better,” she suggested, “if the letter were to come
+from--from your office?”
+
+He considered this politely. “On the whole: no. If, as I take it, an
+amicable arrangement is necessary--to secure the requisite evidence then
+a line from you, suggesting an interview, seems to me more advisable.”
+
+“An interview? Is an interview necessary?” She was ashamed to show her
+agitation to this cautiously smiling young man, who must wonder at
+her childish lack of understanding; but the break in her voice was
+uncontrollable.
+
+“Oh, please write to him--I can’t! And I can’t see him! Oh, can’t you
+arrange it for me?” she pleaded.
+
+She saw now that her idea of a divorce had been that it was something
+one went out--or sent out--to buy in a shop: something concrete and
+portable, that Strefford’s money could pay for, and that it required no
+personal participation to obtain. What a fool the lawyer must think her!
+Stiffening herself, she rose from her seat.
+
+“My husband and I don’t wish to see each other again.... I’m sure it
+would be useless... and very painful.”
+
+“You are the best judge, of course. But in any case, a letter from
+you, a friendly letter, seems wiser... considering the apparent lack of
+evidence....”
+
+“Very well, then; I’ll write,” she agreed, and hurried away, scarcely
+hearing his parting injunction that she should take a copy of her
+letter.
+
+That night she wrote. At the last moment it might have been impossible,
+if at the theatre little Breckenridge had not bobbed into her box. He
+was just back from Rome, where he had dined with the Hickses (“a bang-up
+show--they’re really lances--you wouldn’t know them!”), and had met there
+Lansing, whom he reported as intending to marry Coral “as soon as things
+were settled”. “You were dead right, weren’t you, Susy,” he snickered,
+“that night in Venice last summer, when we all thought you were joking
+about their engagement? Pity now you chucked our surprise visit to the
+Hickses, and sent Streff up to drag us back just as we were breaking in!
+You remember?”
+
+He flung off the “Streff” airily, in the old way, but with a tentative
+side-glance at his host; and Lord Altringham, leaning toward Susy, said
+coldly: “Was Breckenridge speaking about me? I didn’t catch what he
+said. Does he speak indistinctly--or am I getting deaf, I wonder?”
+
+After that it seemed comparatively easy, when Strefford had dropped her
+at her hotel, to go upstairs and write. She dashed off the date and her
+address, and then stopped; but suddenly she remembered Breckenridge’s
+snicker, and the words rushed from her. “Nick dear, it was July when you
+left Venice, and I have had no word from you since the note in which you
+said you had gone for a few days, and that I should hear soon again.
+
+“You haven’t written yet, and it is five months since you left me. That
+means, I suppose, that you want to take back your freedom and give me
+mine. Wouldn’t it be kinder, in that case, to tell me so? It is worse
+than anything to go on as we are now. I don’t know how to put these
+things but since you seem unwilling to write to me perhaps you would
+prefer to send your answer to Mr. Frederic Spearman, the American lawyer
+here. His address is 100, Boulevard Haussmann. I hope--”
+
+She broke off on the last word. Hope? What did she hope, either for him
+or for herself? Wishes for his welfare would sound like a mockery--and
+she would rather her letter should seem bitter than unfeeling. Above
+all, she wanted to get it done. To have to re-write even those few
+lines would be torture. So she left “I hope,” and simply added: “to hear
+before long what you have decided.”
+
+She read it over, and shivered. Not one word of the past--not one
+allusion to that mysterious interweaving of their lives which had
+enclosed them one in the other like the flower in its sheath! What place
+had such memories in such a letter? She had the feeling that she wanted
+to hide that other Nick away in her own bosom, and with him the other
+Susy, the Susy he had once imagined her to be.... Neither of them seemed
+concerned with the present business.
+
+The letter done, she stared at the sealed envelope till its presence
+in the room became intolerable, and she understood that she must either
+tear it up or post it immediately. She went down to the hall of the
+sleeping hotel, and bribed the night-porter to carry the letter to the
+nearest post office, though he objected that, at that hour, no time
+would be gained. “I want it out of the house,” she insisted: and waited
+sternly by the desk, in her dressing-gown, till he had performed the
+errand.
+
+As she re-entered her room, the disordered writing-table struck her; and
+she remembered the lawyer’s injunction to take a copy of her letter. A
+copy to be filed away with the documents in “Lansing versus Lansing!”
+ She burst out laughing at the idea. What were lawyers made of, she
+wondered? Didn’t the man guess, by the mere look in her eyes and the
+sound of her voice, that she would never, as long as she lived, forget
+a word of that letter--that night after night she would lie down, as she
+was lying down to-night, to stare wide-eyed for hours into the darkness,
+while a voice in her brain monotonously hammered out: “Nick dear, it was
+July when you left me...” and so on, word after word, down to the last
+fatal syllable?
+
+
+
+
+
+XXII.
+
+
+
+STREFFORD was leaving for England.
+
+Once assured that Susy had taken the first step toward freeing herself,
+he frankly regarded her as his affianced wife, and could see no reason
+for further mystery. She understood his impatience to have their
+plans settled; it would protect him from the formidable menace of the
+marriageable, and cause people, as he said, to stop meddling. Now that
+the novelty of his situation was wearing off, his natural indolence
+reasserted itself, and there was nothing he dreaded more than having to
+be on his guard against the innumerable plans that his well-wishers were
+perpetually making for him. Sometimes Susy fancied he was marrying her
+because to do so was to follow the line of least resistance.
+
+“To marry me is the easiest way of not marrying all the others,” she
+laughed, as he stood before her one day in a quiet alley of the Bois
+de Boulogne, insisting on the settlement of various preliminaries. “I
+believe I’m only a protection to you.”
+
+An odd gleam passed behind his eyes, and she instantly guessed that he
+was thinking: “And what else am I to you?”
+
+She changed colour, and he rejoined, laughing also: “Well, you’re that
+at any rate, thank the Lord!”
+
+She pondered, and then questioned: “But in the interval--how are you
+going to defend yourself for another year?”
+
+“Ah, you’ve got to see to that; you’ve got to take a little house in
+London. You’ve got to look after me, you know.”
+
+It was on the tip of her tongue to flash back: “Oh, if that’s all
+you care--!” But caring was exactly the factor she wanted, as much as
+possible, to keep out of their talk and their thoughts. She could
+not ask him how much he cared without laying herself open to the same
+question; and that way terror lay. As a matter of fact, though Strefford
+was not an ardent wooer--perhaps from tact, perhaps from temperament,
+perhaps merely from the long habit of belittling and disintegrating
+every sentiment and every conviction--yet she knew he did care for her
+as much as he was capable of caring for anyone. If the element of habit
+entered largely into the feeling--if he liked her, above all, because he
+was used to her, knew her views, her indulgences, her allowances, knew
+he was never likely to be bored, and almost certain to be amused, by
+her; why, such ingredients though not of the fieriest, were perhaps
+those most likely to keep his feeling for her at a pleasant temperature.
+She had had a taste of the tropics, and wanted more equable weather; but
+the idea of having to fan his flame gently for a year was unspeakably
+depressing to her. Yet all this was precisely what she could not say.
+The long period of probation, during which, as she knew, she would
+have to amuse him, to guard him, to hold him, and to keep off the other
+women, was a necessary part of their situation. She was sure that, as
+little Breckenridge would have said, she could “pull it off”; but she
+did not want to think about it. What she would have preferred would have
+been to go away--no matter where and not see Strefford again till they
+were married. But she dared not tell him that either.
+
+“A little house in London--?” She wondered.
+
+“Well, I suppose you’ve got to have some sort of a roof over your head.”
+
+“I suppose so.”
+
+He sat down beside her. “If you like me well enough to live at
+Altringham some day, won’t you, in the meantime, let me provide you with
+a smaller and more convenient establishment?”
+
+Still she hesitated. The alternative, she knew, would be to live on
+Ursula Gillow, Violet Melrose, or some other of her rich friends, any
+one of whom would be ready to lavish the largest hospitality on the
+prospective Lady Altringham. Such an arrangement, in the long run,
+would be no less humiliating to her pride, no less destructive to
+her independence, than Altringham’s little establishment. But she
+temporized. “I shall go over to London in December, and stay for a while
+with various people--then we can look about.”
+
+“All right; as you like.” He obviously considered her hesitation
+ridiculous, but was too full of satisfaction at her having started
+divorce proceedings to be chilled by her reply.
+
+“And now, look here, my dear; couldn’t I give you some sort of a ring?”
+
+“A ring?” She flushed at the suggestion. “What’s the use, Streff, dear?
+With all those jewels locked away in London--”
+
+“Oh, I daresay you’ll think them old-fashioned. And, hang it, why
+shouldn’t I give you something new, I ran across Ellie and Bockheimer
+yesterday, in the rue de la Paix, picking out sapphires. Do you like
+sapphires, or emeralds? Or just a diamond? I’ve seen a thumping one....
+I’d like you to have it.”
+
+Ellie and Bockheimer! How she hated the conjunction of the names! Their
+case always seemed to her like a caricature of her own, and she felt an
+unreasoning resentment against Ellie for having selected the same season
+for her unmating and re-mating.
+
+“I wish you wouldn’t speak of them, Streff... as if they were like us! I
+can hardly bear to sit in the same room with Ellie Vanderlyn.”
+
+“Hullo? What’s wrong? You mean because of her giving up Clarissa?”
+
+“Not that only.... You don’t know.... I can’t tell you....” She shivered
+at the memory, and rose restlessly from the bench where they had been
+sitting.
+
+Strefford gave his careless shrug. “Well, my dear, you can hardly expect
+me to agree, for after all it was to Ellie I owed the luck of being so
+long alone with you in Venice. If she and Algie hadn’t prolonged their
+honeymoon at the villa--”
+
+He stopped abruptly, and looked at Susy. She was conscious that every
+drop of blood had left her face. She felt it ebbing away from her heart,
+flowing out of her as if from all her severed arteries, till it seemed
+as though nothing were left of life in her but one point of irreducible
+pain.
+
+“Ellie--at your villa? What do you mean? Was it Ellie and Bockheimer
+who--?”
+
+Strefford still stared. “You mean to say you didn’t know?”
+
+“Who came after Nick and me...?” she insisted.
+
+“Why, do you suppose I’d have turned you out otherwise? That beastly
+Bockheimer simply smothered me with gold. Ah, well, there’s one good
+thing: I shall never have to let the villa again! I rather like the
+little place myself, and I daresay once in a while we might go there for
+a day or two.... Susy, what’s the matter?” he exclaimed.
+
+She returned his stare, but without seeing him. Everything swam and
+danced before her eyes.
+
+“Then she was there while I was posting all those letters for her--?”
+
+“Letters--what letters? What makes you look so frightfully upset?”
+
+She pursued her thought as if he had not spoken. “She and Algie
+Bockheimer arrived there the very day that Nick and I left?”
+
+“I suppose so. I thought she’d told you. Ellie always tells everybody
+everything.”
+
+“She would have told me, I daresay--but I wouldn’t let her.”
+
+“Well, my dear, that was hardly my fault, was it? Though I really don’t
+see--”
+
+But Susy, still blind to everything but the dance of dizzy sparks before
+her eyes, pressed on as if she had not heard him. “It was their motor,
+then, that took us to Milan! It was Algie Bockheimer’s motor!” She did
+not know why, but this seemed to her the most humiliating incident in
+the whole hateful business. She remembered Nick’s reluctance to use the
+motor--she remembered his look when she had boasted of her “managing.”
+ The nausea mounted to her throat.
+
+Strefford burst out laughing. “I say--you borrowed their motor? And you
+didn’t know whose it was?”
+
+“How could I know? I persuaded the chauffeur... for a little tip....
+It was to save our railway fares to Milan... extra luggage costs so
+frightfully in Italy....”
+
+“Good old Susy! Well done! I can see you doing it--”
+
+“Oh, how horrible--how horrible!” she groaned.
+
+“Horrible? What’s horrible?”
+
+“Why, your not seeing... not feeling...” she began impetuously; and then
+stopped. How could she explain to him that what revolted her was not so
+much the fact of his having given the little house, as soon as she and
+Nick had left it, to those two people of all others--though the vision
+of them in the sweet secret house, and under the plane-trees of the
+terrace, drew such a trail of slime across her golden hours? No, it was
+not that from which she most recoiled, but from the fact that Strefford,
+living in luxury in Nelson Vanderlyn’s house, should at the same time
+have secretly abetted Ellie Vanderlyn’s love-affairs, and allowed
+her--for a handsome price--to shelter them under his own roof. The
+reproach trembled on her lip--but she remembered her own part in the
+wretched business, and the impossibility of avowing it to Strefford, and
+of revealing to him that Nick had left her for that very reason. She was
+not afraid that the discovery would diminish her in Strefford’s eyes: he
+was untroubled by moral problems, and would laugh away her avowal, with
+a sneer at Nick in his new part of moralist. But that was just what she
+could not bear: that anyone should cast a doubt on the genuineness of
+Nick’s standards, or should know how far below them she had fallen.
+
+She remained silent, and Strefford, after a moment, drew her gently down
+to the seat beside him. “Susy, upon my soul I don’t know what you’re
+driving at. Is it me you’re angry with--or yourself? And what’s it all
+about! Are you disgusted because I let the villa to a couple who weren’t
+married! But, hang it, they’re the kind that pay the highest price and
+I had to earn my living somehow! One doesn’t run across a bridal pair
+every day....”
+
+She lifted her eyes to his puzzled incredulous face. Poor Streff! No,
+it was not with him that she was angry. Why should she be? Even that
+ill-advised disclosure had told her nothing she had not already known
+about him. It had simply revealed to her once more the real point of
+view of the people he and she lived among had shown her that, in spite
+of the superficial difference, he felt as they felt, judged as they
+judged, was blind as they were--and as she would be expected to be,
+should she once again become one of them. What was the use of being
+placed by fortune above such shifts and compromises, if in one’s heart
+one still condoned them? And she would have to--she would catch the
+general note, grow blunted as those other people were blunted, and
+gradually come to wonder at her own revolt, as Strefford now honestly
+wondered at it. She felt as though she were on the point of losing some
+new-found treasure, a treasure precious only to herself, but beside
+which all he offered her was nothing, the triumph of her wounded pride
+nothing, the security of her future nothing.
+
+“What is it, Susy?” he asked, with the same puzzled gentleness.
+
+Ah, the loneliness of never being able to make him understand! She had
+felt lonely enough when the flaming sword of Nick’s indignation had shut
+her out from their Paradise; but there had been a cruel bliss in the
+pain. Nick had not opened her eyes to new truths, but had waked in her
+again something which had lain unconscious under years of accumulated
+indifference. And that re-awakened sense had never left her since,
+and had somehow kept her from utter loneliness because it was a secret
+shared with Nick, a gift she owed to Nick, and which, in leaving her, he
+could not take from her. It was almost, she suddenly felt, as if he had
+left her with a child.
+
+“My dear girl,” Strefford said, with a resigned glance at his watch,
+“you know we’re dining at the Embassy....”
+
+At the Embassy? She looked at him vaguely: then she remembered. Yes,
+they were dining that night at the Ascots’, with Strefford’s cousin, the
+Duke of Dunes, and his wife, the handsome irreproachable young Duchess;
+with the old gambling Dowager Duchess, whom her son and daughter-in-law
+had come over from England to see; and with other English and French
+guests of a rank and standing worthy of the Duneses. Susy knew that her
+inclusion in such a dinner could mean but one thing: it was her definite
+recognition as Altringham’s future wife. She was “the little American”
+ whom one had to ask when one invited him, even on ceremonial occasions.
+The family had accepted her; the Embassy could but follow suit.
+
+“It’s late, dear; and I’ve got to see someone on business first,”
+ Strefford reminded her patiently.
+
+“Oh, Streff--I can’t, I can’t!” The words broke from her without her
+knowing what she was saying. “I can’t go with you--I can’t go to the
+Embassy. I can’t go on any longer like this....” She lifted her eyes
+to his in desperate appeal. “Oh, understand--do please understand!” she
+wailed, knowing, while she spoke, the utter impossibility of what she
+asked.
+
+Strefford’s face had gradually paled and hardened. From sallow it turned
+to a dusky white, and lines of obstinacy deepened between the ironic
+eyebrows and about the weak amused mouth.
+
+“Understand? What do you want me to understand,” He laughed. “That
+you’re trying to chuck me already?”
+
+She shrank at the sneer of the “already,” but instantly remembered that
+it was the only thing he could be expected to say, since it was just
+because he couldn’t understand that she was flying from him.
+
+“Oh, Streff--if I knew how to tell you!”
+
+“It doesn’t so much matter about the how. Is that what you’re trying to
+say?”
+
+Her head drooped, and she saw the dead leaves whirling across the path
+at her feet, lifted on a sudden wintry gust.
+
+“The reason,” he continued, clearing his throat with a stiff smile, “is
+not quite as important to me as the fact.”
+
+She stood speechless, agonized by his pain. But still, she thought, he
+had remembered the dinner at the Embassy. The thought gave her courage
+to go on.
+
+“It wouldn’t do, Streff. I’m not a bit the kind of person to make you
+happy.”
+
+“Oh, leave that to me, please, won’t you?”
+
+“No, I can’t. Because I should be unhappy too.”
+
+He clicked at the leaves as they whirled past. “You’ve taken a rather
+long time to find it out.” She saw that his new-born sense of his own
+consequence was making him suffer even more than his wounded affection;
+and that again gave her courage.
+
+“If I’ve taken long it’s all the more reason why I shouldn’t take
+longer. If I’ve made a mistake it’s you who would have suffered from
+it....”
+
+“Thanks,” he said, “for your extreme solicitude.”
+
+She looked at him helplessly, penetrated by the despairing sense of
+their inaccessibility to each other. Then she remembered that Nick,
+during their last talk together, had seemed as inaccessible, and
+wondered if, when human souls try to get too near each other, they do
+not inevitably become mere blurs to each other’s vision. She would have
+liked to say this to Streff--but he would not have understood it either.
+The sense of loneliness once more enveloped her, and she groped in vain
+for a word that should reach him.
+
+“Let me go home alone, won’t you?” she appealed to him.
+
+“Alone?”
+
+She nodded. “To-morrow--to-morrow....”
+
+He tried, rather valiantly, to smile. “Hang to-morrow! Whatever is wrong,
+it needn’t prevent my seeing you home.” He glanced toward the taxi that
+awaited them at the end of the deserted drive.
+
+“No, please. You’re in a hurry; take the taxi. I want immensely a long
+long walk by myself... through the streets, with the lights coming
+out....”
+
+He laid his hand on her arm. “I say, my dear, you’re not ill?”
+
+“No; I’m not ill. But you may say I am, to-night at the Embassy.”
+
+He released her and drew back. “Oh, very well,” he answered coldly;
+and she understood by his tone that the knot was cut, and that at that
+moment he almost hated her. She turned away, hastening down the deserted
+alley, flying from him, and knowing, as she fled, that he was still
+standing there motionless, staring after her, wounded, humiliated,
+uncomprehending. It was neither her fault nor his....
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIII.
+
+
+
+AS she fled on toward the lights of the streets a breath of freedom
+seemed to blow into her face.
+
+Like a weary load the accumulated hypocrisies of the last months had
+dropped from her: she was herself again, Nick’s Susy, and no one else’s.
+She sped on, staring with bright bewildered eyes at the stately facades
+of the La Muette quarter, the perspectives of bare trees, the awakening
+glitter of shop-windows holding out to her all the things she would
+never again be able to buy....
+
+In an avenue of shops she paused before a milliner’s window, and said
+to herself: “Why shouldn’t I earn my living by trimming hats?” She met
+work-girls streaming out under a doorway, and scattering to catch trams
+and omnibuses; and she looked with newly-wakened interest at their tired
+independent faces. “Why shouldn’t I earn my living as well as they do?”
+ she thought. A little farther on she passed a Sister of Charity with
+softly trotting feet, a calm anonymous glance, and hands hidden in her
+capacious sleeves. Susy looked at her and thought: “Why shouldn’t I be
+a Sister, and have no money to worry about, and trot about under a white
+coif helping poor people?”
+
+All these strangers on whom she smiled in passing, and glanced back at
+enviously, were free from the necessities that enslaved her, and would
+not have known what she meant if she had told them that she must have
+so much money for her dresses, so much for her cigarettes, so much for
+bridge and cabs and tips, and all kinds of extras, and that at that
+moment she ought to be hurrying back to a dinner at the British Embassy,
+where her permanent right to such luxuries was to be solemnly recognized
+and ratified.
+
+The artificiality and unreality of her life overcame her as with
+stifling fumes. She stopped at a street-corner, drawing long panting
+breaths as if she had been running a race. Then, slowly and aimlessly,
+she began to saunter along a street of small private houses in damp
+gardens that led to the Avenue du Bois. She sat down on a bench. Not far
+off, the Arc de Triomphe raised its august bulk, and beyond it a
+river of lights streamed down toward Paris, and the stir of the city’s
+heart-beats troubled the quiet in her bosom. But not for long. She
+seemed to be looking at it all from the other side of the grave; and
+as she got up and wandered down the Champs Elysees, half empty in the
+evening lull between dusk and dinner, she felt as if the glittering
+avenue were really changed into the Field of Shadows from which it takes
+its name, and as if she were a ghost among ghosts.
+
+Halfway home, a weakness of loneliness overcame her, and she seated
+herself under the trees near the Rond Point. Lines of motors and
+carriages were beginning to animate the converging thoroughfares,
+streaming abreast, crossing, winding in and out of each other in a
+tangle of hurried pleasure-seeking. She caught the light on jewels and
+shirt-fronts and hard bored eyes emerging from dim billows of fur and
+velvet. She seemed to hear what the couples were saying to each other,
+she pictured the drawing-rooms, restaurants, dance-halls they were
+hastening to, the breathless routine that was hurrying them along, as
+Time, the old vacuum-cleaner, swept them away with the dust of their
+carriage-wheels. And again the loneliness vanished in a sense of
+release....
+
+At the corner of the Place de la Concorde she stopped, recognizing a
+man in evening dress who was hailing a taxi. Their eyes met, and Nelson
+Vanderlyn came forward. He was the last person she cared to run across,
+and she shrank back involuntarily. What did he know, what had he
+guessed, of her complicity in his wife’s affairs? No doubt Ellie had
+blabbed it all out by this time; she was just as likely to confide her
+love-affairs to Nelson as to anyone else, now that the Bockheimer prize
+was landed.
+
+“Well--well--well--so I’ve caught you at it! Glad to see you, Susy,
+my dear.” She found her hand cordially clasped in Vanderlyn’s, and
+his round pink face bent on her with all its old urbanity. Did nothing
+matter, then, in this world she was fleeing from, did no one love or
+hate or remember?
+
+“No idea you were in Paris--just got here myself,” Vanderlyn continued,
+visibly delighted at the meeting. “Look here, don’t suppose you’re out
+of a job this evening by any chance, and would come and cheer up a lone
+bachelor, eh? No? You are? Well, that’s luck for once! I say, where
+shall we go? One of the places where they dance, I suppose? Yes, I twirl
+the light fantastic once in a while myself. Got to keep up with the
+times! Hold on, taxi! Here--I’ll drive you home first, and wait while
+you jump into your toggery. Lots of time.” As he steered her toward the
+carriage she noticed that he had a gouty limp, and pulled himself in
+after her with difficulty.
+
+“Mayn’t I come as I am, Nelson, I don’t feel like dancing. Let’s go and
+dine in one of those nice smoky little restaurants by the Place de la
+Bourse.”
+
+He seemed surprised but relieved at the suggestion, and they rolled off
+together. In a corner at Bauge’s they found a quiet table, screened from
+the other diners, and while Vanderlyn adjusted his eyeglasses to study
+the carte Susy stole a long look at him. He was dressed with even more
+than his usual formal trimness, and she detected, in an ultra-flat
+wrist-watch and discreetly expensive waistcoat buttons, an attempt at
+smartness altogether new. His face had undergone the same change: its
+familiar look of worn optimism had been, as it were, done up to match
+his clothes, as though a sort of moral cosmetic had made him pinker,
+shinier and sprightlier without really rejuvenating him. A thin veil of
+high spirits had merely been drawn over his face, as the shining strands
+of hair were skilfully brushed over his baldness.
+
+“Here! Carte des vins, waiter! What champagne, Susy?” He chose,
+fastidiously, the best the cellar could produce, grumbling a little at
+the bourgeois character of the dishes. “Capital food of its kind, no
+doubt, but coarsish, don’t you think? Well, I don’t mind... it’s rather
+a jolly change from the Luxe cooking. A new sensation--I’m all for new
+sensations, ain’t you, my dear?” He re-filled their champagne glasses,
+flung an arm sideways over his chair, and smiled at her with a foggy
+benevolence.
+
+As the champagne flowed his confidences flowed with it.
+
+“Suppose you know what I’m here for--this divorce business? We wanted to
+settle it quietly without a fuss, and of course Paris is the best place
+for that sort of job. Live and let live; no questions asked. None
+of your dirty newspapers. Great country, this. No hypocrisy... they
+understand Life over here!”
+
+Susy gazed and listened. She remembered that people had thought Nelson
+would make a row when he found out. He had always been addicted to
+truculent anecdotes about unfaithful wives, and the very formula of
+his perpetual ejaculation--“Caught you at it, eh?”--seemed to hint at a
+constant preoccupation with such ideas. But now it was evident that,
+as the saying was, he had “swallowed his dose” like all the others. No
+strong blast of indignation had momentarily lifted him above his normal
+stature: he remained a little man among little men, and his eagerness to
+rebuild his life with all the old smiling optimism reminded Susy of the
+patient industry of an ant remaking its ruined ant-heap.
+
+“Tell you what, great thing, this liberty! Everything’s changed
+nowadays; why shouldn’t marriage be too? A man can get out of a business
+partnership when he wants to; but the parsons want to keep us noosed up
+to each other for life because we’ve blundered into a church one day and
+said ‘Yes’ before one of ’em. No, no--that’s too easy. We’ve got
+beyond that. Science, and all these new discoveries.... I say the Ten
+Commandments were made for man, and not man for the Commandments; and
+there ain’t a word against divorce in ’em, anyhow! That’s what I tell my
+poor old mother, who builds everything on her Bible. Find me the place
+where it says: ‘Thou shalt not sue for divorce.’ It makes her wild, poor
+old lady, because she can’t; and she doesn’t know how they happen to
+have left it out.... I rather think Moses left it out because he knew
+more about human nature than these snivelling modern parsons do. Not
+that they’ll always bear investigating either; but I don’t care about
+that. Live and let live, eh, Susy? Haven’t we all got a right to our
+Affinities? I hear you’re following our example yourself. First-rate
+idea: I don’t mind telling you I saw it coming on last summer at Venice.
+Caught you at it, so to speak! Old Nelson ain’t as blind as people
+think. Here, let’s open another bottle to the health of Streff and Mrs.
+Streff!”
+
+She caught the hand with which he was signalling to the sommelier.
+This flushed and garrulous Nelson moved her more poignantly than a
+more heroic figure. “No more champagne, please, Nelson. Besides,” she
+suddenly added, “it’s not true.”
+
+He stared. “Not true that you’re going to marry Altringham?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“By George then what on earth did you chuck Nick for? Ain’t you got an
+Affinity, my dear?”
+
+She laughed and shook her head.
+
+“Do you mean to tell me it’s all Nick’s doing, then?”
+
+“I don’t know. Let’s talk of you instead, Nelson. I’m glad you’re in
+such good spirits. I rather thought--”
+
+He interrupted her quickly. “Thought I’d cut up a rumpus--do some
+shooting? I know--people did.” He twisted his moustache, evidently proud
+of his reputation. “Well, maybe I did see red for a day or two--but I’m
+a philosopher, first and last. Before I went into banking I’d made and
+lost two fortunes out West. Well, how did I build ’em up again? Not by
+shooting anybody even myself. By just buckling to, and beginning all
+over again. That’s how... and that’s what I am doing now. Beginning all
+over again.” His voice dropped from boastfulness to a note of wistful
+melancholy, the look of strained jauntiness fell from his face like a
+mask, and for an instant she saw the real man, old, ruined, lonely. Yes,
+that was it: he was lonely, desperately lonely, foundering in such deep
+seas of solitude that any presence out of the past was like a spar to
+which he clung. Whatever he knew or guessed of the part she had played
+in his disaster, it was not callousness that had made him greet her with
+such forgiving warmth, but the same sense of smallness, insignificance
+and isolation which perpetually hung like a cold fog on her own horizon.
+Suddenly she too felt old--old and unspeakably tired.
+
+“It’s been nice seeing you, Nelson. But now I must be getting home.”
+
+He offered no objection, but asked for the bill, resumed his jaunty air
+while he scattered largesse among the waiters, and sauntered out behind
+her after calling for a taxi.
+
+They drove off in silence. Susy was thinking: “And Clarissa?” but dared
+not ask. Vanderlyn lit a cigarette, hummed a dance-tune, and stared out
+of the window. Suddenly she felt his hand on hers.
+
+“Susy--do you ever see her?”
+
+“See--Ellie?”
+
+He nodded, without turning toward her.
+
+“Not often... sometimes....”
+
+“If you do, for God’s sake tell her I’m happy... happy as a king...
+tell her you could see for yourself that I was....” His voice broke in
+a little gasp. “I... I’ll be damned if... if she shall ever be unhappy
+about me... if I can help it....” The cigarette dropped from his
+fingers, and with a sob he covered his face.
+
+“Oh, poor Nelson--poor Nelson,” Susy breathed. While their cab rattled
+across the Place du Carrousel, and over the bridge, he continued to
+sit beside her with hidden face. At last he pulled out a scented
+handkerchief, rubbed his eyes with it, and groped for another cigarette.
+
+“I’m all right! Tell her that, will you, Susy? There are some of our old
+times I don’t suppose I shall ever forget; but they make me feel kindly
+to her, and not angry. I didn’t know it would be so, beforehand--but it
+is.... And now the thing’s settled I’m as right as a trivet, and you can
+tell her so.... Look here, Susy...” he caught her by the arm as the taxi
+drew up at her hotel.... “Tell her I understand, will you? I’d rather
+like her to know that....”
+
+“I’ll tell her, Nelson,” she promised; and climbed the stairs alone to
+her dreary room.
+
+Susy’s one fear was that Strefford, when he returned the next day,
+should treat their talk of the previous evening as a fit of “nerves”
+ to be jested away. He might, indeed, resent her behaviour too deeply
+to seek to see her at once; but his easygoing modern attitude toward
+conduct and convictions made that improbable. She had an idea that
+what he had most minded was her dropping so unceremoniously out of the
+Embassy Dinner.
+
+But, after all, why should she see him again? She had had enough of
+explanations during the last months to have learned how seldom they
+explain anything. If the other person did not understand at the first
+word, at the first glance even, subsequent elucidations served only to
+deepen the obscurity. And she wanted above all--and especially since her
+hour with Nelson Vanderlyn--to keep herself free, aloof, to retain
+her hold on her precariously recovered self. She sat down and wrote to
+Strefford--and the letter was only a little less painful to write than
+the one she had despatched to Nick. It was not that her own feelings
+were in any like measure engaged; but because, as the decision to give
+up Strefford affirmed itself, she remembered only his kindness, his
+forbearance, his good humour, and all the other qualities she had always
+liked in him; and because she felt ashamed of the hesitations which must
+cause him so much pain and humiliation. Yes: humiliation chiefly. She
+knew that what she had to say would hurt his pride, in whatever way she
+framed her renunciation; and her pen wavered, hating its task. Then she
+remembered Vanderlyn’s words about his wife: “There are some of our
+old times I don’t suppose I shall ever forget--” and a phrase of Grace
+Fulmer’s that she had but half grasped at the time: “You haven’t been
+married long enough to understand how trifling such things seem in the
+balance of one’s memories.”
+
+Here were two people who had penetrated farther than she into the
+labyrinth of the wedded state, and struggled through some of
+its thorniest passages; and yet both, one consciously, the other
+half-unaware, testified to the mysterious fact which was already dawning
+on her: that the influence of a marriage begun in mutual understanding
+is too deep not to reassert itself even in the moment of flight and
+denial.
+
+“The real reason is that you’re not Nick” was what she would have said
+to Strefford if she had dared to set down the bare truth; and she knew
+that, whatever she wrote, he was too acute not to read that into it.
+
+“He’ll think it’s because I’m still in love with Nick... and perhaps I
+am. But even if I were, the difference doesn’t seem to lie there, after
+all, but deeper, in things we’ve shared that seem to be meant to outlast
+love, or to change it into something different.” If she could have
+hoped to make Strefford understand that, the letter would have been easy
+enough to write--but she knew just at what point his imagination would
+fail, in what obvious and superficial inferences it would rest.
+
+
+“Poor Streff--poor me!” she thought as she sealed the letter.
+
+After she had despatched it a sense of blankness descended on her. She
+had succeeded in driving from her mind all vain hesitations, doubts,
+returns upon herself: her healthy system naturally rejected them. But
+they left a queer emptiness in which her thoughts rattled about as
+thoughts might, she supposed, in the first moments after death--before
+one got used to it. To get used to being dead: that seemed to be her
+immediate business. And she felt such a novice at it--felt so horribly
+alive! How had those others learned to do without living? Nelson--well,
+he was still in the throes; and probably never would understand, or
+be able to communicate, the lesson when he had mastered it. But Grace
+Fulmer--she suddenly remembered that Grace was in Paris, and set forth
+to find her.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIV.
+
+
+
+NICK LANSING had walked out a long way into the Campagna. His hours were
+seldom his own, for both Mr. and Mrs. Hicks were becoming more and more
+addicted to sudden and somewhat imperious demands upon his time; but on
+this occasion he had simply slipped away after luncheon, and taking the
+tram to the Porta Salaria, had wandered on thence in the direction of
+the Ponte Nomentano.
+
+He wanted to get away and think; but now that he had done it the
+business proved as unfruitful as everything he had put his hand to since
+he had left Venice. Think--think about what? His future seemed to him
+a negligible matter since he had received, two months earlier, the few
+lines in which Susy had asked him for her freedom.
+
+The letter had been a shock--though he had fancied himself so prepared
+for it--yet it had also, in another sense, been a relief, since, now
+that at last circumstances compelled him to write to her, they also told
+him what to say. And he had said it as briefly and simply as possible,
+telling her that he would put no obstacle in the way of her release,
+that he held himself at her lawyer’s disposal to answer any further
+communication--and that he would never forget their days together, or
+cease to bless her for them.
+
+That was all. He gave his Roman banker’s address, and waited for another
+letter; but none came. Probably the “formalities,” whatever they were,
+took longer than he had supposed; and being in no haste to recover his
+own liberty, he did not try to learn the cause of the delay. From that
+moment, however, he considered himself virtually free, and ceased, by
+the same token, to take any interest in his own future. His life seemed
+as flat as a convalescent’s first days after the fever has dropped.
+
+The only thing he was sure of was that he was not going to remain in
+the Hickses’ employ: when they left Rome for Central Asia he had no
+intention of accompanying them. The part of Mr. Buttles’ successor was
+becoming daily more intolerable to him, for the very reasons that had
+probably made it most gratifying to Mr. Buttles. To be treated by Mr.
+and Mrs. Hicks as a paid oracle, a paraded and petted piece of property,
+was a good deal more distasteful than he could have imagined any
+relation with these kindly people could be. And since their aspirations
+had become frankly social he found his task, if easier, yet far less
+congenial than during his first months with them. He preferred patiently
+explaining to Mrs. Hicks, for the hundredth time, that Sassanian and
+Saracenic were not interchangeable terms, to unravelling for her the
+genealogies of her titled guests, and reminding her, when she “seated”
+ her dinner-parties, that Dukes ranked higher than Princes. No--the job
+was decidedly intolerable; and he would have to look out for another
+means of earning his living. But that was not what he had really got
+away to think about. He knew he should never starve; he had even begun
+to believe again in his book. What he wanted to think of was Susy--or
+rather, it was Susy that he could not help thinking of, on whatever
+train of thought he set out.
+
+Again and again he fancied he had established a truce with the past: had
+come to terms--the terms of defeat and failure with that bright enemy
+called happiness. And, in truth, he had reached the point of definitely
+knowing that he could never return to the kind of life that he and Susy
+had embarked on. It had been the tragedy, of their relation that loving
+her roused in him ideals she could never satisfy. He had fallen in
+love with her because she was, like himself, amused, unprejudiced and
+disenchanted; and he could not go on loving her unless she ceased to
+be all these things. From that circle there was no issue, and in it he
+desperately revolved.
+
+If he had not heard such persistent rumours of her re-marriage to Lord
+Altringham he might have tried to see her again; but, aware of the
+danger and the hopelessness of a meeting, he was, on the whole, glad to
+have a reason for avoiding it. Such, at least, he honestly supposed to
+be his state of mind until he found himself, as on this occasion, free
+to follow out his thought to its end. That end, invariably, was Susy;
+not the bundle of qualities and defects into which his critical
+spirit had tried to sort her out, but the soft blur of identity, of
+personality, of eyes, hair, mouth, laugh, tricks of speech and gesture,
+that were all so solely and profoundly her own, and yet so mysteriously
+independent of what she might do, say, think, in crucial circumstances.
+He remembered her once saying to him: “After all, you were right
+when you wanted me to be your mistress,” and the indignant stare of
+incredulity with which he had answered her. Yet in these hours it
+was the palpable image of her that clung closest, till, as invariably
+happened, his vision came full circle, and feeling her on his breast he
+wanted her also in his soul.
+
+Well--such all-encompassing loves were the rarest of human experiences;
+he smiled at his presumption in wanting no other. Wearily he turned, and
+tramped homeward through the winter twilight....
+
+At the door of the hotel he ran across the Prince of Teutoburg’s
+aide-de-camp. They had not met for some days, and Nick had a vague
+feeling that if the Prince’s matrimonial designs took definite shape he
+himself was not likely, after all, to be their chosen exponent. He
+had surprised, now and then, a certain distrustful coldness under the
+Princess Mother’s cordial glance, and had concluded that she perhaps
+suspected him of being an obstacle to her son’s aspirations. He had no
+idea of playing that part, but was not sorry to appear to; for he was
+sincerely attached to Coral Hicks, and hoped for her a more human fate
+than that of becoming Prince Anastasius’s consort.
+
+This evening, however, he was struck by the beaming alacrity of the
+aide-de-camp’s greeting. Whatever cloud had hung between them had
+lifted: the Teutoburg clan, for one reason or another, no longer feared
+or distrusted him. The change was conveyed in a mere hand-pressure,
+a brief exchange of words, for the aide-de-camp was hastening after a
+well-known dowager of the old Roman world, whom he helped into a large
+coronetted brougham which looked as if it had been extracted, for
+some ceremonial purpose, from a museum of historic vehicles. And in an
+instant it flashed on Lansing that this lady had been the person chosen
+to lay the Prince’s offer at Miss Hicks’s feet.
+
+The discovery piqued him; and instead of making straight for his own
+room he went up to Mrs. Hicks’s drawing-room.
+
+The room was empty, but traces of elaborate tea pervaded it, and an
+immense bouquet of stiff roses lay on the centre table. As he turned
+away, Eldorada Tooker, flushed and tear-stained, abruptly entered.
+
+“Oh, Mr. Lansing--we were looking everywhere for you.”
+
+“Looking for me?”
+
+“Yes. Coral especially... she wants to see you. She wants you to come to
+her own sitting-room.”
+
+She led him across the ante-chamber and down the passage to the separate
+suite which Miss Hicks inhabited. On the threshold Eldorada gasped out
+emotionally: “You’ll find her looking lovely--” and jerked away with a
+sob as he entered.
+
+Coral Hicks was never lovely: but she certainly looked unusually
+handsome. Perhaps it was the long dress of black velvet which, outlined
+against a shaded lamp, made her strong build seem slenderer, or perhaps
+the slight flush on her dusky cheek: a bloom of womanhood hung upon
+her which she made no effort to dissemble. Indeed, it was one of her
+originalities that she always gravely and courageously revealed the
+utmost of whatever mood possessed her.
+
+“How splendid you look!” he said, smiling at her.
+
+She threw her head back and gazed him straight in the eyes. “That’s
+going to be my future job.”
+
+“To look splendid?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“And wear a crown?”
+
+“And wear a crown....”
+
+They continued to consider each other without speaking. Nick’s heart
+contracted with pity and perplexity.
+
+“Oh, Coral--it’s not decided?”
+
+She scrutinized him for a last penetrating moment; then she looked away.
+“I’m never long deciding.”
+
+He hesitated, choking with contradictory impulses, and afraid to
+formulate any, lest they should either mislead or pain her.
+
+“Why didn’t you tell me?” he questioned lamely; and instantly perceived
+his blunder.
+
+She sat down, and looked up at him under brooding lashes--had he ever
+noticed the thickness of her lashes before?
+
+“Would it have made any difference if I had told you?”
+
+“Any difference--?”
+
+“Sit down by me,” she commanded. “I want to talk to you. You can say
+now whatever you might have said sooner. I’m not married yet: I’m still
+free.”
+
+“You haven’t given your answer?”
+
+“It doesn’t matter if I have.”
+
+The retort frightened him with the glimpse of what she still expected of
+him, and what he was still so unable to give.
+
+“That means you’ve said yes?” he pursued, to gain time.
+
+“Yes or no--it doesn’t matter. I had to say something. What I want is
+your advice.”
+
+“At the eleventh hour?”
+
+“Or the twelfth.” She paused. “What shall I do?” she questioned, with a
+sudden accent of helplessness.
+
+He looked at her as helplessly. He could not say: “Ask yourself--ask
+your parents.” Her next word would sweep away such frail hypocrisies.
+Her “What shall I do?” meant “What are you going to do?” and he knew it,
+and knew that she knew it.
+
+“I’m a bad person to give any one matrimonial advice,” he began, with a
+strained smile; “but I had such a different vision for you.”
+
+“What kind of a vision?” She was merciless.
+
+“Merely what people call happiness, dear.”
+
+“‘People call’--you see you don’t believe in it yourself! Well, neither
+do I--in that form, at any rate.”
+
+He considered. “I believe in trying for it--even if the trying’s the
+best of it.”
+
+“Well, I’ve tried, and failed. And I’m twenty-two, and I never was
+young. I suppose I haven’t enough imagination.” She drew a deep breath.
+“Now I want something different.” She appeared to search for the word.
+“I want to be--prominent,” she declared.
+
+“Prominent?”
+
+She reddened swarthily. “Oh, you smile--you think it’s ridiculous: it
+doesn’t seem worth while to you. That’s because you’ve always had all
+those things. But I haven’t. I know what father pushed up from, and
+I want to push up as high again--higher. No, I haven’t got much
+imagination. I’ve always liked Facts. And I find I shall like the fact
+of being a Princess--choosing the people I associate with, and being up
+above all these European grandees that father and mother bow down to,
+though they think they despise them. You can be up above these people by
+just being yourself; you know how. But I need a platform--a sky-scraper.
+Father and mother slaved to give me my education. They thought education
+was the important thing; but, since we’ve all three of us got mediocre
+minds, it has just landed us among mediocre people. Don’t you suppose I
+see through all the sham science and sham art and sham everything we’re
+surrounded with? That’s why I want to buy a place at the very top, where
+I shall be powerful enough to get about me the people I want, the big
+people, the right people, and to help them I want to promote culture,
+like those Renaissance women you’re always talking about. I want to do
+it for Apex City; do you understand? And for father and mother too. I
+want all those titles carved on my tombstone. They’re facts, anyhow!
+Don’t laugh at me....” She broke off with one of her clumsy smiles, and
+moved away from him to the other end of the room.
+
+He sat looking at her with a curious feeling of admiration. Her harsh
+positivism was like a tonic to his disenchanted mood, and he thought:
+“What a pity!”
+
+Aloud he said: “I don’t feel like laughing at you. You’re a great
+woman.”
+
+“Then I shall be a great Princess.”
+
+“Oh--but you might have been something so much greater!”
+
+Her face flamed again. “Don’t say that!”
+
+He stood up involuntarily, and drew near her.
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“Because you’re the only man with whom I can imagine the other kind of
+greatness.”
+
+It moved him--moved him unexpectedly. He got as far as saying to
+himself: “Good God, if she were not so hideously rich--” and then of
+yielding for a moment to the persuasive vision of all that he and she
+might do with those very riches which he dreaded. After all, there was
+nothing mean in her ideals they were hard and material, in keeping with
+her primitive and massive person; but they had a certain grim nobility.
+And when she spoke of “the other kind of greatness” he knew that she
+understood what she was talking of, and was not merely saying something
+to draw him on, to get him to commit himself. There was not a drop of
+guile in her, except that which her very honesty distilled.
+
+“The other kind of greatness?” he repeated.
+
+“Well, isn’t that what you said happiness was? I wanted to be happy...
+but one can’t choose.”
+
+He went up to her. “No, one can’t choose. And how can anyone give you
+happiness who hasn’t got it himself?” He took her hands, feeling how
+large, muscular and voluntary they were, even as they melted in his
+palms.
+
+“My poor Coral, of what use can I ever be to you? What you need is to be
+loved.”
+
+She drew back and gave him one of her straight strong glances: “No,” she
+said gallantly, “but just to love.”
+
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+XXV
+
+IN the persistent drizzle of a Paris winter morning Susy Lansing walked
+back alone from the school at which she had just deposited the four
+eldest Fulmers to the little house in Passy where, for the last two
+months, she had been living with them.
+
+She had on ready-made boots, an old waterproof and a last year’s hat;
+but none of these facts disturbed her, though she took no particular
+pride in them. The truth was that she was too busy to think much about
+them. Since she had assumed the charge of the Fulmer children, in the
+absence of both their parents in Italy, she had had to pass through such
+an arduous apprenticeship of motherhood that every moment of her waking
+hours was packed with things to do at once, and other things to remember
+to do later. There were only five Fulmers; but at times they were
+like an army with banners, and their power of self-multiplication was
+equalled only by the manner in which they could dwindle, vanish, grow
+mute, and become as it were a single tumbled brown head bent over a book
+in some corner of the house in which nobody would ever have thought of
+hunting for them--and which, of course, were it the bonne’s room in the
+attic, or the subterranean closet where the trunks were kept, had been
+singled out by them for that very reason.
+
+These changes from ubiquity to invisibility would have seemed to Susy,
+a few months earlier, one of the most maddening of many characteristics
+not calculated to promote repose. But now she felt differently. She
+had grown interested in her charges, and the search for a clue to their
+methods, whether tribal or individual, was as exciting to her as the
+development of a detective story.
+
+What interested her most in the whole stirring business was the
+discovery that they had a method. These little creatures, pitched upward
+into experience on the tossing waves of their parents’ agitated lives,
+had managed to establish a rough-and-ready system of self-government.
+Junie, the eldest (the one who already chose her mother’s hats, and
+tried to put order in her wardrobe) was the recognized head of the
+state. At twelve she knew lots of things which her mother had never
+thoroughly learned, and Susy, her temporary mother, had never even
+guessed at: she spoke with authority on all vital subjects, from
+castor-oil to flannel under-clothes, from the fair sharing of stamps
+or marbles to the number of helpings of rice-pudding or jam which each
+child was entitled to.
+
+There was hardly any appeal from her verdict; yet each of her subjects
+revolved in his or her own orbit of independence, according to laws
+which Junie acknowledged and respected; and the interpreting of this
+mysterious charter of rights and privileges had not been without
+difficulty for Susy.
+
+Besides this, there were material difficulties to deal with. The six of
+them, and the breathless bonne who cooked and slaved for them all, had
+but a slim budget to live on; and, as Junie remarked, you’d have thought
+the boys ate their shoes, the way they vanished. They ate, certainly, a
+great deal else, and mostly of a nourishing and expensive kind. They
+had definite views about the amount and quality of their food, and were
+capable of concerted rebellion when Susy’s catering fell beneath their
+standard. All this made her life a hurried and harassing business, but
+never--what she had most feared it would be a dull or depressing one.
+
+It was not, she owned to herself, that the society of the Fulmer
+children had roused in her any abstract passion for the human young. She
+knew--had known since Nick’s first kiss--how she would love any child of
+his and hers; and she had cherished poor little Clarissa Vanderlyn with
+a shrinking and wistful solicitude. But in these rough young Fulmers she
+took a positive delight, and for reasons that were increasingly clear to
+her. It was because, in the first place, they were all intelligent; and
+because their intelligence had been fed only on things worth caring for.
+However inadequate Grace Fulmer’s bringing-up of her increasing tribe
+had been, they had heard in her company nothing trivial or dull: good
+music, good books and good talk had been their daily food, and if at
+times they stamped and roared and crashed about like children unblessed
+by such privileges, at others they shone with the light of poetry and
+spoke with the voice of wisdom.
+
+That had been Susy’s discovery: for the first time she was among
+awakening minds which had been wakened only to beauty. From their
+cramped and uncomfortable household Grace and Nat Fulmer had managed to
+keep out mean envies, vulgar admirations, shabby discontents; above all
+the din and confusion the great images of beauty had brooded, like those
+ancestral figures that stood apart on their shelf in the poorest Roman
+households.
+
+No, the task she had undertaken for want of a better gave Susy no sense
+of a missed vocation: “mothering” on a large scale would never, she
+perceived, be her job. Rather it gave her, in odd ways, the sense
+of being herself mothered, of taking her first steps in the life of
+immaterial values which had begun to seem so much more substantial than
+any she had known.
+
+On the day when she had gone to Grace Fulmer for counsel and comfort
+she had little guessed that they would come to her in this form. She had
+found her friend, more than ever distracted and yet buoyant, riding the
+large untidy waves of her life with the splashed ease of an amphibian.
+Grace was probably the only person among Susy’s friends who could have
+understood why she could not make up her mind to marry Altringham; but
+at the moment Grace was too much absorbed in her own problems to
+pay much attention to her friend’s, and, according to her wont, she
+immediately “unpacked” her difficulties.
+
+Nat was not getting what she had hoped out of his European opportunity.
+Oh, she was enough of an artist herself to know that there must be
+fallow periods--that the impact of new impressions seldom produced
+immediate results. She had allowed for all that. But her past experience
+of Nat’s moods had taught her to know just when he was assimilating,
+when impressions were fructifying in him. And now they were not, and he
+knew it as well as she did. There had been too much rushing about, too
+much excitement and sterile flattery... Mrs. Melrose? Well, yes, for
+a while... the trip to Spain had been a love-journey, no doubt. Grace
+spoke calmly, but the lines of her face sharpened: she had suffered, oh
+horribly, at his going to Spain without her. Yet she couldn’t, for the
+children’s sake, afford to miss the big sum that Ursula Gillow had given
+her for her fortnight at Ruan. And her playing had struck people, and
+led, on the way back, to two or three profitable engagements in private
+houses in London. Fashionable society had made “a little fuss”
+ about her, and it had surprised and pleased Nat, and given her a new
+importance in his eyes. “He was beginning to forget that I wasn’t only
+a nursery-maid, and it’s been a good thing for him to be reminded...
+but the great thing is that with what I’ve earned he and I can go off
+to southern Italy and Sicily for three months. You know I know how
+to manage... and, alone with me, Nat will settle down to work: to
+observing, feeling, soaking things in. It’s the only way. Mrs. Melrose
+wants to take him, to pay all the expenses again--well she shan’t. I’ll
+pay them.” Her worn cheek flushed with triumph. “And you’ll see what
+wonders will come of it.... Only there’s the problem of the children.
+Junie quite agrees that we can’t take them....”
+
+Thereupon she had unfolded her idea. If Susy was at a loose end, and
+hard up, why shouldn’t she take charge of the children while their
+parents were in Italy? For three months at most--Grace could promise it
+shouldn’t be longer. They couldn’t pay her much, of course, but at least
+she would be lodged and fed. “And, you know, it will end by interesting
+you--I’m sure it will,” the mother concluded, her irrepressible
+hopefulness rising even to this height, while Susy stood before her with
+a hesitating smile.
+
+Take care of five Fulmers for three months! The prospect cowed her. If
+there had been only Junie and Geordie, the oldest and youngest of the
+band, she might have felt less hesitation. But there was Nat, the second
+in age, whose motor-horn had driven her and Nick out to the hill-side
+on their fatal day at the Fulmers’ and there were the twins, Jack and
+Peggy, of whom she had kept memories almost equally disquieting. To rule
+this uproarious tribe would be a sterner business than trying to beguile
+Clarissa Vanderlyn’s ladylike leisure; and she would have refused on the
+spot, as she had refused once before, if the only possible alternatives
+had not come to seem so much less bearable, and if Junie, called in for
+advice, and standing there, small, plain and competent, had not said
+in her quiet grown-up voice: “Oh, yes, I’m sure Mrs. Lansing and I can
+manage while you’re away--especially if she reads aloud well.”
+
+Reads aloud well! The stipulation had enchanted Susy. She had never
+before known children who cared to be read aloud to; she remembered with
+a shiver her attempts to interest Clarissa in anything but gossip
+and the fashions, and the tone in which the child had said, showing
+Strefford’s trinket to her father: “Because I said I’d rather have it
+than a book.”
+
+And here were children who consented to be left for three months by
+their parents, but on condition that a good reader was provided for
+them!
+
+“Very well--I will! But what shall I be expected to read to you?” she
+had gaily questioned; and Junie had answered, after one of her sober
+pauses of reflection: “The little ones like nearly everything; but Nat
+and I want poetry particularly, because if we read it to ourselves we so
+often pronounce the puzzling words wrong, and then it sounds so horrid.”
+
+“Oh, I hope I shall pronounce them right,” Susy murmured, stricken with
+self-distrust and humility.
+
+Apparently she did; for her reading was a success, and even the twins
+and Geordie, once they had grown used to her, seemed to prefer a ringing
+page of Henry V, or the fairy scenes from the Midsummer Night’s Dream,
+to their own more specialized literature, though that had also at times
+to be provided.
+
+There were, in fact, no lulls in her life with the Fulmers; but
+its commotions seemed to Susy less meaningless, and therefore less
+fatiguing, than those that punctuated the existence of people like
+Altringham, Ursula Gillow, Ellie Vanderlyn and their train; and the
+noisy uncomfortable little house at Passy was beginning to greet her
+with the eyes of home when she returned there after her tramps to and
+from the children’s classes. At any rate she had the sense of doing
+something useful and even necessary, and of earning her own keep, though
+on so modest a scale; and when the children were in their quiet
+mood, and demanded books or music (or, even, on one occasion, at the
+surprising Junie’s instigation, a collective visit to the Louvre, where
+they recognized the most unlikely pictures, and the two elders emitted
+startling technical judgments, and called their companion’s attention to
+details she had not observed); on these occasions, Susy had a surprised
+sense of being drawn back into her brief life with Nick, or even still
+farther and deeper, into those visions of Nick’s own childhood on which
+the trivial later years had heaped their dust.
+
+It was curious to think that if he and she had remained together, and
+she had had a child--the vision used to come to her, in her sleepless
+hours, when she looked at little Geordie, in his cot by her bed--their
+life together might have been very much like the life she was now
+leading, a small obscure business to the outer world, but to themselves
+how wide and deep and crowded!
+
+She could not bear, at that moment, the thought of giving up this mystic
+relation to the life she had missed. In spite of the hurry and fatigue
+of her days, the shabbiness and discomfort of everything, and the hours
+when the children were as “horrid” as any other children, and turned a
+conspiracy of hostile faces to all her appeals; in spite of all this
+she did not want to give them up, and had decided, when their parents
+returned, to ask to go back to America with them. Perhaps, if Nat’s
+success continued, and Grace was able to work at her music, they would
+need a kind of governess-companion. At any rate, she could picture no
+future less distasteful.
+
+She had not sent to Mr. Spearman Nick’s answer to her letter. In the
+interval between writing to him and receiving his reply she had broken
+with Strefford; she had therefore no object in seeking her freedom. If
+Nick wanted his, he knew he had only to ask for it; and his silence, as
+the weeks passed, woke a faint hope in her. The hope flamed high when
+she read one day in the newspapers a vague but evidently “inspired”
+ allusion to the possibility of an alliance between his Serene Highness
+the reigning Prince of Teutoburg-Waldhain and Miss Coral Hicks of
+Apex City; it sank to ashes when, a few days later, her eye lit on a
+paragraph wherein Mr. and Mrs. Mortimer Hicks “requested to state” that
+there was no truth in the report.
+
+On the foundation of these two statements Susy raised one watch-tower
+of hope after another, feverish edifices demolished or rebuilt by every
+chance hint from the outer world wherein Nick’s name figured with the
+Hickses’. And still, as the days passed and she heard nothing, either
+from him or from her lawyer, her flag continued to fly from the quaking
+structures.
+
+Apart from the custody of the children there was indeed little to
+distract her mind from these persistent broodings. She winced sometimes
+at the thought of the ease with which her fashionable friends had let
+her drop out of sight. In the perpetual purposeless rush of their days,
+the feverish making of winter plans, hurrying off to the Riviera or St.
+Moritz, Egypt or New York, there was no time to hunt up the vanished
+or to wait for the laggard. Had they learned that she had broken her
+“engagement” (how she hated the word!) to Strefford, and had the fact
+gone about that she was once more only a poor hanger-on, to be taken up
+when it was convenient, and ignored in the intervals? She did not know;
+though she fancied Strefford’s newly-developed pride would prevent his
+revealing to any one what had passed between them. For several days
+after her abrupt flight he had made no sign; and though she longed to
+write and ask his forgiveness she could not find the words. Finally it
+was he who wrote: a short note, from Altringham, typical of all that was
+best in the old Strefford. He had gone down to Altringham, he told her,
+to think quietly over their last talk, and try to understand what
+she had been driving at. He had to own that he couldn’t; but that, he
+supposed, was the very head and front of his offending. Whatever he had
+done to displease her, he was sorry for; but he asked, in view of his
+invincible ignorance, to be allowed not to regard his offence as a cause
+for a final break. The possibility of that, he found, would make him
+even more unhappy than he had foreseen; as she knew, his own happiness
+had always been his first object in life, and he therefore begged her to
+suspend her decision a little longer. He expected to be in Paris within
+another two months, and before arriving he would write again, and ask
+her to see him.
+
+The letter moved her but did not make her waver. She simply wrote that
+she was touched by his kindness, and would willingly see him if he came
+to Paris later; though she was bound to tell him that she had not yet
+changed her mind, and did not believe it would promote his happiness to
+have her try to do so.
+
+He did not reply to this, and there was nothing further to keep her
+thoughts from revolving endlessly about her inmost hopes and fears.
+
+On the rainy afternoon in question, tramping home from the “cours” (to
+which she was to return at six), she had said to herself that it was
+two months that very day since Nick had known she was ready to release
+him--and that after such a delay he was not likely to take any further
+steps. The thought filled her with a vague ecstasy. She had had to fix
+an arbitrary date as the term of her anguish, and she had fixed that
+one; and behold she was justified. For what could his silence mean but
+that he too....
+
+On the hall-table lay a typed envelope with the Paris postage-mark. She
+opened it carelessly, and saw that the letter-head bore Mr. Spearman’s
+office address. The words beneath spun round before her eyes.... “Has
+notified us that he is at your disposal... carry out your wishes...
+arriving in Paris... fix an appointment with his lawyers....”
+
+Nick--it was Nick the words were talking of! It was the fact of Nick’s
+return to Paris that was being described in those preposterous terms!
+She sank down on the bench beside the dripping umbrella-stand and stared
+vacantly before her. It had fallen at last--this blow in which she now
+saw that she had never really believed! And yet she had imagined she was
+prepared for it, had expected it, was already planning her future life
+in view of it--an effaced impersonal life in the service of somebody
+else’s children--when, in reality, under that thin surface of abnegation
+and acceptance, all the old hopes had been smouldering red-hot in their
+ashes! What was the use of any self-discipline, any philosophy, any
+experience, if the lawless self underneath could in an instant consume
+them like tinder?
+
+She tried to collect herself--to understand what had happened. Nick was
+coming to Paris--coming not to see her but to consult his lawyer! It
+meant, of course, that he had definitely resolved to claim his freedom;
+and that, if he had made up his mind to this final step, after more
+than six months of inaction and seeming indifference, it could be
+only because something unforeseen and decisive had happened to him.
+Feverishly, she put together again the stray scraps of gossip and the
+newspaper paragraphs that had reached her in the last months. It
+was evident that Miss Hicks’s projected marriage with the Prince of
+Teutoburg-Waldhain had been broken off at the last moment; and broken
+off because she intended to marry Nick. The announcement of his arrival
+in Paris and the publication of Mr. and Mrs. Hicks’s formal denial of
+their daughter’s betrothal coincided too closely to admit of any other
+inference. Susy tried to grasp the reality of these assembled facts, to
+picture to herself their actual tangible results. She thought of Coral
+Hicks bearing the name of Mrs. Nick Lansing--her name, Susy’s own!--and
+entering drawing-rooms with Nick in her wake, gaily welcomed by the very
+people who, a few months before, had welcomed Susy with the same warmth.
+In spite of Nick’s growing dislike of society, and Coral’s attitude of
+intellectual superiority, their wealth would fatally draw them back into
+the world to which Nick was attached by all his habits and associations.
+And no doubt it would amuse him to re-enter that world as a dispenser of
+hospitality, to play the part of host where he had so long been a guest;
+just as Susy had once fancied it would amuse her to re-enter it as Lady
+Altringham.... But, try as she would, now that the reality was so close
+on her, she could not visualize it or relate it to herself. The mere
+juxtaposition of the two names--Coral, Nick--which in old times she had
+so often laughingly coupled, now produced a blur in her brain.
+
+She continued to sit helplessly beside the hall-table, the tears running
+down her cheeks. The appearance of the bonne aroused her. Her youngest
+charge, Geordie, had been feverish for a day or two; he was better,
+but still confined to the nursery, and he had heard Susy unlock the
+house-door, and could not imagine why she had not come straight up to
+him. He now began to manifest his indignation in a series of racking
+howls, and Susy, shaken out of her trance, dropped her cloak and
+umbrella and hurried up.
+
+“Oh, that child!” she groaned.
+
+Under the Fulmer roof there was little time or space for the indulgence
+of private sorrows. From morning till night there was always some
+immediate practical demand on one’s attention; and Susy was beginning
+to see how, in contracted households, children may play a part less
+romantic but not less useful than that assigned to them in fiction,
+through the mere fact of giving their parents no leisure to dwell on
+irremediable grievances. Though her own apprenticeship to family life
+had been so short, she had already acquired the knack of rapid mental
+readjustment, and as she hurried up to the nursery her private cares
+were dispelled by a dozen problems of temperature, diet and medicine.
+
+Such readjustment was of course only momentary; yet each time it
+happened it seemed to give her more firmness and flexibility of temper.
+“What a child I was myself six months ago!” she thought, wondering that
+Nick’s influence, and the tragedy of their parting, should have done
+less to mature and steady her than these few weeks in a house full of
+children.
+
+Pacifying Geordie was not easy, for he had long since learned to use
+his grievances as a pretext for keeping the offender at his beck with a
+continuous supply of stories, songs and games. “You’d better be careful
+never to put yourself in the wrong with Geordie,” the astute Junie had
+warned Susy at the outset, “because he’s got such a memory, and he won’t
+make it up with you till you’ve told him every fairy-tale he’s ever
+heard before.”
+
+But on this occasion, as soon as he saw her, Geordie’s indignation
+melted. She was still in the doorway, compunctious, abject and racking
+her dazed brain for his favourite stories, when she saw, by the
+smoothing out of his mouth and the sudden serenity of his eyes, that he
+was going to give her the delicious but not wholly reassuring shock of
+being a good boy.
+
+Thoughtfully he examined her face as she knelt down beside the cot; then
+he poked out a finger and pressed it on her tearful cheek.
+
+“Poor Susy got a pain too,” he said, putting his arms about her; and
+as she hugged him close, he added philosophically: “Tell Geordie a new
+story, darling, and you’ll forget all about it.”
+
+
+
+
+
+XXVI.
+
+
+
+NICK Lansing arrived in Paris two days after his lawyer had announced
+his coming to Mr. Spearman.
+
+He had left Rome with the definite purpose of freeing himself and Susy;
+and though he was not pledged to Coral Hicks he had not concealed from
+her the object of his journey. In vain had he tried to rouse in himself
+any sense of interest in his own future. Beyond the need of reaching a
+definite point in his relation to Susy his imagination could not travel.
+But he had been moved by Coral’s confession, and his reason told him
+that he and she would probably be happy together, with the temperate
+happiness based on a community of tastes and an enlargement of
+opportunities. He meant, on his return to Rome, to ask her to marry
+him; and he knew that she knew it. Indeed, if he had not spoken before
+leaving it was with no idea of evading his fate, or keeping her longer
+in suspense, but simply because of the strange apathy that had fallen
+on him since he had received Susy’s letter. In his incessant
+self-communings he dressed up this apathy as a discretion which forbade
+his engaging Coral’s future till his own was assured. But in truth he
+knew that Coral’s future was already engaged, and his with it: in Rome
+the fact had seemed natural and even inevitable.
+
+In Paris, it instantly became the thinnest of unrealities. Not because
+Paris was not Rome, nor because it was Paris; but because hidden away
+somewhere in that vast unheeding labyrinth was the half-forgotten part
+of himself that was Susy.... For weeks, for months past, his mind had
+been saturated with Susy: she had never seemed more insistently near him
+than as their separation lengthened, and the chance of reunion became
+less probable. It was as if a sickness long smouldering in him had
+broken out and become acute, enveloping him in the Nessus-shirt of his
+memories. There were moments when, to his memory, their actual embraces
+seemed perfunctory, accidental, compared with this deep deliberate
+imprint of her soul on his.
+
+Yet now it had become suddenly different. Now that he was in the same
+place with her, and might at any moment run across her, meet her eyes,
+hear her voice, avoid her hand--now that penetrating ghost of her
+with which he had been living was sucked back into the shadows, and
+he seemed, for the first time since their parting, to be again in her
+actual presence. He woke to the fact on the morning of his arrival,
+staring down from his hotel window on a street she would perhaps walk
+through that very day, and over a limitless huddle of roofs, one
+of which covered her at that hour. The abruptness of the transition
+startled him; he had not known that her mere geographical nearness would
+take him by the throat in that way. What would it be, then, if she were
+to walk into the room?
+
+Thank heaven that need never happen! He was sufficiently informed as
+to French divorce proceedings to know that they would not necessitate
+a confrontation with his wife; and with ordinary luck, and some
+precautions, he might escape even a distant glimpse of her. He did not
+mean to remain in Paris more than a few days; and during that time it
+would be easy--knowing, as he did, her tastes and Altringham’s--to avoid
+the places where she was likely to be met. He did not know where she was
+living, but imagined her to be staying with Mrs. Melrose, or some other
+rich friend, or else lodged, in prospective affluence, at the Nouveau
+Luxe, or in a pretty flat of her own. Trust Susy--ah, the pang of it--to
+“manage”!
+
+His first visit was to his lawyer’s; and as he walked through the
+familiar streets each approaching face, each distant figure seemed
+hers. The obsession was intolerable. It would not last, of course; but
+meanwhile he had the exposed sense of a fugitive in a nightmare, who
+feels himself the only creature visible in a ghostly and besetting
+multitude. The eye of the metropolis seemed fixed on him in an immense
+unblinking stare.
+
+At the lawyer’s he was told that, as a first step to freedom, he must
+secure a domicile in Paris. He had of course known of this necessity: he
+had seen too many friends through the Divorce Court, in one country
+or another, not to be fairly familiar with the procedure. But the fact
+presented a different aspect as soon as he tried to relate it to himself
+and Susy: it was as though Susy’s personality were a medium through
+which events still took on a transfiguring colour. He found the
+“domicile” that very day: a tawdrily furnished rez-de-chaussee,
+obviously destined to far different uses. And as he sat there, after the
+concierge had discreetly withdrawn with the first quarter’s payment in
+her pocket, and stared about him at the vulgar plushy place, he burst
+out laughing at what it was about to figure in the eyes of the law: a
+Home, and a Home desecrated by his own act! The Home in which he and
+Susy had reared their precarious bliss, and seen it crumble at the
+brutal touch of his unfaithfulness and his cruelty--for he had been told
+that he must be cruel to her as well as unfaithful! He looked at the
+walls hung with sentimental photogravures, at the shiny bronze “nudes,”
+ the moth-eaten animal-skins and the bedizened bed--and once more the
+unreality, the impossibility, of all that was happening to him entered
+like a drug into his veins.
+
+To rouse himself he stood up, turned the key on the hideous place, and
+returned to his lawyer’s. He knew that in the hard dry atmosphere of the
+office the act of giving the address of the flat would restore some kind
+of reality to the phantasmal transaction. And with wonder he watched the
+lawyer, as a matter of course, pencil the street and the number on one
+of the papers enclosed in a folder on which his own name was elaborately
+engrossed.
+
+As he took leave it occurred to him to ask where Susy was living. At
+least he imagined that it had just occurred to him, and that he was
+making the enquiry merely as a measure of precaution, in order to know
+what quarter of Paris to avoid; but in reality the question had been on
+his lips since he had first entered the office, and lurking in his mind
+since he had emerged from the railway station that morning. The fact
+of not knowing where she lived made the whole of Paris a meaningless
+unintelligible place, as useless to him as the face of a huge clock that
+has lost its hour hand.
+
+The address in Passy surprised him: he had imagined that she would be
+somewhere in the neighborhood of the Champs Elysees or the Place de
+l’Etoile. But probably either Mrs. Melrose or Ellie Vanderlyn had taken
+a house at Passy. Well--it was something of a relief to know that she
+was so far off. No business called him to that almost suburban region
+beyond the Trocadero, and there was much less chance of meeting her than
+if she had been in the centre of Paris.
+
+All day he wandered, avoiding the fashionable quarters, the streets
+in which private motors glittered five deep, and furred and feathered
+silhouettes glided from them into tea-rooms, picture-galleries and
+jewellers’ shops. In some such scenes Susy was no doubt figuring:
+slenderer, finer, vivider, than the other images of clay, but imitating
+their gestures, chattering their jargon, winding her hand among the same
+pearls and sables. He struck away across the Seine, along the quays
+to the Cite, the net-work of old Paris, the great grey vaults of St.
+Eustache, the swarming streets of the Marais. He gazed at monuments
+dawdled before shop-windows, sat in squares and on quays, watching
+people bargain, argue, philander, quarrel, work-girls stroll past in
+linked bands, beggars whine on the bridges, derelicts doze in the pale
+winter sun, mothers in mourning hasten by taking children to school, and
+street-walkers beat their weary rounds before the cafes.
+
+The day drifted on. Toward evening he began to grow afraid of his
+solitude, and to think of dining at the Nouveau Luxe, or some
+other fashionable restaurant where he would be fairly sure to
+meet acquaintances, and be carried off to a theatre, a boite or a
+dancing-hall. Anything, anything now, to get away from the maddening
+round of his thoughts. He felt the same blank fear of solitude as months
+ago in Genoa.... Even if he were to run across Susy and Altringham, what
+of it? Better get the job over. People had long since ceased to take on
+tragedy airs about divorce: dividing couples dined together to the last,
+and met afterward in each other’s houses, happy in the consciousness
+that their respective remarriages had provided two new centres of
+entertainment. Yet most of the couples who took their re-matings so
+philosophically had doubtless had their hour of enchantment, of belief
+in the immortality of loving; whereas he and Susy had simply and frankly
+entered into a business contract for their mutual advantage. The fact
+gave the last touch of incongruity to his agonies and exaltations, and
+made him appear to himself as grotesque and superannuated as the hero of
+a romantic novel.
+
+He stood up from a bench on which he had been lounging in the Luxembourg
+gardens, and hailed a taxi. Dusk had fallen, and he meant to go back to
+his hotel, take a rest, and then go out to dine. But instead, he threw
+Susy’s address to the driver, and settled down in the cab, resting both
+hands on the knob of his umbrella and staring straight ahead of him as
+if he were accomplishing some tiresome duty that had to be got through
+with before he could turn his mind to more important things.
+
+“It’s the easiest way,” he heard himself say.
+
+At the street-corner--her street-corner--he stopped the cab, and stood
+motionless while it rattled away. It was a short vague street, much
+farther off than he had expected, and fading away at the farther end in
+a dusky blur of hoardings overhung by trees. A thin rain was beginning
+to fall, and it was already night in this inadequately lit suburban
+quarter. Lansing walked down the empty street. The houses stood a few
+yards apart, with bare-twigged shrubs between, and gates and railings
+dividing them from the pavement. He could not, at first, distinguish
+their numbers; but presently, coming abreast of a street-lamp, he
+discovered that the small shabby facade it illuminated was precisely
+the one he sought. The discovery surprised him. He had imagined that, as
+frequently happened in the outlying quarters of Passy and La Muette,
+the mean street would lead to a stately private hotel, built upon some
+bowery fragment of an old country-place. It was the latest whim of the
+wealthy to establish themselves on these outskirts of Paris, where
+there was still space for verdure; and he had pictured Susy behind
+some pillared house-front, with lights pouring across glossy turf to
+sculptured gateposts. Instead, he saw a six-windowed house, huddled
+among neighbours of its kind, with the family wash fluttering between
+meagre bushes. The arc-light beat ironically on its front, which had
+the worn look of a tired work-woman’s face; and Lansing, as he leaned
+against the opposite railing, vainly tried to fit his vision of Susy
+into so humble a setting.
+
+The probable explanation was that his lawyer had given him the wrong
+address; not only the wrong number but the wrong street. He pulled out
+the slip of paper, and was crossing over to decipher it under the lamp,
+when an errand-boy appeared out of the obscurity, and approached the
+house. Nick drew back, and the boy, unlatching the gate, ran up the
+steps and gave the bell a pull.
+
+Almost immediately the door opened; and there stood Susy, the light full
+upon her, and upon a red-checked child against her shoulder. The space
+behind them was dark, or so dimly lit that it formed a black background
+to her vivid figure. She looked at the errand-boy without surprise, took
+his parcel, and after he had turned away, lingered a moment in the door,
+glancing down the empty street.
+
+That moment, to her watcher, seemed quicker than a flash yet as long
+as a life-time. There she was, a stone’s throw away, but utterly
+unconscious of his presence: his Susy, the old Susy, and yet a new Susy,
+curiously transformed, transfigured almost, by the new attitude in which
+he beheld her.
+
+In the first shock of the vision he forgot his surprise at her being in
+such a place, forgot to wonder whose house she was in, or whose was
+the sleepy child in her arms. For an instant she stood out from the
+blackness behind her, and through the veil of the winter night, a thing
+apart, an unconditioned vision, the eternal image of the woman and
+the child; and in that instant everything within him was changed and
+renewed. His eyes were still absorbing her, finding again the familiar
+curves of her light body, noting the thinness of the lifted arm that
+upheld the little boy, the droop of the shoulder he weighed on, the
+brooding way in which her cheek leaned to his even while she looked
+away; then she drew back, the door closed, and the street-lamp again
+shone on blankness.
+
+“But she’s mine!” Nick cried, in a fierce triumph of recovery...
+
+His eyes were so full of her that he shut them to hold in the crowding
+vision.
+
+It remained with him, at first, as a complete picture; then gradually it
+broke up into its component parts, the child vanished, the strange house
+vanished, and Susy alone stood before him, his own Susy, only his Susy,
+yet changed, worn, tempered--older, even--with sharper shadows under
+the cheek-bones, the brows drawn, the joint of the slim wrist more
+prominent. It was not thus that his memory had evoked her, and he
+recalled, with a remorseful pang, the fact that something in her
+look, her dress, her tired and drooping attitude, suggested poverty,
+dependence, seemed to make her after all a part of the shabby house in
+which, at first sight, her presence had seemed so incongruous.
+
+“But she looks poor!” he thought, his heart tightening. And instantly
+it occurred to him that these must be the Fulmer children whom she
+was living with while their parents travelled in Italy. Rumours of Nat
+Fulmer’s sudden ascension had reached him, and he had heard that the
+couple had lately been seen in Naples and Palermo. No one had mentioned
+Susy’s name in connection with them, and he could hardly tell why he
+had arrived at this conclusion, except perhaps because it seemed natural
+that, if Susy were in trouble, she should turn to her old friend Grace.
+
+But why in trouble? What trouble? What could have happened to check her
+triumphant career?
+
+“That’s what I mean to find out!” he exclaimed.
+
+His heart was beating with a tumult of new hopes and old memories. The
+sight of his wife, so remote in mien and manner from the world in
+which he had imagined her to be re-absorbed, changed in a flash his own
+relation to life, and flung a mist of unreality over all that he
+had been trying to think most solid and tangible. Nothing now was
+substantial to him but the stones of the street in which he stood, the
+front of the house which hid her, the bell-handle he already felt in
+his grasp. He started forward, and was halfway to the threshold when a
+private motor turned the corner, the twin glitter of its lamps carpeting
+the wet street with gold to Susy’s door.
+
+Lansing drew back into the shadow as the motor swept up to the house. A
+man jumped out, and the light fell on Strefford’s shambling figure, its
+lazy disjointed movements so unmistakably the same under his fur coat,
+and in the new setting of prosperity.
+
+Lansing stood motionless, staring at the door. Strefford rang, and
+waited. Would Susy appear again? Perhaps she had done so before only
+because she had been on the watch....
+
+But no: after a slight delay a bonne appeared--the breathless
+maid-of-all-work of a busy household--and at once effaced herself,
+letting the visitor in. Lansing was sure that not a word passed between
+the two, of enquiry on Lord Altringham’s part, or of acquiescence on the
+servant’s. There could be no doubt that he was expected.
+
+The door closed on him, and a light appeared behind the blind of the
+adjoining window. The maid had shown the visitor into the sitting-room
+and lit the lamp. Upstairs, meanwhile, Susy was no doubt running skilful
+fingers through her tumbled hair and daubing her pale lips with red.
+Ah, how Lansing knew every movement of that familiar rite, even to the
+pucker of the brow and the pouting thrust-out of the lower lip! He was
+seized with a sense of physical sickness as the succession of remembered
+gestures pressed upon his eyes.... And the other man? The other man,
+inside the house, was perhaps at that very instant smiling over the
+remembrance of the same scene!
+
+At the thought, Lansing plunged away into the night.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXVII.
+
+
+
+SUSY and Lord Altringham sat in the little drawing-room, divided from
+each other by a table carrying a smoky lamp and heaped with tattered
+school-books.
+
+In another half hour the bonne, despatched to fetch the children from
+their classes, would be back with her flock; and at any moment Geordie’s
+imperious cries might summon his slave up to the nursery. In the scant
+time allotted them, the two sat, and visibly wondered what to say.
+
+Strefford, on entering, had glanced about the dreary room, with its
+piano laden with tattered music, the children’s toys littering the lame
+sofa, the bunches of dyed grass and impaled butterflies flanking the
+cast-bronze clock. Then he had turned to Susy and asked simply: “Why on
+earth are you here?”
+
+She had not tried to explain; from the first, she had understood the
+impossibility of doing so. And she would not betray her secret longing
+to return to Nick, now that she knew that Nick had taken definite steps
+for his release. In dread lest Strefford should have heard of this, and
+should announce it to her, coupling it with the news of Nick’s projected
+marriage, and lest, hearing her fears thus substantiated, she should
+lose her self-control, she had preferred to say, in a voice that she
+tried to make indifferent: “The ‘proceedings,’ or whatever the lawyers
+call them, have begun. While they’re going on I like to stay quite by
+myself.... I don’t know why....”
+
+Strefford, at that, had looked at her keenly. “Ah,” he murmured; and
+his lips were twisted into their old mocking smile. “Speaking of
+proceedings,” he went on carelessly, “what stage have Ellie’s reached,
+I wonder? I saw her and Vanderlyn and Bockheimer all lunching cheerfully
+together to-day at Larue’s.”
+
+The blood rushed to Susy’s forehead. She remembered her tragic evening
+with Nelson Vanderlyn, only two months earlier, and thought to herself.
+“In time, then, I suppose, Nick and I....”
+
+Aloud she said: “I can’t imagine how Nelson and Ellie can ever want to
+see each other again. And in a restaurant, of all places!”
+
+Strefford continued to smile. “My dear, you’re incorrigibly
+old-fashioned. Why should two people who’ve done each other the best
+turn they could by getting out of each other’s way at the right moment
+behave like sworn enemies ever afterward? It’s too absurd; the humbug’s
+too flagrant. Whatever our generation has failed to do, it’s got rid of
+humbug; and that’s enough to immortalize it. I daresay Nelson and Ellie
+never liked each other better than they do to-day. Twenty years ago,
+they’d have been afraid to confess it; but why shouldn’t they now?”
+
+Susy looked at Strefford, conscious that under his words was the ache of
+the disappointment she had caused him; and yet conscious also that that
+very ache was not the overwhelming penetrating emotion he perhaps wished
+it to be, but a pang on a par with a dozen others; and that even while
+he felt it he foresaw the day when he should cease to feel it. And she
+thought to herself that this certainty of oblivion must be bitterer than
+any certainty of pain.
+
+A silence had fallen between them. He broke it by rising from his
+seat, and saying with a shrug: “You’ll end by driving me to marry Joan
+Senechal.”
+
+Susy smiled. “Well, why not? She’s lovely.”
+
+“Yes; but she’ll bore me.”
+
+“Poor Streff! So should I--”
+
+“Perhaps. But nothing like as soon--” He grinned sardonically. “There’d
+be more margin.” He appeared to wait for her to speak. “And what else on
+earth are you going to do?” he concluded, as she still remained silent.
+
+“Oh, Streff, I couldn’t marry you for a reason like that!” she murmured
+at length.
+
+“Then marry me, and find your reason afterward.”
+
+Her lips made a movement of denial, and still in silence she held out
+her hand for good-bye. He clasped it, and then turned away; but on the
+threshold he paused, his screwed-up eyes fixed on her wistfully.
+
+The look moved her, and she added hurriedly: “The only reason I can find
+is one for not marrying you. It’s because I can’t yet feel unmarried
+enough.”
+
+“Unmarried enough? But I thought Nick was doing his best to make you
+feel that.”
+
+“Yes. But even when he has--sometimes I think even that won’t make any
+difference.”
+
+He still scrutinized her hesitatingly, with the gravest eyes she had
+ever seen in his careless face.
+
+“My dear, that’s rather the way I feel about you,” he said simply as he
+turned to go.
+
+That evening after the children had gone to bed Susy sat up late in the
+cheerless sitting-room. She was not thinking of Strefford but of Nick.
+He was coming to Paris--perhaps he had already arrived. The idea that he
+might be in the same place with her at that very moment, and without her
+knowing it, was so strange and painful that she felt a violent revolt of
+all her strong and joy-loving youth. Why should she go on suffering so
+unbearably, so abjectly, so miserably? If only she could see him, hear
+his voice, even hear him say again such cruel and humiliating words as
+he had spoken on that dreadful day in Venice when that would be better
+than this blankness, this utter and final exclusion from his life! He
+had been cruel to her, unimaginably cruel: hard, arrogant, unjust; and
+had been so, perhaps, deliberately, because he already wanted to be
+free. But she was ready to face even that possibility, to humble herself
+still farther than he had humbled her--she was ready to do anything, if
+only she might see him once again.
+
+She leaned her aching head on her hands and pondered. Do anything? But
+what could she do? Nothing that should hurt him, interfere with his
+liberty, be false to the spirit of their pact: on that she was more than
+ever resolved. She had made a bargain, and she meant to stick to it, not
+for any abstract reason, but simply because she happened to love him in
+that way. Yes--but to see him again, only once!
+
+Suddenly she remembered what Strefford had said about Nelson Vanderlyn
+and his wife. “Why should two people who’ve just done each other the
+best turn they could behave like sworn enemies ever after?” If in
+offering Nick his freedom she had indeed done him such a service as
+that, perhaps he no longer hated her, would no longer be unwilling
+to see her.... At any rate, why should she not write to him on that
+assumption, write in a spirit of simple friendliness, suggesting that
+they should meet and “settle things”? The business-like word “settle”
+ (how she hated it) would prove to him that she had no secret designs
+upon his liberty; and besides he was too unprejudiced, too modern, too
+free from what Strefford called humbug, not to understand and accept
+such a suggestion. After all, perhaps Strefford was right; it was
+something to have rid human relations of hypocrisy, even if, in the
+process, so many exquisite things seemed somehow to have been torn away
+with it....
+
+She ran up to her room, scribbled a note, and hurried with it through
+the rain and darkness to the post-box at the corner. As she returned
+through the empty street she had an odd feeling that it was not
+empty--that perhaps Nick was already there, somewhere near her in the
+night, about to follow her to the door, enter the house, go up with
+her to her bedroom in the old way. It was strange how close he had been
+brought by the mere fact of her having written that little note to him!
+
+In the bedroom, Geordie lay in his crib in ruddy slumber, and she blew
+out the candle and undressed softly for fear of waking him.
+
+Nick Lansing, the next day, received Susy’s letter, transmitted to his
+hotel from the lawyer’s office.
+
+He read it carefully, two or three times over, weighing and scrutinizing
+the guarded words. She proposed that they should meet to “settle
+things.” What things? And why should he accede to such a request? What
+secret purpose had prompted her? It was horrible that nowadays, in
+thinking of Susy, he should always suspect ulterior motives, be meanly
+on the watch for some hidden tortuousness. What on earth was she trying
+to “manage” now, he wondered.
+
+A few hours ago, at the sight of her, all his hardness had melted, and
+he had charged himself with cruelty, with injustice, with every sin of
+pride against himself and her; but the appearance of Strefford, arriving
+at that late hour, and so evidently expected and welcomed, had driven
+back the rising tide of tenderness.
+
+Yet, after all, what was there to wonder at? Nothing was changed in
+their respective situations. He had left his wife, deliberately, and for
+reasons which no subsequent experience had caused him to modify. She had
+apparently acquiesced in his decision, and had utilized it, as she was
+justified in doing, to assure her own future.
+
+In all this, what was there to wail or knock the breast between two
+people who prided themselves on looking facts in the face, and making
+their grim best of them, without vain repinings? He had been right in
+thinking their marriage an act of madness. Her charms had overruled his
+judgment, and they had had their year... their mad year... or at least
+all but two or three months of it. But his first intuition had been
+right; and now they must both pay for their madness. The Fates seldom
+forget the bargains made with them, or fail to ask for compound
+interest. Why not, then, now that the time had come, pay up gallantly,
+and remember of the episode only what had made it seem so supremely
+worth the cost?
+
+He sent a pneumatic telegram to Mrs. Nicholas Lansing to say that he
+would call on her that afternoon at four. “That ought to give us time,”
+ he reflected drily, “to ‘settle things,’ as she calls it, without
+interfering with Strefford’s afternoon visit.”
+
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII.
+
+
+
+HER husband’s note had briefly said:
+
+“To-day at four o’clock. N.L.”
+
+All day she pored over the words in an agony of longing, trying to read
+into them regret, emotion, memories, some echo of the tumult in her own
+bosom. But she had signed “Susy,” and he signed “N.L.” That seemed
+to put an abyss between them. After all, she was free and he was not.
+Perhaps, in view of his situation, she had only increased the distance
+between them by her unconventional request for a meeting.
+
+She sat in the little drawing-room, and the cast-bronze clock ticked out
+the minutes. She would not look out of the window: it might bring bad
+luck to watch for him. And it seemed to her that a thousand invisible
+spirits, hidden demons of good and evil, pressed about her, spying out
+her thoughts, counting her heart-beats, ready to pounce upon the least
+symptom of over-confidence and turn it deftly to derision. Oh, for an
+altar on which to pour out propitiatory offerings! But what sweeter
+could they have than her smothered heart-beats, her choked-back tears?
+
+The bell rang, and she stood up as if a spring had jerked her to her
+feet. In the mirror between the dried grasses her face looked long pale
+inanimate. Ah, if he should find her too changed--! If there were but
+time to dash upstairs and put on a touch of red....
+
+The door opened; it shut on him; he was there.
+
+He said: “You wanted to see me?”
+
+She answered: “Yes.” And her heart seemed to stop beating.
+
+At first she could not make out what mysterious change had come over
+him, and why it was that in looking at him she seemed to be looking at a
+stranger; then she perceived that his voice sounded as it used to sound
+when he was talking to other people; and she said to herself, with a
+sick shiver of understanding, that she had become an “other person” to
+him.
+
+There was a deathly pause; then she faltered out, not knowing what she
+said: “Nick--you’ll sit down?”
+
+He said: “Thanks,” but did not seem to have heard her, for he continued
+to stand motionless, half the room between them. And slowly the
+uselessness, the hopelessness of his being there overcame her. A wall of
+granite seemed to have built itself up between them. She felt as if
+it hid her from him, as if with those remote new eyes of his he were
+staring into the wall and not at her. Suddenly she said to herself:
+“He’s suffering more than I am, because he pities me, and is afraid to
+tell me that he is going to be married.”
+
+The thought stung her pride, and she lifted her head and met his eyes
+with a smile.
+
+“Don’t you think,” she said, “it’s more sensible--with everything so
+changed in our lives--that we should meet as friends, in this way? I
+wanted to tell you that you needn’t feel--feel in the least unhappy
+about me.”
+
+A deep flush rose to his forehead. “Oh, I know--I know that--” he
+declared hastily; and added, with a factitious animation: “But thank you
+for telling me.”
+
+“There’s nothing, is there,” she continued, “to make our meeting in this
+way in the least embarrassing or painful to either of us, when both
+have found....” She broke off, and held her hand out to him. “I’ve heard
+about you and Coral,” she ended.
+
+He just touched her hand with cold fingers, and let it drop. “Thank
+you,” he said for the third time.
+
+“You won’t sit down?”
+
+He sat down.
+
+“Don’t you think,” she continued, “that the new way of... of meeting
+as friends... and talking things over without ill-will... is much
+pleasanter and more sensible, after all?”
+
+He smiled. “It’s immensely kind of you to feel that.”
+
+“Oh, I do feel it!” She stopped short, and wondered what on earth she
+had meant to say next, and why she had so abruptly lost the thread of
+her discourse.
+
+In the pause she heard him cough slightly and clear his throat. “Let me
+say, then,” he began, “that I’m glad too--immensely glad that your own
+future is so satisfactorily settled.”
+
+She lifted her glance again to his walled face, in which not a muscle
+stirred.
+
+“Yes: it--it makes everything easier for you, doesn’t it?”
+
+“For you too, I hope.” He paused, and then went on: “I want also to tell
+you that I perfectly understand--”
+
+“Oh,” she interrupted, “so do I; your point of view, I mean.”
+
+They were again silent.
+
+“Nick, why can’t we be friends real friends? Won’t it be easier?” she
+broke out at last with twitching lips.
+
+“Easier--?”
+
+“I mean, about talking things over--arrangements. There are arrangements
+to be made, I suppose?”
+
+“I suppose so.” He hesitated. “I’m doing what I’m told--simply following
+out instructions. The business is easy enough, apparently. I’m taking
+the necessary steps--”
+
+She reddened a little, and drew a gasping breath. “The necessary steps:
+what are they? Everything the lawyers tell one is so confusing.... I
+don’t yet understand--how it’s done.”
+
+“My share, you mean? Oh, it’s very simple.” He paused, and added in a
+tone of laboured ease: “I’m going down to Fontainebleau to-morrow--”
+
+She stared, not understanding. “To Fontainebleau--?”
+
+Her bewilderment drew from him his first frank smile. “Well--I chose
+Fontainebleau--I don’t know why... except that we’ve never been there
+together.”
+
+At that she suddenly understood, and the blood rushed to her forehead.
+She stood up without knowing what she was doing, her heart in her
+throat. “How grotesque--how utterly disgusting!”
+
+He gave a slight shrug. “I didn’t make the laws....”
+
+“But isn’t it too stupid and degrading that such things should be
+necessary when two people want to part--?” She broke off again, silenced
+by the echo of that fatal “want to part.”...
+
+He seemed to prefer not to dwell farther on the legal obligations
+involved.
+
+“You haven’t yet told me,” he suggested, “how you happen to be living
+here.”
+
+“Here--with the Fulmer children?” She roused herself, trying to catch
+his easier note. “Oh, I’ve simply been governessing them for a few
+weeks, while Nat and Grace are in Sicily.” She did not say: “It’s
+because I’ve parted with Strefford.” Somehow it helped her wounded pride
+a little to keep from him the secret of her precarious independence.
+
+He looked his wonder. “All alone with that bewildered bonne? But how
+many of them are there? Five? Good Lord!” He contemplated the clock with
+unseeing eyes, and then turned them again on her face.
+
+“I should have thought a lot of children would rather get on your
+nerves.”
+
+“Oh, not these children. They’re so good to me.”
+
+“Ah, well, I suppose it won’t be for long.”
+
+He sent his eyes again about the room, which his absent-minded gaze
+seemed to reduce to its dismal constituent elements, and added, with an
+obvious effort at small talk: “I hear the Fulmers are not hitting it off
+very well since his success. Is it true that he’s going to marry Violet
+Melrose?”
+
+The blood rose to Susy’s face. “Oh, never, never! He and Grace are
+travelling together now.”
+
+“Oh, I didn’t know. People say things....” He was visibly embarrassed
+with the subject, and sorry that he had broached it.
+
+“Some of the things that people say are true. But Grace doesn’t mind.
+She says she and Nat belong to each other. They can’t help it, she
+thinks, after having been through such a lot together.”
+
+“Dear old Grace!”
+
+He had risen from his chair, and this time she made no effort to detain
+him. He seemed to have recovered his self-composure, and it struck her
+painfully, humiliatingly almost, that he should have spoken in that
+light way of the expedition to Fontainebleau on the morrow.... Well,
+men were different, she supposed; she remembered having felt that once
+before about Nick.
+
+It was on the tip of her tongue to cry out: “But wait--wait! I’m not
+going to marry Strefford after all!”--but to do so would seem like an
+appeal to his compassion, to his indulgence; and that was not what she
+wanted. She could never forget that he had left her because he had not
+been able to forgive her for “managing”--and not for the world would she
+have him think that this meeting had been planned for such a purpose.
+
+“If he doesn’t see that I am different, in spite of appearances... and
+that I never was what he said I was that day--if in all these months it
+hasn’t come over him, what’s the use of trying to make him see it now?”
+ she mused. And then, her thoughts hurrying on: “Perhaps he’s suffering
+too--I believe he is suffering--at any rate, he’s suffering for me, if
+not for himself. But if he’s pledged to Coral, what can he do? What
+would he think of me if I tried to make him break his word to her?”
+
+There he stood--the man who was “going to Fontainebleau to-morrow”; who
+called it “taking the necessary steps!” Who could smile as he made the
+careless statement! A world seemed to divide them already: it was as if
+their parting were already over. All the words, cries, arguments beating
+loud wings in her dropped back into silence. The only thought left was:
+“How much longer does he mean to go on standing there?”
+
+He may have read the question in her face, for turning back from an
+absorbed contemplation of the window curtains he said: “There’s nothing
+else?”
+
+“Nothing else?”
+
+“I mean: you spoke of things to be settled--”
+
+She flushed, suddenly remembering the pretext she had used to summon
+him.
+
+“Oh,” she faltered, “I didn’t know... I thought there might be.... But
+the lawyers, I suppose....”
+
+She saw the relief on his contracted face. “Exactly. I’ve always thought
+it was best to leave it to them. I assure you”--again for a moment the
+smile strained his lips--“I shall do nothing to interfere with a quick
+settlement.”
+
+She stood motionless, feeling herself turn to stone. He appeared already
+a long way off, like a figure vanishing down a remote perspective.
+
+“Then--good-bye,” she heard him say from its farther end.
+
+“Oh,--good-bye,” she faltered, as if she had not had the word ready, and
+was relieved to have him supply it.
+
+He stopped again on the threshold, looked back at her, began to speak.
+“I’ve--” he said; then he repeated “Good-bye,” as though to make sure he
+had not forgotten to say it; and the door closed on him.
+
+It was over; she had had her last chance and missed it. Now, whatever
+happened, the one thing she had lived and longed for would never be. He
+had come, and she had let him go again....
+
+How had it come about? Would she ever be able to explain it to herself?
+How was it that she, so fertile in strategy, so practiced in feminine
+arts, had stood there before him, helpless, inarticulate, like a
+school-girl a-choke with her first love-longing? If he was gone, and
+gone never to return, it was her own fault, and none but hers. What had
+she done to move him, detain him, make his heart beat and his head
+swim as hers were beating and swimming? She stood aghast at her own
+inadequacy, her stony inexpressiveness....
+
+And suddenly she lifted her hands to her throbbing forehead and cried
+out: “But this is love! This must be love!”
+
+She had loved him before, she supposed; for what else was she to call
+the impulse that had drawn her to him, taught her how to overcome his
+scruples, and whirled him away with her on their mad adventure? Well,
+if that was love, this was something so much larger and deeper that the
+other feeling seemed the mere dancing of her blood in tune with his....
+
+But, no! Real love, great love, the love that poets sang, and privileged
+and tortured beings lived and died of, that love had its own superior
+expressiveness, and the sure command of its means. The petty arts of
+coquetry were no farther from it than the numbness of the untaught
+girl. Great love was wise, strong, powerful, like genius, like any other
+dominant form of human power. It knew itself, and what it wanted, and
+how to attain its ends.
+
+Not great love, then... but just the common humble average of human love
+was hers. And it had come to her so newly, so overwhelmingly, with a
+face so grave, a touch so startling, that she had stood there petrified,
+humbled at the first look of its eyes, recognizing that what she had
+once taken for love was merely pleasure and spring-time, and the flavour
+of youth.
+
+“But how was I to know? And now it’s too late!” she wailed.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIX.
+
+
+
+THE inhabitants of the little house in Passy were of necessity early
+risers; but when Susy jumped out of bed the next morning no one else
+was astir, and it lacked nearly an hour of the call of the bonne’s
+alarm-clock.
+
+For a moment Susy leaned out of her dark room into the darker night.
+A cold drizzle fell on her face, and she shivered and drew back. Then,
+lighting a candle, and shading it, as her habit was, from the sleeping
+child, she slipped on her dressing-gown and opened the door. On the
+threshold she paused to look at her watch. Only half-past five! She
+thought with compunction of the unkindness of breaking in on Junie
+Fulmer’s slumbers; but such scruples did not weigh an ounce in the
+balance of her purpose. Poor Junie would have to oversleep herself on
+Sunday, that was all.
+
+Susy stole into the passage, opened a door, and cast her light on the
+girl’s face.
+
+“Junie! Dearest Junie, you must wake up!”
+
+Junie lay in the abandonment of youthful sleep; but at the sound of her
+name she sat up with the promptness of a grown person on whom domestic
+burdens have long weighed.
+
+“Which one of them is it?” she asked, one foot already out of bed.
+
+“Oh, Junie dear, no... it’s nothing wrong with the children... or with
+anybody,” Susy stammered, on her knees by the bed.
+
+In the candlelight, she saw Junie’s anxious brow darken reproachfully.
+
+“Oh, Susy, then why--? I was just dreaming we were all driving about
+Rome in a great big motor-car with father and mother!”
+
+“I’m so sorry, dear. What a lovely dream! I’m a brute to have
+interrupted it--”
+
+She felt the little girl’s awakening scrutiny. “If there’s nothing wrong
+with anybody, why are you crying, Susy? Is it you there’s something
+wrong with? What has happened?”
+
+“Am I crying?” Susy rose from her knees and sat down on the counterpane.
+“Yes, it is me. And I had to disturb you.”
+
+“Oh, Susy, darling, what is it?” Junie’s arms were about her in a flash,
+and Susy grasped them in burning fingers.
+
+“Junie, listen! I’ve got to go away at once--to leave you all for the
+whole day. I may not be back till late this evening; late to-night; I
+can’t tell. I promised your mother I’d never leave you; but I’ve got
+to--I’ve got to.”
+
+Junie considered her agitated face with fully awakened eyes. “Oh, I
+won’t tell, you know, you old brick,” she said with simplicity.
+
+Susy hugged her. “Junie, Junie, you darling! But that wasn’t what I
+meant. Of course you may tell--you must tell. I shall write to
+your mother myself. But what worries me is the idea of having to go
+away--away from Paris--for the whole day, with Geordie still coughing a
+little, and no one but that silly Angele to stay with him while you’re
+out--and no one but you to take yourself and the others to school. But
+Junie, Junie, I’ve got to do it!” she sobbed out, clutching the child
+tighter.
+
+Junie Fulmer, with her strangely mature perception of the case, and
+seemingly of every case that fate might call on her to deal with, sat
+for a moment motionless in Susy’s hold. Then she freed her wrists with
+an adroit twist, and leaning back against the pillows said judiciously:
+“You’ll never in the world bring up a family of your own if you take on
+like this over other people’s children.”
+
+Through all her turmoil of spirit the observation drew a laugh from
+Susy. “Oh, a family of my own--I don’t deserve one, the way I’m behaving
+to your--”
+
+Junie still considered her. “My dear, a change will do you good: you
+need it,” she pronounced.
+
+Susy rose with a laughing sigh. “I’m not at all sure it will! But I’ve
+got to have it, all the same. Only I do feel anxious--and I can’t even
+leave you my address!”
+
+Junie still seemed to examine the case.
+
+“Can’t you even tell me where you’re going?” she ventured, as if not
+quite sure of the delicacy of asking.
+
+“Well--no, I don’t think I can; not till I get back. Besides, even if
+I could it wouldn’t be much use, because I couldn’t give you my address
+there. I don’t know what it will be.”
+
+“But what does it matter, if you’re coming back to-night?”
+
+“Of course I’m coming back! How could you possibly imagine I should
+think of leaving you for more than a day?”
+
+“Oh, I shouldn’t be afraid--not much, that is, with the poker, and Nat’s
+water-pistol,” emended Junie, still judicious.
+
+Susy again enfolded her vehemently, and then turned to more practical
+matters. She explained that she wished if possible to catch an
+eight-thirty train from the Gare de Lyon, and that there was not a
+moment to lose if the children were to be dressed and fed, and full
+instructions written out for Junie and Angele, before she rushed for the
+underground.
+
+While she bathed Geordie, and then hurried into her own clothes, she
+could not help wondering at her own extreme solicitude for her charges.
+She remembered, with a pang, how often she had deserted Clarissa
+Vanderlyn for the whole day, and even for two or three in
+succession--poor little Clarissa, whom she knew to be so unprotected,
+so exposed to evil influences. She had been too much absorbed in her own
+greedy bliss to be more than intermittently aware of the child; but now,
+she felt, no sorrow however ravaging, no happiness however absorbing,
+would ever again isolate her from her kind.
+
+And then these children were so different! The exquisite Clarissa was
+already the predestined victim of her surroundings: her budding soul
+was divided from Susy’s by the same barrier of incomprehension that
+separated the latter from Mrs. Vanderlyn. Clarissa had nothing to
+teach Susy but the horror of her own hard little appetites; whereas the
+company of the noisy argumentative Fulmers had been a school of wisdom
+and abnegation.
+
+As she applied the brush to Geordie’s shining head and the handkerchief
+to his snuffling nose, the sense of what she owed him was so borne in on
+Susy that she interrupted the process to catch him to her bosom.
+
+“I’ll have such a story to tell you when I get back to-night, if you’ll
+promise me to be good all day,” she bargained with him; and Geordie,
+always astute, bargained back: “Before I promise, I’d like to know what
+story.”
+
+At length all was in order. Junie had been enlightened, and Angele
+stunned, by the minuteness of Susy’s instructions; and the latter,
+waterproofed and stoutly shod, descended the doorstep, and paused to
+wave at the pyramid of heads yearning to her from an upper window.
+
+It was hardly light, and still raining, when she turned into the dismal
+street. As usual, it was empty; but at the corner she perceived a
+hesitating taxi, with luggage piled beside the driver. Perhaps it was
+some early traveller, just arriving, who would release the carriage in
+time for her to catch it, and thus avoid the walk to the metro, and the
+subsequent strap-hanging; for it was the work-people’s hour. Susy raced
+toward the vehicle, which, overcoming its hesitation, was beginning to
+move in her direction. Observing this, she stopped to see where it
+would discharge its load. Thereupon the taxi stopped also, and the load
+discharged itself in front of her in the shape of Nick Lansing.
+
+The two stood staring at each other through the rain till Nick broke
+out: “Where are you going? I came to get you.”
+
+“To get me? To get me?” she repeated. Beside the driver she had suddenly
+remarked the old suit-case from which her husband had obliged her to
+extract Strefford’s cigars as they were leaving Como; and everything
+that had happened since seemed to fall away and vanish in the pang and
+rapture of that memory.
+
+“To get you; yes. Of course.” He spoke the words peremptorily, almost as
+if they were an order. “Where were you going?” he repeated.
+
+Without answering, she turned toward the house. He followed her, and the
+laden taxi closed the procession.
+
+“Why are you out in such weather without an umbrella?” he continued, in
+the same severe tone, drawing her under the shelter of his.
+
+“Oh, because Junie’s umbrella is in tatters, and I had to leave her
+mine, as I was going away for the whole day.” She spoke the words like a
+person in a trance.
+
+“For the whole day? At this hour? Where?”
+
+They were on the doorstep, and she fumbled automatically for her key,
+let herself in, and led the way to the sitting-room. It had not been
+tidied up since the night before. The children’s school books lay
+scattered on the table and sofa, and the empty fireplace was grey with
+ashes. She turned to Nick in the pallid light.
+
+“I was going to see you,” she stammered, “I was going to follow you to
+Fontainebleau, if necessary, to tell you... to prevent you....”
+
+He repeated in the same aggressive tone: “Tell me what? Prevent what?”
+
+“Tell you that there must be some other way... some decent way... of our
+separating... without that horror, that horror of your going off with a
+woman....”
+
+He stared, and then burst into a laugh. The blood rushed to her face.
+She had caught a familiar ring in his laugh, and it wounded her. What
+business had he, at such a time, to laugh in the old way?
+
+“I’m sorry; but there is no other way, I’m afraid. No other way but
+one,” he corrected himself.
+
+She raised her head sharply. “Well?”
+
+“That you should be the woman.--Oh, my dear!” He had dropped his mocking
+smile, and was at her side, her hands in his. “Oh, my dear, don’t you
+see that we’ve both been feeling the same thing, and at the same hour?
+You lay awake thinking of it all night, didn’t you? So did I. Whenever
+the clock struck, I said to myself: ‘She’s hearing it too.’ And I was up
+before daylight, and packed my traps--for I never want to set foot again
+in that awful hotel where I’ve lived in hell for the last three days.
+And I swore to myself that I’d go off with a woman by the first train I
+could catch--and so I mean to, my dear.”
+
+She stood before him numb. Yes, numb: that was the worst of it! The
+violence of the reaction had been too great, and she could hardly
+understand what he was saying. Instead, she noticed that the tassel of
+the window-blind was torn off again (oh, those children!), and vaguely
+wondered if his luggage were safe on the waiting taxi. One heard such
+stories....
+
+His voice came back to her. “Susy! Listen!” he was entreating. “You
+must see yourself that it can’t be. We’re married--isn’t that all that
+matters? Oh, I know--I’ve behaved like a brute: a cursed arrogant ass!
+You couldn’t wish that ass a worse kicking than I’ve given him! But
+that’s not the point, you see. The point is that we’re married....
+Married.... Doesn’t it mean something to you, something--inexorable? It
+does to me. I didn’t dream it would--in just that way. But all I can say
+is that I suppose the people who don’t feel it aren’t really married--and
+they’d better separate; much better. As for us--”
+
+Through her tears she gasped out: “That’s what I felt... that’s what I
+said to Streff....”
+
+He was upon her with a great embrace. “My darling! My darling! You have
+told him?”
+
+“Yes,” she panted. “That’s why I’m living here.” She paused. “And you’ve
+told Coral?”
+
+She felt his embrace relax. He drew away a little, still holding her,
+but with lowered head.
+
+
+“No... I... haven’t.”
+
+“Oh, Nick! But then--?”
+
+He caught her to him again, resentfully. “Well--then what? What do you
+mean? What earthly difference does it make?”
+
+“But if you’ve told her you were going to marry her--” (Try as she
+would, her voice was full of silver chimes.)
+
+“Marry her? Marry her?” he echoed. “But how could I? What does marriage
+mean anyhow? If it means anything at all it means--you! And I can’t ask
+Coral Hicks just to come and live with me, can I?”
+
+Between crying and laughing she lay on his breast, and his hand passed
+over her hair.
+
+They were silent for a while; then he began again: “You said it yourself
+yesterday, you know.”
+
+She strayed back from sunlit distances. “Yesterday?”
+
+“Yes: that Grace Fulmer says you can’t separate two people who’ve been
+through a lot of things--”
+
+“Ah, been through them together--it’s not the things, you see, it’s the
+togetherness,” she interrupted.
+
+“The togetherness--that’s it!” He seized on the word as if it had just
+been coined to express their case, and his mind could rest in it without
+farther labour.
+
+The door-bell rang, and they started. Through the window they saw the
+taxi-driver gesticulating enquiries as to the fate of the luggage.
+
+“He wants to know if he’s to leave it here,” Susy laughed.
+
+“No--no! You’re to come with me,” her husband declared.
+
+“Come with you?” She laughed again at the absurdity of the suggestion.
+
+“Of course: this very instant. What did you suppose? That I was going
+away without you? Run up and pack your things,” he commanded.
+
+“My things? My things? But I can’t leave the children!”
+
+He stared, between indignation and amusement. “Can’t leave the children?
+Nonsense! Why, you said yourself you were going to follow me to
+Fontainebleau--”
+
+She reddened again, this time a little painfully “I didn’t know what
+I was doing.... I had to find you... but I should have come back this
+evening, no matter what happened.”
+
+“No matter what?”
+
+She nodded, and met his gaze resolutely.
+
+“No; but really--”
+
+“Really, I can’t leave the children till Nat and Grace come back. I
+promised I wouldn’t.”
+
+“Yes; but you didn’t know then.... Why on earth can’t their nurse look
+after them?”
+
+“There isn’t any nurse but me.”
+
+“Good Lord!”
+
+“But it’s only for two weeks more,” she pleaded. “Two weeks! Do you know
+how long I’ve been without you!” He seized her by both wrists, and drew
+them against his breast. “Come with me at least for two days--Susy!” he
+entreated her.
+
+“Oh,” she cried, “that’s the very first time you’ve said my name!”
+
+“Susy, Susy, then--my Susy--Susy! And you’ve only said mine once, you
+know.”
+
+“Nick!” she sighed, at peace, as if the one syllable were a magic seed
+that hung out great branches to envelop them.
+
+“Well, then, Susy, be reasonable. Come!”
+
+“Reasonable--oh, reasonable!” she sobbed through laughter.
+
+“Unreasonable, then! That’s even better.”
+
+She freed herself, and drew back gently. “Nick, I swore I wouldn’t leave
+them; and I can’t. It’s not only my promise to their mother--it’s what
+they’ve been to me themselves. You don’t, know... You can’t imagine
+the things they’ve taught me. They’re awfully naughty at times, because
+they’re so clever; but when they’re good they’re the wisest people I
+know.” She paused, and a sudden inspiration illuminated her. “But why
+shouldn’t we take them with us?” she exclaimed.
+
+Her husband’s arms fell away from her, and he stood dumfounded.
+
+“Take them with us?”
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“All five of them?”
+
+“Of course--I couldn’t possibly separate them. And Junie and Nat will
+help us to look after the young ones.”
+
+“Help us!” he groaned.
+
+“Oh, you’ll see; they won’t bother you. Just leave it to me; I’ll
+manage--” The word stopped her short, and an agony of crimson suffused
+her from brow to throat. Their eyes met; and without a word he stooped
+and laid his lips gently on the stain of red on her neck.
+
+“Nick,” she breathed, her hands in his.
+
+“But those children--”
+
+Instead of answering, she questioned: “Where are we going?”
+
+His face lit up.
+
+“Anywhere, dearest, that you choose.”
+
+“Well--I choose Fontainebleau!” she exulted.
+
+“So do I! But we can’t take all those children to an hotel at
+Fontainebleau, can we?” he questioned weakly. “You see, dear, there’s
+the mere expense of it--”
+
+Her eyes were already travelling far ahead of him. “The expense won’t
+amount to much. I’ve just remembered that Angele, the bonne, has a
+sister who is cook there in a nice old-fashioned pension which must be
+almost empty at this time of year. I’m sure I can ma--arrange easily,”
+ she hurried on, nearly tripping again over the fatal word. “And just
+think of the treat it will be to them! This is Friday, and I can get
+them let off from their afternoon classes, and keep them in the country
+till Monday. Poor darlings, they haven’t been out of Paris for months!
+And I daresay the change will cure Geordie’s cough--Geordie’s the
+youngest,” she explained, surprised to find herself, even in the rapture
+of reunion, so absorbed in the welfare of the Fulmers.
+
+She was conscious that her husband was surprised also; but instead of
+prolonging the argument he simply questioned: “Was Geordie the chap you
+had in your arms when you opened the front door the night before last?”
+
+She echoed: “I opened the front door the night before last?”
+
+“To a boy with a parcel.”
+
+“Oh,” she sobbed, “you were there? You were watching?”
+
+He held her to him, and the currents flowed between them warm and full
+as on the night of their moon over Como.
+
+In a trice, after that, she had the matter in hand and her forces
+marshalled. The taxi was paid, Nick’s luggage deposited in the
+vestibule, and the children, just piling down to breakfast, were
+summoned in to hear the news.
+
+It was apparent that, seasoned to surprises as they were, Nick’s
+presence took them aback. But when, between laughter and embraces, his
+identity, and his right to be where he was, had been made clear to them,
+Junie dismissed the matter by asking him in her practical way: “Then
+I suppose we may talk about you to Susy now?”--and thereafter all five
+addressed themselves to the vision of their imminent holiday.
+
+From that moment the little house became the centre of a whirlwind.
+Treats so unforeseen, and of such magnitude, were rare in the young
+Fulmers’ experience, and had it not been for Junie’s steadying influence
+Susy’s charges would have got out of hand. But young Nat, appealed to
+by Nick on the ground of their common manhood, was induced to forego
+celebrating the event on his motor horn (the very same which had
+tortured the New Hampshire echoes), and to assert his authority over
+his juniors; and finally a plan began to emerge from the chaos, and each
+child to fit into it like a bit of a picture puzzle.
+
+Susy, riding the whirlwind with her usual firmness, nevertheless felt an
+undercurrent of anxiety. There had been no time as yet, between her and
+Nick, to revert to money matters; and where there was so little money
+it could not, obviously, much matter. But that was the more reason for
+being secretly aghast at her intrepid resolve not to separate herself
+from her charges. A three days’ honey-moon with five children in the
+party--and children with the Fulmer appetite--could not but be a costly
+business; and while she settled details, packed them off to school, and
+routed out such nondescript receptacles as the house contained in the
+way of luggage, her thoughts remained fixed on the familiar financial
+problem.
+
+Yes--it was cruel to have it rear its hated head, even through the
+bursting boughs of her new spring; but there it was, the perpetual
+serpent in her Eden, to be bribed, fed, sent to sleep with such scraps
+as she could beg, borrow or steal for it. And she supposed it was the
+price that fate meant her to pay for her blessedness, and was surer than
+ever that the blessedness was worth it. Only, how was she to compound
+the business with her new principles?
+
+With the children’s things to pack, luncheon to be got ready, and the
+Fontainebleau pension to be telephoned to, there was little time to
+waste on moral casuistry; and Susy asked herself with a certain irony
+if the chronic lack of time to deal with money difficulties had not been
+the chief cause of her previous lapses. There was no time to deal with
+this question either; no time, in short, to do anything but rush forward
+on a great gale of plans and preparations, in the course of which she
+whirled Nick forth to buy some charcuterie for luncheon, and telephone
+to Fontainebleau.
+
+Once he was gone--and after watching him safely round the corner--she
+too got into her wraps, and transferring a small packet from her
+dressing-case to her pocket, hastened out in a different direction.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXX.
+
+
+
+IT took two brimming taxi-cabs to carry the Nicholas Lansings to the
+station on their second honey-moon. In the first were Nick, Susy and the
+luggage of the whole party (little Nat’s motor horn included, as a last
+concession, and because he had hitherto forborne to play on it); and in
+the second, the five Fulmers, the bonne, who at the eleventh hour had
+refused to be left, a cage-full of canaries, and a foundling kitten who
+had murderous designs on them; all of which had to be taken because, if
+the bonne came, there would be nobody left to look after them.
+
+At the corner Susy tore herself from Nick’s arms and held up the
+procession while she ran back to the second taxi to make sure that the
+bonne had brought the house-key. It was found of course that she hadn’t
+but that Junie had; whereupon the caravan got under way again, and
+reached the station just as the train was starting; and there, by some
+miracle of good nature on the part of the guard, they were all packed
+together into an empty compartment--no doubt, as Susy remarked, because
+train officials never failed to spot a newly-married couple, and treat
+them kindly.
+
+The children, sentinelled by Junie, at first gave promise of superhuman
+goodness; but presently their feelings overflowed, and they were not to
+be quieted till it had been agreed that Nat should blow his motor-horn
+at each halt, while the twins called out the names of the stations, and
+Geordie, with the canaries and kitten, affected to change trains.
+
+Luckily the halts were few; but the excitement of travel, combined
+with over-indulgence in the chocolates imprudently provided by Nick,
+overwhelmed Geordie with a sudden melancholy that could be appeased only
+by Susy’s telling him stories till they arrived at Fontainebleau.
+
+The day was soft, with mild gleams of sunlight on decaying foliage;
+and after luggage and livestock had been dropped at the pension Susy
+confessed that she had promised the children a scamper in the forest,
+and buns in a tea-shop afterward. Nick placidly agreed, and darkness
+had long fallen, and a great many buns been consumed, when at length
+the procession turned down the street toward the pension, headed by Nick
+with the sleeping Geordie on his shoulder, while the others, speechless
+with fatigue and food, hung heavily on Susy.
+
+It had been decided that, as the bonne was of the party, the children
+might be entrusted to her for the night, and Nick and Susy establish
+themselves in an adjacent hotel. Nick had flattered himself that
+they might remove their possessions there when they returned from the
+tea-room; but Susy, manifestly surprised at the idea, reminded him
+that her charges must first be given their supper and put to bed. She
+suggested that he should meanwhile take the bags to the hotel, and
+promised to join him as soon as Geordie was asleep.
+
+She was a long time coming, but waiting for her was sweet, even in a
+deserted hotel reading-room insufficiently heated by a sulky stove; and
+after he had glanced through his morning’s mail, hurriedly thrust into
+his pocket as he left Paris, he sank into a state of drowsy beatitude.
+It was all the maddest business in the world, yet it did not give him
+the sense of unreality that had made their first adventure a mere golden
+dream; and he sat and waited with the security of one in whom dear
+habits have struck deep roots. In this mood of acquiescence even the
+presence of the five Fulmers seemed a natural and necessary consequence
+of all the rest; and when Susy at length appeared, a little pale and
+tired, with the brooding inward look that busy mothers bring from the
+nursery, that too seemed natural and necessary, and part of the new
+order of things.
+
+They had wandered out to a cheap restaurant for dinner; now, in the damp
+December night, they were walking back to the hotel under a sky full of
+rain-clouds. They seemed to have said everything to each other, and yet
+barely to have begun what they had to tell; and at each step they took,
+their heavy feet dragged a great load of bliss.
+
+In the hotel almost all the lights were already out; and they groped
+their way to the third floor room which was the only one that Susy
+had found cheap enough. A ray from a street-lamp struck up through the
+unshuttered windows; and after Nick had revived the fire they drew their
+chairs close to it, and sat quietly for a while in the dark.
+
+Their silence was so sweet that Nick could not make up his mind to break
+it; not to do so gave his tossing spirit such a sense of permanence, of
+having at last unlimited time before him in which to taste his joy and
+let its sweetness stream through him. But at length he roused himself to
+say: “It’s queer how things coincide. I’ve had a little bit of good news
+in one of the letters I got this morning.”
+
+Susy took the announcement serenely. “Well, you would, you know,” she
+commented, as if the day had been too obviously designed for bliss to
+escape the notice of its dispensers.
+
+“Yes,” he continued with a thrill of pardonable pride. “During the
+cruise I did a couple of articles on Crete--oh, just travel-impressions,
+of course; they couldn’t be more. But the editor of the New Review
+has accepted them, and asks for others. And here’s his cheque, if you
+please! So you see you might have let me take the jolly room downstairs
+with the pink curtains. And it makes me awfully hopeful about my book.”
+
+He had expected a rapturous outburst, and perhaps some reassertion
+of wifely faith in the glorious future that awaited The Pageant of
+Alexander; and deep down under the lover’s well-being the author felt a
+faint twinge of mortified vanity when Susy, leaping to her feet, cried
+out, ravenously and without preamble: “Oh, Nick, Nick--let me see how
+much they’ve given you!”
+
+He flourished the cheque before her in the firelight. “A couple of
+hundred, you mercenary wretch!”
+
+“Oh, oh--” she gasped, as if the good news had been almost too much for
+her tense nerves; and then surprised him by dropping to the ground, and
+burying her face against his knees.
+
+“Susy, my Susy,” he whispered, his hand on her shaking shoulder. “Why,
+dear, what is it? You’re not crying?”
+
+“Oh, Nick, Nick--two hundred? Two hundred dollars? Then I’ve got to tell
+you--oh now, at once!”
+
+A faint chill ran over him, and involuntarily his hand drew back from
+her bowed figure.
+
+“Now? Oh, why now?” he protested. “What on earth does it matter
+now--whatever it is?”
+
+“But it does matter--it matters more than you can think!”
+
+She straightened herself, still kneeling before him, and lifted her head
+so that the firelight behind her turned her hair into a ruddy halo. “Oh,
+Nick, the bracelet--Ellie’s bracelet.... I’ve never returned it to her,”
+ she faltered out.
+
+He felt himself recoiling under the hands with which she clutched his
+knees. For an instant he did not remember what she alluded to; it was
+the mere mention of Ellie Vanderlyn’s name that had fallen between them
+like an icy shadow. What an incorrigible fool he had been to think they
+could ever shake off such memories, or cease to be the slaves of such a
+past!
+
+“The bracelet?--Oh, yes,” he said, suddenly understanding, and feeling
+the chill mount slowly to his lips.
+
+“Yes, the bracelet... Oh, Nick, I meant to give it back at once; I
+did--I did; but the day you went away I forgot everything else. And when
+I found the thing, in the bottom of my bag, weeks afterward, I thought
+everything was over between you and me, and I had begun to see Ellie
+again, and she was kind to me and how could I?” To save his life he
+could have found no answer, and she pressed on: “And so this morning,
+when I saw you were frightened by the expense of bringing all the
+children with us, and when I felt I couldn’t leave them, and couldn’t
+leave you either, I remembered the bracelet; and I sent you off to
+telephone while I rushed round the corner to a little jeweller’s where
+I’d been before, and pawned it so that you shouldn’t have to pay for the
+children.... But now, darling, you see, if you’ve got all that money, I
+can get it out of pawn at once, can’t I, and send it back to her?”
+
+She flung her arms about him, and he held her fast, wondering if the
+tears he felt were hers or his. Still he did not speak; but as he
+clasped her close she added, with an irrepressible flash of her old
+irony: “Not that Ellie will understand why I’ve done it. She’s never yet
+been able to make out why you returned her scarf-pin.”
+
+For a long time she continued to lean against him, her head on his
+knees, as she had done on the terrace of Como on the last night of their
+honeymoon. She had ceased to talk, and he sat silent also, passing
+his hand quietly to and fro over her hair. The first rapture had been
+succeeded by soberer feelings. Her confession had broken up the frozen
+pride about his heart, and humbled him to the earth; but it had also
+roused forgotten things, memories and scruples swept aside in the first
+rush of their reunion. He and she belonged to each other for always:
+he understood that now. The impulse which had first drawn them
+together again, in spite of reason, in spite of themselves almost, that
+deep-seated instinctive need that each had of the other, would never
+again wholly let them go. Yet as he sat there he thought of Strefford,
+he thought of Coral Hicks. He had been a coward in regard to Coral, and
+Susy had been sincere and courageous in regard to Strefford. Yet his
+mind dwelt on Coral with tenderness, with compunction, with remorse; and
+he was almost sure that Susy had already put Strefford utterly out of
+her mind.
+
+It was the old contrast between the two ways of loving, the man’s way
+and the woman’s; and after a moment it seemed to Nick natural enough
+that Susy, from the very moment of finding him again, should feel
+neither pity nor regret, and that Strefford should already be to her
+as if he had never been. After all, there was something Providential in
+such arrangements.
+
+He stooped closer, pressed her dreaming head between his hands, and
+whispered: “Wake up; it’s bedtime.”
+
+She rose; but as she moved away to turn on the light he caught her hand
+and drew her to the window. They leaned on the sill in the darkness,
+and through the clouds, from which a few drops were already falling,
+the moon, labouring upward, swam into a space of sky, cast her troubled
+glory on them, and was again hidden.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg’s The Glimpses of the Moon, by Edith Wharton
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1263 ***
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+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" />
+    <title>
+      The Glimpses of the Moon, by Edith Wharton
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
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+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
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+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
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+  <body>
+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1263 ***</div>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      THE GLIMPSES OF THE MOON
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      By Edith Wharton
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      Contents
+    </h2>
+    <table summary="" style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto">
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_PART1"> PART I </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_PART2"> PART II </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_PART3"> PART III </a>
+          </p>
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+    </table>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_PART1" id="link2H_PART1">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      PART I
+    </h2>
+
+<h3>I.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">It</span> rose for them&mdash;their honey-moon&mdash;over the waters of a lake so
+      famed as the scene of romantic raptures that they were rather proud of not
+      having been afraid to choose it as the setting of their own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It required a total lack of humour, or as great a gift for it as ours, to
+      risk the experiment,&rdquo; Susy Lansing opined, as they hung over the
+      inevitable marble balustrade and watched their tutelary orb roll its magic
+      carpet across the waters to their feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;or the loan of Strefford&rsquo;s villa,&rdquo; her husband emended,
+      glancing upward through the branches at a long low patch of paleness to
+      which the moonlight was beginning to give the form of a white house-front.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, come when we&rsquo;d five to choose from. At least if you count the Chicago
+      flat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So we had&mdash;you wonder!&rdquo; He laid his hand on hers, and his touch
+      renewed the sense of marvelling exultation which the deliberate survey of
+      their adventure always roused in her.... It was characteristic that she
+      merely added, in her steady laughing tone: &ldquo;Or, not counting the flat&mdash;for
+      I hate to brag&mdash;just consider the others: Violet Melrose&rsquo;s place at
+      Versailles, your aunt&rsquo;s villa at Monte Carlo&mdash;and a moor!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was conscious of throwing in the moor tentatively, and yet with a
+      somewhat exaggerated emphasis, as if to make sure that he shouldn&rsquo;t accuse
+      her of slurring it over. But he seemed to have no desire to do so. &ldquo;Poor
+      old Fred!&rdquo; he merely remarked; and she breathed out carelessly: &ldquo;Oh, well&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His hand still lay on hers, and for a long interval, while they stood
+      silent in the enveloping loveliness of the night, she was aware only of
+      the warm current running from palm to palm, as the moonlight below them
+      drew its line of magic from shore to shore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nick Lansing spoke at last. &ldquo;Versailles in May would have been impossible:
+      all our Paris crowd would have run us down within twenty-four hours. And
+      Monte Carlo is ruled out because it&rsquo;s exactly the kind of place everybody
+      expected us to go. So&mdash;with all respect to you&mdash;it wasn&rsquo;t much
+      of a mental strain to decide on Como.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His wife instantly challenged this belittling of her capacity. &ldquo;It took a
+      good deal of argument to convince you that we could face the ridicule of
+      Como!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I should have preferred something in a lower key; at least I
+      thought I should till we got here. Now I see that this place is idiotic
+      unless one is perfectly happy; and that then it&rsquo;s&mdash;as good as any other.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She sighed out a blissful assent. &ldquo;And I must say that Streffy has done
+      things to a turn. Even the cigars&mdash;who do you suppose gave him those
+      cigars?&rdquo; She added thoughtfully: &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll miss them when we have to go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I say, don&rsquo;t let&rsquo;s talk to-night about going. Aren&rsquo;t we outside of
+      time and space...? Smell that guinea-a-bottle stuff over there: what is
+      it? Stephanotis?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Y&mdash;yes.... I suppose so. Or gardenias.... Oh, the fire-flies! Look...
+      there, against that splash of moonlight on the water. Apples of silver in
+      a net-work of gold....&rdquo; They leaned together, one flesh from shoulder to
+      finger-tips, their eyes held by the snared glitter of the ripples.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I could bear,&rdquo; Lansing remarked, &ldquo;even a nightingale at this moment....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A faint gurgle shook the magnolias behind them, and a long liquid whisper
+      answered it from the thicket of laurel above their heads.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a little late in the year for them: they&rsquo;re ending just as we
+      begin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy laughed. &ldquo;I hope when our turn comes we shall say good-bye to each
+      other as sweetly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was in her husband&rsquo;s mind to answer: &ldquo;They&rsquo;re not saying good-bye, but
+      only settling down to family cares.&rdquo; But as this did not happen to be in
+      his plan, or in Susy&rsquo;s, he merely echoed her laugh and pressed her closer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The spring night drew them into its deepening embrace. The ripples of the
+      lake had gradually widened and faded into a silken smoothness, and high
+      above the mountains the moon was turning from gold to white in a sky
+      powdered with vanishing stars. Across the lake the lights of a little town
+      went out, one after another, and the distant shore became a floating
+      blackness. A breeze that rose and sank brushed their faces with the scents
+      of the garden; once it blew out over the water a great white moth like a
+      drifting magnolia petal. The nightingales had paused and the trickle of
+      the fountain behind the house grew suddenly insistent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Susy spoke it was in a voice languid with visions. &ldquo;I have been
+      thinking,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;that we ought to be able to make it last at least a
+      year longer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her husband received the remark without any sign of surprise or
+      disapprobation; his answer showed that he not only understood her, but had
+      been inwardly following the same train of thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean,&rdquo; he enquired after a pause, &ldquo;without counting your
+      grandmother&rsquo;s pearls?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;without the pearls.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He pondered a while, and then rejoined in a tender whisper: &ldquo;Tell me again
+      just how.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let&rsquo;s sit down, then. No, I like the cushions best.&rdquo; He stretched himself
+      in a long willow chair, and she curled up on a heap of boat-cushions and
+      leaned her head against his knee. Just above her, when she lifted her
+      lids, she saw bits of moon-flooded sky incrusted like silver in a sharp
+      black patterning of plane-boughs. All about them breathed of peace and
+      beauty and stability, and her happiness was so acute that it was almost a
+      relief to remember the stormy background of bills and borrowing against
+      which its frail structure had been reared. &ldquo;People with a balance can&rsquo;t be
+      as happy as all this,&rdquo; Susy mused, letting the moonlight filter through
+      her lazy lashes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      People with a balance had always been Susy Branch&rsquo;s bugbear; they were
+      still, and more dangerously, to be Susy Lansing&rsquo;s. She detested them,
+      detested them doubly, as the natural enemies of mankind and as the people
+      one always had to put one&rsquo;s self out for. The greater part of her life
+      having been passed among them, she knew nearly all that there was to know
+      about them, and judged them with the contemptuous lucidity of nearly
+      twenty years of dependence. But at the present moment her animosity was
+      diminished not only by the softening effect of love but by the fact that
+      she had got out of those very people more&mdash;yes, ever so much more&mdash;than
+      she and Nick, in their hours of most reckless planning, had ever dared to
+      hope for.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After all, we owe them this!&rdquo; she mused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her husband, lost in the drowsy beatitude of the hour, had not repeated
+      his question; but she was still on the trail of the thought he had
+      started. A year&mdash;yes, she was sure now that with a little management
+      they could have a whole year of it! &ldquo;It&rdquo; was their marriage, their being
+      together, and away from bores and bothers, in a comradeship of which both
+      of them had long ago guessed the immediate pleasure, but she at least had
+      never imagined the deeper harmony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was at one of their earliest meetings&mdash;at one of the heterogeneous
+      dinners that the Fred Gillows tried to think &ldquo;literary&rdquo;&mdash;that the
+      young man who chanced to sit next to her, and of whom it was vaguely
+      rumoured that he had &ldquo;written,&rdquo; had presented himself to her imagination
+      as the sort of luxury to which Susy Branch, heiress, might conceivably
+      have treated herself as a crowning folly. Susy Branch, pauper, was fond of
+      picturing how this fancied double would employ her millions: it was one of
+      her chief grievances against her rich friends that they disposed of theirs
+      so unimaginatively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;d rather have a husband like that than a steam-yacht!&rdquo; she had thought
+      at the end of her talk with the young man who had written, and as to whom
+      it had at once been clear to her that nothing his pen had produced, or
+      might hereafter set down, would put him in a position to offer his wife
+      anything more costly than a row-boat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His wife! As if he could ever have one! For he&rsquo;s not the kind to marry
+      for a yacht either.&rdquo; In spite of her past, Susy had preserved enough inner
+      independence to detect the latent signs of it in others, and also to
+      ascribe it impulsively to those of the opposite sex who happened to
+      interest her. She had a natural contempt for people who gloried in what
+      they need only have endured. She herself meant eventually to marry,
+      because one couldn&rsquo;t forever hang on to rich people; but she was going to
+      wait till she found some one who combined the maximum of wealth with at
+      least a minimum of companionableness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had at once perceived young Lansing&rsquo;s case to be exactly the opposite:
+      he was as poor as he could be, and as companionable as it was possible to
+      imagine. She therefore decided to see as much of him as her hurried and
+      entangled life permitted; and this, thanks to a series of adroit
+      adjustments, turned out to be a good deal. They met frequently all the
+      rest of that winter; so frequently that Mrs. Fred Gillow one day abruptly
+      and sharply gave Susy to understand that she was &ldquo;making herself
+      ridiculous.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah&mdash;&rdquo; said Susy with a long breath, looking her friend and patroness
+      straight in the painted eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; cried Ursula Gillow in a sob, &ldquo;before you interfered Nick liked me
+      awfully... and, of course, I don&rsquo;t want to reproach you... but when I
+      think....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy made no answer. How could she, when she thought? The dress she had on
+      had been given her by Ursula; Ursula&rsquo;s motor had carried her to the feast
+      from which they were both returning. She counted on spending the following
+      August with the Gillows at Newport... and the only alternative was to go
+      to California with the Bockheimers, whom she had hitherto refused even to
+      dine with.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course, what you fancy is perfect nonsense, Ursula; and as to my
+      interfering&mdash;&rdquo; Susy hesitated, and then murmured: &ldquo;But if it will
+      make you any happier I&rsquo;ll arrange to see him less often....&rdquo; She sounded
+      the lowest depths of subservience in returning Ursula&rsquo;s tearful kiss....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy Branch had a masculine respect for her word; and the next day she put
+      on her most becoming hat and sought out young Mr. Lansing in his lodgings.
+      She was determined to keep her promise to Ursula; but she meant to look
+      her best when she did it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She knew at what time the young man was likely to be found, for he was
+      doing a dreary job on a popular encyclopaedia (V to X), and had told her
+      what hours were dedicated to the hateful task. &ldquo;Oh, if only it were a
+      novel!&rdquo; she thought as she mounted his dingy stairs; but immediately
+      reflected that, if it were the kind that she could bear to read, it
+      probably wouldn&rsquo;t bring him in much more than his encyclopaedia. Miss
+      Branch had her standards in literature....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The apartment to which Mr. Lansing admitted her was a good deal cleaner,
+      but hardly less dingy, than his staircase. Susy, knowing him to be
+      addicted to Oriental archaeology, had pictured him in a bare room adorned
+      by a single Chinese bronze of flawless shape, or by some precious fragment
+      of Asiatic pottery. But such redeeming features were conspicuously absent,
+      and no attempt had been made to disguise the decent indigence of the
+      bed-sitting-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing welcomed his visitor with every sign of pleasure, and with
+      apparent indifference as to what she thought of his furniture. He seemed
+      to be conscious only of his luck in seeing her on a day when they had not
+      expected to meet. This made Susy all the sorrier to execute her promise,
+      and the gladder that she had put on her prettiest hat; and for a moment or
+      two she looked at him in silence from under its conniving brim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Warm as their mutual liking was, Lansing had never said a word of love to
+      her; but this was no deterrent to his visitor, whose habit it was to speak
+      her meaning clearly when there were no reasons, worldly or pecuniary, for
+      its concealment. After a moment, therefore, she told him why she had come;
+      it was a nuisance, of course, but he would understand. Ursula Gillow was
+      jealous, and they would have to give up seeing each other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young man&rsquo;s burst of laughter was music to her; for, after all, she
+      had been rather afraid that being devoted to Ursula might be as much in
+      his day&rsquo;s work as doing the encyclopaedia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I give you my word it&rsquo;s a raving-mad mistake! And I don&rsquo;t believe she
+      ever meant me, to begin with&mdash;&rdquo; he protested; but Susy, her
+      common-sense returning with her reassurance, promptly cut short his
+      denial.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can trust Ursula to make herself clear on such occasions. And it
+      doesn&rsquo;t make any difference what you think. All that matters is what she
+      believes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, come! I&rsquo;ve got a word to say about that too, haven&rsquo;t I?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy looked slowly and consideringly about the room. There was nothing in
+      it, absolutely nothing, to show that he had ever possessed a spare dollar&mdash;or
+      accepted a present.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not as far as I&rsquo;m concerned,&rdquo; she finally pronounced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you mean? If I&rsquo;m as free as air&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He grew thoughtful. &ldquo;Oh, then, of course&mdash;. It only seems a little
+      odd,&rdquo; he added drily, &ldquo;that in that case, the protest should have come
+      from Mrs. Gillow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Instead of coming from my millionaire bridegroom, Oh, I haven&rsquo;t any; in
+      that respect I&rsquo;m as free as you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then&mdash;? Haven&rsquo;t we only got to stay free?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy drew her brows together anxiously. It was going to be rather more
+      difficult than she had supposed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I said I was as free in that respect. I&rsquo;m not going to marry&mdash;and I
+      don&rsquo;t suppose you are?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God, no!&rdquo; he ejaculated fervently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But that doesn&rsquo;t always imply complete freedom....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood just above her, leaning his elbow against the hideous black
+      marble arch that framed his fireless grate. As she glanced up she saw his
+      face harden, and the colour flew to hers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was that what you came to tell me?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you don&rsquo;t understand&mdash;and I don&rsquo;t see why you don&rsquo;t, since we&rsquo;ve
+      knocked about so long among exactly the same kind of people.&rdquo; She stood up
+      impulsively and laid her hand on his arm. &ldquo;I do wish you&rsquo;d help me&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He remained motionless, letting the hand lie untouched.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Help you to tell me that poor Ursula was a pretext, but that there IS
+      someone who&mdash;for one reason or another&mdash;really has a right to
+      object to your seeing me too often?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy laughed impatiently. &ldquo;You talk like the hero of a novel&mdash;the
+      kind my governess used to read. In the first place I should never
+      recognize that kind of right, as you call it&mdash;never!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then what kind do you?&rdquo; he asked with a clearing brow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why&mdash;the kind I suppose you recognize on the part of your
+      publisher.&rdquo; This evoked a hollow laugh from him. &ldquo;A business claim, call
+      it,&rdquo; she pursued. &ldquo;Ursula does a lot for me: I live on her for half the
+      year. This dress I&rsquo;ve got on now is one she gave me. Her motor is going to
+      take me to a dinner to-night. I&rsquo;m going to spend next summer with her at
+      Newport.... If I don&rsquo;t, I&rsquo;ve got to go to California with the
+      Bockheimers&mdash;so good-bye.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly in tears, she was out of the door and down his steep three
+      flights before he could stop her&mdash;though, in thinking it over, she
+      didn&rsquo;t even remember if he had tried to. She only recalled having stood a
+      long time on the corner of Fifth Avenue, in the harsh winter radiance,
+      waiting till a break in the torrent of motors laden with fashionable women
+      should let her cross, and saying to herself: &ldquo;After all, I might have
+      promised Ursula... and kept on seeing him....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Instead of which, when Lansing wrote the next day entreating a word with
+      her, she had sent back a friendly but firm refusal; and had managed soon
+      afterward to get taken to Canada for a fortnight&rsquo;s ski-ing, and then to
+      Florida for six weeks in a house-boat....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As she reached this point in her retrospect the remembrance of Florida
+      called up a vision of moonlit waters, magnolia fragrance and balmy airs;
+      merging with the circumambient sweetness, it laid a drowsy spell upon her
+      lids. Yes, there had been a bad moment: but it was over; and she was here,
+      safe and blissful, and with Nick; and this was his knee her head rested
+      on, and they had a year ahead of them... a whole year.... &ldquo;Not counting
+      the pearls,&rdquo; she murmured, shutting her eyes....
+    </p>
+
+
+    <h3>II.</h3>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Lansing</span> threw the end of Strefford&rsquo;s expensive cigar into the lake, and
+      bent over his wife. Poor child! She had fallen asleep.... He leaned back
+      and stared up again at the silver-flooded sky. How queer&mdash;how
+      inexpressibly queer&mdash;it was to think that that light was shed by his
+      honey-moon! A year ago, if anyone had predicted his risking such an
+      adventure, he would have replied by asking to be locked up at the first
+      symptoms....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was still no doubt in his mind that the adventure was a mad one. It
+      was all very well for Susy to remind him twenty times a day that they had
+      pulled it off&mdash;and so why should he worry? Even in the light of her
+      far-seeing cleverness, and of his own present bliss, he knew the future
+      would not bear the examination of sober thought. And as he sat there in
+      the summer moonlight, with her head on his knee, he tried to recapitulate
+      the successive steps that had landed them on Streffy&rsquo;s lake-front.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On Lansing&rsquo;s side, no doubt, it dated back to his leaving Harvard with the
+      large resolve not to miss anything. There stood the evergreen Tree of
+      Life, the Four Rivers flowing from its foot; and on every one of the four
+      currents he meant to launch his little skiff. On two of them he had not
+      gone very far, on the third he had nearly stuck in the mud; but the fourth
+      had carried him to the very heart of wonder. It was the stream of his
+      lively imagination, of his inexhaustible interest in every form of beauty
+      and strangeness and folly. On this stream, sitting in the stout little
+      craft of his poverty, his insignificance and his independence, he had made
+      some notable voyages.... And so, when Susy Branch, whom he had sought out
+      through a New York season as the prettiest and most amusing girl in sight,
+      had surprised him with the contradictory revelation of her modern sense of
+      expediency and her old-fashioned standard of good faith, he had felt an
+      irresistible desire to put off on one more cruise into the unknown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was of the essence of the adventure that, after her one brief visit to
+      his lodgings, he should have kept his promise and not tried to see her
+      again. Even if her straightforwardness had not roused his emulation, his
+      understanding of her difficulties would have moved his pity. He knew on
+      how frail a thread the popularity of the penniless hangs, and how
+      miserably a girl like Susy was the sport of other people&rsquo;s moods and
+      whims. It was a part of his difficulty and of hers that to get what they
+      liked they so often had to do what they disliked. But the keeping of his
+      promise was a greater bore than he had expected. Susy Branch had become a
+      delightful habit in a life where most of the fixed things were dull, and
+      her disappearance had made it suddenly clear to him that his resources
+      were growing more and more limited. Much that had once amused him hugely
+      now amused him less, or not at all: a good part of his world of wonder had
+      shrunk to a village peep-show. And the things which had kept their
+      stimulating power&mdash;distant journeys, the enjoyment of art, the
+      contact with new scenes and strange societies&mdash;were becoming less and
+      less attainable. Lansing had never had more than a pittance; he had spent
+      rather too much of it in his first plunge into life, and the best he could
+      look forward to was a middle-age of poorly-paid hack-work, mitigated by
+      brief and frugal holidays. He knew that he was more intelligent than the
+      average, but he had long since concluded that his talents were not
+      marketable. Of the thin volume of sonnets which a friendly publisher had
+      launched for him, just seventy copies had been sold; and though his essay
+      on &ldquo;Chinese Influences in Greek Art&rdquo; had created a passing stir, it had
+      resulted in controversial correspondence and dinner invitations rather
+      than in more substantial benefits. There seemed, in short, no prospect of
+      his ever earning money, and his restricted future made him attach an
+      increasing value to the kind of friendship that Susy Branch had given him.
+      Apart from the pleasure of looking at her and listening to her&mdash;of
+      enjoying in her what others less discriminatingly but as liberally
+      appreciated&mdash;he had the sense, between himself and her, of a kind of
+      free-masonry of precocious tolerance and irony. They had both, in early
+      youth, taken the measure of the world they happened to live in: they knew
+      just what it was worth to them and for what reasons, and the community of
+      these reasons lent to their intimacy its last exquisite touch. And now,
+      because of some jealous whim of a dissatisfied fool of a woman, as to whom
+      he felt himself no more to blame than any young man who has paid for good
+      dinners by good manners, he was to be deprived of the one complete
+      companionship he had ever known....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His thoughts travelled on. He recalled the long dull spring in New York
+      after his break with Susy, the weary grind on his last articles, his
+      listless speculations as to the cheapest and least boring way of disposing
+      of the summer; and then the amazing luck of going, reluctantly and at the
+      last minute, to spend a Sunday with the poor Nat Fulmers, in the wilds of
+      New Hampshire, and of finding Susy there&mdash;Susy, whom he had never
+      even suspected of knowing anybody in the Fulmers&rsquo; set!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had behaved perfectly&mdash;and so had he&mdash;but they were
+      obviously much too glad to see each other. And then it was unsettling to
+      be with her in such a house as the Fulmers&rsquo;, away from the large setting
+      of luxury they were both used to, in the cramped cottage where their host
+      had his studio in the verandah, their hostess practiced her violin in the
+      dining-room, and five ubiquitous children sprawled and shouted and blew
+      trumpets and put tadpoles in the water-jugs, and the mid-day dinner was
+      two hours late&mdash;and proportionately bad&mdash;because the Italian cook was
+      posing for Fulmer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing&rsquo;s first thought had been that meeting Susy in such circumstances
+      would be the quickest way to cure them both of their regrets. The case of
+      the Fulmers was an awful object-lesson in what happened to young people
+      who lost their heads; poor Nat, whose pictures nobody bought, had gone to
+      seed so terribly&mdash;and Grace, at twenty-nine, would never again be anything
+      but the woman of whom people say, &ldquo;I can remember her when she was
+      lovely.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the devil of it was that Nat had never been such good company, or
+      Grace so free from care and so full of music; and that, in spite of their
+      disorder and dishevelment, and the bad food and general crazy discomfort,
+      there was more amusement to be got out of their society than out of the
+      most opulently staged house-party through which Susy and Lansing had ever
+      yawned their way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was almost a relief to the young man when, on the second afternoon,
+      Miss Branch drew him into the narrow hall to say: &ldquo;I really can&rsquo;t stand
+      the combination of Grace&rsquo;s violin and little Nat&rsquo;s motor-horn any longer.
+      Do let us slip out till the duet is over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do they stand it, I wonder?&rdquo; he basely echoed, as he followed her up
+      the wooded path behind the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It might be worth finding out,&rdquo; she rejoined with a musing smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he remained resolutely skeptical. &ldquo;Oh, give them a year or two more
+      and they&rsquo;ll collapse&mdash;! His pictures will never sell, you know. He&rsquo;ll
+      never even get them into a show.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose not. And she&rsquo;ll never have time to do anything worth while with
+      her music.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They had reached a piny knoll high above the ledge on which the house was
+      perched. All about them stretched an empty landscape of endless
+      featureless wooded hills. &ldquo;Think of sticking here all the year round!&rdquo;
+       Lansing groaned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know. But then think of wandering over the world with some people!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Lord, yes. For instance, my trip to India with the Mortimer Hickses.
+      But it was my only chance and what the deuce is one to do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish I knew!&rdquo; she sighed, thinking of the Bockheimers; and he turned
+      and looked at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Knew what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The answer to your question. What is one to do&mdash;when one sees both
+      sides of the problem? Or every possible side of it, indeed?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They had seated themselves on a commanding rock under the pines, but
+      Lansing could not see the view at their feet for the stir of the brown
+      lashes on her cheek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean: Nat and Grace may after all be having the best of it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can I say, when I&rsquo;ve told you I see all the sides? Of course,&rdquo; Susy
+      added hastily, &ldquo;I couldn&rsquo;t live as they do for a week. But it&rsquo;s wonderful
+      how little it&rsquo;s dimmed them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly Nat was never more coruscating. And she keeps it up even
+      better.&rdquo; He reflected. &ldquo;We do them good, I daresay.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;or they us. I wonder which?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After that, he seemed to remember that they sat a long time silent, and
+      that his next utterance was a boyish outburst against the tyranny of the
+      existing order of things, abruptly followed by the passionate query why,
+      since he and she couldn&rsquo;t alter it, and since they both had the habit of
+      looking at facts as they were, they wouldn&rsquo;t be utter fools not to take
+      their chance of being happy in the only way that was open to them, To this
+      challenge he did not recall Susy&rsquo;s making any definite answer; but after
+      another interval, in which all the world seemed framed in a sudden kiss,
+      he heard her murmur to herself in a brooding tone: &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t suppose it&rsquo;s
+      ever been tried before; but we might&mdash;.&rdquo; And then and there she had
+      laid before him the very experiment they had since hazarded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She would have none of surreptitious bliss, she began by declaring; and
+      she set forth her reasons with her usual lucid impartiality. In the first
+      place, she should have to marry some day, and when she made the bargain
+      she meant it to be an honest one; and secondly, in the matter of love, she
+      would never give herself to anyone she did not really care for, and if
+      such happiness ever came to her she did not want it shorn of half its
+      brightness by the need of fibbing and plotting and dodging.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve seen too much of that kind of thing. Half the women I know who&rsquo;ve
+      had lovers have had them for the fun of sneaking and lying about it; but
+      the other half have been miserable. And I should be miserable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was at this point that she unfolded her plan. Why shouldn&rsquo;t they marry;
+      belong to each other openly and honourably, if for ever so short a time,
+      and with the definite understanding that whenever either of them got the
+      chance to do better he or she should be immediately released? The law of
+      their country facilitated such exchanges, and society was beginning to
+      view them as indulgently as the law. As Susy talked, she warmed to her
+      theme and began to develop its endless possibilities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We should really, in a way, help more than we should hamper each other,&rdquo;
+       she ardently explained. &ldquo;We both know the ropes so well; what one of us
+      didn&rsquo;t see the other might&mdash;in the way of opportunities, I mean. And
+      then we should be a novelty as married people. We&rsquo;re both rather unusually
+      popular&mdash;why not be frank!&mdash;and it&rsquo;s such a blessing for
+      dinner-givers to be able to count on a couple of whom neither one is a
+      blank. Yes, I really believe we should be more than twice the success we
+      are now; at least,&rdquo; she added with a smile, &ldquo;if there&rsquo;s that amount of
+      room for improvement. I don&rsquo;t know how you feel; a man&rsquo;s popularity is so
+      much less precarious than a girl&rsquo;s&mdash;but I know it would furbish me up
+      tremendously to reappear as a married woman.&rdquo; She glanced away from him
+      down the long valley at their feet, and added in a lower tone: &ldquo;And I
+      should like, just for a little while, to feel I had something in life of
+      my very own&mdash;something that nobody had lent me, like a fancy-dress or
+      a motor or an opera cloak.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The suggestion, at first, had seemed to Lansing as mad as it was
+      enchanting: it had thoroughly frightened him. But Susy&rsquo;s arguments were
+      irrefutable, her ingenuities inexhaustible. Had he ever thought it all
+      out? She asked. No. Well, she had; and would he kindly not interrupt? In
+      the first place, there would be all the wedding-presents. Jewels, and a
+      motor, and a silver dinner service, did she mean? Not a bit of it! She
+      could see he&rsquo;d never given the question proper thought. Cheques, my dear,
+      nothing but cheques&mdash;she undertook to manage that on her side: she
+      really thought she could count on about fifty, and she supposed he could
+      rake up a few more? Well, all that would simply represent pocket-money!
+      For they would have plenty of houses to live in: he&rsquo;d see. People were
+      always glad to lend their house to a newly-married couple. It was such fun
+      to pop down and see them: it made one feel romantic and jolly. All they
+      need do was to accept the houses in turn: go on honey-mooning for a year!
+      What was he afraid of? Didn&rsquo;t he think they&rsquo;d be happy enough to want to
+      keep it up? And why not at least try&mdash;get engaged, and then see what
+      would happen? Even if she was all wrong, and her plan failed, wouldn&rsquo;t it
+      have been rather nice, just for a month or two, to fancy they were going
+      to be happy? &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve often fancied it all by myself,&rdquo; she concluded; &ldquo;but
+      fancying it with you would somehow be so awfully different....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That was how it began: and this lakeside dream was what it had led up to.
+      Fantastically improbable as they had seemed, all her previsions had come
+      true. If there were certain links in the chain that Lansing had never been
+      able to put his hand on, certain arrangements and contrivances that still
+      needed further elucidation, why, he was lazily resolved to clear them up
+      with her some day; and meanwhile it was worth all the past might have
+      cost, and every penalty the future might exact of him, just to be sitting
+      here in the silence and sweetness, her sleeping head on his knee, clasped
+      in his joy as the hushed world was clasped in moonlight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stooped down and kissed her. &ldquo;Wake up,&rdquo; he whispered, &ldquo;it&rsquo;s bed-time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+
+
+<h3>III.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">Their</span> month of Como was within a few hours of ending. Till the last moment
+      they had hoped for a reprieve; but the accommodating Streffy had been
+      unable to put the villa at their disposal for a longer time, since he had
+      had the luck to let it for a thumping price to some beastly bouncers who
+      insisted on taking possession at the date agreed on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing, leaving Susy&rsquo;s side at dawn, had gone down to the lake for a last
+      plunge; and swimming homeward through the crystal light he looked up at
+      the garden brimming with flowers, the long low house with the cypress wood
+      above it, and the window behind which his wife still slept. The month had
+      been exquisite, and their happiness as rare, as fantastically complete, as
+      the scene before him. He sank his chin into the sunlit ripples and sighed
+      for sheer content....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a bore to be leaving the scene of such complete well-being, but the
+      next stage in their progress promised to be hardly less delightful. Susy
+      was a magician: everything she predicted came true. Houses were being
+      showered on them; on all sides he seemed to see beneficent spirits winging
+      toward them, laden with everything from a piano nobile in Venice to a camp
+      in the Adirondacks. For the present, they had decided on the former. Other
+      considerations apart, they dared not risk the expense of a journey across
+      the Atlantic; so they were heading instead for the Nelson Vanderlyns&rsquo;
+      palace on the Giudecca. They were agreed that, for reasons of expediency,
+      it might be wise to return to New York for the coming winter. It would
+      keep them in view, and probably lead to fresh opportunities; indeed, Susy
+      already had in mind the convenient flat that she was sure a migratory
+      cousin (if tactfully handled, and assured that they would not overwork her
+      cook) could certainly be induced to lend them. Meanwhile the need of
+      making plans was still remote; and if there was one art in which young
+      Lansing&rsquo;s twenty-eight years of existence had perfected him it was that of
+      living completely and unconcernedly in the present....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If of late he had tried to look into the future more insistently than was
+      his habit, it was only because of Susy. He had meant, when they married,
+      to be as philosophic for her as for himself; and he knew she would have
+      resented above everything his regarding their partnership as a reason for
+      anxious thought. But since they had been together she had given him
+      glimpses of her past that made him angrily long to shelter and defend her
+      future. It was intolerable that a spirit as fine as hers should be ever so
+      little dulled or diminished by the kind of compromises out of which their
+      wretched lives were made. For himself, he didn&rsquo;t care a hang: he had
+      composed for his own guidance a rough-and-ready code, a short set of
+      &ldquo;mays&rdquo; and &ldquo;mustn&rsquo;ts&rdquo; which immensely simplified his course. There were
+      things a fellow put up with for the sake of certain definite and otherwise
+      unattainable advantages; there were other things he wouldn&rsquo;t traffic with
+      at any price. But for a woman, he began to see, it might be different. The
+      temptations might be greater, the cost considerably higher, the dividing
+      line between the &ldquo;mays&rdquo; and &ldquo;mustn&rsquo;ts&rdquo; more fluctuating and less sharply
+      drawn. Susy, thrown on the world at seventeen, with only a weak wastrel of
+      a father to define that treacherous line for her, and with every
+      circumstance soliciting her to overstep it, seemed to have been preserved
+      chiefly by an innate scorn of most of the objects of human folly. &ldquo;Such
+      trash as he went to pieces for,&rdquo; was her curt comment on her parent&rsquo;s
+      premature demise: as though she accepted in advance the necessity of
+      ruining one&rsquo;s self for something, but was resolved to discriminate firmly
+      between what was worth it and what wasn&rsquo;t.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This philosophy had at first enchanted Lansing; but now it began to rouse
+      vague fears. The fine armour of her fastidiousness had preserved her from
+      the kind of risks she had hitherto been exposed to; but what if others,
+      more subtle, found a joint in it? Was there, among her delicate
+      discriminations, any equivalent to his own rules? Might not her taste for
+      the best and rarest be the very instrument of her undoing; and if
+      something that wasn&rsquo;t &ldquo;trash&rdquo; came her way, would she hesitate a second to
+      go to pieces for it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was determined to stick to the compact that they should do nothing to
+      interfere with what each referred to as the other&rsquo;s &ldquo;chance&rdquo;; but what if,
+      when hers came, he couldn&rsquo;t agree with her in recognizing it? He wanted
+      for her, oh, so passionately, the best; but his conception of that best
+      had so insensibly, so subtly been transformed in the light of their first
+      month together!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His lazy strokes were carrying him slowly shoreward; but the hour was so
+      exquisite that a few yards from the landing he laid hold of the mooring
+      rope of Streffy&rsquo;s boat and floated there, following his dream.... It was a
+      bore to be leaving; no doubt that was what made him turn things inside-out
+      so uselessly. Venice would be delicious, of course; but nothing would ever
+      again be as sweet as this. And then they had only a year of security
+      before them; and of that year a month was gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Reluctantly he swam ashore, walked up to the house, and pushed open a
+      window of the cool painted drawing-room. Signs of departure were already
+      visible. There were trunks in the hall, tennis rackets on the stairs; on
+      the landing, the cook Giulietta had both arms around a slippery hold-all
+      that refused to let itself be strapped. It all gave him a chill sense of
+      unreality, as if the past month had been an act on the stage, and its
+      setting were being folded away and rolled into the wings to make room for
+      another play in which he and Susy had no part.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By the time he came down again, dressed and hungry, to the terrace where
+      coffee awaited him, he had recovered his usual pleasant sense of security.
+      Susy was there, fresh and gay, a rose in her breast and the sun in her
+      hair: her head was bowed over Bradshaw, but she waved a fond hand across
+      the breakfast things, and presently looked up to say: &ldquo;Yes, I believe we
+      can just manage it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Manage what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To catch the train at Milan&mdash;if we start in the motor at ten sharp.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stared. &ldquo;The motor? What motor?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, the new people&rsquo;s&mdash;Streffy&rsquo;s tenants. He&rsquo;s never told me their
+      name, and the chauffeur says he can&rsquo;t pronounce it. The chauffeur&rsquo;s is
+      Ottaviano, anyhow; I&rsquo;ve been making friends with him. He arrived last
+      night, and he says they&rsquo;re not due at Como till this evening. He simply
+      jumped at the idea of running us over to Milan.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good Lord&mdash;&rdquo; said Lansing, when she stopped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She sprang up from the table with a laugh. &ldquo;It will be a scramble; but
+      I&rsquo;ll manage it, if you&rsquo;ll go up at once and pitch the last things into
+      your trunk.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; but look here&mdash;have you any idea what it&rsquo;s going to cost?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She raised her eyebrows gaily. &ldquo;Why, a good deal less than our railway
+      tickets. Ottaviano&rsquo;s got a sweetheart in Milan, and hasn&rsquo;t seen her for
+      six months. When I found that out I knew he&rsquo;d be going there anyhow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was clever of her, and he laughed. But why was it that he had grown to
+      shrink from even such harmless evidence of her always knowing how to
+      &ldquo;manage&rdquo;? &ldquo;Oh, well,&rdquo; he said to himself, &ldquo;she&rsquo;s right: the fellow would
+      be sure to be going to Milan.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Upstairs, on the way to his dressing room, he found her in a cloud of
+      finery which her skilful hands were forcibly compressing into a last
+      portmanteau. He had never seen anyone pack as cleverly as Susy: the way
+      she coaxed reluctant things into a trunk was a symbol of the way she
+      fitted discordant facts into her life. &ldquo;When I&rsquo;m rich,&rdquo; she often said,
+      &ldquo;the thing I shall hate most will be to see an idiot maid at my trunks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As he passed, she glanced over her shoulder, her face pink with the
+      struggle, and drew a cigar-box from the depths. &ldquo;Dearest, do put a couple
+      of cigars into your pocket as a tip for Ottaviano.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing stared. &ldquo;Why, what on earth are you doing with Streffy&rsquo;s cigars?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Packing them, of course.... You don&rsquo;t suppose he meant them for those
+      other people?&rdquo; She gave him a look of honest wonder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know whom he meant them for&mdash;but they&rsquo;re not ours....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She continued to look at him wonderingly. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see what there is to be
+      solemn about. The cigars are not Streffy&rsquo;s either... you may be sure he
+      got them out of some bounder. And there&rsquo;s nothing he&rsquo;d hate more than to
+      have them passed on to another.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nonsense. If they&rsquo;re not Streffy&rsquo;s they&rsquo;re much less mine. Hand them
+      over, please, dear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just as you like. But it does seem a waste; and, of course, the other
+      people will never have one of them.... The gardener and Giulietta&rsquo;s lover
+      will see to that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing looked away from her at the waves of lace and muslin from which
+      she emerged like a rosy Nereid. &ldquo;How many boxes of them are left?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only four.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Unpack them, please.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Before she moved there was a pause so full of challenge that Lansing had
+      time for an exasperated sense of the disproportion between his anger and
+      its cause. And this made him still angrier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She held out a box. &ldquo;The others are in your suitcase downstairs. It&rsquo;s
+      locked and strapped.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give me the key, then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We might send them back from Venice, mightn&rsquo;t we? That lock is so nasty:
+      it will take you half an hour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give me the key, please.&rdquo; She gave it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He went downstairs and battled with the lock, for the allotted half-hour,
+      under the puzzled eyes of Giulietta and the sardonic grin of the
+      chauffeur, who now and then, from the threshold, politely reminded him how
+      long it would take to get to Milan. Finally the key turned, and Lansing,
+      broken-nailed and perspiring, extracted the cigars and stalked with them
+      into the deserted drawing room. The great bunches of golden roses that he
+      and Susy had gathered the day before were dropping their petals on the
+      marble embroidery of the floor, pale camellias floated in the alabaster
+      tazzas between the windows, haunting scents of the garden blew in on him
+      with the breeze from the lake. Never had Streffy&rsquo;s little house seemed so
+      like a nest of pleasures. Lansing laid the cigar boxes on a console and
+      ran upstairs to collect his last possessions. When he came down again, his
+      wife, her eyes brilliant with achievement, was seated in their borrowed
+      chariot, the luggage cleverly stowed away, and Giulietta and the gardener
+      kissing her hand and weeping out inconsolable farewells.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder what she&rsquo;s given them?&rdquo; he thought, as he jumped in beside her
+      and the motor whirled them through the nightingale-thickets to the gate.
+    </p>
+
+
+<h3>IV.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">Charlie Strefford&rsquo;s</span> villa was like a nest in a rose-bush; the Nelson
+      Vanderlyns&rsquo; palace called for loftier analogies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Its vastness and splendour seemed, in comparison, oppressive to Susy.
+      Their landing, after dark, at the foot of the great shadowy staircase,
+      their dinner at a dimly-lit table under a ceiling weighed down with
+      Olympians, their chilly evening in a corner of a drawing room where
+      minuets should have been danced before a throne, contrasted with the happy
+      intimacies of Como as their sudden sense of disaccord contrasted with the
+      mutual confidence of the day before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The journey had been particularly jolly: both Susy and Lansing had had too
+      long a discipline in the art of smoothing things over not to make a
+      special effort to hide from each other the ravages of their first
+      disagreement. But, deep down and invisible, the disagreement remained; and
+      compunction for having been its cause gnawed at Susy&rsquo;s bosom as she sat in
+      her tapestried and vaulted bedroom, brushing her hair before a tarnished
+      mirror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought I liked grandeur; but this place is really out of scale,&rdquo; she
+      mused, watching the reflection of a pale hand move back and forward in the
+      dim recesses of the mirror. &ldquo;And yet,&rdquo; she continued, &ldquo;Ellie Vanderlyn&rsquo;s
+      hardly half an inch taller than I am; and she certainly isn&rsquo;t a bit more
+      dignified.... I wonder if it&rsquo;s because I feel so horribly small to-night
+      that the place seems so horribly big.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She loved luxury: splendid things always made her feel handsome and high
+      ceilings arrogant; she did not remember having ever before been oppressed
+      by the evidences of wealth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She laid down the brush and leaned her chin on her clasped hands.... Even
+      now she could not understand what had made her take the cigars. She had
+      always been alive to the value of her inherited scruples: her reasoned
+      opinions were unusually free, but with regard to the things one couldn&rsquo;t
+      reason about she was oddly tenacious. And yet she had taken Streffy&rsquo;s
+      cigars! She had taken them&mdash;yes, that was the point&mdash;she had
+      taken them for Nick, because the desire to please him, to make the
+      smallest details of his life easy and agreeable and luxurious, had become
+      her absorbing preoccupation. She had committed, for him, precisely the
+      kind of little baseness she would most have scorned to commit for herself;
+      and, since he hadn&rsquo;t instantly felt the difference, she would never be
+      able to explain it to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She stood up with a sigh, shook out her loosened hair, and glanced around
+      the great frescoed room. The maid-servant had said something about the
+      Signora&rsquo;s having left a letter for her; and there it lay on the
+      writing-table, with her mail and Nick&rsquo;s; a thick envelope addressed in
+      Ellie&rsquo;s childish scrawl, with a glaring &ldquo;Private&rdquo; dashed across the
+      corner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What on earth can she have to say, when she hates writing so,&rdquo; Susy
+      mused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She broke open the envelope, and four or five stamped and sealed letters
+      fell from it. All were addressed, in Ellie&rsquo;s hand, to Nelson Vanderlyn
+      Esqre; and in the corner of each was faintly pencilled a number and a
+      date: one, two, three, four&mdash;with a week&rsquo;s interval between the
+      dates.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Goodness&mdash;&rdquo; gasped Susy, understanding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had dropped into an armchair near the table, and for a long time she
+      sat staring at the numbered letters. A sheet of paper covered with Ellie&rsquo;s
+      writing had fluttered out among them, but she let it lie; she knew so well
+      what it would say! She knew all about her friend, of course; except poor
+      old Nelson, who didn&rsquo;t, But she had never imagined that Ellie would dare
+      to use her in this way. It was unbelievable... she had never pictured
+      anything so vile.... The blood rushed to her face, and she sprang up
+      angrily, half minded to tear the letters in bits and throw them all into
+      the fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She heard her husband&rsquo;s knock on the door between their rooms, and swept
+      the dangerous packet under the blotting-book.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, go away, please, there&rsquo;s a dear,&rdquo; she called out; &ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t finished
+      unpacking, and everything&rsquo;s in such a mess.&rdquo; Gathering up Nick&rsquo;s papers
+      and letters, she ran across the room and thrust them through the door.
+      &ldquo;Here&rsquo;s something to keep you quiet,&rdquo; she laughed, shining in on him an
+      instant from the threshold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned back feeling weak with shame. Ellie&rsquo;s letter lay on the floor:
+      reluctantly she stooped to pick it up, and one by one the expected phrases
+      sprang out at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One good turn deserves another.... Of course you and Nick are welcome to
+      stay all summer.... There won&rsquo;t be a particle of expense for you&mdash;the
+      servants have orders.... If you&rsquo;ll just be an angel and post these letters
+      yourself.... It&rsquo;s been my only chance for such an age; when we meet I&rsquo;ll
+      explain everything. And in a month at latest I&rsquo;ll be back to fetch
+      Clarissa....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy lifted the letter to the lamp to be sure she had read aright. To
+      fetch Clarissa! Then Ellie&rsquo;s child was here? Here, under the roof with
+      them, left to their care? She read on, raging. &ldquo;She&rsquo;s so delighted, poor
+      darling, to know you&rsquo;re coming. I&rsquo;ve had to sack her beastly governess for
+      impertinence, and if it weren&rsquo;t for you she&rsquo;d be all alone with a lot of
+      servants I don&rsquo;t much trust. So for pity&rsquo;s sake be good to my child, and
+      forgive me for leaving her. She thinks I&rsquo;ve gone to take a cure; and she
+      knows she&rsquo;s not to tell her Daddy that I&rsquo;m away, because it would only
+      worry him if he thought I was ill. She&rsquo;s perfectly to be trusted; you&rsquo;ll
+      see what a clever angel she is....&rdquo; And then, at the bottom of the page,
+      in a last slanting postscript: &ldquo;Susy darling, if you&rsquo;ve ever owed me
+      anything in the way of kindness, you won&rsquo;t, on your sacred honour, say a
+      word of this to any one, even to Nick. And I know I can count on you to
+      rub out the numbers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy sprang up and tossed Mrs. Vanderlyn&rsquo;s letter into the fire: then she
+      came slowly back to the chair. There, at her elbow, lay the four fatal
+      envelopes; and her next affair was to make up her mind what to do with
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To destroy them on the spot had seemed, at first thought, inevitable: it
+      might be saving Ellie as well as herself. But such a step seemed to Susy
+      to involve departure on the morrow, and this in turn involved notifying
+      Ellie, whose letter she had vainly scanned for an address. Well&mdash;perhaps
+      Clarissa&rsquo;s nurse would know where one could write to her mother; it was
+      unlikely that even Ellie would go off without assuring some means of
+      communication with her child. At any rate, there was nothing to be done
+      that night: nothing but to work out the details of their flight on the
+      morrow, and rack her brains to find a substitute for the hospitality they
+      were rejecting. Susy did not disguise from herself how much she had
+      counted on the Vanderlyn apartment for the summer: to be able to do so had
+      singularly simplified the future. She knew Ellie&rsquo;s largeness of hand, and
+      had been sure in advance that as long as they were her guests their only
+      expense would be an occasional present to the servants. And what would the
+      alternative be? She and Lansing, in their endless talks, had so lived
+      themselves into the vision of indolent summer days on the lagoon, of
+      flaming hours on the beach of the Lido, and evenings of music and dreams
+      on their broad balcony above the Giudecca, that the idea of having to
+      renounce these joys, and deprive her Nick of them, filled Susy with a
+      wrath intensified by his having confided in her that when they were
+      quietly settled in Venice he &ldquo;meant to write.&rdquo; Already nascent in her
+      breast was the fierce resolve of the author&rsquo;s wife to defend her husband&rsquo;s
+      privacy and facilitate his encounters with the Muse. It was abominable,
+      simply abominable, that Ellie Vanderlyn should have drawn her into such a
+      trap!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well&mdash;there was nothing for it but to make a clean breast of the
+      whole thing to Nick. The trivial incident of the cigars&mdash;how trivial it now
+      seemed!&mdash;showed her the kind of stand he would take, and communicated
+      to her something of his own uncompromising energy. She would tell him the
+      whole story in the morning, and try to find a way out with him: Susy&rsquo;s
+      faith in her power of finding a way out was inexhaustible. But suddenly
+      she remembered the adjuration at the end of Mrs. Vanderlyn&rsquo;s letter: &ldquo;If
+      you&rsquo;re ever owed me anything in the way of kindness, you won&rsquo;t, on your
+      sacred honour, say a word to Nick....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was, of course, exactly what no one had the right to ask of her: if
+      indeed the word &ldquo;right&rdquo;, could be used in any conceivable relation to this
+      coil of wrongs. But the fact remained that, in the way of kindness, she
+      did owe much to Ellie; and that this was the first payment her friend had
+      ever exacted. She found herself, in fact, in exactly the same position as
+      when Ursula Gillow, using the same argument, had appealed to her to give
+      up Nick Lansing. Yes, Susy reflected; but then Nelson Vanderlyn had been
+      kind to her too; and the money Ellie had been so kind with was
+      Nelson&rsquo;s.... The queer edifice of Susy&rsquo;s standards tottered on its base
+      she honestly didn&rsquo;t know where fairness lay, as between so much that was
+      foul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The very depth of her perplexity puzzled her. She had been in &ldquo;tight
+      places&rdquo; before; had indeed been in so few that were not, in one way or
+      another, constricting! As she looked back on her past it lay before her as
+      a very network of perpetual concessions and contrivings. But never before
+      had she had such a sense of being tripped up, gagged and pinioned. The
+      little misery of the cigars still galled her, and now this big humiliation
+      superposed itself on the raw wound. Decidedly, the second month of their
+      honey-moon was beginning cloudily....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She glanced at the enamel led travelling-clock on her dressing table&mdash;one
+      of the few wedding-presents she had consented to accept in kind&mdash;and
+      was startled at the lateness of the hour. In a moment Nick would be
+      coming; and an uncomfortable sensation in her throat warned her that
+      through sheer nervousness and exasperation she might blurt out something
+      ill-advised. The old habit of being always on her guard made her turn once
+      more to the looking-glass. Her face was pale and haggard; and having, by a
+      swift and skilful application of cosmetics, increased its appearance of
+      fatigue, she crossed the room and softly opened her husband&rsquo;s door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He too sat by a lamp, reading a letter which he put aside as she entered.
+      His face was grave, and she said to herself that he was certainly still
+      thinking about the cigars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m very tired, dearest, and my head aches so horribly that I&rsquo;ve come to
+      bid you good-night.&rdquo; Bending over the back of his chair, she laid her arms
+      on his shoulders. He lifted his hands to clasp hers, but, as he threw his
+      head back to smile up at her she noticed that his look was still serious,
+      almost remote. It was as if, for the first time, a faint veil hung between
+      his eyes and hers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m so sorry: it&rsquo;s been a long day for you,&rdquo; he said absently, pressing
+      his lips to her hands
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She felt the dreaded twitch in her throat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nick!&rdquo; she burst out, tightening her embrace, &ldquo;before I go, you&rsquo;ve got to
+      swear to me on your honour that you know I should never have taken those
+      cigars for myself!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment he stared at her, and she stared back at him with equal
+      gravity; then the same irresistible mirth welled up in both, and Susy&rsquo;s
+      compunctions were swept away on a gale of laughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When she woke the next morning the sun was pouring in between her curtains
+      of old brocade, and its refraction from the ripples of the Canal was
+      drawing a network of golden scales across the vaulted ceiling. The maid
+      had just placed a tray on a slim marquetry table near the bed, and over
+      the edge of the tray Susy discovered the small serious face of Clarissa
+      Vanderlyn. At the sight of the little girl all her dormant qualms awoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Clarissa was just eight, and small for her age: her little round chin was
+      barely on a level with the tea-service, and her clear brown eyes gazed at
+      Susy between the ribs of the toast-rack and the single tea-rose in an old
+      Murano glass. Susy had not seen her for two years, and she seemed, in the
+      interval, to have passed from a thoughtful infancy to complete ripeness of
+      feminine experience. She was looking with approval at her mother&rsquo;s guest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m so glad you&rsquo;ve come,&rdquo; she said in a small sweet voice. &ldquo;I like you so
+      very much. I know I&rsquo;m not to be often with you; but at least you&rsquo;ll have
+      an eye on me, won&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An eye on you! I shall never want to have it off you, if you say such
+      nice things to me!&rdquo; Susy laughed, leaning from her pillows to draw the
+      little girl up to her side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Clarissa smiled and settled herself down comfortably on the silken
+      bedspread. &ldquo;Oh, I know I&rsquo;m not to be always about, because you&rsquo;re just
+      married; but could you see to it that I have my meals regularly?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, you poor darling! Don&rsquo;t you always?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not when mother&rsquo;s away on these cures. The servants don&rsquo;t always obey me:
+      you see I&rsquo;m so little for my age. In a few years, of course, they&rsquo;ll have
+      to&mdash;even if I don&rsquo;t grow much,&rdquo; she added judiciously. She put out
+      her hand and touched the string of pearls about Susy&rsquo;s throat. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re
+      small, but they&rsquo;re very good. I suppose you don&rsquo;t take the others when you
+      travel?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The others? Bless you! I haven&rsquo;t any others&mdash;and never shall have,
+      probably.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No other pearls?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No other jewels at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Clarissa stared. &ldquo;Is that really true?&rdquo; she asked, as if in the presence
+      of the unprecedented.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Awfully true,&rdquo; Susy confessed. &ldquo;But I think I can make the servants obey
+      me all the same.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This point seemed to have lost its interest for Clarissa, who was still
+      gravely scrutinizing her companion. After a while she brought forth
+      another question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you have to give up all your jewels when you were divorced?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Divorced&mdash;?&rdquo; Susy threw her head back against the pillows and
+      laughed. &ldquo;Why, what are you thinking of? Don&rsquo;t you remember that I wasn&rsquo;t
+      even married the last time you saw me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; I do. But that was two years ago.&rdquo; The little girl wound her arms
+      about Susy&rsquo;s neck and leaned against her caressingly. &ldquo;Are you going to be
+      soon, then? I&rsquo;ll promise not to tell if you don&rsquo;t want me to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Going to be divorced? Of course not! What in the world made you think so?
+      &rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because you look so awfully happy,&rdquo; said Clarissa Vanderlyn simply.
+    </p>
+
+
+<h3>V.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">It</span> was a trifling enough sign, but it had remained in Susy&rsquo;s mind: that
+      first morning in Venice Nick had gone out without first coming in to see
+      her. She had stayed in bed late, chatting with Clarissa, and expecting to
+      see the door open and her husband appear; and when the child left, and she
+      had jumped up and looked into Nick&rsquo;s room, she found it empty, and a line
+      on his dressing table informed her that he had gone out to send a
+      telegram.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was lover-like, and even boyish, of him to think it necessary to
+      explain his absence; but why had he not simply come in and told her! She
+      instinctively connected the little fact with the shade of preoccupation
+      she had noticed on his face the night before, when she had gone to his
+      room and found him absorbed in letter; and while she dressed she had
+      continued to wonder what was in the letter, and whether the telegram he
+      had hurried out to send was an answer to it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had never found out. When he reappeared, handsome and happy as the
+      morning, he proffered no explanation; and it was part of her life-long
+      policy not to put uncalled-for questions. It was not only that her jealous
+      regard for her own freedom was matched by an equal respect for that of
+      others; she had steered too long among the social reefs and shoals not to
+      know how narrow is the passage that leads to peace of mind, and she was
+      determined to keep her little craft in mid-channel. But the incident had
+      lodged itself in her memory, acquiring a sort of symbolic significance, as
+      of a turning-point in her relations with her husband. Not that these were
+      less happy, but that she now beheld them, as she had always formerly
+      beheld such joys, as an unstable islet in a sea of storms. Her present
+      bliss was as complete as ever, but it was ringed by the perpetual menace
+      of all she knew she was hiding from Nick, and of all she suspected him of
+      hiding from her....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was thinking of these things one afternoon about three weeks after
+      their arrival in Venice. It was near sunset, and she sat alone on the
+      balcony, watching the cross-lights on the water weave their pattern above
+      the flushed reflection of old palace-basements. She was almost always
+      alone at that hour. Nick had taken to writing in the afternoons&mdash;he
+      had been as good as his word, and so, apparently, had the Muse and it was
+      his habit to join his wife only at sunset, for a late row on the lagoon.
+      She had taken Clarissa, as usual, to the Giardino Pubblico, where that
+      obliging child had politely but indifferently &ldquo;played&rdquo;&mdash;Clarissa
+      joined in the diversions of her age as if conforming to an obsolete
+      tradition&mdash;and had brought her back for a music lesson, echoes of
+      which now drifted down from a distant window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy had come to be extremely thankful for Clarissa. But for the little
+      girl, her pride in her husband&rsquo;s industry might have been tinged with a
+      faint sense of being at times left out and forgotten; and as Nick&rsquo;s
+      industry was the completest justification for their being where they were,
+      and for her having done what she had, she was grateful to Clarissa for
+      helping her to feel less alone. Clarissa, indeed, represented the other
+      half of her justification: it was as much on the child&rsquo;s account as on
+      Nick&rsquo;s that Susy had held her tongue, remained in Venice, and slipped out
+      once a week to post one of Ellie&rsquo;s numbered letters. A day&rsquo;s experience of
+      the Palazzo Vanderlyn had convinced Susy of the impossibility of deserting
+      Clarissa. Long experience had shown her that the most crowded households
+      often contain the loneliest nurseries, and that the rich child is exposed
+      to evils unknown to less pampered infancy; but hitherto such things had
+      merely been to her one of the uglier bits in the big muddled pattern of
+      life. Now she found herself feeling where before she had only judged: her
+      precarious bliss came to her charged with a new weight of pity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was thinking of these things, and of the approaching date of Ellie
+      Vanderlyn&rsquo;s return, and of the searching truths she was storing up for
+      that lady&rsquo;s private ear, when she noticed a gondola turning its prow
+      toward the steps below the balcony. She leaned over, and a tall gentleman
+      in shabby clothes, glancing up at her as he jumped out, waved a mouldy
+      Panama in joyful greeting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Streffy!&rdquo; she exclaimed as joyfully; and she was half-way down the stairs
+      when he ran up them followed by his luggage-laden boatman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s all right, I suppose?&mdash;Ellie said I might come,&rdquo; he explained
+      in a shrill cheerful voice; &ldquo;and I&rsquo;m to have my same green room with the
+      parrot-panels, because its furniture is already so frightfully stained
+      with my hair-wash.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy was beaming on him with the deep sense of satisfaction which his
+      presence always produced in his friends. There was no one in the world,
+      they all agreed, half as ugly and untidy and delightful as Streffy; no one
+      who combined such outspoken selfishness with such imperturbable good
+      humour; no one who knew so well how to make you believe he was being
+      charming to you when it was you who were being charming to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In addition to these seductions, of which none estimated the value more
+      accurately than their possessor, Strefford had for Susy another attraction
+      of which he was probably unconscious. It was that of being the one rooted
+      and stable being among the fluid and shifting figures that composed her
+      world. Susy had always lived among people so denationalized that those one
+      took for Russians generally turned out to be American, and those one was
+      inclined to ascribe to New York proved to have originated in Rome or
+      Bucharest. These cosmopolitan people, who, in countries not their own,
+      lived in houses as big as hotels, or in hotels where the guests were as
+      international as the waiters, had inter-married, inter-loved and
+      inter-divorced each other over the whole face of Europe, and according to
+      every code that attempts to regulate human ties. Strefford, too, had his
+      home in this world, but only one of his homes. The other, the one he spoke
+      of, and probably thought of, least often, was a great dull English
+      country-house in a northern county, where a life as monotonous and
+      self-contained as his own was chequered and dispersed had gone on for
+      generation after generation; and it was the sense of that house, and of
+      all it typified even to his vagrancy and irreverence, which, coming out
+      now and then in his talk, or in his attitude toward something or somebody,
+      gave him a firmer outline and a steadier footing than the other
+      marionettes in the dance. Superficially so like them all, and so eager to
+      outdo them in detachment and adaptability, ridiculing the prejudices he
+      had shaken off, and the people to whom he belonged, he still kept, under
+      his easy pliancy, the skeleton of old faiths and old fashions. &ldquo;He talks
+      every language as well as the rest of us,&rdquo; Susy had once said of him, &ldquo;but
+      at least he talks one language better than the others&rdquo;; and Strefford,
+      told of the remark, had laughed, called her an idiot, and been pleased.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he shambled up the stairs with her, arm in arm, she was thinking of
+      this quality with a new appreciation of its value. Even she and Lansing,
+      in spite of their unmixed Americanism, their substantial background of
+      old-fashioned cousinships in New York and Philadelphia, were as mentally
+      detached, as universally at home, as touts at an International Exhibition.
+      If they were usually recognized as Americans it was only because they
+      spoke French so well, and because Nick was too fair to be &ldquo;foreign,&rdquo; and
+      too sharp-featured to be English. But Charlie Strefford was English with
+      all the strength of an inveterate habit; and something in Susy was slowly
+      waking to a sense of the beauty of habit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lounging on the balcony, whither he had followed her without pausing to
+      remove the stains of travel, Strefford showed himself immensely interested
+      in the last chapter of her history, greatly pleased at its having been
+      enacted under his roof, and hugely and flippantly amused at the firmness
+      with which she refused to let him see Nick till the latter&rsquo;s daily task
+      was over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Writing? Rot! What&rsquo;s he writing? He&rsquo;s breaking you in, my dear; that&rsquo;s
+      what he&rsquo;s doing: establishing an alibi. What&rsquo;ll you bet he&rsquo;s just sitting
+      there smoking and reading Le Rire? Let&rsquo;s go and see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Susy was firm. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s read me his first chapter: it&rsquo;s wonderful. It&rsquo;s a
+      philosophic romance&mdash;rather like Marius, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes&mdash;I do!&rdquo; said Strefford, with a laugh that she thought
+      idiotic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She flushed up like a child. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re stupid, Streffy. You forget that Nick
+      and I don&rsquo;t need alibis. We&rsquo;ve got rid of all that hyprocrisy by agreeing
+      that each will give the other a hand up when either of us wants a change.
+      We&rsquo;ve not married to spy and lie, and nag each other; we&rsquo;ve formed a
+      partnership for our mutual advantage.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see; that&rsquo;s capital. But how can you be sure that, when Nick wants a
+      change, you&rsquo;ll consider it for his advantage to have one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the point that had always secretly tormented Susy; she often
+      wondered if it equally tormented Nick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope I shall have enough common sense&mdash;&rdquo; she began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, of course: common sense is what you&rsquo;re both bound to base your
+      argument on, whichever way you argue.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This flash of insight disconcerted her, and she said, a little irritably:
+      &ldquo;What should you do then, if you married?&mdash;Hush, Streffy! I forbid
+      you to shout like that&mdash;all the gondolas are stopping to look!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can I help it?&rdquo; He rocked backward and forward in his chair. &ldquo;&lsquo;If you
+      marry,&rsquo; she says: &lsquo;Streffy, what have you decided to do if you suddenly
+      become a raving maniac?&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I said no such thing. If your uncle and your cousin died, you&rsquo;d marry
+      to-morrow; you know you would.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, now you&rsquo;re talking business.&rdquo; He folded his long arms and leaned over
+      the balcony, looking down at the dusky ripples streaked with fire. &ldquo;In
+      that case I should say: &lsquo;Susan, my dear&mdash;Susan&mdash;now that by the
+      merciful intervention of Providence you have become Countess of Altringham
+      in the peerage of Great Britain, and Baroness Dunsterville and d&rsquo;Amblay in
+      the peerages of Ireland and Scotland, I&rsquo;ll thank you to remember that you
+      are a member of one of the most ancient houses in the United Kingdom&mdash;and
+      not to get found out.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy laughed. &ldquo;We know what those warnings mean! I pity my namesake.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He swung about and gave her a quick look out of his small ugly twinkling
+      eyes. &ldquo;Is there any other woman in the world named Susan?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope so, if the name&rsquo;s an essential. Even if Nick chucks me, don&rsquo;t
+      count on me to carry out that programme. I&rsquo;ve seen it in practice too
+      often.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, well: as far as I know, everybody&rsquo;s in perfect health at Altringham.&rdquo;
+       He fumbled in his pocket and drew out a fountain pen, a handkerchief over
+      which it had leaked, and a packet of dishevelled cigarettes. Lighting one,
+      and restoring the other objects to his pocket, he continued calmly: &ldquo;Tell
+      me how did you manage to smooth things over with the Gillows? Ursula was
+      running amuck when I was in Newport last Summer; it was just when people
+      were beginning to say that you were going to marry Nick. I was afraid
+      she&rsquo;d put a spoke in your wheel; and I hear she put a big cheque in your
+      hand instead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy was silent. From the first moment of Strefford&rsquo;s appearance she had
+      known that in the course of time he would put that question. He was as
+      inquisitive as a monkey, and when he had made up his mind to find out
+      anything it was useless to try to divert his attention. After a moment&rsquo;s
+      hesitation she said: &ldquo;I flirted with Fred. It was a bore but he was very
+      decent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He would be&mdash;poor Fred. And you got Ursula thoroughly frightened!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;enough. And then luckily that young Nerone Altineri turned up
+      from Rome: he went over to New York to look for a job as an engineer, and
+      Ursula made Fred put him in their iron works.&rdquo; She paused again, and then
+      added abruptly: &ldquo;Streffy! If you knew how I hate that kind of thing. I&rsquo;d
+      rather have Nick come in now and tell me frankly, as I know he would, that
+      he&rsquo;s going off with&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With Coral Hicks?&rdquo; Strefford suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She laughed. &ldquo;Poor Coral Hicks! What on earth made you think of the
+      Hickses?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because I caught a glimpse of them the other day at Capri. They&rsquo;re
+      cruising about: they said they were coming in here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a nuisance! I do hope they won&rsquo;t find us out. They were awfully kind
+      to Nick when he went to India with them, and they&rsquo;re so simple-minded that
+      they would expect him to be glad to see them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford aimed his cigarette-end at a tourist on a puggaree who was
+      gazing up from his guidebook at the palace. &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; he murmured with
+      satisfaction, seeing the shot take effect; then he added: &ldquo;Coral Hicks is
+      growing up rather pretty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Streff&mdash;you&rsquo;re dreaming! That lump of a girl with spectacles and
+      thick ankles! Poor Mrs. Hicks used to say to Nick: &lsquo;When Mr. Hicks and I
+      had Coral educated we presumed culture was in greater demand in Europe
+      than it appears to be.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you&rsquo;ll see: that girl&rsquo;s education won&rsquo;t interfere with her, once
+      she&rsquo;s started. So then: if Nick came in and told you he was going off&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should be so thankful if it was with a fright like Coral! But you
+      know,&rdquo; she added with a smile, &ldquo;we&rsquo;ve agreed that it&rsquo;s not to happen for a
+      year.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+
+
+<h3>VI.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">Susy</span> found Strefford, after his first burst of nonsense, unusually kind
+      and responsive. The interest he showed in her future and Nick&rsquo;s seemed to
+      proceed not so much from his habitual spirit of scientific curiosity as
+      from simple friendliness. He was privileged to see Nick&rsquo;s first chapter,
+      of which he formed so favourable an impression that he spoke sternly to
+      Susy on the importance of respecting her husband&rsquo;s working hours; and he
+      even carried his general benevolence to the length of showing a fatherly
+      interest in Clarissa Vanderlyn. He was always charming to children, but
+      fitfully and warily, with an eye on his independence, and on the
+      possibility of being suddenly bored by them; Susy had never seen him
+      abandon these precautions so completely as he did with Clarissa.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor little devil! Who looks after her when you and Nick are off
+      together? Do you mean to tell me Ellie sacked the governess and went away
+      without having anyone to take her place?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think she expected me to do it,&rdquo; said Susy with a touch of asperity.
+      There were moments when her duty to Clarissa weighed on her somewhat
+      heavily; whenever she went off alone with Nick she was pursued by the
+      vision of a little figure waving wistful farewells from the balcony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, that&rsquo;s like Ellie: you might have known she&rsquo;d get an equivalent when
+      she lent you all this. But I don&rsquo;t believe she thought you&rsquo;d be so
+      conscientious about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy considered. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t suppose she did; and perhaps I shouldn&rsquo;t have
+      been, a year ago. But you see&rdquo;&mdash;she hesitated&mdash;&ldquo;Nick&rsquo;s so
+      awfully good: it&rsquo;s made me look; at a lot of things differently....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, hang Nick&rsquo;s goodness! It&rsquo;s happiness that&rsquo;s done it, my dear. You&rsquo;re
+      just one of the people with whom it happens to agree.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy, leaning back, scrutinized between her lashes his crooked ironic
+      face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it that&rsquo;s agreeing with you, Streffy? I&rsquo;ve never seen you so
+      human. You must be getting an outrageous price for the villa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford laughed and clapped his hand on his breast-pocket. &ldquo;I should be
+      an ass not to: I&rsquo;ve got a wire here saying they must have it for another
+      month at any price.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What luck! I&rsquo;m so glad. Who are they, by the way?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He drew himself up out of the long chair in which he was disjointedly
+      lounging, and looked down at her with a smile. &ldquo;Another couple of
+      love-sick idiots like you and Nick.... I say, before I spend it all let&rsquo;s
+      go out and buy something ripping for Clarissa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The days passed so quickly and radiantly that, but for her concern for
+      Clarissa, Susy would hardly have been conscious of her hostess&rsquo;s
+      protracted absence. Mrs. Vanderlyn had said: &ldquo;Four weeks at the latest,&rdquo;
+       and the four weeks were over, and she had neither arrived nor written to
+      explain her non-appearance. She had, in fact, given no sign of life since
+      her departure, save in the shape of a post-card which had reached Clarissa
+      the day after the Lansings&rsquo; arrival, and in which Mrs. Vanderlyn
+      instructed her child to be awfully good, and not to forget to feed the
+      mongoose. Susy noticed that this missive had been posted in Milan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She communicated her apprehensions to Strefford. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t trust that
+      green-eyed nurse. She&rsquo;s forever with the younger gondolier; and Clarissa&rsquo;s
+      so awfully sharp. I don&rsquo;t see why Ellie hasn&rsquo;t come: she was due last
+      Monday.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her companion laughed, and something in the sound of his laugh suggested
+      that he probably knew as much of Ellie&rsquo;s movements as she did, if not
+      more. The sense of disgust which the subject always roused in her made her
+      look away quickly from his tolerant smile. She would have given the world,
+      at that moment, to have been free to tell Nick what she had learned on the
+      night of their arrival, and then to have gone away with him, no matter
+      where. But there was Clarissa&mdash;!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To fortify herself against the temptation, she resolutely fixed her
+      thoughts on her husband. Of Nick&rsquo;s beatitude there could be no doubt. He
+      adored her, he revelled in Venice, he rejoiced in his work; and concerning
+      the quality of that work her judgment was as confident as her heart. She
+      still doubted if he would ever earn a living by what he wrote, but she no
+      longer doubted that he would write something remarkable. The mere fact
+      that he was engaged on a philosophic romance, and not a mere novel, seemed
+      the proof of an intrinsic superiority. And if she had mistrusted her
+      impartiality Strefford&rsquo;s approval would have reassured her. Among their
+      friends Strefford passed as an authority on such matters: in summing him
+      up his eulogists always added: &ldquo;And you know he writes.&rdquo; As a matter of
+      fact, the paying public had remained cold to his few published pages; but
+      he lived among the kind of people who confuse taste with talent, and are
+      impressed by the most artless attempts at literary expression; and though
+      he affected to disdain their judgment, and his own efforts, Susy knew he
+      was not sorry to have it said of him: &ldquo;Oh, if only Streffy had chosen&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford&rsquo;s approval of the philosophic romance convinced her that it had
+      been worth while staying in Venice for Nick&rsquo;s sake; and if only Ellie
+      would come back, and carry off Clarissa to St. Moritz or Deauville, the
+      disagreeable episode on which their happiness was based would vanish like
+      a cloud, and leave them to complete enjoyment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ellie did not come; but the Mortimer Hickses did, and Nick Lansing was
+      assailed by the scruples his wife had foreseen. Strefford, coming back one
+      evening from the Lido, reported having recognized the huge outline of the
+      Ibis among the pleasure craft of the outer harbour; and the very next
+      evening, as the guests of Palazzo Vanderlyn were sipping their ices at
+      Florian&rsquo;s, the Hickses loomed up across the Piazza.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy pleaded in vain with her husband in defence of his privacy. &ldquo;Remember
+      you&rsquo;re here to write, dearest; it&rsquo;s your duty not to let any one interfere
+      with that. Why shouldn&rsquo;t we tell them we&rsquo;re just leaving!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because it&rsquo;s no use: we&rsquo;re sure to be always meeting them. And besides,
+      I&rsquo;ll be hanged if I&rsquo;m going to shirk the Hickses. I spent five whole
+      months on the Ibis, and if they bored me occasionally, India didn&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll make them take us to Aquileia anyhow,&rdquo; said Strefford
+      philosophically; and the next moment the Hickses were bearing down on the
+      defenceless trio.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They presented a formidable front, not only because of their mere physical
+      bulk&mdash;Mr. and Mrs. Hicks were equally and majestically
+      three-dimensional&mdash;but because they never moved abroad without the
+      escort of two private secretaries (one for the foreign languages), Mr.
+      Hicks&rsquo;s doctor, a maiden lady known as Eldoradder Tooker, who was Mrs.
+      Hicks&rsquo;s cousin and stenographer, and finally their daughter, Coral Hicks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Coral Hicks, when Susy had last encountered the party, had been a fat
+      spectacled school-girl, always lagging behind her parents, with a
+      reluctant poodle in her wake. Now the poodle had gone, and his mistress
+      led the procession. The fat school-girl had changed into a young lady of
+      compact if not graceful outline; a long-handled eyeglass had replaced the
+      spectacles, and through it, instead of a sullen glare, Miss Coral Hicks
+      projected on the world a glance at once confident and critical. She looked
+      so strong and so assured that Susy, taking her measure in a flash, saw
+      that her position at the head of the procession was not fortuitous, and
+      murmured inwardly: &ldquo;Thank goodness she&rsquo;s not pretty too!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      If she was not pretty, she was well-dressed; and if she was overeducated,
+      she seemed capable, as Strefford had suggested, of carrying off even this
+      crowning disadvantage. At any rate, she was above disguising it; and
+      before the whole party had been seated five minutes in front of a fresh
+      supply of ices (with Eldorada and the secretaries at a table slightly in
+      the background) she had taken up with Nick the question of exploration in
+      Mesopotamia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Queer child, Coral,&rdquo; he said to Susy that night as they smoked a last
+      cigarette on their balcony. &ldquo;She told me this afternoon that she&rsquo;d
+      remembered lots of things she heard me say in India. I thought at the time
+      that she cared only for caramels and picture-puzzles, but it seems she was
+      listening to everything, and reading all the books she could lay her hands
+      on; and she got so bitten with Oriental archaeology that she took a course
+      last year at Bryn Mawr. She means to go to Bagdad next spring, and back by
+      the Persian plateau and Turkestan.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy laughed luxuriously: she was sitting with her hand in Nick&rsquo;s, while
+      the late moon&mdash;theirs again&mdash;rounded its orange-coloured glory
+      above the belfry of San Giorgio.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor Coral! How dreary&mdash;&rdquo; Susy murmured
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dreary? Why? A trip like that is about as well worth doing as anything I
+      know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I meant: dreary to do it without you or me,&rdquo; she laughed, getting up
+      lazily to go indoors. A broad band of moonlight, dividing her room onto
+      two shadowy halves, lay on the painted Venetian bed with its folded-back
+      sheet, its old damask coverlet and lace-edged pillows. She felt the warmth
+      of Nick&rsquo;s enfolding arm and lifted her face to his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Hickses retained the most tender memory of Nick&rsquo;s sojourn on the Ibis,
+      and Susy, moved by their artless pleasure in meeting him again, was glad
+      he had not followed her advice and tried to elude them. She had always
+      admired Strefford&rsquo;s ruthless talent for using and discarding the human
+      material in his path, but now she began to hope that Nick would not
+      remember her suggestion that he should mete out that measure to the
+      Hickses. Even if it had been less pleasant to have a big yacht at their
+      door during the long golden days and the nights of silver fire, the
+      Hickses&rsquo; admiration for Nick would have made Susy suffer them gladly. She
+      even began to be aware of a growing liking for them, a liking inspired by
+      the very characteristics that would once have provoked her disapproval.
+      Susy had had plenty of training in liking common people with big purses;
+      in such cases her stock of allowances and extenuations was inexhaustible.
+      But they had to be successful common people; and the trouble was that the
+      Hickses, judged by her standards, were failures. It was not only that they
+      were ridiculous; so, heaven knew, were many of their rivals. But the
+      Hickses were both ridiculous and unsuccessful. They had consistently
+      resisted the efforts of the experienced advisers who had first descried
+      them on the horizon and tried to help them upward. They were always taking
+      up the wrong people, giving the wrong kind of party, and spending millions
+      on things that nobody who mattered cared about. They all believed
+      passionately in &ldquo;movements&rdquo; and &ldquo;causes&rdquo; and &ldquo;ideals,&rdquo; and were always
+      attended by the exponents of their latest beliefs, always asking you to
+      hear lectures by haggard women in peplums, and having their portraits
+      painted by wild people who never turned out to be the fashion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All this would formerly have increased Susy&rsquo;s contempt; now she found
+      herself liking the Hickses most for their failings. She was touched by
+      their simple good faith, their isolation in the midst of all their queer
+      apostles and parasites, their way of drifting about an alien and
+      indifferent world in a compactly clinging group of which Eldorada Tooker,
+      the doctor and the two secretaries formed the outer fringe, and by their
+      view of themselves as a kind of collective re-incarnation of some past
+      state of princely culture, symbolised for Mrs. Hicks in what she called
+      &ldquo;the court of the Renaissance.&rdquo; Eldorada, of course, was their chief
+      prophetess; but even the intensely &ldquo;bright&rdquo; and modern young secretaries,
+      Mr. Beck and Mr. Buttles, showed a touching tendency to share her view,
+      and spoke of Mr. Hicks as &ldquo;promoting art,&rdquo; in the spirit of Pandolfino
+      celebrating the munificence of the Medicis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m getting really fond of the Hickses; I believe I should be nice to
+      them even if they were staying at Danieli&rsquo;s,&rdquo; Susy said to Strefford.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And even if you owned the yacht?&rdquo; he answered; and for once his banter
+      struck her as beside the point.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Ibis carried them, during the endless June days, far and wide along
+      the enchanted shores; they roamed among the Euganeans, they saw Aquileia
+      and Pomposa and Ravenna. Their hosts would gladly have taken them farther,
+      across the Adriatic and on into the golden network of the Aegean; but Susy
+      resisted this infraction of Nick&rsquo;s rules, and he himself preferred to
+      stick to his task. Only now he wrote in the early mornings, so that on
+      most days they could set out before noon and steam back late to the low
+      fringe of lights on the lagoon. His work continued to progress, and as
+      page was added to page Susy obscurely but surely perceived that each one
+      corresponded with a hidden secretion of energy, the gradual forming within
+      him of something that might eventually alter both their lives. In what
+      sense she could not conjecture: she merely felt that the fact of his
+      having chosen a job and stuck to it, if only through a few rosy summer
+      weeks, had already given him a new way of saying &ldquo;Yes&rdquo; and &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+
+
+<h3>VII.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">Of</span> some new ferment at work in him Nick Lansing himself was equally aware.
+      He was a better judge of the book he was trying to write than either Susy
+      or Strefford; he knew its weaknesses, its treacheries, its tendency to
+      slip through his fingers just as he thought his grasp tightest; but he
+      knew also that at the very moment when it seemed to have failed him it
+      would suddenly be back, beating its loud wings in his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had no delusions as to its commercial value, and had winced more than
+      he triumphed when Susy produced her allusion to Marius. His book was to be
+      called The Pageant of Alexander. His imagination had been enchanted by the
+      idea of picturing the young conqueror&rsquo;s advance through the fabulous
+      landscapes of Asia: he liked writing descriptions, and vaguely felt that
+      under the guise of fiction he could develop his theory of Oriental
+      influences in Western art at the expense of less learning than if he had
+      tried to put his ideas into an essay. He knew enough of his subject to
+      know that he did not know enough to write about it; but he consoled
+      himself by remembering that Wilhelm Meister has survived many weighty
+      volumes on aesthetics; and between his moments of self-disgust he took
+      himself at Susy&rsquo;s valuation, and found an unmixed joy in his task.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Never&mdash;no, never!&mdash;had he been so boundlessly, so confidently
+      happy. His hack-work had given him the habit of application, and now habit
+      wore the glow of inspiration. His previous literary ventures had been
+      timid and tentative: if this one was growing and strengthening on his
+      hands, it must be because the conditions were so different. He was at
+      ease, he was secure, he was satisfied; and he had also, for the first time
+      since his early youth, before his mother&rsquo;s death, the sense of having some
+      one to look after, some one who was his own particular care, and to whom
+      he was answerable for himself and his actions, as he had never felt
+      himself answerable to the hurried and indifferent people among whom he had
+      chosen to live.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy had the same standards as these people: she spoke their language,
+      though she understood others, she required their pleasures if she did not
+      revere their gods. But from the moment that she had become his property he
+      had built up in himself a conception of her answering to some deep-seated
+      need of veneration. She was his, he had chosen her, she had taken her
+      place in the long line of Lansing women who had been loved, honoured, and
+      probably deceived, by bygone Lansing men. He didn&rsquo;t pretend to understand
+      the logic of it; but the fact that she was his wife gave purpose and
+      continuity to his scattered impulses, and a mysterious glow of
+      consecration to his task.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once or twice, in the first days of his marriage, he had asked himself
+      with a slight shiver what would happen if Susy should begin to bore him.
+      The thing had happened to him with other women as to whom his first
+      emotions had not differed in intensity from those she inspired. The part
+      he had played in his previous love-affairs might indeed have been summed
+      up in the memorable line: &ldquo;I am the hunter and the prey,&rdquo; for he had
+      invariably ceased to be the first only to regard himself as the second.
+      This experience had never ceased to cause him the liveliest pain, since
+      his sympathy for his pursuer was only less keen than his commiseration for
+      himself; but as he was always a little sorrier for himself, he had always
+      ended by distancing the pursuer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All these pre-natal experiences now seemed utterly inapplicable to the new
+      man he had become. He could not imagine being bored by Susy&mdash;or
+      trying to escape from her if he were. He could not think of her as an
+      enemy, or even as an accomplice, since accomplices are potential enemies:
+      she was some one with whom, by some unheard-of miracle, joys above the
+      joys of friendship were to be tasted, but who, even through these fleeting
+      ecstasies, remained simply and securely his friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These new feelings did not affect his general attitude toward life: they
+      merely confirmed his faith in its ultimate &ldquo;jolliness.&rdquo; Never had he more
+      thoroughly enjoyed the things he had always enjoyed. A good dinner had
+      never been as good to him, a beautiful sunset as beautiful; he still
+      rejoiced in the fact that he appreciated both with an equal acuity. He was
+      as proud as ever of Susy&rsquo;s cleverness and freedom from prejudice: she
+      couldn&rsquo;t be too &ldquo;modern&rdquo; for him now that she was his. He shared to the
+      full her passionate enjoyment of the present, and all her feverish
+      eagerness to make it last. He knew when she was thinking of ways of
+      extending their golden opportunity, and he secretly thought with her,
+      wondering what new means they could devise. He was thankful that Ellie
+      Vanderlyn was still absent, and began to hope they might have the palace
+      to themselves for the remainder of the summer. If they did, he would have
+      time to finish his book, and Susy to lay up a little interest on their
+      wedding cheques; and thus their enchanted year might conceivably be
+      prolonged to two.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Late as the season was, their presence and Strefford&rsquo;s in Venice had
+      already drawn thither several wandering members of their set. It was
+      characteristic of these indifferent but agglutinative people that they
+      could never remain long parted from each other without a dim sense of
+      uneasiness. Lansing was familiar with the feeling. He had known slight
+      twinges of it himself, and had often ministered to its qualms in others.
+      It was hardly stronger than the faint gnawing which recalls the tea-hour
+      to one who has lunched well and is sure of dining as abundantly; but it
+      gave a purpose to the purposeless, and helped many hesitating spirits over
+      the annual difficulty of deciding between Deauville and St. Moritz,
+      Biarritz and Capri.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nick was not surprised to learn that it was becoming the fashion, that
+      summer, to pop down to Venice and take a look at the Lansings. Streffy had
+      set the example, and Streffy&rsquo;s example was always followed. And then
+      Susy&rsquo;s marriage was still a subject of sympathetic speculation. People
+      knew the story of the wedding cheques, and were interested in seeing how
+      long they could be made to last. It was going to be the thing, that year,
+      to help prolong the honey-moon by pressing houses on the adventurous
+      couple. Before June was over a band of friends were basking with the
+      Lansings on the Lido.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nick found himself unexpectedly disturbed by their arrival. To avoid
+      comment and banter he put his book aside and forbade Susy to speak of it,
+      explaining to her that he needed an interval of rest. His wife instantly
+      and exaggeratedly adopted this view, guarding him from the temptation to
+      work as jealously as she had discouraged him from idling; and he was
+      careful not to let her find out that the change in his habits coincided
+      with his having reached a difficult point in his book. But though he was
+      not sorry to stop writing he found himself unexpectedly oppressed by the
+      weight of his leisure. For the first time communal dawdling had lost its
+      charm for him; not because his fellow dawdlers were less congenial than of
+      old, but because in the interval he had known something so immeasurably
+      better. He had always felt himself to be the superior of his habitual
+      associates, but now the advantage was too great: really, in a sense, it
+      was hardly fair to them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had flattered himself that Susy would share this feeling; but he
+      perceived with annoyance that the arrival of their friends heightened her
+      animation. It was as if the inward glow which had given her a new beauty
+      were now refracted upon her by the presence of the very people they had
+      come to Venice to avoid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing was vaguely irritated; and when he asked her how she liked being
+      with their old crowd again his irritation was increased by her answering
+      with a laugh that she only hoped the poor dears didn&rsquo;t see too plainly how
+      they bored her. The patent insincerity of the reply was a shock to
+      Lansing. He knew that Susy was not really bored, and he understood that
+      she had simply guessed his feelings and instinctively adopted them: that
+      henceforth she was always going to think as he thought. To confirm this
+      fear he said carelessly: &ldquo;Oh, all the same, it&rsquo;s rather jolly knocking
+      about with them again for a bit;&rdquo; and she answered at once, and with equal
+      conviction: &ldquo;Yes, isn&rsquo;t it? The old darlings&mdash;all the same!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A fear of the future again laid its cold touch on Lansing. Susy&rsquo;s
+      independence and self-sufficiency had been among her chief attractions; if
+      she were to turn into an echo their delicious duet ran the risk of
+      becoming the dullest of monologues. He forgot that five minutes earlier he
+      had resented her being glad to see their friends, and for a moment he
+      found himself leaning dizzily over that insoluble riddle of the
+      sentimental life: that to be differed with is exasperating, and to be
+      agreed with monotonous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once more he began to wonder if he were not fundamentally unfitted for the
+      married state; and was saved from despair only by remembering that Susy&rsquo;s
+      subjection to his moods was not likely to last. But even then it never
+      occurred to him to reflect that his apprehensions were superfluous, since
+      their tie was avowedly a temporary one. Of the special understanding on
+      which their marriage had been based not a trace remained in his thoughts
+      of her; the idea that he or she might ever renounce each other for their
+      mutual good had long since dwindled to the ghost of an old joke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was borne in on him, after a week or two of unbroken sociability, that
+      of all his old friends it was the Mortimer Hickses who bored him the
+      least. The Hickses had left the Ibis for an apartment in a vast
+      dilapidated palace near the Canareggio. They had hired the apartment from
+      a painter (one of their newest discoveries), and they put up
+      philosophically with the absence of modern conveniences in order to secure
+      the inestimable advantage of &ldquo;atmosphere.&rdquo; In this privileged air they
+      gathered about them their usual mixed company of quiet studious people and
+      noisy exponents of new theories, themselves totally unconscious of the
+      disparity between their different guests, and beamingly convinced that at
+      last they were seated at the source of wisdom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In old days Lansing would have got half an hour&rsquo;s amusement, followed by a
+      long evening of boredom, from the sight of Mrs. Hicks, vast and jewelled,
+      seated between a quiet-looking professor of archaeology and a large-browed
+      composer, or the high priest of a new dance-step, while Mr. Hicks, beaming
+      above his vast white waistcoat, saw to it that the champagne flowed more
+      abundantly than the talk, and the bright young secretaries industriously
+      &ldquo;kept up&rdquo; with the dizzy cross-current of prophecy and erudition. But a
+      change had come over Lansing. Hitherto it was in contrast to his own
+      friends that the Hickses had seemed most insufferable; now it was as an
+      escape from these same friends that they had become not only sympathetic
+      but even interesting. It was something, after all, to be with people who
+      did not regard Venice simply as affording exceptional opportunities for
+      bathing and adultery, but who were reverently if confusedly aware that
+      they were in the presence of something unique and ineffable, and
+      determined to make the utmost of their privilege.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After all,&rdquo; he said to himself one evening, as his eyes wandered, with
+      somewhat of a convalescent&rsquo;s simple joy, from one to another of their
+      large confiding faces, &ldquo;after all, they&rsquo;ve got a religion....&rdquo; The phrase
+      struck him, in the moment of using it, as indicating a new element in his
+      own state of mind, and as being, in fact, the key to his new feeling about
+      the Hickses. Their muddled ardour for great things was related to his own
+      new view of the universe: the people who felt, however dimly, the wonder
+      and weight of life must ever after be nearer to him than those to whom it
+      was estimated solely by one&rsquo;s balance at the bank. He supposed, on
+      reflexion, that that was what he meant when he thought of the Hickses as
+      having &ldquo;a religion&rdquo;....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A few days later, his well-being was unexpectedly disturbed by the arrival
+      of Fred Gillow. Lansing had always felt a tolerant liking for Gillow, a
+      large smiling silent young man with an intense and serious desire to miss
+      nothing attainable by one of his fortune and standing. What use he made of
+      his experiences, Lansing, who had always gone into his own modest
+      adventures rather thoroughly, had never been able to guess; but he had
+      always suspected the prodigal Fred of being no more than a well-disguised
+      looker-on. Now for the first time he began to view him with another eye.
+      The Gillows were, in fact, the one uneasy point in Nick&rsquo;s conscience. He
+      and Susy from the first, had talked of them less than of any other members
+      of their group: they had tacitly avoided the name from the day on which
+      Susy had come to Lansing&rsquo;s lodgings to say that Ursula Gillow had asked
+      her to renounce him, till that other day, just before their marriage, when
+      she had met him with the rapturous cry: &ldquo;Here&rsquo;s our first wedding present!
+      Such a thumping big cheque from Fred and Ursula!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Plenty of sympathizing people were ready, Lansing knew, to tell him just
+      what had happened in the interval between those two dates; but he had
+      taken care not to ask. He had even affected an initiation so complete that
+      the friends who burned to enlighten him were discouraged by his so
+      obviously knowing more than they; and gradually he had worked himself
+      around to their view, and had taken it for granted that he really did.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now he perceived that he knew nothing at all, and that the &ldquo;Hullo, old
+      Fred!&rdquo; with which Susy hailed Gillow&rsquo;s arrival might be either the usual
+      tribal welcome&mdash;since they were all &ldquo;old,&rdquo; and all nicknamed, in
+      their private jargon&mdash;or a greeting that concealed inscrutable depths
+      of complicity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy was visibly glad to see Gillow; but she was glad of everything just
+      then, and so glad to show her gladness! The fact disarmed her husband and
+      made him ashamed of his uneasiness. &ldquo;You ought to have thought this all
+      out sooner, or else you ought to chuck thinking of it at all,&rdquo; was the
+      sound but ineffectual advice he gave himself on the day after Gillow&rsquo;s
+      arrival; and immediately set to work to rethink the whole matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fred Gillow showed no consciousness of disturbing any one&rsquo;s peace of mind.
+      Day after day he sprawled for hours on the Lido sands, his arms folded
+      under his head, listening to Streffy&rsquo;s nonsense and watching Susy between
+      sleepy lids; but he betrayed no desire to see her alone, or to draw her
+      into talk apart from the others. More than ever he seemed content to be
+      the gratified spectator of a costly show got up for his private
+      entertainment. It was not until he heard her, one morning, grumble a
+      little at the increasing heat and the menace of mosquitoes, that he said,
+      quite as if they had talked the matter over long before, and finally
+      settled it: &ldquo;The moor will be ready any time after the first of August.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nick fancied that Susy coloured a little, and drew herself up more
+      defiantly than usual as she sent a pebble skimming across the dying
+      ripples at their feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll be a lot cooler in Scotland,&rdquo; Fred added, with what, for him, was
+      an unusual effort at explicitness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, shall we?&rdquo; she retorted gaily; and added with an air of mystery and
+      importance, pivoting about on her high heels: &ldquo;Nick&rsquo;s got work to do here.
+      It will probably keep us all summer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Work? Rot! You&rsquo;ll die of the smells.&rdquo; Gillow stared perplexedly skyward
+      from under his tilted hat-brim; and then brought out, as from the depth of
+      a rankling grievance: &ldquo;I thought it was all understood.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why,&rdquo; Nick asked his wife that night, as they re-entered Ellie&rsquo;s cool
+      drawing-room after a late dinner at the Lido, &ldquo;did Gillow think it was
+      understood that we were going to his moor in August?&rdquo; He was conscious of
+      the oddness of speaking of their friend by his surname, and reddened at
+      his blunder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy had let her lace cloak slide to her feet, and stood before him in the
+      faintly-lit room, slim and shimmering-white through black transparencies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She raised her eyebrows carelessly. &ldquo;I told you long ago he&rsquo;d asked us
+      there for August.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You didn&rsquo;t tell me you&rsquo;d accepted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She smiled as if he had said something as simple as Fred. &ldquo;I accepted
+      everything&mdash;from everybody!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      What could he answer? It was the very principle on which their bargain had
+      been struck. And if he were to say: &ldquo;Ah, but this is different, because
+      I&rsquo;m jealous of Gillow,&rdquo; what light would such an answer shed on his past?
+      The time for being jealous&mdash;if so antiquated an attitude were on any ground
+      defensible&mdash;would have been before his marriage, and before the acceptance
+      of the bounties which had helped to make it possible. He wondered a little
+      now that in those days such scruples had not troubled him. His
+      inconsistency irritated him, and increased his irritation against Gillow.
+      &ldquo;I suppose he thinks he owns us!&rdquo; he grumbled inwardly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had thrown himself into an armchair, and Susy, advancing across the
+      shining arabesques of the floor, slid down at his feet, pressed her
+      slender length against him, and whispered with lifted face and lips close
+      to his: &ldquo;We needn&rsquo;t ever go anywhere you don&rsquo;t want to.&rdquo; For once her
+      submission was sweet, and folding her close he whispered back through his
+      kiss: &ldquo;Not there, then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In her response to his embrace he felt the acquiescence of her whole happy
+      self in whatever future he decided on, if only it gave them enough of such
+      moments as this; and as they held each other fast in silence his doubts
+      and distrust began to seem like a silly injustice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us stay here as long as ever Ellie will let us,&rdquo; he said, as if the
+      shadowy walls and shining floors were a magic boundary drawn about his
+      happiness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She murmured her assent and stood up, stretching her sleepy arm above her
+      shoulders. &ldquo;How dreadfully late it is.... Will you unhook me?... Oh,
+      there&rsquo;s a telegram.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She picked it up from the table, and tearing it open stared a moment at
+      the message. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s from Ellie. She&rsquo;s coming to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned to the window and strayed out onto the balcony. Nick followed
+      her with enlacing arm. The canal below them lay in moonless shadow, barred
+      with a few lingering lights. A last snatch of gondola-music came from far
+      off, carried upward on a sultry gust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear old Ellie. All the same... I wish all this belonged to you and me.&rdquo;
+       Susy sighed.
+    </p>
+
+
+<h3>VIII.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">It</span> was not Mrs. Vanderlyn&rsquo;s fault if, after her arrival, her palace seemed
+      to belong any less to the Lansings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She arrived in a mood of such general benevolence that it was impossible
+      for Susy, when they finally found themselves alone, to make her view even
+      her own recent conduct in any but the most benevolent light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew you&rsquo;d be the veriest angel about it all, darling, because I knew
+      you&rsquo;d understand me&mdash;especially now,&rdquo; she declared, her slim hands in
+      Susy&rsquo;s, her big eyes (so like Clarissa&rsquo;s) resplendent with past pleasures
+      and future plans.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The expression of her confidence was unexpectedly distasteful to Susy
+      Lansing, who had never lent so cold an ear to such warm avowals. She had
+      always imagined that being happy one&rsquo;s self made one&mdash;as Mrs.
+      Vanderlyn appeared to assume&mdash;more tolerant of the happiness of
+      others, of however doubtful elements composed; and she was almost ashamed
+      of responding so languidly to her friend&rsquo;s outpourings. But she herself
+      had no desire to confide her bliss to Ellie; and why should not Ellie
+      observe a similar reticence?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was all so perfect&mdash;you see, dearest, I was meant to be happy,&rdquo;
+       that lady continued, as if the possession of so unusual a characteristic
+      singled her out for special privileges.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy, with a certain sharpness, responded that she had always supposed we
+      all were.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no, dearest: not governesses and mothers-in-law and companions, and
+      that sort of people. They wouldn&rsquo;t know how if they tried. But you and I,
+      darling&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I don&rsquo;t consider myself in any way exceptional,&rdquo; Susy intervened. She
+      longed to add: &ldquo;Not in your way, at any rate&mdash;&rdquo; but a few minutes
+      earlier Mrs. Vanderlyn had told her that the palace was at her disposal
+      for the rest of the summer, and that she herself was only going to perch
+      there&mdash;if they&rsquo;d let her!&mdash;long enough to gather up her things
+      and start for St. Moritz. The memory of this announcement had the effect
+      of curbing Susy&rsquo;s irony, and of making her shift the conversation to the
+      safer if scarcely less absorbing topic of the number of day and evening
+      dresses required for a season at St. Moritz.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As she listened to Mrs. Vanderlyn&mdash;no less eloquent on this theme
+      than on the other&mdash;Susy began to measure the gulf between her past
+      and present. &ldquo;This is the life I used to lead; these are the things I used
+      to live for,&rdquo; she thought, as she stood before the outspread glories of
+      Mrs. Vanderlyn&rsquo;s wardrobe. Not that she did not still care: she could not
+      look at Ellie&rsquo;s laces and silks and furs without picturing herself in
+      them, and wondering by what new miracle of management she could give
+      herself the air of being dressed by the same consummate artists. But these
+      had become minor interests: the past few months had given her a new
+      perspective, and the thing that most puzzled and disconcerted her about
+      Ellie was the fact that love and finery and bridge and dining-out were
+      seemingly all on the same plane to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The inspection of the dresses lasted a long time, and was marked by many
+      fluctuations of mood on the part of Mrs. Vanderlyn, who passed from
+      comparative hopefulness to despair at the total inadequacy of her
+      wardrobe. It wouldn&rsquo;t do to go to St. Moritz looking like a frump, and yet
+      there was no time to get anything sent from Paris, and, whatever she did,
+      she wasn&rsquo;t going to show herself in any dowdy re-arrangements done at
+      home. But suddenly light broke on her, and she clasped her hands for joy.
+      &ldquo;Why, Nelson&rsquo;ll bring them&mdash;I&rsquo;d forgotten all about Nelson! There&rsquo;ll
+      be just time if I wire to him at once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is Nelson going to join you at St. Moritz?&rdquo; Susy asked, surprised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Heavens, no! He&rsquo;s coming here to pick up Clarissa and take her to some
+      stuffy cure in Austria with his mother. It&rsquo;s too lucky: there&rsquo;s just time
+      to telegraph him to bring my things. I didn&rsquo;t mean to wait for him; but it
+      won&rsquo;t delay me more than day or two.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy&rsquo;s heart sank. She was not much afraid of Ellie alone, but Ellie and
+      Nelson together formed an incalculable menace. No one could tell what
+      spark of truth might dash from their collision. Susy felt that she could
+      deal with the two dangers separately and successively, but not together
+      and simultaneously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, Ellie, why should you wait for Nelson? I&rsquo;m certain to find someone
+      here who&rsquo;s going to St. Moritz and will take your things if he brings
+      them. It&rsquo;s a pity to risk losing your rooms.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This argument appealed for a moment to Mrs. Vanderlyn. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s true; they
+      say all the hotels are jammed. You dear, you&rsquo;re always so practical!&rdquo; She
+      clasped Susy to her scented bosom. &ldquo;And you know, darling, I&rsquo;m sure you&rsquo;ll
+      be glad to get rid of me&mdash;you and Nick! Oh, don&rsquo;t be hypocritical and
+      say &lsquo;Nonsense!&rsquo; You see, I understand... I used to think of you so often,
+      you two... during those blessed weeks when we two were alone....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The sudden tears, brimming over Ellie&rsquo;s lovely eyes, and threatening to
+      make the blue circles below them run into the adjoining carmine, filled
+      Susy with compunction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor thing&mdash;oh, poor thing!&rdquo; she thought; and hearing herself called
+      by Nick, who was waiting to take her out for their usual sunset on the
+      lagoon, she felt a wave of pity for the deluded creature who would never
+      taste that highest of imaginable joys. &ldquo;But all the same,&rdquo; Susy reflected,
+      as she hurried down to her husband, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad I persuaded her not to wait
+      for Nelson.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Some days had elapsed since Susy and Nick had had a sunset to themselves,
+      and in the interval Susy had once again learned the superior quality of
+      the sympathy that held them together. She now viewed all the rest of life
+      as no more than a show: a jolly show which it would have been a thousand
+      pities to miss, but which, if the need arose, they could get up and leave
+      at any moment&mdash;provided that they left it together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the dusk, while their prow slid over inverted palaces, and through the
+      scent of hidden gardens, she leaned against him and murmured, her mind
+      returning to the recent scene with Ellie: &ldquo;Nick, should you hate me
+      dreadfully if I had no clothes?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her husband was kindling a cigarette, and the match lit up the grin with
+      which he answered: &ldquo;But, my dear, have I ever shown the slightest symptom&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, rubbish! When a woman says: &lsquo;No clothes,&rsquo; she means: &lsquo;Not the right
+      clothes.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He took a meditative puff. &ldquo;Ah, you&rsquo;ve been going over Ellie&rsquo;s finery with
+      her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes: all those trunks and trunks full. And she finds she&rsquo;s got nothing
+      for St. Moritz!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; he murmured, drowsy with content, and manifesting but a
+      languid interest in the subject of Mrs. Vanderlyn&rsquo;s wardrobe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only fancy&mdash;she very nearly decided to stop over for Nelson&rsquo;s
+      arrival next week, so that he might bring her two or three more trunkfuls
+      from Paris. But mercifully I&rsquo;ve managed to persuade her that it would be
+      foolish to wait.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy felt a hardly perceptible shifting of her husband&rsquo;s lounging body,
+      and was aware, through all her watchful tentacles, of a widening of his
+      half-closed lids.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You &lsquo;managed&rsquo;&mdash;?&rdquo; She fancied he paused on the word ironically. &ldquo;But
+      why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why&mdash;what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why on earth should you try to prevent Ellie&rsquo;s waiting for Nelson, if for
+      once in her life she wants to?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy, conscious of reddening suddenly, drew back as though the leap of her
+      tell-tale heart might have penetrated the blue flannel shoulder against
+      which she leaned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Really, dearest&mdash;!&rdquo; she murmured; but with a sudden doggedness he
+      renewed his &ldquo;Why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because she&rsquo;s in such a fever to get to St. Moritz&mdash;and in such a
+      funk lest the hotel shouldn&rsquo;t keep her rooms,&rdquo; Susy somewhat breathlessly
+      produced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah&mdash;I see.&rdquo; Nick paused again. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re a devoted friend, aren&rsquo;t
+      you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What an odd question! There&rsquo;s hardly anyone I&rsquo;ve reason to be more
+      devoted to than Ellie,&rdquo; his wife answered; and she felt his contrite clasp
+      on her hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Darling! No; nor I&mdash;. Or more grateful to for leaving us alone in
+      this heaven.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dimness had fallen on the waters, and her lifted lips met his bending
+      ones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Trailing late into dinner that evening, Ellie announced that, after all,
+      she had decided it was safest to wait for Nelson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should simply worry myself ill if I weren&rsquo;t sure of getting my things,&rdquo;
+       she said, in the tone of tender solicitude with which she always discussed
+      her own difficulties. &ldquo;After all, people who deny themselves everything do
+      get warped and bitter, don&rsquo;t they?&rdquo; she argued plaintively, her lovely
+      eyes wandering from one to the other of her assembled friends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford remarked gravely that it was the complaint which had fatally
+      undermined his own health; and in the laugh that followed the party
+      drifted into the great vaulted dining-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I don&rsquo;t mind your laughing at me, Streffy darling,&rdquo; his hostess
+      retorted, pressing his arm against her own; and Susy, receiving the shock
+      of their rapidly exchanged glance, said to herself, with a sharp twinge of
+      apprehension: &ldquo;Of course Streffy knows everything; he showed no surprise
+      at finding Ellie away when he arrived. And if he knows, what&rsquo;s to prevent
+      Nelson&rsquo;s finding out?&rdquo; For Strefford, in a mood of mischief, was no more
+      to be trusted than a malicious child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy instantly resolved to risk speaking to him, if need be even betraying
+      to him the secret of the letters. Only by revealing the depth of her own
+      danger could she hope to secure his silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the balcony, late in the evening, while the others were listening
+      indoors to the low modulations of a young composer who had embroidered his
+      fancies on Browning&rsquo;s &ldquo;Toccata,&rdquo; Susy found her chance. Strefford,
+      unsummoned, had followed her out, and stood silently smoking at her side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see, Streff&mdash;oh, why should you and I make mysteries to each
+      other?&rdquo; she suddenly began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, indeed: but do we?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy glanced back at the group around the piano. &ldquo;About Ellie, I mean&mdash;and
+      Nelson.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lord! Ellie and Nelson? You call that a mystery? I should as soon apply
+      the term to one of the million candle-power advertisements that adorn your
+      native thoroughfares.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, yes. But&mdash;&rdquo; She stopped again. Had she not tacitly promised
+      Ellie not to speak?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My Susan, what&rsquo;s wrong?&rdquo; Strefford asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I do, then: you&rsquo;re afraid that, if Ellie and Nelson meet here,
+      she&rsquo;ll blurt out something&mdash;injudicious.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, she won&rsquo;t!&rdquo; Susy cried with conviction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then&mdash;who will! I trust that superhuman child not to. And you
+      and I and Nick&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; she gasped, interrupting him, &ldquo;that&rsquo;s just it. Nick doesn&rsquo;t know...
+      doesn&rsquo;t even suspect. And if he did....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford flung away his cigar and turned to scrutinize her. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see&mdash;hanged
+      if I do. What business is it of any of us, after all?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That, of course, was the old view that cloaked connivance in an air of
+      decency. But to Susy it no longer carried conviction, and she hesitated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If Nick should find out that I know....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good Lord&mdash;doesn&rsquo;t he know that you know? After all, I suppose it&rsquo;s
+      not the first time&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She remained silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The first time you&rsquo;ve received confidences&mdash;from married friends.
+      Does Nick suppose you&rsquo;ve lived even to your tender age without... Hang it,
+      what&rsquo;s come over you, child?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      What had, indeed, that she could make clear to him? And yet more than ever
+      she felt the need of having him securely on her side. Once his word was
+      pledged, he was safe: otherwise there was no limit to his capacity for
+      wilful harmfulness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look here, Streff, you and I know that Ellie hasn&rsquo;t been away for a cure;
+      and that if poor Clarissa was sworn to secrecy it was not because it
+      &lsquo;worries father&rsquo; to think that mother needs to take care of her health.&rdquo;
+       She paused, hating herself for the ironic note she had tried to sound.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;?&rdquo; he questioned, from the depths of the chair into which he
+      had sunk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Nick doesn&rsquo;t... doesn&rsquo;t dream of it. If he knew that we owed our
+      summer here to... to my knowing....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford sat silent: she felt his astonished stare through the darkness.
+      &ldquo;Jove!&rdquo; he said at last, with a low whistle Susy bent over the balustrade,
+      her heart thumping against the stone rail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What was left of soul, I wonder&mdash;?&rdquo; the young composer&rsquo;s voice
+      shrilled through the open windows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford sank into another silence, from which he roused himself only as
+      Susy turned back toward the lighted threshold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, my dear, we&rsquo;ll see it through between us; you and I&mdash;and Clarissa,&rdquo;
+       he said with his rasping laugh, rising to follow her. He caught her hand
+      and gave it a short pressure as they re-entered the drawing-room, where
+      Ellie was saying plaintively to Fred Gillow: &ldquo;I can never hear that thing
+      sung without wanting to cry like a baby.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+
+
+<h3>IX.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">Nelson Vanderlyn</span>, still in his travelling clothes, paused on the threshold
+      of his own dining-room and surveyed the scene with pardonable
+      satisfaction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was a short round man, with a grizzled head, small facetious eyes and a
+      large and credulous smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the luncheon table sat his wife, between Charlie Strefford and Nick
+      Lansing. Next to Strefford, perched on her high chair, Clarissa throned in
+      infant beauty, while Susy Lansing cut up a peach for her. Through wide
+      orange awnings the sun slanted in upon the white-clad group.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;well&mdash;well! So I&rsquo;ve caught you at it!&rdquo; cried the happy
+      father, whose inveterate habit it was to address his wife and friends as
+      if he had surprised them at an inopportune moment. Stealing up from
+      behind, he lifted his daughter into the air, while a chorus of &ldquo;Hello, old
+      Nelson,&rdquo; hailed his appearance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was two or three years since Nick Lansing had seen Mr. Vanderlyn, who
+      was now the London representative of the big New York bank of Vanderlyn
+      &amp; Co., and had exchanged his sumptuous house in Fifth Avenue for
+      another, more sumptuous still, in Mayfair; and the young man looked
+      curiously and attentively at his host.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Vanderlyn had grown older and stouter, but his face still kept its
+      look of somewhat worn optimism. He embraced his wife, greeted Susy
+      affectionately, and distributed cordial hand-grasps to the two men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hullo,&rdquo; he exclaimed, suddenly noticing a pearl and coral trinket hanging
+      from Clarissa&rsquo;s neck. &ldquo;Who&rsquo;s been giving my daughter jewellery, I&rsquo;d like
+      to know!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Streffy did&mdash;just think, father! Because I said I&rsquo;d rather have
+      it than a book, you know,&rdquo; Clarissa lucidly explained, her arms tight
+      about her father&rsquo;s neck, her beaming eyes on Strefford.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nelson Vanderlyn&rsquo;s own eyes took on the look of shrewdness which came into
+      them whenever there was a question of material values.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What, Streffy? Caught you at it, eh? Upon my soul-spoiling the brat like
+      that! You&rsquo;d no business to, my dear chap-a lovely baroque pearl&mdash;&rdquo; he
+      protested, with the half-apologetic tone of the rich man embarrassed by
+      too costly a gift from an impecunious friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, hadn&rsquo;t I? Why? Because it&rsquo;s too good for Clarissa, or too expensive
+      for me? Of course you daren&rsquo;t imply the first; and as for me&mdash;I&rsquo;ve
+      had a windfall, and am blowing it in on the ladies.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford, Lansing had noticed, always used American slang when he was
+      slightly at a loss, and wished to divert attention from the main point.
+      But why was he embarrassed, whose attention did he wish to divert, It was
+      plain that Vanderlyn&rsquo;s protest had been merely formal: like most of the
+      wealthy, he had only the dimmest notion of what money represented to the
+      poor. But it was unusual for Strefford to give any one a present, and
+      especially an expensive one: perhaps that was what had fixed Vanderlyn&rsquo;s
+      attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A windfall?&rdquo; he gaily repeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, a tiny one: I was offered a thumping rent for my little place at
+      Como, and dashed over here to squander my millions with the rest of you,&rdquo;
+       said Strefford imperturbably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Vanderlyn&rsquo;s look immediately became interested and sympathetic. &ldquo;What&mdash;the
+      scene of the honey-moon?&rdquo; He included Nick and Susy in his friendly smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just so: the reward of virtue. I say, give me a cigar, will you, old man,
+      I left some awfully good ones at Como, worse luck&mdash;and I don&rsquo;t mind
+      telling you that Ellie&rsquo;s no judge of tobacco, and that Nick&rsquo;s too far gone
+      in bliss to care what he smokes,&rdquo; Strefford grumbled, stretching a hand
+      toward his host&rsquo;s cigar-case.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do like jewellery best,&rdquo; Clarissa murmured, hugging her father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nelson Vanderlyn&rsquo;s first word to his wife had been that he had brought her
+      all her toggery; and she had welcomed him with appropriate enthusiasm. In
+      fact, to the lookers-on her joy at seeing him seemed rather too patently
+      in proportion to her satisfaction at getting her clothes. But no such
+      suspicion appeared to mar Mr. Vanderlyn&rsquo;s happiness in being, for once,
+      and for nearly twenty-four hours, under the same roof with his wife and
+      child. He did not conceal his regret at having promised his mother to join
+      her the next day; and added, with a wistful glance at Ellie: &ldquo;If only I&rsquo;d
+      known you meant to wait for me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But being a man of duty, in domestic as well as business affairs, he did
+      not even consider the possibility of disappointing the exacting old lady
+      to whom he owed his being. &ldquo;Mother cares for so few people,&rdquo; he used to
+      say, not without a touch of filial pride in the parental exclusiveness,
+      &ldquo;that I have to be with her rather more than if she were more sociable&rdquo;;
+      and with smiling resignation he gave orders that Clarissa should be ready
+      to start the next evening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And meanwhile,&rdquo; he concluded, &ldquo;we&rsquo;ll have all the good time that&rsquo;s
+      going.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The ladies of the party seemed united in the desire to further this
+      resolve; and it was settled that as soon as Mr. Vanderlyn had despatched a
+      hasty luncheon, his wife, Clarissa and Susy should carry him off for a
+      tea-picnic at Torcello. They did not even suggest that Strefford or Nick
+      should be of the party, or that any of the other young men of the group
+      should be summoned; as Susy said, Nelson wanted to go off alone with his
+      harem. And Lansing and Strefford were left to watch the departure of the
+      happy Pasha ensconced between attentive beauties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;that&rsquo;s what you call being married!&rdquo; Strefford commented,
+      waving his battered Panama at Clarissa.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no, I don&rsquo;t!&rdquo; Lansing laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He does. But do you know&mdash;&rdquo; Strefford paused and swung about on his
+      companion&mdash;&ldquo;do you know, when the Rude Awakening comes, I don&rsquo;t care
+      to be there. I believe there&rsquo;ll be some crockery broken.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shouldn&rsquo;t wonder,&rdquo; Lansing answered indifferently. He wandered away to
+      his own room, leaving Strefford to philosophize to his pipe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing had always known about poor old Nelson: who hadn&rsquo;t, except poor
+      old Nelson? The case had once seemed amusing because so typical; now, it
+      rather irritated Nick that Vanderlyn should be so complete an ass. But he
+      would be off the next day, and so would Ellie, and then, for many
+      enchanted weeks, the palace would once more be the property of Nick and
+      Susy. Of all the people who came and went in it, they were the only ones
+      who appreciated it, or knew how it was meant to be lived in; and that made
+      it theirs in the only valid sense. In this light it became easy to regard
+      the Vanderlyns as mere transient intruders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having relegated them to this convenient distance, Lansing shut himself up
+      with his book. He had returned to it with fresh energy after his few weeks
+      of holiday-making, and was determined to finish it quickly. He did not
+      expect that it would bring in much money; but if it were moderately
+      successful it might give him an opening in the reviews and magazines, and
+      in that case he meant to abandon archaeology for novels, since it was only
+      as a purveyor of fiction that he could count on earning a living for
+      himself and Susy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Late in the afternoon he laid down his pen and wandered out of doors. He
+      loved the increasing heat of the Venetian summer, the bruised peach-tints
+      of worn house-fronts, the enamelling of sunlight on dark green canals, the
+      smell of half-decayed fruits and flowers thickening the languid air. What
+      visions he could build, if he dared, of being tucked away with Susy in the
+      attic of some tumble-down palace, above a jade-green waterway, with a
+      terrace overhanging a scrap of neglected garden&mdash;and cheques from the
+      publishers dropping in at convenient intervals! Why should they not settle
+      in Venice if he pulled it off!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He found himself before the church of the Scalzi, and pushing open the
+      leathern door wandered up the nave under the whirl of rose-and-lemon
+      angels in Tiepolo&rsquo;s great vault. It was not a church in which one was
+      likely to run across sight-seers; but he presently remarked a young lady
+      standing alone near the choir, and assiduously applying her field-glass to
+      the celestial vortex, from which she occasionally glanced down at an open
+      manual.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Lansing&rsquo;s step sounded on the pavement, the young lady, turning,
+      revealed herself as Miss Hicks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah&mdash;you like this too? It&rsquo;s several centuries out of your line,
+      though, isn&rsquo;t it!&rdquo; Nick asked as they shook hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She gazed at him gravely. &ldquo;Why shouldn&rsquo;t one like things that are out of
+      one&rsquo;s line?&rdquo; she answered; and he agreed, with a laugh, that it was often
+      an incentive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She continued to fix her grave eyes on him, and after one or two remarks
+      about the Tiepolos he perceived that she was feeling her way toward a
+      subject of more personal interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad to see you alone,&rdquo; she said at length, with an abruptness that
+      might have seemed awkward had it not been so completely unconscious. She
+      turned toward a cluster of straw chairs, and signed to Nick to seat
+      himself beside her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I seldom do,&rdquo; she added, with the serious smile that made her heavy face
+      almost handsome; and she went on, giving him no time to protest: &ldquo;I wanted
+      to speak to you&mdash;to explain about father&rsquo;s invitation to go with us
+      to Persia and Turkestan.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To explain?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. You found the letter when you arrived here just after your marriage,
+      didn&rsquo;t you? You must have thought it odd, our asking you just then; but we
+      hadn&rsquo;t heard that you were married.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I guessed as much: it happened very quietly, and I was remiss about
+      announcing it, even to old friends.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing frowned. His thoughts had wandered away to the evening when he had
+      found Mrs. Hicks&rsquo;s letter in the mail awaiting him at Venice. The day was
+      associated in his mind with the ridiculous and mortifying episode of the
+      cigars&mdash;the expensive cigars that Susy had wanted to carry away from
+      Strefford&rsquo;s villa. Their brief exchange of views on the subject had left
+      the first blur on the perfect surface of his happiness, and he still felt
+      an uncomfortable heat at the remembrance. For a few hours the prospect of
+      life with Susy had seemed unendurable; and it was just at that moment that
+      he had found the letter from Mrs. Hicks, with its almost irresistible
+      invitation. If only her daughter had known how nearly he had accepted it!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was a dreadful temptation,&rdquo; he said, smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To go with us? Then why&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, everything&rsquo;s different now: I&rsquo;ve got to stick to my writing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Hicks still bent on him the same unblinking scrutiny. &ldquo;Does that mean
+      that you&rsquo;re going to give up your real work?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My real work&mdash;archaeology?&rdquo; He smiled again to hide a twitch of
+      regret. &ldquo;Why, I&rsquo;m afraid it hardly produces a living wage; and I&rsquo;ve got to
+      think of that.&rdquo; He coloured suddenly, as if suspecting that Miss Hicks
+      might consider the avowal an opening for he hardly knew what ponderous
+      offer of aid. The Hicks munificence was too uncalculating not to be
+      occasionally oppressive. But looking at her again he saw that her eyes
+      were full of tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought it was your vocation,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So did I. But life comes along, and upsets things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I understand. There may be things&mdash;worth giving up all other
+      things for.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are!&rdquo; cried Nick with beaming emphasis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was conscious that Miss Hicks&rsquo;s eyes demanded of him even more than
+      this sweeping affirmation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But your novel may fail,&rdquo; she said with her odd harshness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It may&mdash;it probably will,&rdquo; he agreed. &ldquo;But if one stopped to
+      consider such possibilities&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you have to, with a wife?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, my dear Coral&mdash;how old are you? Not twenty?&rdquo; he questioned,
+      laying a brotherly hand on hers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She stared at him a moment, and sprang up clumsily from her chair. &ldquo;I was
+      never young... if that&rsquo;s what you mean. It&rsquo;s lucky, isn&rsquo;t it, that my
+      parents gave me such a grand education? Because, you see, art&rsquo;s a
+      wonderful resource.&rdquo; (She pronounced it RE-source.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He continued to look at her kindly. &ldquo;You won&rsquo;t need it&mdash;or any other&mdash;when
+      you grow young, as you will some day,&rdquo; he assured her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean, when I fall in love? But I am in love&mdash;Oh, there&rsquo;s
+      Eldorada and Mr. Beck!&rdquo; She broke off with a jerk, signalling with her
+      field-glass to the pair who had just appeared at the farther end of the
+      nave. &ldquo;I told them that if they&rsquo;d meet me here to-day I&rsquo;d try to make them
+      understand Tiepolo. Because, you see, at home we never really have
+      understood Tiepolo; and Mr. Beck and Eldorada are the only ones to realize
+      it. Mr. Buttles simply won&rsquo;t.&rdquo; She turned to Lansing and held out her
+      hand. &ldquo;I am in love,&rdquo; she repeated earnestly, &ldquo;and that&rsquo;s the reason why I
+      find art such a RE source.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She restored her eye-glasses, opened her manual, and strode across the
+      church to the expectant neophytes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing, looking after her, wondered for half a moment whether Mr. Beck
+      were the object of this apparently unrequited sentiment; then, with a
+      queer start of introspection, abruptly decided that, no, he certainly was
+      not. But then&mdash;but then&mdash;. Well, there was no use in following
+      up such conjectures.... He turned home-ward, wondering if the picnickers
+      had already reached Palazzo Vanderlyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They got back only in time for a late dinner, full of chaff and laughter,
+      and apparently still enchanted with each other&rsquo;s society. Nelson Vanderlyn
+      beamed on his wife, sent his daughter off to bed with a kiss, and leaning
+      back in his armchair before the fruit-and-flower-laden table, declared
+      that he&rsquo;d never spent a jollier day in his life. Susy seemed to come in
+      for a full share of his approbation, and Lansing thought that Ellie was
+      unusually demonstrative to her friend. Strefford, from his hostess&rsquo;s side,
+      glanced across now and then at young Mrs. Lansing, and his glance seemed
+      to Lansing a confidential comment on the Vanderlyn raptures. But then
+      Strefford was always having private jokes with people or about them; and
+      Lansing was irritated with himself for perpetually suspecting his best
+      friends of vague complicities at his expense. &ldquo;If I&rsquo;m going to be jealous
+      of Streffy now&mdash;!&rdquo; he concluded with a grimace of self-derision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Certainly Susy looked lovely enough to justify the most irrational pangs.
+      As a girl she had been, for some people&rsquo;s taste, a trifle fine-drawn and
+      sharp-edged; now, to her old lightness of line was added a shadowy bloom,
+      a sort of star-reflecting depth. Her movements were slower, less angular;
+      her mouth had a needing droop, her lids seemed weighed down by their
+      lashes; and then suddenly the old spirit would reveal itself through the
+      new languor, like the tartness at the core of a sweet fruit. As her
+      husband looked at her across the flowers and lights he laughed inwardly at
+      the nothingness of all things else.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Vanderlyn and Clarissa left betimes the next morning; and Mrs. Vanderlyn,
+      who was to start for St. Moritz in the afternoon, devoted her last hours
+      to anxious conferences with her maid and Susy. Strefford, with Fred Gillow
+      and the others, had gone for a swim at the Lido, and Lansing seized the
+      opportunity to get back to his book.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The quietness of the great echoing place gave him a foretaste of the
+      solitude to come. By mid-August all their party would be scattered: the
+      Hickses off on a cruise to Crete and the Ægean, Fred Gillow on the way to
+      his moor, Strefford to stay with friends in Capri till his annual visit to
+      Northumberland in September. One by one the others would follow, and
+      Lansing and Susy be left alone in the great sun-proof palace, alone under
+      the star-laden skies, alone with the great orange moons&mdash;still theirs!&mdash;above
+      the bell-tower of San Giorgio. The novel, in that blessed quiet, would
+      unfold itself as harmoniously as his dreams.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He wrote on, forgetful of the passing hours, till the door opened and he
+      heard a step behind him. The next moment two hands were clasped over his
+      eyes, and the air was full of Mrs. Vanderlyn&rsquo;s last new scent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You dear thing&mdash;I&rsquo;m just off, you know,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Susy told me you
+      were working, and I forbade her to call you down. She and Streffy are
+      waiting to take me to the station, and I&rsquo;ve run up to say good-bye.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ellie, dear!&rdquo; Full of compunction, Lansing pushed aside his writing and
+      started up; but she pressed him back into his seat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no! I should never forgive myself if I&rsquo;d interrupted you. I oughtn&rsquo;t
+      to have come up; Susy didn&rsquo;t want me to. But I had to tell you, you
+      dear.... I had to thank you...&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In her dark travelling dress and hat, so discreetly conspicuous, so
+      negligent and so studied, with a veil masking her paint, and gloves hiding
+      her rings, she looked younger, simpler, more natural than he had ever seen
+      her. Poor Ellie such a good fellow, after all!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To thank me? For what? For being so happy here?&rdquo; he laughed, taking her
+      hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at him, laughed back, and flung her arms about his neck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For helping me to be so happy elsewhere&mdash;you and Susy, you two
+      blessed darlings!&rdquo; she cried, with a kiss on his cheek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Their eyes met for a second; then her arms slipped slowly downward,
+      dropping to her sides. Lansing sat before her like a stone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; she gasped, &ldquo;why do you stare so? Didn&rsquo;t you know...?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They heard Strefford&rsquo;s shrill voice on the stairs. &ldquo;Ellie, where the deuce
+      are you? Susy&rsquo;s in the gondola. You&rsquo;ll miss the train!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing stood up and caught Mrs. Vanderlyn by the wrist. &ldquo;What do you
+      mean? What are you talking about?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, nothing... But you were both such bricks about the letters.... And
+      when Nelson was here, too.... Nick, don&rsquo;t hurt my wrist so! I must run!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He dropped her hand and stood motionless, staring after her and listening
+      to the click of her high heels as she fled across the room and along the
+      echoing corridor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he turned back to the table he noticed that a small morocco case had
+      fallen among his papers. In falling it had opened, and before him, on the
+      pale velvet lining, lay a scarf-pin set with a perfect pearl. He picked
+      the box up, and was about to hasten after Mrs. Vanderlyn&mdash;it was so
+      like her to shed jewels on her path!&mdash;when he noticed his own
+      initials on the cover.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He dropped the box as if it had been a hot coal, and sat for a long while
+      gazing at the gold N. L., which seemed to have burnt itself into his
+      flesh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last he roused himself and stood up.
+    </p>
+
+
+<h3>X.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">With</span> a sigh of relief Susy drew the pins from her hat and threw herself
+      down on the lounge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ordeal she had dreaded was over, and Mr. and Mrs. Vanderlyn had safely
+      gone their several ways. Poor Ellie was not noted for prudence, and when
+      life smiled on her she was given to betraying her gratitude too openly;
+      but thanks to Susy&rsquo;s vigilance (and, no doubt, to Strefford&rsquo;s tacit
+      co-operation), the dreaded twenty-four hours were happily over. Nelson
+      Vanderlyn had departed without a shadow on his brow, and though Ellie&rsquo;s,
+      when she came down from bidding Nick good-bye, had seemed to Susy less
+      serene than usual, she became her normal self as soon as it was discovered
+      that the red morocco bag with her jewel-box was missing. Before it had
+      been discovered in the depths of the gondola they had reached the station,
+      and there was just time to thrust her into her &ldquo;sleeper,&rdquo; from which she
+      was seen to wave an unperturbed farewell to her friends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, my dear, we&rsquo;ve been it through,&rdquo; Strefford remarked with a deep
+      breath as the St. Moritz express rolled away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; Susy sighed in mute complicity; then, as if to cover her
+      self-betrayal: &ldquo;Poor darling, she does so like what she likes!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;even if it&rsquo;s a rotten bounder,&rdquo; Strefford agreed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A rotten bounder? Why, I thought&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That it was still young Davenant? Lord, no&mdash;not for the last six
+      months. Didn&rsquo;t she tell you&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy felt herself redden. &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t ask her&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ask her? You mean you didn&rsquo;t let her!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t let her. And I don&rsquo;t let you,&rdquo; Susy added sharply, as he helped
+      her into the gondola.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, all right: I daresay you&rsquo;re right. It simplifies things,&rdquo; Strefford
+      placidly acquiesced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She made no answer, and in silence they glided homeward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, in the quiet of her own room, Susy lay and pondered on the distance
+      she had travelled during the last year. Strefford had read her mind with
+      his usual penetration. It was true that there had been a time when she
+      would have thought it perfectly natural that Ellie should tell her
+      everything; that the name of young Davenant&rsquo;s successor should be confided
+      to her as a matter of course. Apparently even Ellie had been obscurely
+      aware of the change, for after a first attempt to force her confidences on
+      Susy she had contented herself with vague expressions of gratitude,
+      allusive smiles and sighs, and the pretty &ldquo;surprise&rdquo; of the sapphire
+      bangle slipped onto her friend&rsquo;s wrist in the act of their farewell
+      embrace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bangle was extremely handsome. Susy, who had an auctioneer&rsquo;s eye for
+      values, knew to a fraction the worth of those deep convex stones
+      alternating with small emeralds and brilliants. She was glad to own the
+      bracelet, and enchanted with the effect it produced on her slim wrist;
+      yet, even while admiring it, and rejoicing that it was hers, she had
+      already transmuted it into specie, and reckoned just how far it would go
+      toward the paying of domestic necessities. For whatever came to her now
+      interested her only as something more to be offered up to Nick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The door opened and Nick came in. Dusk had fallen, and she could not see
+      his face; but something in the jerk of the door-handle roused her
+      ever-wakeful apprehension. She hurried toward him with outstretched wrist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look, dearest&mdash;wasn&rsquo;t it too darling of Ellie?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She pressed the button of the lamp that lit her dressing-table, and her
+      husband&rsquo;s face started unfamiliarly out of the twilight. She slipped off
+      the bracelet and held it up to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I can go you one better,&rdquo; he said with a laugh; and pulling a morocco
+      case from his pocket he flung it down among the scent-bottles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy opened the case automatically, staring at the pearl because she was
+      afraid to look again at Nick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ellie&mdash;gave you this?&rdquo; she asked at length.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. She gave me this.&rdquo; There was a pause. &ldquo;Would you mind telling me,&rdquo;
+       Lansing continued in the same dead-level tone, &ldquo;exactly for what services
+      we&rsquo;ve both been so handsomely paid?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The pearl is beautiful,&rdquo; Susy murmured, to gain time, while her head spun
+      round with unimaginable terrors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So are your sapphires; though, on closer examination, my services would
+      appear to have been valued rather higher than yours. Would you be kind
+      enough to tell me just what they were?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy threw her head back and looked at him. &ldquo;What on earth are you talking
+      about, Nick! Why shouldn&rsquo;t Ellie have given us these things? Do you forget
+      that it&rsquo;s like our giving her a pen-wiper or a button-hook? What is it you
+      are trying to suggest?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It had cost her a considerable effort to hold his eyes while she put the
+      questions. Something had happened between him and Ellie, that was
+      evident&mdash;one of those hideous unforeseeable blunders that may cause one&rsquo;s
+      cleverest plans to crumble at a stroke; and again Susy shuddered at the
+      frailty of her bliss. But her old training stood her in good stead. There
+      had been more than one moment in her past when everything&mdash;somebody else&rsquo;s
+      everything&mdash;had depended on her keeping a cool head and a clear glance. It
+      would have been a wonder if now, when she felt her own everything at
+      stake, she had not been able to put up as good a defence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; she repeated impatiently, as Lansing continued to remain
+      silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s what I&rsquo;m here to ask,&rdquo; he returned, keeping his eyes as steady as
+      she kept hers. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s no reason on earth, as you say, why Ellie
+      shouldn&rsquo;t give us presents&mdash;as expensive presents as she likes; and
+      the pearl is a beauty. All I ask is: for what specific services were they
+      given? For, allowing for all the absence of scruple that marks the
+      intercourse of truly civilized people, you&rsquo;ll probably agree that there
+      are limits; at least up to now there have been limits....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I really don&rsquo;t know what you mean. I suppose Ellie wanted to show that
+      she was grateful to us for looking after Clarissa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But she gave us all this in exchange for that, didn&rsquo;t she?&rdquo; he suggested,
+      with a sweep of the hand around the beautiful shadowy room. &ldquo;A whole
+      summer of it if we choose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy smiled. &ldquo;Apparently she didn&rsquo;t think that enough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a doting mother! It shows the store she sets upon her child.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, don&rsquo;t you set store upon Clarissa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Clarissa is exquisite; but her mother didn&rsquo;t mention her in offering me
+      this recompense.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy lifted her head again. &ldquo;Whom did she mention?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Vanderlyn,&rdquo; said Lansing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Vanderlyn? Nelson?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;and some letters... something about letters.... What is it, my
+      dear, that you and I have been hired to hide from Vanderlyn? Because I
+      should like to know,&rdquo; Nick broke out savagely, &ldquo;if we&rsquo;ve been adequately
+      paid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy was silent: she needed time to reckon up her forces, and study her
+      next move; and her brain was in such a whirl of fear that she could at
+      last only retort: &ldquo;What is it that Ellie said to you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing laughed again. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s just what you&rsquo;d like to find out&mdash;isn&rsquo;t
+      it?&mdash;in order to know the line to take in making your explanation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The sneer had an effect that he could not have foreseen, and that Susy
+      herself had not expected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, don&rsquo;t&mdash;don&rsquo;t let us speak to each other like that!&rdquo; she cried;
+      and sinking down by the dressing-table she hid her face in her hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed to her, now, that nothing mattered except that their love for
+      each other, their faith in each other, should be saved from some
+      unhealable hurt. She was willing to tell Nick everything&mdash;she wanted
+      to tell him everything&mdash;if only she could be sure of reaching a
+      responsive chord in him. But the scene of the cigars came back to her, and
+      benumbed her. If only she could make him see that nothing was of any
+      account as long as they continued to love each other!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His touch fell compassionately on her shoulder. &ldquo;Poor child&mdash;don&rsquo;t,&rdquo;
+       he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Their eyes met, but his expression checked the smile breaking through her
+      tears. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you see,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;that we&rsquo;ve got to have this thing
+      out?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She continued to stare at him through a prism of tears. &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t&mdash;while
+      you stand up like that,&rdquo; she stammered, childishly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had cowered down again into a corner of the lounge; but Lansing did
+      not seat himself at her side. He took a chair facing her, like a caller on
+      the farther side of a stately tea-tray. &ldquo;Will that do?&rdquo; he asked with a
+      stiff smile, as if to humour her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing will do&mdash;as long as you&rsquo;re not you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She shook her head wearily. &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the use? You accept things
+      theoretically&mdash;and then when they happen....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What things? What has happened!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A sudden impatience mastered her. What did he suppose, after all&mdash;?
+      &ldquo;But you know all about Ellie. We used to talk about her often enough in
+      old times,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ellie and young Davenant?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Young Davenant; or the others....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Or the others. But what business was it of ours?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, that&rsquo;s just what I think!&rdquo; she cried, springing up with an explosion
+      of relief. Lansing stood up also, but there was no answering light in his
+      face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We&rsquo;re outside of all that; we&rsquo;ve nothing to do with it, have we?&rdquo; he
+      pursued.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing whatever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then what on earth is the meaning of Ellie&rsquo;s gratitude? Gratitude for
+      what we&rsquo;ve done about some letters&mdash;and about Vanderlyn?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, not you,&rdquo; Susy cried, involuntarily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not I? Then you?&rdquo; He came close and took her by the wrist. &ldquo;Answer me.
+      Have you been mixed up in some dirty business of Ellie&rsquo;s?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a pause. She found it impossible to speak, with that burning
+      grasp on the wrist where the bangle had been. At length he let her go and
+      moved away. &ldquo;Answer,&rdquo; he repeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve told you it was my business and not yours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He received this in silence; then he questioned: &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve been sending
+      letters for her, I suppose? To whom?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, why do you torment me? Nelson was not supposed to know that she&rsquo;d
+      been away. She left me the letters to post to him once a week. I found
+      them here the night we arrived.... It was the price&mdash;for this. Oh,
+      Nick, say it&rsquo;s been worth it&mdash;say at least that it&rsquo;s been worth it!&rdquo; she
+      implored him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood motionless, unresponding. One hand drummed on the corner of her
+      dressing-table, making the jewelled bangle dance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How many letters?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know... four... five... What does it matter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And once a week, for six weeks&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you took it all as a matter of course?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No: I hated it. But what could I do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What could you do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When our being together depended on it? Oh, Nick, how could you think I&rsquo;d
+      give you up?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give me up?&rdquo; he echoed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;doesn&rsquo;t our being together depend on&mdash;on what we can get
+      out of people? And hasn&rsquo;t there always got to be some give-and-take? Did
+      you ever in your life get anything for nothing?&rdquo; she cried with sudden
+      exasperation. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve lived among these people as long as I have; I
+      suppose it&rsquo;s not the first time&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By God, but it is,&rdquo; he exclaimed, flushing. &ldquo;And that&rsquo;s the difference&mdash;the
+      fundamental difference.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The difference!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Between you and me. I&rsquo;ve never in my life done people&rsquo;s dirty work for
+      them&mdash;least of all for favours in return. I suppose you guessed it,
+      or you wouldn&rsquo;t have hidden this beastly business from me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The blood rose to Susy&rsquo;s temples also. Yes, she had guessed it;
+      instinctively, from the day she had first visited him in his bare
+      lodgings, she had been aware of his stricter standard. But how could she
+      tell him that under his influence her standard had become stricter too,
+      and that it was as much to hide her humiliation from herself as to escape
+      his anger that she had held her tongue?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You knew I wouldn&rsquo;t have stayed here another day if I&rsquo;d known,&rdquo; he
+      continued.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes: and then where in the world should we have gone?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean that&mdash;in one way or another&mdash;what you call
+      give-and-take is the price of our remaining together?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;isn&rsquo;t it,&rdquo; she faltered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then we&rsquo;d better part, hadn&rsquo;t we?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke in a low tone, thoughtfully and deliberately, as if this had been
+      the inevitable conclusion to which their passionate argument had led.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy made no answer. For a moment she ceased to be conscious of the causes
+      of what had happened; the thing itself seemed to have smothered her under
+      its ruins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nick wandered away from the dressing-table and stood gazing out of the
+      window at the darkening canal flecked with lights. She looked at his back,
+      and wondered what would happen if she were to go up to him and fling her
+      arms about him. But even if her touch could have broken the spell, she was
+      not sure she would have chosen that way of breaking it. Beneath her
+      speechless anguish there burned the half-conscious sense of having been
+      unfairly treated. When they had entered into their queer compact, Nick had
+      known as well as she on what compromises and concessions the life they
+      were to live together must be based. That he should have forgotten it
+      seemed so unbelievable that she wondered, with a new leap of fear, if he
+      were using the wretched Ellie&rsquo;s indiscretion as a means of escape from a
+      tie already wearied of. Suddenly she raised her head with a laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After all&mdash;you were right when you wanted me to be your mistress.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned on her with an astonished stare. &ldquo;You&mdash;my mistress?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Through all her pain she thrilled with pride at the discovery that such a
+      possibility had long since become unthinkable to him. But she insisted.
+      &ldquo;That day at the Fulmers&rsquo;&mdash;have you forgotten? When you said it would
+      be sheer madness for us to marry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing stood leaning in the embrasure of the window, his eyes fixed on
+      the mosaic volutes of the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was right enough when I said it would be sheer madness for us to
+      marry,&rdquo; he rejoined at length.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She sprang up trembling. &ldquo;Well, that&rsquo;s easily settled. Our compact&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, that compact&mdash;&rdquo; he interrupted her with an impatient laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aren&rsquo;t you asking me to carry it out now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because I said we&rsquo;d better part?&rdquo; He paused. &ldquo;But the compact&mdash;I&rsquo;d
+      almost forgotten it&mdash;was to the effect, wasn&rsquo;t it, that we were to
+      give each other a helping hand if either of us had a better chance? The
+      thing was absurd, of course; a mere joke; from my point of view, at least.
+      I shall never want any better chance... any other chance....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Nick, oh, Nick... but then....&rdquo; She was close to him, his face
+      looming down through her tears; but he put her back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would have been easy enough, wouldn&rsquo;t it,&rdquo; he rejoined, &ldquo;if we&rsquo;d been
+      as detachable as all that? As it is, it&rsquo;s going to hurt horribly. But
+      talking it over won&rsquo;t help. You were right just now when you asked how
+      else we were going to live. We&rsquo;re born parasites, both, I suppose, or we&rsquo;d
+      have found out some way long ago. But I find there are things I might put
+      up with for myself, at a pinch&mdash;and should, probably, in time that I
+      can&rsquo;t let you put up with for me... ever.... Those cigars at Como: do you
+      suppose I didn&rsquo;t know it was for me? And this too? Well, it won&rsquo;t do... it
+      won&rsquo;t do....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stopped, as if his courage failed him; and she moaned out: &ldquo;But your
+      writing&mdash;if your book&rsquo;s a success....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My poor Susy&mdash;that&rsquo;s all part of the humbug. We both know that my
+      sort of writing will never pay. And what&rsquo;s the alternative except more of
+      the same kind of baseness? And getting more and more blunted to it? At
+      least, till now, I&rsquo;ve minded certain things; I don&rsquo;t want to go on till I
+      find myself taking them for granted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She reached out a timid hand. &ldquo;But you needn&rsquo;t ever, dear... if you&rsquo;d only
+      leave it to me....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He drew back sharply. &ldquo;That seems simple to you, I suppose? Well, men are
+      different.&rdquo; He walked toward the dressing-table and glanced at the little
+      enamelled clock which had been one of her wedding-presents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Time to dress, isn&rsquo;t it? Shall you mind if I leave you to dine with
+      Streffy, and whoever else is coming? I&rsquo;d rather like a long tramp, and no
+      more talking just at present except with myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He passed her by and walked rapidly out of the room. Susy stood
+      motionless, unable to lift a detaining hand or to find a final word of
+      appeal. On her disordered dressing-table Mrs. Vanderlyn&rsquo;s gifts glittered
+      in the rosy lamp-light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes: men were different, as he said.
+    </p>
+
+
+<h3>XI.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">But</span> there were necessary accommodations, there always had been; Nick in
+      old times, had been the first to own it.... How they had laughed at the
+      Perpendicular People, the people who went by on the other side (since you
+      couldn&rsquo;t be a good Samaritan without stooping over and poking into heaps
+      of you didn&rsquo;t know what)! And now Nick had suddenly become
+      perpendicular....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy, that evening, at the head of the dinner table, saw&mdash;in the
+      breaks between her scudding thoughts&mdash;the nauseatingly familiar faces
+      of the people she called her friends: Strefford, Fred Gillow, a giggling
+      fool of a young Breckenridge, of their New York group, who had arrived
+      that day, and Prince Nerone Altineri, Ursula&rsquo;s Prince, who, in Ursula&rsquo;s
+      absence at a tiresome cure, had, quite simply and naturally, preferred to
+      join her husband at Venice. Susy looked from one to the other of them, as
+      if with newly-opened eyes, and wondered what life would be like with no
+      faces but such as theirs to furnish it....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ah, Nick had become perpendicular!... After all, most people went through
+      life making a given set of gestures, like dance-steps learned in advance.
+      If your dancing manual told you at a given time to be perpendicular, you
+      had to be, automatically&mdash;and that was Nick!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what on earth, Susy,&rdquo; Gillow&rsquo;s puzzled voice suddenly came to her as
+      from immeasurable distances, &ldquo;Are you going to do in this beastly stifling
+      hole for the rest of the summer?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ask Nick, my dear fellow,&rdquo; Strefford answered for her; and: &ldquo;By the way,
+      where is Nick&mdash;if one may ask?&rdquo; young Breckenridge interposed,
+      glancing up to take belated note of his host&rsquo;s absence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dining out,&rdquo; said Susy glibly. &ldquo;People turned up: blighting bores that I
+      wouldn&rsquo;t have dared to inflict on you.&rdquo; How easily the old familiar
+      fibbing came to her!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The kind to whom you say, &lsquo;Now mind you look me up&rsquo;; and then spend the
+      rest of your life dodging-like our good Hickses,&rdquo; Strefford amplified.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Hickses&mdash;but, of course, Nick was with the Hickses! It went
+      through Susy like a knife, and the dinner she had so lightly fibbed became
+      a hateful truth. She said to herself feverishly: &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll call him up there
+      after dinner&mdash;and then he will feel silly&rdquo;&mdash;but only to remember
+      that the Hickses, in their mediaeval setting, had of course sternly denied
+      themselves a telephone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fact of Nick&rsquo;s temporary inaccessibility&mdash;since she was now
+      convinced that he was really at the Hickses&rsquo;&mdash;turned her distress to
+      a mocking irritation. Ah, that was where he carried his principles, his
+      standards, or whatever he called the new set of rules he had suddenly
+      begun to apply to the old game! It was stupid of her not to have guessed
+      it at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, the Hickses&mdash;Nick adores them, you know. He&rsquo;s going to marry
+      Coral next,&rdquo; she laughed out, flashing the joke around the table with all
+      her practiced flippancy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lord!&rdquo; grasped Gillow, inarticulate: while the Prince displayed the
+      unsurprised smile which Susy accused him of practicing every morning with
+      his Mueller exercises.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly Susy felt Strefford&rsquo;s eyes upon her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the matter with me? Too much rouge?&rdquo; she asked, passing her arm in
+      his as they left the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No: too little. Look at yourself,&rdquo; he answered in a low tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, in these cadaverous old looking-glasses-everybody looks fished up
+      from the canal!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She jerked away from him to spin down the long floor of the sala, hands on
+      hips, whistling a rag-time tune. The Prince and young Breckenridge caught
+      her up, and she spun back with the latter, while Gillow&mdash;it was believed to
+      be his sole accomplishment&mdash;snapped his fingers in simulation of bones, and
+      shuffled after the couple on stamping feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy sank down on a sofa near the window, fanning herself with a floating
+      scarf, and the men foraged for cigarettes, and rang for the gondoliers,
+      who came in with trays of cooling drinks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, what next&mdash;this ain&rsquo;t all, is it?&rdquo; Gillow presently queried,
+      from the divan where he lolled half-asleep with dripping brow. Fred
+      Gillow, like Nature, abhorred a void, and it was inconceivable to him that
+      every hour of man&rsquo;s rational existence should not furnish a motive for
+      getting up and going somewhere else. Young Breckenridge, who took the same
+      view, and the Prince, who earnestly desired to, reminded the company that
+      somebody they knew was giving a dance that night at the Lido.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford vetoed the Lido, on the ground that he&rsquo;d just come back from
+      there, and proposed that they should go out on foot for a change.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not? What fun!&rdquo; Susy was up in an instant. &ldquo;Let&rsquo;s pay somebody a
+      surprise visit&mdash;I don&rsquo;t know who! Streffy, Prince, can&rsquo;t you think of
+      somebody who&rsquo;d be particularly annoyed by our arrival?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, the list&rsquo;s too long. Let&rsquo;s start, and choose our victim on the way,&rdquo;
+       Strefford suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy ran to her room for a light cloak, and without changing her
+      high-heeled satin slippers went out with the four men. There was no moon&mdash;thank
+      heaven there was no moon!&mdash;but the stars hung over them as close as
+      fruit, and secret fragrances dropped on them from garden-walls. Susy&rsquo;s
+      heart tightened with memories of Como.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They wandered on, laughing and dawdling, and yielding to the drifting
+      whims of aimless people. Presently someone proposed taking a nearer look
+      at the facade of San Giorgio Maggiore, and they hailed a gondola and were
+      rowed out through the bobbing lanterns and twanging guitar-strings. When
+      they landed again, Gillow, always acutely bored by scenery, and
+      particularly resentful of midnight aesthetics, suggested a night club near
+      at hand, which was said to be jolly. The Prince warmly supported this
+      proposal; but on Susy&rsquo;s curt refusal they started their rambling again,
+      circuitously threading the vague dark lanes and making for the Piazza and
+      Florian&rsquo;s ices. Suddenly, at a calle-corner, unfamiliar and yet somehow
+      known to her, Susy paused to stare about her with a laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But the Hickses&mdash;surely that&rsquo;s their palace? And the windows all lit
+      up! They must be giving a party! Oh, do let&rsquo;s go up and surprise them!&rdquo;
+       The idea struck her as one of the drollest that she had ever originated,
+      and she wondered that her companions should respond so languidly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t see anything very thrilling in surprising the Hickses,&rdquo; Gillow
+      protested, defrauded of possible excitements; and Strefford added: &ldquo;It
+      would surprise me more than them if I went.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Susy insisted feverishly: &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t know. It may be awfully exciting!
+      I have an idea that Coral&rsquo;s announcing her engagement&mdash;her engagement
+      to Nick! Come, give me a hand, Streff&mdash;and you the other, Fred-&rdquo; she
+      began to hum the first bars of Donna Anna&rsquo;s entrance in Don Giovanni.
+      &ldquo;Pity I haven&rsquo;t got a black cloak and a mask....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, your face will do,&rdquo; said Strefford, laying his hand on her arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She drew back, flushing crimson. Breckenridge and the Prince had sprung on
+      ahead, and Gillow, lumbering after them, was already halfway up the
+      stairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My face? My face? What&rsquo;s the matter with my face? Do you know any reason
+      why I shouldn&rsquo;t go to the Hickses to-night?&rdquo; Susy broke out in sudden
+      wrath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;None whatever; except that if you do it will bore me to death,&rdquo; Strefford
+      returned, with serenity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, in that case&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; come on. I hear those fools banging on the door already.&rdquo; He caught
+      her by the hand, and they started up the stairway. But on the first
+      landing she paused, twisted her hand out of his, and without a word,
+      without a conscious thought, dashed down the long flight, across the great
+      resounding vestibule and out into the darkness of the calle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford caught up with her, and they stood a moment silent in the night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Susy&mdash;what the devil&rsquo;s the matter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The matter? Can&rsquo;t you see? That I&rsquo;m tired, that I&rsquo;ve got a splitting
+      headache&mdash;that you bore me to death, one and all of you!&rdquo; She turned
+      and laid a deprecating hand on his arm. &ldquo;Streffy, old dear, don&rsquo;t mind me:
+      but for God&rsquo;s sake find a gondola and send me home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alone?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was never any concern of Streff&rsquo;s if people wanted to do things he did
+      not understand, and she knew that she could count on his obedience. They
+      walked on in silence to the next canal, and he picked up a passing gondola
+      and put her in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now go and amuse yourself,&rdquo; she called after him, as the boat shot under
+      the nearest bridge. Anything, anything, to be alone, away from the folly
+      and futility that would be all she had left if Nick were to drop out of
+      her life....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But perhaps he has dropped already&mdash;dropped for good,&rdquo; she thought
+      as she set her foot on the Vanderlyn threshold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The short summer night was already growing transparent: a new born breeze
+      stirred the soiled surface of the water and sent it lapping freshly
+      against the old palace doorways. Nearly two o&rsquo;clock! Nick had no doubt
+      come back long ago. Susy hurried up the stairs, reassured by the mere
+      thought of his nearness. She knew that when their eyes and their lips met
+      it would be impossible for anything to keep them apart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gondolier dozing on the landing roused himself to receive her, and to
+      proffer two envelopes. The upper one was a telegram for Strefford: she
+      threw it down again and paused under the lantern hanging from the painted
+      vault, the other envelope in her hand. The address it bore was in Nick&rsquo;s
+      writing. &ldquo;When did the signore leave this for me? Has he gone out again?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gone out again? But the signore had not come in since dinner: of that the
+      gondolier was positive, as he had been on duty all the evening. A boy had
+      brought the letter&mdash;an unknown boy: he had left it without waiting.
+      It must have been about half an hour after the signora had herself gone
+      out with her guests.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy, hardly hearing him, fled on to her own room, and there, beside the
+      very lamp which, two months before, had illuminated Ellie Vanderlyn&rsquo;s
+      fatal letter, she opened Nick&rsquo;s.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t think me hard on you, dear; but I&rsquo;ve got to work this thing out by
+      myself. The sooner the better&mdash;don&rsquo;t you agree? So I&rsquo;m taking the express
+      to Milan presently. You&rsquo;ll get a proper letter in a day or two. I wish I
+      could think, now, of something to say that would show you I&rsquo;m not a brute&mdash;but
+      I can&rsquo;t. N. L.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was not much of the night left in which to sleep, even had a
+      semblance of sleep been achievable. The letter fell from Susy&rsquo;s hands, and
+      she crept out onto the balcony and cowered there, her forehead pressed
+      against the balustrade, the dawn wind stirring in her thin laces. Through
+      her closed eyelids and the tightly-clenched fingers pressed against them,
+      she felt the penetration of the growing light, the relentless advance of
+      another day&mdash;a day without purpose and without meaning&mdash;a day
+      without Nick. At length she dropped her hands, and staring from dry lids
+      saw a rim of fire above the roofs across the Grand Canal. She sprang up,
+      ran back into her room, and dragging the heavy curtains shut across the
+      windows, stumbled over in the darkness to the lounge and fell among its
+      pillows-face downward&mdash;groping, delving for a deeper night....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She started up, stiff and aching, to see a golden wedge of sun on the
+      floor at her feet. She had slept, then&mdash;was it possible?&mdash;it
+      must be eight or nine o&rsquo;clock already! She had slept&mdash;slept like a
+      drunkard&mdash;with that letter on the table at her elbow! Ah, now she
+      remembered&mdash;she had dreamed that the letter was a dream! But there,
+      inexorably, it lay; and she picked it up, and slowly, painfully re-read
+      it. Then she tore it into shreds hunted for a match, and kneeling before
+      the empty hearth, as though she were accomplishing some funeral rite, she
+      burnt every shred of it to ashes. Nick would thank her for that some day!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After a bath and a hurried toilet she began to be aware of feeling younger
+      and more hopeful. After all, Nick had merely said that he was going away
+      for &ldquo;a day or two.&rdquo; And the letter was not cruel: there were tender things
+      in it, showing through the curt words. She smiled at herself a little
+      stiffly in the glass, put a dash of red on her colourless lips, and rang
+      for the maid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Coffee, Giovanna, please; and will you tell Mr. Strefford that I should
+      like to see him presently.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      If Nick really kept to his intention of staying away for a few days she
+      must trump up some explanation of his absence; but her mind refused to
+      work, and the only thing she could think of was to take Strefford into her
+      confidence. She knew that he could be trusted in a real difficulty; his
+      impish malice transformed itself into a resourceful ingenuity when his
+      friends required it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The maid stood looking at her with a puzzled gaze, and Susy somewhat
+      sharply repeated her order. &ldquo;But don&rsquo;t wake him on purpose,&rdquo; she added,
+      foreseeing the probable effect on Strefford&rsquo;s temper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, signora, the gentleman is already out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Already out?&rdquo; Strefford, who could hardly be routed from his bed before
+      luncheon-time! &ldquo;Is it so late?&rdquo; Susy cried, incredulous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After nine. And the gentleman took the eight o&rsquo;clock train for England.
+      Gervaso said he had received a telegram. He left word that he would write
+      to the signora.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The door closed upon the maid, and Susy continued to gaze at her painted
+      image in the glass, as if she had been trying to outstare an importunate
+      stranger. There was no one left for her to take counsel of, then&mdash;no
+      one but poor Fred Gillow! She made a grimace at the idea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But what on earth could have summoned Strefford back to England?
+    </p>
+
+
+<h3>XII.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">Nick Lansing</span>, in the Milan express, was roused by the same bar of sunshine
+      lying across his knees. He yawned, looked with disgust at his stolidly
+      sleeping neighbours, and wondered why he had decided to go to Milan, and
+      what on earth he should do when he got there. The difficulty about
+      trenchant decisions was that the next morning they generally left one
+      facing a void....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the train drew into the station at Milan, he scrambled out, got some
+      coffee, and having drunk it decided to continue his journey to Genoa. The
+      state of being carried passively onward postponed action and dulled
+      thought; and after twelve hours of furious mental activity that was
+      exactly what he wanted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He fell into a doze again, waking now and then to haggard intervals of
+      more thinking, and then dropping off to the clank and rattle of the train.
+      Inside his head, in his waking intervals, the same clanking and grinding
+      of wheels and chains went on unremittingly. He had done all his lucid
+      thinking within an hour of leaving the Palazzo Vanderlyn the night before;
+      since then, his brain had simply continued to revolve indefatigably about
+      the same old problem. His cup of coffee, instead of clearing his thoughts,
+      had merely accelerated their pace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At Genoa he wandered about in the hot streets, bought a cheap suit-case
+      and some underclothes, and then went down to the port in search of a
+      little hotel he remembered there. An hour later he was sitting in the
+      coffee-room, smoking and glancing vacantly over the papers while he waited
+      for dinner, when he became aware of being timidly but intently examined by
+      a small round-faced gentleman with eyeglasses who sat alone at the
+      adjoining table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hullo&mdash;Buttles!&rdquo; Lansing exclaimed, recognising with surprise the
+      recalcitrant secretary who had resisted Miss Hicks&rsquo;s endeavour to convert
+      him to Tiepolo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Buttles, blushing to the roots of his scant hair, half rose and bowed
+      ceremoniously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nick Lansing&rsquo;s first feeling was of annoyance at being disturbed in his
+      solitary broodings; his next, of relief at having to postpone them even to
+      converse with Mr. Buttles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No idea you were here: is the yacht in harbour?&rdquo; he asked, remembering
+      that the Ibis must be just about to spread her wings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Buttles, at salute behind his chair, signed a mute negation: for the
+      moment he seemed too embarrassed to speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah&mdash;you&rsquo;re here as an advance guard? I remember now&mdash;I saw Miss
+      Hicks in Venice the day before yesterday,&rdquo; Lansing continued, dazed at the
+      thought that hardly forty-eight hours had passed since his encounter with
+      Coral in the Scalzi.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Buttles, instead of speaking, had tentatively approached his table.
+      &ldquo;May I take this seat for a moment, Mr. Lansing? Thank you. No, I am not
+      here as an advance guard&mdash;though I believe the Ibis is due some time
+      to-morrow.&rdquo; He cleared his throat, wiped his eyeglasses on a silk
+      handkerchief, replaced them on his nose, and went on solemnly: &ldquo;Perhaps,
+      to clear up any possible misunderstanding, I ought to say that I am no
+      longer in the employ of Mr. Hicks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing glanced at him sympathetically. It was clear that he suffered
+      horribly in imparting this information, though his compact face did not
+      lend itself to any dramatic display of emotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Really,&rdquo; Nick smiled, and then ventured: &ldquo;I hope it&rsquo;s not owing to
+      conscientious objections to Tiepolo?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Buttles&rsquo;s blush became a smouldering agony. &ldquo;Ah, Miss Hicks mentioned
+      to you... told you...? No, Mr. Lansing. I am principled against the effete
+      art of Tiepolo, and of all his contemporaries, I confess; but if Miss
+      Hicks chooses to surrender herself momentarily to the unwholesome spell of
+      the Italian decadence it is not for me to protest or to criticize. Her
+      intellectual and aesthetic range so far exceeds my humble capacity that it
+      would be ridiculous, unbecoming....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He broke off, and once more wiped a faint moisture from his eyeglasses. It
+      was evident that he was suffering from a distress which he longed and yet
+      dreaded to communicate. But Nick made no farther effort to bridge the gulf
+      of his own preoccupations; and Mr. Buttles, after an expectant pause, went
+      on: &ldquo;If you see me here to-day it is only because, after a somewhat abrupt
+      departure, I find myself unable to take leave of our friends without a
+      last look at the Ibis&mdash;the scene of so many stimulating hours. But I
+      must beg you,&rdquo; he added earnestly, &ldquo;should you see Miss Hicks&mdash;or any
+      other member of the party&mdash;to make no allusion to my presence in
+      Genoa. I wish,&rdquo; said Mr. Buttles with simplicity, &ldquo;to preserve the
+      strictest incognito.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing glanced at him kindly. &ldquo;Oh, but&mdash;isn&rsquo;t that a little
+      unfriendly?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No other course is possible, Mr. Lansing,&rdquo; said the ex-secretary, &ldquo;and I
+      commit myself to your discretion. The truth is, if I am here it is not to
+      look once more at the Ibis, but at Miss Hicks: once only. You will
+      understand me, and appreciate what I am suffering.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He bowed again, and trotted away on his small, tightly-booted feet;
+      pausing on the threshold to say: &ldquo;From the first it was hopeless,&rdquo; before
+      he disappeared through the glass doors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A gleam of commiseration flashed through Nick&rsquo;s mind: there was something
+      quaintly poignant in the sight of the brisk and efficient Mr. Buttles
+      reduced to a limp image of unrequited passion. And what a painful surprise
+      to the Hickses to be thus suddenly deprived of the secretary who possessed
+      &ldquo;the foreign languages&rdquo;! Mr. Beck kept the accounts and settled with the
+      hotel-keepers; but it was Mr. Buttles&rsquo;s loftier task to entertain in their
+      own tongues the unknown geniuses who flocked about the Hickses, and Nick
+      could imagine how disconcerting his departure must be on the eve of their
+      Grecian cruise which Mrs. Hicks would certainly call an Odyssey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next moment the vision of Coral&rsquo;s hopeless suitor had faded, and Nick
+      was once more spinning around on the wheel of his own woes. The night
+      before, when he had sent his note to Susy, from a little restaurant close
+      to Palazzo Vanderlyn that they often patronized, he had done so with the
+      firm intention of going away for a day or two in order to collect his wits
+      and think over the situation. But after his letter had been entrusted to
+      the landlord&rsquo;s little son, who was a particular friend of Susy&rsquo;s, Nick had
+      decided to await the lad&rsquo;s return. The messenger had not been bidden to
+      ask for an answer; but Nick, knowing the friendly and inquisitive Italian
+      mind, was almost sure that the boy, in the hope of catching a glimpse of
+      Susy, would linger about while the letter was carried up. And he pictured
+      the maid knocking at his wife&rsquo;s darkened room, and Susy dashing some
+      powder on her tear-stained face before she turned on the light&mdash;poor
+      foolish child!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The boy had returned rather sooner than Nick expected, and he had brought
+      no answer, but merely the statement that the signora was out: that
+      everybody was out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Everybody?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The signora and the four gentlemen who were dining at the palace. They
+      all went out together on foot soon after dinner. There was no one to whom
+      I could give the note but the gondolier on the landing, for the signora
+      had said she would be very late, and had sent the maid to bed; and the
+      maid had, of course, gone out immediately with her innamorato.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah&mdash;&rdquo; said Nick, slipping his reward into the boy&rsquo;s hand, and
+      walking out of the restaurant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy had gone out&mdash;gone out with their usual band, as she did every
+      night in these sultry summer weeks, gone out after her talk with Nick, as
+      if nothing had happened, as if his whole world and hers had not crashed in
+      ruins at their feet. Ah, poor Susy! After all, she had merely obeyed the
+      instinct of self preservation, the old hard habit of keeping up, going
+      ahead and hiding her troubles; unless indeed the habit had already
+      engendered indifference, and it had become as easy for her as for most of
+      her friends to pass from drama to dancing, from sorrow to the cinema. What
+      of soul was left, he wondered&mdash;?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His train did not start till midnight, and after leaving the restaurant
+      Nick tramped the sultry by-ways till his tired legs brought him to a
+      standstill under the vine-covered pergola of a gondolier&rsquo;s wine-shop at a
+      landing close to the Piazzetta. There he could absorb cooling drinks until
+      it was time to go to the station.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was after eleven, and he was beginning to look about for a boat, when a
+      black prow pushed up to the steps, and with much chaff and laughter a
+      party of young people in evening dress jumped out. Nick, from under the
+      darkness of the vine, saw that there was only one lady among them, and it
+      did not need the lamp above the landing to reveal her identity. Susy,
+      bareheaded and laughing, a light scarf slipping from her bare shoulders, a
+      cigarette between her fingers, took Strefford&rsquo;s arm and turned in the
+      direction of Florian&rsquo;s, with Gillow, the Prince and young Breckenridge in
+      her wake....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nick had relived this rapid scene hundreds of times during his hours in
+      the train and his aimless trampings through the streets of Genoa. In that
+      squirrel-wheel of a world of his and Susy&rsquo;s you had to keep going or drop
+      out&mdash;and Susy, it was evident, had chosen to keep going. Under the
+      lamp-flare on the landing he had had a good look at her face, and had seen
+      that the mask of paint and powder was carefully enough adjusted to hide
+      any ravages the scene between them might have left. He even fancied that
+      she had dropped a little atropine into her eyes....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no time to spare if he meant to catch the midnight train, and no
+      gondola in sight but that which his wife had just left. He sprang into it,
+      and bade the gondolier carry him to the station. The cushions, as he
+      leaned back, gave out a breath of her scent; and in the glare of electric
+      light at the station he saw at his feet a rose which had fallen from her
+      dress. He ground his heel into it as he got out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There it was, then; that was the last picture he was to have of her. For
+      he knew now that he was not going back; at least not to take up their life
+      together. He supposed he should have to see her once, to talk things over,
+      settle something for their future. He had been sincere in saying that he
+      bore her no ill-will; only he could never go back into that slough again.
+      If he did, he knew he would inevitably be drawn under, slipping downward
+      from concession to concession....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The noises of a hot summer night in the port of Genoa would have kept the
+      most care-free from slumber; but though Nick lay awake he did not notice
+      them, for the tumult in his brain was more deafening. Dawn brought a
+      negative relief, and out of sheer weariness he dropped into a heavy sleep.
+      When he woke it was nearly noon, and from his window he saw the well-known
+      outline of the Ibis standing up dark against the glitter of the harbour.
+      He had no fear of meeting her owners, who had doubtless long since landed
+      and betaken themselves to cooler and more fashionable regions: oddly
+      enough, the fact seemed to accentuate his loneliness, his sense of having
+      no one on earth to turn to. He dressed, and wandered out disconsolately to
+      pick up a cup of coffee in some shady corner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he drank his coffee his thoughts gradually cleared. It became obvious
+      to him that he had behaved like a madman or a petulant child&mdash;he
+      preferred to think it was like a madman. If he and Susy were to separate
+      there was no reason why it should not be done decently and quietly, as
+      such transactions were habitually managed among people of their kind. It
+      seemed grotesque to introduce melodrama into their little world of
+      unruffled Sybarites, and he felt inclined, now, to smile at the
+      incongruity of his gesture.... But suddenly his eyes filled with tears.
+      The future without Susy was unbearable, inconceivable. Why, after all,
+      should they separate? At the question, her soft face seemed close to his,
+      and that slight lift of the upper lip that made her smile so exquisite.
+      Well&mdash;he would go back. But not with any presence of going to talk things
+      over, come to an agreement, wind up their joint life like a business
+      association. No&mdash;if he went back he would go without conditions, for
+      good, forever....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Only, what about the future? What about the not far-distant day when the
+      wedding cheques would have been spent, and Granny&rsquo;s pearls sold, and
+      nothing left except unconcealed and unconditional dependence on rich
+      friends, the role of the acknowledged hangers-on? Was there no other
+      possible solution, no new way of ordering their lives? No&mdash;there was
+      none: he could not picture Susy out of her setting of luxury and leisure,
+      could not picture either of them living such a life as the Nat Fulmers,
+      for instance! He remembered the shabby untidy bungalow in New Hampshire,
+      the slatternly servants, uneatable food and ubiquitous children. How could
+      he ask Susy to share such a life with him? If he did, she would probably
+      have the sense to refuse. Their alliance had been based on a moment&rsquo;s
+      midsummer madness; now the score must be paid....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He decided to write. If they were to part he could not trust himself to
+      see her. He called a waiter, asked for pen and paper, and pushed aside a
+      pile of unread newspapers on the corner of the table where his coffee had
+      been served. As he did so, his eye lit on a Daily Mail of two days before.
+      As a pretext for postponing his letter, he took up the paper and glanced
+      down the first page. He read:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tragic Yachting Accident in the Solent. The Earl of Altringham and his
+      son Viscount d&rsquo;Amblay drowned in midnight collision. Both bodies
+      recovered.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He read on. He grasped the fact that the disaster had happened the night
+      before he had left Venice and that, as the result of a fog in the Solent,
+      their old friend Strefford was now Earl of Altringham, and possessor of
+      one of the largest private fortunes in England. It was vertiginous to
+      think of their old impecunious Streff as the hero of such an adventure.
+      And what irony in that double turn of the wheel which, in one day, had
+      plunged him, Nick Lansing, into nethermost misery, while it tossed the
+      other to the stars!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With an intenser precision he saw again Susy&rsquo;s descent from the gondola at
+      the calle steps, the sound of her laughter and of Strefford&rsquo;s chaff, the
+      way she had caught his arm and clung to it, sweeping the other men on in
+      her train. Strefford&mdash;Susy and Strefford!... More than once, Nick had
+      noticed the softer inflections of his friend&rsquo;s voice when he spoke to
+      Susy, the brooding look in his lazy eyes when they rested on her. In the
+      security of his wedded bliss Nick had made light of those signs. The only
+      real jealousy he had felt had been of Fred Gillow, because of his
+      unlimited power to satisfy a woman&rsquo;s whims. Yet Nick knew that such
+      material advantages would never again suffice for Susy. With Strefford it
+      was different. She had delighted in his society while he was notoriously
+      ineligible; might not she find him irresistible now?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The forgotten terms of their bridal compact came back to Nick: the absurd
+      agreement on which he and Susy had solemnly pledged their faith. But was
+      it so absurd, after all? It had been Susy&rsquo;s suggestion (not his, thank
+      God!); and perhaps in making it she had been more serious than he
+      imagined. Perhaps, even if their rupture had not occurred, Strefford&rsquo;s
+      sudden honours might have caused her to ask for her freedom....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Money, luxury, fashion, pleasure: those were the four cornerstones of her
+      existence. He had always known it&mdash;she herself had always
+      acknowledged it, even in their last dreadful talk together; and once he
+      had gloried in her frankness. How could he ever have imagined that, to
+      have her fill of these things, she would not in time stoop lower than she
+      had yet stooped? Perhaps in giving her up to Strefford he might be saving
+      her. At any rate, the taste of the past was now so bitter to him that he
+      was moved to thank whatever gods there were for pushing that mortuary
+      paragraph under his eye....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Susy, dear [he wrote], the fates seem to have taken our future in hand,
+      and spared us the trouble of unravelling it. If I have sometimes been
+      selfish enough to forget the conditions on which you agreed to marry me,
+      they have come back to me during these two days of solitude. You&rsquo;ve given
+      me the best a man can have, and nothing else will ever be worth much to
+      me. But since I haven&rsquo;t the ability to provide you with what you want, I
+      recognize that I&rsquo;ve no right to stand in your way. We must owe no more
+      Venetian palaces to underhand services. I see by the newspapers that
+      Streff can now give you as many palaces as you want. Let him have the
+      chance&mdash;I fancy he&rsquo;ll jump at it, and he&rsquo;s the best man in sight. I
+      wish I were in his shoes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll write again in a day or two, when I&rsquo;ve collected my wits, and can
+      give you an address. NICK.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He added a line on the subject of their modest funds, put the letter into
+      an envelope, and addressed it to Mrs. Nicholas Lansing. As he did so, he
+      reflected that it was the first time he had ever written his wife&rsquo;s
+      married name.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;by God, no other woman shall have it after her,&rdquo; he vowed, as
+      he groped in his pocketbook for a stamp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood up with a stretch of weariness&mdash;the heat was stifling!&mdash;and
+      put the letter in his pocket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll post it myself, it&rsquo;s safer,&rdquo; he thought; &ldquo;and then what in the name
+      of goodness shall I do next, I wonder?&rdquo; He jammed his hat down on his head
+      and walked out into the sun-blaze.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he was turning away from the square by the general Post Office, a white
+      parasol waved from a passing cab, and Coral Hicks leaned forward with
+      outstretched hand. &ldquo;I knew I&rsquo;d find you,&rdquo; she triumphed. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been
+      driving up and down in this broiling sun for hours, shopping and watching
+      for you at the same time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stared at her blankly, too bewildered even to wonder how she knew he
+      was in Genoa; and she continued, with the kind of shy imperiousness that
+      always made him feel, in her presence, like a member of an orchestra under
+      a masterful baton; &ldquo;Now please get right into this carriage, and don&rsquo;t
+      keep me roasting here another minute.&rdquo; To the cabdriver she called out:
+      &ldquo;Al porto.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nick Lansing sank down beside her. As he did so he noticed a heap of
+      bundles at her feet, and felt that he had simply added one more to the
+      number. He supposed that she was taking her spoils to the Ibis, and that
+      he would be carried up to the deck-house to be displayed with the others.
+      Well, it would all help to pass the day&mdash;and by night he would have
+      reached some kind of a decision about his future.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the third day after Nick&rsquo;s departure the post brought to the Palazzo
+      Vanderlyn three letters for Mrs. Lansing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first to arrive was a word from Strefford, scribbled in the train and
+      posted at Turin. In it he briefly said that he had been called home by the
+      dreadful accident of which Susy had probably read in the daily papers. He
+      added that he would write again from England, and then&mdash;in a blotted
+      postscript&mdash;: &ldquo;I wanted uncommonly badly to see you for good-bye, but
+      the hour was impossible. Regards to Nick. Do write me just a word to
+      Altringham.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The other two letters, which came together in the afternoon, were both
+      from Genoa. Susy scanned the addresses and fell upon the one in her
+      husband&rsquo;s writing. Her hand trembled so much that for a moment she could
+      not open the envelope. When she had done so, she devoured the letter in a
+      flash, and then sat and brooded over the outspread page as it lay on her
+      knee. It might mean so many things&mdash;she could read into it so many
+      harrowing alternatives of indifference and despair, of irony and
+      tenderness! Was he suffering tortures when he wrote it, or seeking only to
+      inflict them upon her? Or did the words represent his actual feelings, no
+      more and no less, and did he really intend her to understand that he
+      considered it his duty to abide by the letter of their preposterous
+      compact? He had left her in wrath and indignation, yet, as a closer
+      scrutiny revealed, there was not a word of reproach in his brief lines.
+      Perhaps that was why, in the last issue, they seemed so cold to her....
+      She shivered and turned to the other envelope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The large stilted characters, though half-familiar, called up no definite
+      image. She opened the envelope and discovered a post-card of the Ibis,
+      canvas spread, bounding over a rippled sea. On the back was written:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So awfully dear of you to lend us Mr. Lansing for a little cruise. You
+      may count on our taking the best of care of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;CORAL&rdquo; <a name="link2H_PART2" id="link2H_PART2">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PART II
+    </h2>
+
+    <h3>
+      XIII.
+    </h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">When</span> Violet Melrose had said to Susy Branch, the winter before in New
+      York: &ldquo;But why on earth don&rsquo;t you and Nick go to my little place at
+      Versailles for the honeymoon? I&rsquo;m off to China, and you could have it to
+      yourselves all summer,&rdquo; the offer had been tempting enough to make the
+      lovers waver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was such an artless ingenuous little house, so full of the demoralizing
+      simplicity of great wealth, that it seemed to Susy just the kind of place
+      in which to take the first steps in renunciation. But Nick had objected
+      that Paris, at that time of year, would be swarming with acquaintances who
+      would hunt them down at all hours; and Susy&rsquo;s own experience had led her
+      to remark that there was nothing the very rich enjoyed more than taking
+      pot-luck with the very poor. They therefore gave Strefford&rsquo;s villa the
+      preference, with an inward proviso (on Susy&rsquo;s part) that Violet&rsquo;s house
+      might very conveniently serve their purpose at another season.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These thoughts were in her mind as she drove up to Mrs. Melrose&rsquo;s door on
+      a rainy afternoon late in August, her boxes piled high on the roof of the
+      cab she had taken at the station. She had travelled straight through from
+      Venice, stopping in Milan just long enough to pick up a reply to the
+      telegram she had despatched to the perfect housekeeper whose permanent
+      presence enabled Mrs. Melrose to say: &ldquo;Oh, when I&rsquo;m sick of everything I
+      just rush off without warning to my little shanty at Versailles, and live
+      there all alone on scrambled eggs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The perfect house-keeper had replied to Susy&rsquo;s enquiry: &ldquo;Am sure Mrs.
+      Melrose most happy&rdquo;; and Susy, without further thought, had jumped into a
+      Versailles train, and now stood in the thin rain before the sphinx-guarded
+      threshold of the pavilion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The revolving year had brought around the season at which Mrs. Melrose&rsquo;s
+      house might be convenient: no visitors were to be feared at Versailles at
+      the end of August, and though Susy&rsquo;s reasons for seeking solitude were so
+      remote from those she had once prefigured, they were none the less cogent.
+      To be alone&mdash;alone! After those first exposed days when, in the
+      persistent presence of Fred Gillow and his satellites, and in the mocking
+      radiance of late summer on the lagoons, she had fumed and turned about in
+      her agony like a trapped animal in a cramping cage, to be alone had seemed
+      the only respite, the one craving: to be alone somewhere in a setting as
+      unlike as possible to the sensual splendours of Venice, under skies as
+      unlike its azure roof. If she could have chosen she would have crawled
+      away into a dingy inn in a rainy northern town, where she had never been
+      and no one knew her. Failing that unobtainable luxury, here she was on the
+      threshold of an empty house, in a deserted place, under lowering skies.
+      She had shaken off Fred Gillow, sulkily departing for his moor (where she
+      had half-promised to join him in September); the Prince, young
+      Breckenridge, and the few remaining survivors of the Venetian group, had
+      dispersed in the direction of the Engadine or Biarritz; and now she could
+      at least collect her wits, take stock of herself, and prepare the
+      countenance with which she was to face the next stage in her career. Thank
+      God it was raining at Versailles!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The door opened, she heard voices in the drawing-room, and a slender
+      languishing figure appeared on the threshold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Darling!&rdquo; Violet Melrose cried in an embrace, drawing her into the dusky
+      perfumed room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I thought you were in China!&rdquo; Susy stammered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In China... in China,&rdquo; Mrs. Melrose stared with dreamy eyes, and Susy
+      remembered her drifting disorganised life, a life more planless, more
+      inexplicable than that of any of the other ephemeral beings blown about
+      upon the same winds of pleasure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Madam, I thought so myself till I got a wire from Mrs. Melrose last
+      evening,&rdquo; remarked the perfect house-keeper, following with Susy&rsquo;s
+      handbag.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Melrose clutched her cavernous temples in her attenuated hands. &ldquo;Of
+      course, of course! I had meant to go to China&mdash;no, India.... But I&rsquo;ve
+      discovered a genius... and Genius, you know....&rdquo; Unable to complete her
+      thought, she sank down upon a pillowy divan, stretched out an arm, cried:
+      &ldquo;Fulmer! Fulmer!&rdquo; and, while Susy Lansing stood in the middle of the room
+      with widening eyes, a man emerged from the more deeply cushioned and
+      scented twilight of some inner apartment, and she saw with surprise Nat
+      Fulmer, the good Nat Fulmer of the New Hampshire bungalow and the
+      ubiquitous progeny, standing before her in lordly ease, his hands in his
+      pockets, a cigarette between his lips, his feet solidly planted in the
+      insidious depths of one of Violet Melrose&rsquo;s white leopard skins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Susy!&rdquo; he shouted with open arms; and Mrs. Melrose murmured: &ldquo;You didn&rsquo;t
+      know, then? You hadn&rsquo;t heard of his masterpieces?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In spite of herself, Susy burst into a laugh. &ldquo;Is Nat your genius?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Melrose looked at her reproachfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fulmer laughed. &ldquo;No; I&rsquo;m Grace&rsquo;s. But Mrs. Melrose has been our
+      Providence, and....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Providence?&rdquo; his hostess interrupted. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t talk as if you were at a
+      prayer-meeting! He had an exhibition in New York... it was the most
+      fabulous success. He&rsquo;s come abroad to make studies for the decoration of
+      my music-room in New York. Ursula Gillow has given him her garden-house at
+      Roslyn to do. And Mrs. Bockheimer&rsquo;s ball-room&mdash;oh, Fulmer, where are
+      the cartoons?&rdquo; She sprang up, tossed about some fashion-papers heaped on a
+      lacquer table, and sank back exhausted by the effort. &ldquo;I&rsquo;d got as far as
+      Brindisi. I&rsquo;ve travelled day and night to be here to meet him,&rdquo; she
+      declared. &ldquo;But, you darling,&rdquo; and she held out a caressing hand to Susy,
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m forgetting to ask if you&rsquo;ve had tea?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      An hour later, over the tea-table, Susy already felt herself mysteriously
+      reabsorbed into what had so long been her native element. Ellie Vanderlyn
+      had brought a breath of it to Venice; but Susy was then nourished on
+      another air, the air of Nick&rsquo;s presence and personality; now that she was
+      abandoned, left again to her own devices, she felt herself suddenly at the
+      mercy of the influences from which she thought she had escaped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the queer social whirligig from which she had so lately fled, it seemed
+      natural enough that a shake of the box should have tossed Nat Fulmer into
+      celebrity, and sent Violet Melrose chasing back from the ends of the earth
+      to bask in his success. Susy knew that Mrs. Melrose belonged to the class
+      of moral parasites; for in that strange world the parts were sometimes
+      reversed, and the wealthy preyed upon the pauper. Wherever there was a
+      reputation to batten on, there poor Violet appeared, a harmless vampire in
+      pearls who sought only to feed on the notoriety which all her millions
+      could not create for her. Any one less versed than Susy in the shallow
+      mysteries of her little world would have seen in Violet Melrose a baleful
+      enchantress, in Nat Fulmer her helpless victim. Susy knew better. Violet,
+      poor Violet, was not even that. The insignificant Ellie Vanderlyn, with
+      her brief trivial passions, her artless mixture of amorous and social
+      interests, was a woman with a purpose, a creature who fulfilled herself;
+      but Violet was only a drifting interrogation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And what of Fulmer? Mustering with new eyes his short sturdily-built
+      figure, his nondescript bearded face, and the eyes that dreamed and
+      wandered, and then suddenly sank into you like claws, Susy seemed to have
+      found the key to all his years of dogged toil, his indifference to
+      neglect, indifference to poverty, indifference to the needs of his growing
+      family.... Yes: for the first time she saw that he looked commonplace
+      enough to be a genius&mdash;was a genius, perhaps, even though it was
+      Violet Melrose who affirmed it! Susy looked steadily at Fulmer, their eyes
+      met, and he smiled at her faintly through his beard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I did discover him&mdash;I did,&rdquo; Mrs. Melrose was insisting, from
+      the depths of the black velvet divan in which she lay sunk like a wan
+      Nereid in a midnight sea. &ldquo;You mustn&rsquo;t believe a word that Ursula Gillow
+      tells you about having pounced on his &lsquo;Spring Snow Storm&rsquo; in a dark corner
+      of the American Artists&rsquo; exhibition&mdash;skied, if you please! They skied
+      him less than a year ago! And naturally Ursula never in her life looked
+      higher than the first line at a picture-show. And now she actually
+      pretends... oh, for pity&rsquo;s sake don&rsquo;t say it doesn&rsquo;t matter, Fulmer! Your
+      saying that just encourages her, and makes people think she did. When, in
+      reality, any one who saw me at the exhibition on varnishing-day.... Who?
+      Well, Eddy Breckenridge, for instance. He was in Egypt, you say? Perhaps
+      he was! As if one could remember the people about one, when suddenly one
+      comes upon a great work of art, as St. Paul did&mdash;didn&rsquo;t he?&mdash;and
+      the scales fell from his eyes. Well... that&rsquo;s exactly what happened to me
+      that day... and Ursula, everybody knows, was down at Roslyn at the time,
+      and didn&rsquo;t come up for the opening of the exhibition at all. And Fulmer
+      sits there and laughs, and says it doesn&rsquo;t matter, and that he&rsquo;ll paint
+      another picture any day for me to discover!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy had rung the door-bell with a hand trembling with eagerness&mdash;eagerness
+      to be alone, to be quiet, to stare her situation in the face, and collect
+      herself before she came out again among her kind. She had stood on the
+      door-step, cowering among her bags, counting the instants till a step
+      sounded and the door-knob turned, letting her in from the searching glare
+      of the outer world.... And now she had sat for an hour in Violet&rsquo;s
+      drawing-room, in the very house where her honey-moon might have been
+      spent; and no one had asked her where she had come from, or why she was
+      alone, or what was the key to the tragedy written on her shrinking
+      face....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That was the way of the world they lived in. Nobody questioned, nobody
+      wondered any more&mdash;because nobody had time to remember. The old risk of
+      prying curiosity, of malicious gossip, was virtually over: one was left
+      with one&rsquo;s drama, one&rsquo;s disaster, on one&rsquo;s hands, because there was nobody
+      to stop and notice the little shrouded object one was carrying. As Susy
+      watched the two people before her, each so frankly unaffected by her
+      presence, Violet Melrose so engrossed in her feverish pursuit of
+      notoriety, Fulmer so plunged in the golden sea of his success, she felt
+      like a ghost making inaudible and imperceptible appeals to the grosser
+      senses of the living.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I wanted to be alone,&rdquo; she thought, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m alone enough, in all
+      conscience.&rdquo; There was a deathly chill in such security. She turned to
+      Fulmer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Grace?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He beamed back without sign of embarrassment. &ldquo;Oh, she&rsquo;s here, naturally&mdash;we&rsquo;re
+      in Paris, kids and all. In a pension, where we can polish up the lingo.
+      But I hardly ever lay eyes on her, because she&rsquo;s as deep in music as I am
+      in paint; it was as big a chance for her as for me, you see, and she&rsquo;s
+      making the most of it, fiddling and listening to the fiddlers. Well, it&rsquo;s
+      a considerable change from New Hampshire.&rdquo; He looked at her dreamily, as
+      if making an intense effort to detach himself from his dream, and situate
+      her in the fading past. &ldquo;Remember the bungalow? And Nick&mdash;ah, how&rsquo;s
+      Nick?&rdquo; he brought out triumphantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes&mdash;darling Nick?&rdquo; Mrs. Melrose chimed in; and Susy, her head
+      erect, her cheeks aflame, declared with resonance: &ldquo;Most awfully well&mdash;splendidly!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s not here, though?&rdquo; from Fulmer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. He&rsquo;s off travelling&mdash;cruising.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Melrose&rsquo;s attention was faintly roused. &ldquo;With anybody interesting?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; you wouldn&rsquo;t know them. People we met....&rdquo; She did not have to
+      continue, for her hostess&rsquo;s gaze had again strayed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you&rsquo;ve come for your clothes, I suppose, darling? Don&rsquo;t listen to
+      people who say that skirts are to be wider. I&rsquo;ve discovered a new woman&mdash;a
+      Genius&mdash;and she absolutely swathes you.... Her name&rsquo;s my secret; but
+      we&rsquo;ll go to her together.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy rose from her engulphing armchair. &ldquo;Do you mind if I go up to my
+      room? I&rsquo;m rather tired&mdash;coming straight through.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course, dear. I think there are some people coming to dinner... Mrs.
+      Match will tell you. She has such a memory.... Fulmer, where on earth are
+      those cartoons of the music-room?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Their voices pursued Susy upstairs, as, in Mrs. Match&rsquo;s perpendicular
+      wake, she mounted to the white-panelled room with its gay linen hangings
+      and the low bed heaped with more cushions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If we&rsquo;d come here,&rdquo; she thought, &ldquo;everything might have been different.&rdquo;
+       And she shuddered at the sumptuous memories of the Palazzo Vanderlyn, and
+      the great painted bedroom where she had met her doom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Match, hoping she would find everything, and mentioning that dinner
+      was not till nine, shut her softly in among her terrors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Find everything?&rdquo; Susy echoed the phrase. Oh, yes, she would always find
+      everything: every time the door shut on her now, and the sound of voices
+      ceased, her memories would be there waiting for her, every one of them,
+      waiting quietly, patiently, obstinately, like poor people in a doctor&rsquo;s
+      office, the people who are always last to be attended to, but whom nothing
+      will discourage or drive away, people to whom time is nothing, fatigue
+      nothing, hunger nothing, other engagements nothing: who just wait....
+      Thank heaven, after all, that she had not found the house empty, if,
+      whenever she returned to her room, she was to meet her memories there!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was just a week since Nick had left her. During that week, crammed with
+      people, questions, packing, explaining, evading, she had believed that in
+      solitude lay her salvation. Now she understood that there was nothing she
+      was so unprepared for, so unfitted for. When, in all her life, had she
+      ever been alone? And how was she to bear it now, with all these ravening
+      memories besetting her!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dinner not till nine? What on earth was she to do till nine o&rsquo;clock? She
+      knelt before her boxes, and feverishly began to unpack.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gradually, imperceptibly, the subtle influences of her old life were
+      stealing into her. As she pulled out her tossed and crumpled dresses she
+      remembered Violet&rsquo;s emphatic warning: &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t believe the people who tell
+      you that skirts are going to be wider.&rdquo; Were hers, perhaps, too wide as it
+      was? She looked at her limp raiment, piling itself up on bed and sofa, and
+      understood that, according to Violet&rsquo;s standards, and that of all her set,
+      those dresses, which Nick had thought so original and exquisite, were
+      already commonplace and dowdy, fit only to be passed on to poor relations
+      or given to one&rsquo;s maid. And Susy would have to go on wearing them till
+      they fell to bits&mdash;or else.... Well, or else begin the old life again in
+      some new form....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She laughed aloud at the turn of her thoughts. Dresses? How little they
+      had mattered a few short weeks ago! And now, perhaps, they would again be
+      one of the foremost considerations in her life. How could it be otherwise,
+      if she were to return again to her old dependence on Ellie Vanderlyn,
+      Ursula Gillow, Violet Melrose? And beyond that, only the Bockheimers and
+      their kind awaited her....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A knock on the door&mdash;what a relief! It was Mrs. Match again, with a
+      telegram. To whom had Susy given her new address? With a throbbing heart
+      she tore open the envelope and read:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall be in Paris Friday for twenty-four hours where can I see you write
+      Nouveau Luxe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ah, yes&mdash;she remembered now: she had written to Strefford! And this
+      was his answer: he was coming. She dropped into a chair, and tried to
+      think. What on earth had she said in her letter? It had been mainly, of
+      course, one of condolence; but now she remembered having added, in a
+      precipitate postscript: &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t give your message to Nick, for he&rsquo;s gone
+      off with the Hickses&mdash;I don&rsquo;t know where, or for how long. It&rsquo;s all right,
+      of course: it was in our bargain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had not meant to put in that last phrase; but as she sealed her letter
+      to Strefford her eye had fallen on Nick&rsquo;s missive, which lay beside it.
+      Nothing in her husband&rsquo;s brief lines had embittered her as much as the
+      allusion to Strefford. It seemed to imply that Nick&rsquo;s own plans were made,
+      that his own future was secure, and that he could therefore freely and
+      handsomely take thought for hers, and give her a pointer in the right
+      direction. Sudden rage had possessed her at the thought: where she had at
+      first read jealousy she now saw only a cold providence, and in a blur of
+      tears she had scrawled her postscript to Strefford. She remembered that
+      she had not even asked him to keep her secret. Well&mdash;after all, what
+      would it matter if people should already know that Nick had left her?
+      Their parting could not long remain a mystery, and the fact that it was
+      known might help her to keep up a presence of indifference.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was in the bargain&mdash;in the bargain,&rdquo; rang through her brain as
+      she re-read Strefford&rsquo;s telegram. She understood that he had snatched the
+      time for this hasty trip solely in the hope of seeing her, and her eyes
+      filled. The more bitterly she thought of Nick the more this proof of
+      Strefford&rsquo;s friendship moved her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The clock, to her relief, reminded her that it was time to dress for
+      dinner. She would go down presently, chat with Violet and Fulmer, and with
+      Violet&rsquo;s other guests, who would probably be odd and amusing, and too much
+      out of her world to embarrass her by awkward questions. She would sit at a
+      softly-lit table, breathe delicate scents, eat exquisite food (trust Mrs.
+      Match!), and be gradually drawn again under the spell of her old
+      associations. Anything, anything but to be alone....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She dressed with even more than her habitual care, reddened her lips
+      attentively, brushed the faintest bloom of pink over her drawn cheeks, and
+      went down&mdash;to meet Mrs. Match coming up with a tray.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Madam, I thought you were too tired.... I was bringing it up to you
+      myself&mdash;just a little morsel of chicken.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy, glancing past her, saw, through the open door, that the lamps were
+      not lit in the drawing-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no, I&rsquo;m not tired, thank you. I thought Mrs. Melrose expected friends
+      at dinner!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Friends at dinner-to-night?&rdquo; Mrs. Match heaved a despairing sigh.
+      Sometimes, the sigh seemed to say, her mistress put too great a strain
+      upon her. &ldquo;Why, Mrs. Melrose and Mr. Fulmer were engaged to dine in Paris.
+      They left an hour ago. Mrs. Melrose told me she&rsquo;d told you,&rdquo; the
+      house-keeper wailed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy kept her little fixed smile. &ldquo;I must have misunderstood. In that
+      case... well, yes, if it&rsquo;s no trouble, I believe I will have my tray
+      upstairs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Slowly she turned, and followed the housekeeper up into the dread solitude
+      she had just left.
+    </p>
+
+
+<h3>XIV.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">The</span> next day a lot of people turned up unannounced for luncheon. They were
+      not of the far-fetched and the exotic, in whom Mrs. Melrose now
+      specialized, but merely commonplace fashionable people belonging to Susy&rsquo;s
+      own group, people familiar with the amusing romance of her penniless
+      marriage, and to whom she had to explain (though none of them really
+      listened to the explanation) that Nick was not with her just now but had
+      gone off cruising... cruising in the AEgean with friends... getting up
+      material for his book (this detail had occurred to her in the night).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the kind of encounter she had most dreaded; but it proved, after
+      all, easy enough to go through compared with those endless hours of
+      turning to and fro, the night before, in the cage of her lonely room.
+      Anything, anything, but to be alone....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gradually, from the force of habit, she found herself actually in tune
+      with the talk of the luncheon table, interested in the references to
+      absent friends, the light allusions to last year&rsquo;s loves and quarrels,
+      scandals and absurdities. The women, in their pale summer dresses, were so
+      graceful, indolent and sure of themselves, the men so easy and
+      good-humoured! Perhaps, after all, Susy reflected, it was the world she
+      was meant for, since the other, the brief Paradise of her dreams, had
+      already shut its golden doors upon her. And then, as they sat on the
+      terrace after luncheon, looking across at the yellow tree-tops of the
+      park, one of the women said something&mdash;made just an allusion&mdash;that
+      Susy would have let pass unnoticed in the old days, but that now filled
+      her with a sudden deep disgust.... She stood up and wandered away, away
+      from them all through the fading garden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two days later Susy and Strefford sat on the terrace of the Tuileries
+      above the Seine. She had asked him to meet her there, with the desire to
+      avoid the crowded halls and drawing-room of the Nouveau Luxe where, even
+      at that supposedly &ldquo;dead&rdquo; season, people one knew were always drifting to
+      and fro; and they sat on a bench in the pale sunlight, the discoloured
+      leaves heaped at their feet, and no one to share their solitude but a lame
+      working-man and a haggard woman who were lunching together mournfully at
+      the other end of the majestic vista.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford, in his new mourning, looked unnaturally prosperous and
+      well-valeted; but his ugly untidy features remained as undisciplined, his
+      smile as whimsical, as of old. He had been on cool though friendly terms
+      with the pompous uncle and the poor sickly cousin whose joint
+      disappearance had so abruptly transformed his future; and it was his way
+      to understate his feelings rather than to pretend more than he felt.
+      Nevertheless, beneath his habitual bantering tone Susy discerned a change.
+      The disaster had shocked him profoundly; already, in his brief sojourn
+      among his people and among the great possessions so tragically acquired,
+      old instincts had awakened, forgotten associations had spoken in him. Susy
+      listened to him wistfully, silenced by her imaginative perception of the
+      distance that these things had put between them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was horrible... seeing them both there together, laid out in that
+      hideous Pugin chapel at Altringham... the poor boy especially. I suppose
+      that&rsquo;s really what&rsquo;s cutting me up now,&rdquo; he murmured, almost
+      apologetically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, it&rsquo;s more than that&mdash;more than you know,&rdquo; she insisted; but he
+      jerked back: &ldquo;Now, my dear, don&rsquo;t be edifying, please,&rdquo; and fumbled for a
+      cigarette in the pocket which was already beginning to bulge with his
+      miscellaneous properties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now about you&mdash;for that&rsquo;s what I came for,&rdquo; he continued,
+      turning to her with one of his sudden movements. &ldquo;I couldn&rsquo;t make head or
+      tail of your letter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She paused a moment to steady her voice. &ldquo;Couldn&rsquo;t you? I suppose you&rsquo;d
+      forgotten my bargain with Nick. He hadn&rsquo;t&mdash;and he&rsquo;s asked me to fulfil it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford stared. &ldquo;What&mdash;that nonsense about your setting each other
+      free if either of you had the chance to make a good match?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She signed &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And he&rsquo;s actually asked you&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well: practically. He&rsquo;s gone off with the Hickses. Before going he wrote
+      me that we&rsquo;d better both consider ourselves free. And Coral sent me a
+      postcard to say that she would take the best of care of him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford mused, his eyes upon his cigarette. &ldquo;But what the deuce led up
+      to all this? It can&rsquo;t have happened like that, out of a clear sky.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy flushed, hesitated, looked away. She had meant to tell Strefford the
+      whole story; it had been one of her chief reasons for wishing to see him
+      again, and half-unconsciously, perhaps, she had hoped, in his laxer
+      atmosphere, to recover something of her shattered self-esteem. But now she
+      suddenly felt the impossibility of confessing to anyone the depths to
+      which Nick&rsquo;s wife had stooped. She fancied that her companion guessed the
+      nature of her hesitation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t tell me anything you don&rsquo;t want to, you know, my dear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; I do want to; only it&rsquo;s difficult. You see&mdash;we had so very
+      little money....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Nick&mdash;who was thinking of his book, and of all sorts of big
+      things, fine things&mdash;didn&rsquo;t realise... left it all to me... to
+      manage....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stumbled over the word, remembering how Nick had always winced at it.
+      But Strefford did not seem to notice her, and she hurried on, unfolding in
+      short awkward sentences the avowal of their pecuniary difficulties, and of
+      Nick&rsquo;s inability to understand that, to keep on with the kind of life they
+      were leading, one had to put up with things... accept favours....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Borrow money, you mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;yes; and all the rest.&rdquo; No&mdash;decidedly she could not
+      reveal to Strefford the episode of Ellie&rsquo;s letters. &ldquo;Nick suddenly felt, I
+      suppose, that he couldn&rsquo;t stand it,&rdquo; she continued; &ldquo;and instead of asking
+      me to try&mdash;to try to live differently, go off somewhere with him and
+      live, like work-people, in two rooms, without a servant, as I was ready to
+      do; well, instead he wrote me that it had all been a mistake from the
+      beginning, that we couldn&rsquo;t keep it up, and had better recognize the fact;
+      and he went off on the Hickses&rsquo; yacht. The last evening that you were in
+      Venice&mdash;the day he didn&rsquo;t come back to dinner&mdash;he had gone off
+      to Genoa to meet them. I suppose he intends to marry Coral.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford received this in silence. &ldquo;Well&mdash;it was your bargain,
+      wasn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo; he said at length.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; but&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Exactly: I always told you so. You weren&rsquo;t ready to have him go yet&mdash;that&rsquo;s
+      all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She flushed to the forehead. &ldquo;Oh, Streff&mdash;is it really all?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A question of time? If you doubt it, I&rsquo;d like to see you try, for a
+      while, in those two rooms without a servant; and then let me hear from
+      you. Why, my dear, it&rsquo;s only a question of time in a palace, with a steam
+      yacht lying off the door-step, and a flock of motors in the garage; look
+      around you and see. And did you ever imagine that you and Nick, of all
+      people, were going to escape the common doom, and survive like Mr. and
+      Mrs. Tithonus, while all about you the eternal passions were crumbling to
+      pieces, and your native Divorce-states piling up their revenues?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She sat with bent head, the weight of the long years to come pressing like
+      a leaden load on her shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I&rsquo;m so young... life&rsquo;s so long. What does last, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you&rsquo;re too young to believe me, if I were to tell you; though you&rsquo;re
+      intelligent enough to understand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, the hold of the things we all think we could do without. Habits&mdash;they
+      outstand the Pyramids. Comforts, luxuries, the atmosphere of ease... above
+      all, the power to get away from dulness and monotony, from constraints and
+      uglinesses. You chose that power, instinctively, before you were even
+      grown up; and so did Nick. And the only difference between you is that
+      he&rsquo;s had the sense to see sooner than you that those are the things that
+      last, the prime necessities.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t believe it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course you don&rsquo;t: at your age one doesn&rsquo;t reason one&rsquo;s materialism.
+      And besides you&rsquo;re mortally hurt that Nick has found out sooner than you,
+      and hasn&rsquo;t disguised his discovery under any hypocritical phrases.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But surely there are people&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;saints and geniuses and heroes: all the fanatics! To which of
+      their categories do you suppose we soft people belong? And the heroes and
+      the geniuses&mdash;haven&rsquo;t they their enormous frailties and their giant
+      appetites? And how should we escape being the victims of our little ones?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She sat for a while without speaking. &ldquo;But, Streff, how can you say such
+      things, when I know you care: care for me, for instance!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Care?&rdquo; He put his hand on hers. &ldquo;But, my dear, it&rsquo;s just the fugitiveness
+      of mortal caring that makes it so exquisite! It&rsquo;s because we know we can&rsquo;t
+      hold fast to it, or to each other, or to anything....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes... yes... but hush, please! Oh, don&rsquo;t say it!&rdquo; She stood up, the
+      tears in her throat, and he rose also.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come along, then; where do we lunch?&rdquo; he said with a smile, slipping his
+      hand through her arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I don&rsquo;t know. Nowhere. I think I&rsquo;m going back to Versailles.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because I&rsquo;ve disgusted you so deeply? Just my luck&mdash;when I came over
+      to ask you to marry me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She laughed, but he had become suddenly grave. &ldquo;Upon my soul, I did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear Streff! As if&mdash;now&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, not now&mdash;I know. I&rsquo;m aware that even with your accelerated
+      divorce methods&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not that. I told you it was no use, Streff&mdash;I told you long
+      ago, in Venice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He shrugged ironically. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not Streff who&rsquo;s asking you now. Streff was
+      not a marrying man: he was only trifling with you. The present offer comes
+      from an elderly peer of independent means. Think it over, my dear: as many
+      days out as you like, and five footmen kept. There&rsquo;s not the least hurry,
+      of course; but I rather think Nick himself would advise it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She flushed to the temples, remembering that Nick had; and the remembrance
+      made Strefford&rsquo;s sneering philosophy seem less unbearable. Why should she
+      not lunch with him, after all? In the first days of his mourning he had
+      come to Paris expressly to see her, and to offer her one of the oldest
+      names and one of the greatest fortunes in England. She thought of Ursula
+      Gillow, Ellie Vanderlyn, Violet Melrose, of their condescending
+      kindnesses, their last year&rsquo;s dresses, their Christmas cheques, and all
+      the careless bounties that were so easy to bestow and so hard to accept.
+      &ldquo;I should rather enjoy paying them back,&rdquo; something in her maliciously
+      murmured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She did not mean to marry Strefford&mdash;she had not even got as far as
+      contemplating the possibility of a divorce but it was undeniable that this
+      sudden prospect of wealth and freedom was like fresh air in her lungs. She
+      laughed again, but now without bitterness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very good, then; we&rsquo;ll lunch together. But it&rsquo;s Streff I want to lunch
+      with to-day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, well,&rdquo; her companion agreed, &ldquo;I rather think that for a tête-à-tête
+      he&rsquo;s better company.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      During their repast in a little restaurant over the Seine, where she
+      insisted on the cheapest dishes because she was lunching with &ldquo;Streff,&rdquo; he
+      became again his old whimsical companionable self. Once or twice she tried
+      to turn the talk to his altered future, and the obligations and interests
+      that lay before him; but he shrugged away from the subject, questioning
+      her instead about the motley company at Violet Melrose&rsquo;s, and fitting a
+      droll or malicious anecdote to each of the people she named.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not till they had finished their coffee, and she was glancing at
+      her watch with a vague notion of taking the next train, that he asked
+      abruptly: &ldquo;But what are you going to do? You can&rsquo;t stay forever at
+      Violet&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no!&rdquo; she cried with a shiver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then&mdash;you&rsquo;ve got some plan, I suppose?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have I?&rdquo; she wondered, jerked back into grim reality from the soothing
+      interlude of their hour together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can&rsquo;t drift indefinitely, can you? Unless you mean to go back to the
+      old sort of life once for all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She reddened and her eyes filled. &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t do that, Streff&mdash;I know I
+      can&rsquo;t!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then what&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She hesitated, and brought out with lowered head: &ldquo;Nick said he would
+      write again&mdash;in a few days. I must wait&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, naturally. Don&rsquo;t do anything in a hurry.&rdquo; Strefford also glanced at
+      his watch. &ldquo;Garcon, l&rsquo;addition! I&rsquo;m taking the train back to-night, and
+      I&rsquo;ve a lot of things left to do. But look here, my dear&mdash;when you
+      come to a decision one way or the other let me know, will you? Oh, I don&rsquo;t
+      mean in the matter I&rsquo;ve most at heart; we&rsquo;ll consider that closed for the
+      present. But at least I can be of use in other ways&mdash;hang it, you
+      know, I can even lend you money. There&rsquo;s a new sensation for our jaded
+      palates!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Streff... Streff!&rdquo; she could only falter; and he pressed on gaily:
+      &ldquo;Try it, now do try it&mdash;I assure you there&rsquo;ll be no interest to pay,
+      and no conditions attached. And promise to let me know when you&rsquo;ve decided
+      anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked into his humorously puckered eyes, answering. Their friendly
+      smile with hers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I promise!&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+
+
+<h3>XV.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">That</span> hour with Strefford had altered her whole perspective. Instead of
+      possible dependence, an enforced return to the old life of connivances and
+      concessions, she saw before her&mdash;whenever she chose to take them&mdash;freedom,
+      power and dignity. Dignity! It was odd what weight that word had come to
+      have for her. She had dimly felt its significance, felt the need of its
+      presence in her inmost soul, even in the young thoughtless days when she
+      had seemed to sacrifice so little to the austere divinities. And since she
+      had been Nick Lansing&rsquo;s wife she had consciously acknowledged it, had
+      suffered and agonized when she fell beneath its standard. Yes: to marry
+      Strefford would give her that sense of self-respect which, in such a world
+      as theirs, only wealth and position could ensure. If she had not the
+      mental or moral training to attain independence in any other way, was she
+      to blame for seeking it on such terms?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course there was always the chance that Nick would come back, would
+      find life without her as intolerable as she was finding it without him. If
+      that happened&mdash;ah, if that happened! Then she would cease to strain
+      her eyes into the future, would seize upon the present moment and plunge
+      into it to the very bottom of oblivion. Nothing on earth would matter then&mdash;money
+      or freedom or pride, or her precious moral dignity, if only she were in
+      Nick&rsquo;s arms again!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But there was Nick&rsquo;s icy letter, there was Coral Hicks&rsquo;s insolent
+      post-card, to show how little chance there was of such a solution. Susy
+      understood that, even before the discovery of her transaction with Ellie
+      Vanderlyn, Nick had secretly wearied, if not of his wife, at least of the
+      life that their marriage compelled him to lead. His passion was not strong
+      enough&mdash;had never been strong enough&mdash;to outweigh his prejudices,
+      scruples, principles, or whatever one chose to call them. Susy&rsquo;s dignity
+      might go up like tinder in the blaze of her love; but his was made of a
+      less combustible substance. She had felt, in their last talk together,
+      that she had forever destroyed the inner harmony between them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well&mdash;there it was, and the fault was doubtless neither hers nor his,
+      but that of the world they had grown up in, of their own moral contempt
+      for it and physical dependence on it, of his half-talents and her
+      half-principles, of the something in them both that was not stout enough
+      to resist nor yet pliant enough to yield. She stared at the fact on the
+      journey back to Versailles, and all that sleepless night in her room; and
+      the next morning, when the housemaid came in with her breakfast tray, she
+      felt the factitious energy that comes from having decided, however
+      half-heartedly, on a definite course.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had said to herself: &ldquo;If there&rsquo;s no letter from Nick this time next
+      week I&rsquo;ll write to Streff&mdash;&rdquo; and the week had passed, and there was
+      no letter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was now three weeks since he had left her, and she had had no word but
+      his note from Genoa. She had concluded that, foreseeing the probability of
+      her leaving Venice, he would write to her in care of their Paris bank. But
+      though she had immediately notified the bank of her change of address no
+      communication from Nick had reached her; and she smiled with a touch of
+      bitterness at the difficulty he was doubtless finding in the composition
+      of the promised letter. Her own scrap-basket, for the first days, had been
+      heaped with the fragments of the letters she had begun; and she told
+      herself that, since they both found it so hard to write, it was probably
+      because they had nothing left to say to each other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile the days at Mrs. Melrose&rsquo;s drifted by as they had been wont to
+      drift when, under the roofs of the rich, Susy Branch had marked time
+      between one episode and the next of her precarious existence. Her
+      experience of such sojourns was varied enough to make her acutely
+      conscious of their effect on her temporary hosts; and in the present case
+      she knew that Violet was hardly aware of her presence. But if no more than
+      tolerated she was at least not felt to be an inconvenience; when your
+      hostess forgot about you it proved that at least you were not in her way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet, as usual, was perpetually on the wing, for her profound indolence
+      expressed itself in a disordered activity. Nat Fulmer had returned to
+      Paris; but Susy guessed that his benefactress was still constantly in his
+      company, and that when Mrs. Melrose was whirled away in her noiseless
+      motor it was generally toward the scene of some new encounter between
+      Fulmer and the arts. On these occasions she sometimes offered to carry
+      Susy to Paris, and they devoted several long and hectic mornings to the
+      dress-makers, where Susy felt herself gradually succumbing to the familiar
+      spell of heaped-up finery. It seemed impossible, as furs and laces and
+      brocades were tossed aside, brought back, and at last carelessly selected
+      from, that anything but the whim of the moment need count in deciding
+      whether one should take all or none, or that any woman could be worth
+      looking at who did not possess the means to make her choice regardless of
+      cost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once alone, and in the street again, the evil fumes would evaporate, and
+      daylight re-enter Susy&rsquo;s soul; yet she felt that the old poison was slowly
+      insinuating itself into her system. To dispel it she decided one day to
+      look up Grace Fulmer. She was curious to know how the happy-go-lucky
+      companion of Fulmer&rsquo;s evil days was bearing the weight of his prosperity,
+      and she vaguely felt that it would be refreshing to see some one who had
+      never been afraid of poverty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The airless pension sitting-room, where she waited while a reluctant
+      maid-servant screamed about the house for Mrs. Fulmer, did not have the
+      hoped-for effect. It was one thing for Grace to put up with such quarters
+      when she shared them with Fulmer; but to live there while he basked in the
+      lingering radiance of Versailles, or rolled from chateau to picture
+      gallery in Mrs. Melrose&rsquo;s motor, showed a courage that Susy felt unable to
+      emulate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear! I knew you&rsquo;d look me up,&rdquo; Grace&rsquo;s joyous voice ran down the
+      stairway; and in another moment she was clasping Susy to her tumbled
+      person.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nat couldn&rsquo;t remember if he&rsquo;d given you our address, though he promised
+      me he would, the last time he was here.&rdquo; She held Susy at arms&rsquo; length,
+      beaming upon her with blinking short-sighted eyes: the same old
+      dishevelled Grace, so careless of her neglected beauty and her squandered
+      youth, so amused and absent-minded and improvident, that the boisterous
+      air of the New Hampshire bungalow seemed to enter with her into the little
+      air-tight salon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While she poured out the tale of Nat&rsquo;s sudden celebrity, and its
+      unexpected consequences, Susy marvelled and dreamed. Was the secret of his
+      triumph perhaps due to those long hard unrewarded years, the steadfast
+      scorn of popularity, the indifference to every kind of material ease in
+      which his wife had so gaily abetted him? Had it been bought at the cost of
+      her own freshness and her own talent, of the children&rsquo;s &ldquo;advantages,&rdquo; of
+      everything except the closeness of the tie between husband and wife? Well&mdash;it
+      was worth the price, no doubt; but what if, now that honours and
+      prosperity had come, the tie were snapped, and Grace were left alone among
+      the ruins?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was nothing in her tone or words to suggest such a possibility. Susy
+      noticed that her ill-assorted raiment was costlier in quality and more
+      professional in cut than the home-made garments which had draped her
+      growing bulk at the bungalow: it was clear that she was trying to dress up
+      to Nat&rsquo;s new situation. But, above all, she was rejoicing in it, filling
+      her hungry lungs with the strong air of his success. It had evidently not
+      occurred to her as yet that those who consent to share the bread of
+      adversity may want the whole cake of prosperity for themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear, it&rsquo;s too wonderful! He&rsquo;s told me to take as many concert and
+      opera tickets as I like; he lets me take all the children with me. The big
+      concerts don&rsquo;t begin till later; but of course the Opera is always going.
+      And there are little things&mdash;there&rsquo;s music in Paris at all seasons.
+      And later it&rsquo;s just possible we may get to Munich for a week&mdash;oh,
+      Susy!&rdquo; Her hands clasped, her eyes brimming, she drank the new wine of
+      life almost sacramentally.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you remember, Susy, when you and Nick came to stay at the bungalow?
+      Nat said you&rsquo;d be horrified by our primitiveness&mdash;but I knew better! And I
+      was right, wasn&rsquo;t I? Seeing us so happy made you and Nick decide to follow
+      our example, didn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo; She glowed with the remembrance. &ldquo;And now, what
+      are your plans? Is Nick&rsquo;s book nearly done? I suppose you&rsquo;ll have to live
+      very economically till he finds a publisher. And the baby, darling&mdash;when is
+      that to be? If you&rsquo;re coming home soon I could let you have a lot of the
+      children&rsquo;s little old things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re always so dear, Grace. But we haven&rsquo;t any special plans as yet&mdash;not
+      even for a baby. And I wish you&rsquo;d tell me all of yours instead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Fulmer asked nothing better: Susy perceived that, so far, the greater
+      part of her European experience had consisted in talking about what it was
+      to be. &ldquo;Well, you see, Nat is so taken up all day with sight-seeing and
+      galleries and meeting important people that he hasn&rsquo;t had time to go about
+      with us; and as so few theatres are open, and there&rsquo;s so little music,
+      I&rsquo;ve taken the opportunity to catch up with my mending. Junie helps me
+      with it now&mdash;she&rsquo;s our eldest, you remember? She&rsquo;s grown into a big
+      girl since you saw her. And later, perhaps, we&rsquo;re to travel. And the most
+      wonderful thing of all&mdash;next to Nat&rsquo;s recognition, I mean&mdash;is
+      not having to contrive and skimp, and give up something every single
+      minute. Just think&mdash;Nat has even made special arrangements here in
+      the pension, so that the children all have second helpings to everything.
+      And when I go up to bed I can think of my music, instead of lying awake
+      calculating and wondering how I can make things come out at the end of the
+      month. Oh, Susy, that&rsquo;s simply heaven!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy&rsquo;s heart contracted. She had come to her friend to be taught again the
+      lesson of indifference to material things, and instead she was hearing
+      from Grace Fulmer&rsquo;s lips the long-repressed avowal of their tyranny. After
+      all, that battle with poverty on the New Hampshire hillside had not been
+      the easy smiling business that Grace and Nat had made it appear. And yet
+      ... and yet....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy stood up abruptly, and straightened the expensive hat which hung
+      irresponsibly over Grace&rsquo;s left ear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&rsquo;s wrong with it? Junie helped me choose it, and she generally
+      knows,&rdquo; Mrs. Fulmer wailed with helpless hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s the way you wear it, dearest&mdash;and the bow is rather top-heavy.
+      Let me have it a minute, please.&rdquo; Susy lifted the hat from her friend&rsquo;s
+      head and began to manipulate its trimming. &ldquo;This is the way Maria Guy or
+      Suzanne would do it.... And now go on about Nat....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She listened musingly while Grace poured forth the tale of her husband&rsquo;s
+      triumph, of the notices in the papers, the demand for his work, the fine
+      ladies&rsquo; battles over their priority in discovering him, and the multiplied
+      orders that had resulted from their rivalry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course they&rsquo;re simply furious with each other&mdash;Mrs. Melrose and Mrs.
+      Gillow especially&mdash;because each one pretends to have been the first
+      to notice his &lsquo;Spring Snow-Storm,&rsquo; and in reality it wasn&rsquo;t either of
+      them, but only poor Bill Haslett, an art-critic we&rsquo;ve known for years, who
+      chanced on the picture, and rushed off to tell a dealer who was looking
+      for a new painter to push.&rdquo; Grace suddenly raised her soft myopic eyes to
+      Susy&rsquo;s face. &ldquo;But, do you know, the funny thing is that I believe Nat is
+      beginning to forget this, and to believe that it was Mrs. Melrose who
+      stopped short in front of his picture on the opening day, and screamed
+      out: &lsquo;This is genius!&rsquo; It seems funny he should care so much, when I&rsquo;ve
+      always known he had genius&mdash;and he has known it too. But they&rsquo;re all so
+      kind to him; and Mrs. Melrose especially. And I suppose it makes a thing
+      sound new to hear it said in a new voice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy looked at her meditatively. &ldquo;And how should you feel if Nat liked too
+      much to hear Mrs. Melrose say it? Too much, I mean, to care any longer
+      what you felt or thought?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her friend&rsquo;s worn face flushed quickly, and then paled: Susy almost
+      repented the question. But Mrs. Fulmer met it with a tranquil dignity.
+      &ldquo;You haven&rsquo;t been married long enough, dear, to understand... how people
+      like Nat and me feel about such things... or how trifling they seem, in
+      the balance... the balance of one&rsquo;s memories.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy stood up again, and flung her arms about her friend. &ldquo;Oh, Grace,&rdquo; she
+      laughed with wet eyes, &ldquo;how can you be as wise as that, and yet not have
+      sense enough to buy a decent hat?&rdquo; She gave Mrs. Fulmer a quick embrace
+      and hurried away. She had learned her lesson after all; but it was not
+      exactly the one she had come to seek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The week she had allowed herself had passed, and still there was no word
+      from Nick. She allowed herself yet another day, and that too went by
+      without a letter. She then decided on a step from which her pride had
+      hitherto recoiled; she would call at the bank and ask for Nick&rsquo;s address.
+      She called, embarrassed and hesitating; and was told, after enquiries in
+      the post-office department, that Mr. Nicholas Lansing had given no address
+      since that of the Palazzo Vanderlyn, three months previously. She went
+      back to Versailles that afternoon with the definite intention of writing
+      to Strefford unless the next morning&rsquo;s post brought a letter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next morning brought nothing from Nick, but a scribbled message from
+      Mrs. Melrose: would Susy, as soon as possible, come into her room for a
+      word, Susy jumped up, hurried through her bath, and knocked at her
+      hostess&rsquo;s door. In the immense low bed that faced the rich umbrage of the
+      park Mrs. Melrose lay smoking cigarettes and glancing over her letters.
+      She looked up with her vague smile, and said dreamily: &ldquo;Susy darling, have
+      you any particular plans&mdash;for the next few months, I mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy coloured: she knew the intonation of old, and fancied she understood
+      what it implied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Plans, dearest? Any number... I&rsquo;m tearing myself away the day after
+      to-morrow... to the Gillows&rsquo; moor, very probably,&rdquo; she hastened to
+      announce.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Instead of the relief she had expected to read on Mrs. Melrose&rsquo;s dramatic
+      countenance she discovered there the blankest disappointment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, really? That&rsquo;s too bad. Is it absolutely settled&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As far as I&rsquo;m concerned,&rdquo; said Susy crisply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other sighed. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m too sorry. You see, dear, I&rsquo;d meant to ask you to
+      stay on here quietly and look after the Fulmer children. Fulmer and I are
+      going to Spain next week&mdash;I want to be with him when he makes his
+      studies, receives his first impressions; such a marvellous experience, to
+      be there when he and Velasquez meet!&rdquo; She broke off, lost in prospective
+      ecstasy. &ldquo;And, you see, as Grace Fulmer insists on coming with us&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, I see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, there are the five children&mdash;such a problem,&rdquo; sighed the
+      benefactress. &ldquo;If you were at a loose end, you know, dear, while Nick&rsquo;s
+      away with his friends, I could really make it worth your while....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So awfully good of you, Violet; only I&rsquo;m not, as it happens.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh the relief of being able to say that, gaily, firmly and even
+      truthfully! Take charge of the Fulmer children, indeed! Susy remembered
+      how Nick and she had fled from them that autumn afternoon in New
+      Hampshire. The offer gave her a salutary glimpse of the way in which, as
+      the years passed, and she lost her freshness and novelty, she would more
+      and more be used as a convenience, a stop-gap, writer of notes, runner of
+      errands, nursery governess or companion. She called to mind several
+      elderly women of her acquaintance, pensioners of her own group, who still
+      wore its livery, struck its attitudes and chattered its jargon, but had
+      long since been ruthlessly relegated to these slave-ant offices. Never in
+      the world would she join their numbers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Melrose&rsquo;s face fell, and she looked at Susy with the plaintive
+      bewilderment of the wielder of millions to whom everything that cannot be
+      bought is imperceptible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I can&rsquo;t see why you can&rsquo;t change your plans,&rdquo; she murmured with a
+      soft persistency.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, well, you know&rdquo;&mdash;Susy paused on a slow inward smile&mdash;&ldquo;they&rsquo;re
+      not mine only, as it happens.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Melrose&rsquo;s brow clouded. The unforeseen complication of Mrs. Fulmer&rsquo;s
+      presence on the journey had evidently tried her nerves, and this new
+      obstacle to her arrangements shook her faith in the divine order of
+      things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your plans are not yours only? But surely you won&rsquo;t let Ursula Gillow
+      dictate to you?... There&rsquo;s my jade pendant; the one you said you liked the
+      other day.... The Fulmers won&rsquo;t go with me, you understand, unless they&rsquo;re
+      satisfied about the children; the whole plan will fall through. Susy
+      darling, you were always too unselfish; I hate to see you sacrificed to
+      Ursula.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy&rsquo;s smile lingered. Time was when she might have been glad to add the
+      jade pendant to the collection already enriched by Ellie Vanderlyn&rsquo;s
+      sapphires; more recently, she would have resented the offer as an insult
+      to her newly-found principles. But already the mere fact that she might
+      henceforth, if she chose, be utterly out of reach of such bribes, enabled
+      her to look down on them with tolerance. Oh, the blessed moral freedom
+      that wealth conferred! She recalled Mrs. Fulmer&rsquo;s uncontrollable cry: &ldquo;The
+      most wonderful thing of all is not having to contrive and skimp, and give
+      up something every single minute!&rdquo; Yes; it was only on such terms that one
+      could call one&rsquo;s soul one&rsquo;s own. The sense of it gave Susy the grace to
+      answer amicably: &ldquo;If I could possibly help you out, Violet, I shouldn&rsquo;t
+      want a present to persuade me. And, as you say, there&rsquo;s no reason why I
+      should sacrifice myself to Ursula&mdash;or to anybody else. Only, as it
+      happens&rdquo;&mdash;she paused and took the plunge&mdash;&ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to England
+      because I&rsquo;ve promised to see a friend.&rdquo; That night she wrote to Strefford.
+    </p>
+
+
+<h3>XVI.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">Stretched</span> out under an awning on the deck of the Ibis, Nick Lansing looked
+      up for a moment at the vanishing cliffs of Malta and then plunged again
+      into his book.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had had nearly three weeks of drug-taking on the Ibis. The drugs he had
+      absorbed were of two kinds: visions of fleeing landscapes, looming up from
+      the blue sea to vanish into it again, and visions of study absorbed from
+      the volumes piled up day and night at his elbow. For the first time in
+      months he was in reach of a real library, just the kind of scholarly yet
+      miscellaneous library, that his restless and impatient spirit craved. He
+      was aware that the books he read, like the fugitive scenes on which he
+      gazed, were merely a form of anesthetic: he swallowed them with the
+      careless greed of the sufferer who seeks only to still pain and deaden
+      memory. But they were beginning to produce in him a moral languor that was
+      not disagreeable, that, indeed, compared with the fierce pain of the first
+      days, was almost pleasurable. It was exactly the kind of drug that he
+      needed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is probably no point on which the average man has more definite
+      views than on the uselessness of writing a letter that is hard to write.
+      In the line he had sent to Susy from Genoa Nick had told her that she
+      would hear from him again in a few days; but when the few days had passed,
+      and he began to consider setting himself to the task, he found fifty
+      reasons for postponing it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Had there been any practical questions to write about it would have been
+      different; he could not have borne for twenty-four hours the idea that she
+      was in uncertainty as to money. But that had all been settled long ago.
+      From the first she had had the administering of their modest fortune. On
+      their marriage Nick&rsquo;s own meagre income, paid in, none too regularly, by
+      the agent who had managed for years the dwindling family properties, had
+      been transferred to her: it was the only wedding present he could make.
+      And the wedding cheques had of course all been deposited in her name.
+      There were therefore no &ldquo;business&rdquo; reasons for communicating with her; and
+      when it came to reasons of another order the mere thought of them benumbed
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the first few days he reproached himself for his inertia; then he
+      began to seek reasons for justifying it. After all, for both their sakes a
+      waiting policy might be the wisest he could pursue. He had left Susy
+      because he could not tolerate the conditions on which he had discovered
+      their life together to be based; and he had told her so. What more was
+      there to say?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nothing was changed in their respective situations; if they came together
+      it could be only to resume the same life; and that, as the days went by,
+      seemed to him more and more impossible. He had not yet reached the point
+      of facing a definite separation; but whenever his thoughts travelled back
+      over their past life he recoiled from any attempt to return to it. As long
+      as this state of mind continued there seemed nothing to add to the letter
+      he had already written, except indeed the statement that he was cruising
+      with the Hickses. And he saw no pressing reason for communicating that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To the Hickses he had given no hint of his situation. When Coral Hicks, a
+      fortnight earlier, had picked him up in the broiling streets of Genoa, and
+      carried him off to the Ibis, he had thought only of a cool dinner and
+      perhaps a moonlight sail. Then, in reply to their friendly urging, he had
+      confessed that he had not been well&mdash;had indeed gone off hurriedly
+      for a few days&rsquo; change of air&mdash;and that left him without defence
+      against the immediate proposal that he should take his change of air on
+      the Ibis. They were just off to Corsica and Sardinia, and from there to
+      Sicily: he could rejoin the railway at Naples, and be back at Venice in
+      ten days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ten days of respite&mdash;the temptation was irresistible. And he really
+      liked the kind uncomplicated Hickses. A wholesome honesty and simplicity
+      breathed through all their opulence, as if the rich trappings of their
+      present life still exhaled the fragrance of their native prairies. The
+      mere fact of being with such people was like a purifying bath. When the
+      yacht touched at Naples he agreed since they were so awfully kind&mdash;to
+      go on to Sicily. And when the chief steward, going ashore at Naples for
+      the last time before they got up steam, said: &ldquo;Any letters for the post,
+      sir?&rdquo; he answered, as he had answered at each previous halt: &ldquo;No, thank
+      you: none.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Now they were heading for Rhodes and Crete&mdash;Crete, where he had never
+      been, where he had so often longed to go. In spite of the lateness of the
+      season the weather was still miraculously fine: the short waves danced
+      ahead under a sky without a cloud, and the strong bows of the Ibis hardly
+      swayed as she flew forward over the flying crests.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Only his hosts and their daughter were on the yacht&mdash;of course with
+      Eldorada Tooker and Mr. Beck in attendance. An eminent archaeologist, who
+      was to have joined them at Naples, had telegraphed an excuse at the last
+      moment; and Nick noticed that, while Mrs. Hicks was perpetually
+      apologizing for the great man&rsquo;s absence, Coral merely smiled and said
+      nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As a matter of fact, Mr. and Mrs. Hicks were never as pleasant as when one
+      had them to one&rsquo;s self. In company, Mr. Hicks ran the risk of appearing
+      over-hospitable, and Mrs. Hicks confused dates and names in the desire to
+      embrace all culture in her conversation. But alone with Nick, their old
+      travelling-companion, they shone out in their native simplicity, and Mr.
+      Hicks talked soundly of investments, and Mrs. Hicks recalled her early
+      married days in Apex City, when, on being brought home to her new house in
+      Aeschylus Avenue, her first thought had been: &ldquo;How on earth shall I get
+      all those windows washed?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The loss of Mr. Buttles had been as serious to them as Nick had supposed:
+      Mr. Beck could never hope to replace him. Apart from his mysterious gift
+      of languages, and his almost superhuman faculty for knowing how to address
+      letters to eminent people, and in what terms to conclude them, he had a
+      smattering of archaeology and general culture on which Mrs. Hicks had
+      learned to depend&mdash;her own memory being, alas, so inadequate to the
+      range of her interests.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her daughter might perhaps have helped her; but it was not Miss Hicks&rsquo;s
+      way to mother her parents. She was exceedingly kind to them, but left
+      them, as it were, to bring themselves up as best they could, while she
+      pursued her own course of self-development. A sombre zeal for knowledge
+      filled the mind of this strange girl: she appeared interested only in
+      fresh opportunities of adding to her store of facts. They were illuminated
+      by little imagination and less poetry; but, carefully catalogued and
+      neatly sorted in her large cool brain, they were always as accessible as
+      the volumes in an up-to-date public library.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Nick there was something reposeful in this lucid intellectual
+      curiosity. He wanted above all things to get away from sentiment, from
+      seduction, from the moods and impulses and flashing contradictions that
+      were Susy. Susy was not a great reader: her store of facts was small, and
+      she had grown up among people who dreaded ideas as much as if they had
+      been a contagious disease. But, in the early days especially, when Nick
+      had put a book in her hand, or read a poem to her, her swift intelligence
+      had instantly shed a new light on the subject, and, penetrating to its
+      depths, had extracted from them whatever belonged to her. What a pity that
+      this exquisite insight, this intuitive discrimination, should for the most
+      part have been spent upon reading the thoughts of vulgar people, and
+      extracting a profit from them&mdash;should have been wasted, since her
+      childhood, on all the hideous intricacies of &ldquo;managing&rdquo;!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And visible beauty&mdash;how she cared for that too! He had not guessed
+      it, or rather he had not been sure of it, till the day when, on their way
+      through Paris, he had taken her to the Louvre, and they had stood before
+      the little Crucifixion of Mantegna. He had not been looking at the
+      picture, or watching to see what impression it produced on Susy. His own
+      momentary mood was for Correggio and Fragonard, the laughter of the Music
+      Lesson and the bold pagan joys of the Antiope; and then he had missed her
+      from his side, and when he came to where she stood, forgetting him,
+      forgetting everything, had seen the glare of that tragic sky in her face,
+      her trembling lip, the tears on her lashes. That was Susy....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Closing his book he stole a glance at Coral Hicks&rsquo;s profile, thrown back
+      against the cushions of the deck-chair at his side. There was something
+      harsh and bracing in her blunt primitive build, in the projection of the
+      black eyebrows that nearly met over her thick straight nose, and the faint
+      barely visible black down on her upper lip. Some miracle of will-power,
+      combined with all the artifices that wealth can buy, had turned the fat
+      sallow girl he remembered into this commanding young woman, almost
+      handsome at times indisputably handsome&mdash;in her big authoritative
+      way. Watching the arrogant lines of her profile against the blue sea, he
+      remembered, with a thrill that was sweet to his vanity, how twice&mdash;under
+      the dome of the Scalzi and in the streets of Genoa&mdash;he had seen those
+      same lines soften at his approach, turn womanly, pleading and almost
+      humble. That was Coral....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly she said, without turning toward him: &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve had no letters
+      since you&rsquo;ve been on board.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at her, surprised. &ldquo;No&mdash;thank the Lord!&rdquo; he laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you haven&rsquo;t written one either,&rdquo; she continued in her hard
+      statistical tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he again agreed, with the same laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That means that you really are free&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Free?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He saw the cheek nearest him redden. &ldquo;Really off on a holiday, I mean; not
+      tied down.&rdquo; After a pause he rejoined: &ldquo;No, I&rsquo;m not particularly tied
+      down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And your book?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, my book&mdash;&rdquo; He stopped and considered. He had thrust The Pageant
+      of Alexander into his handbag on the night of his Bight from Venice; but
+      since then he had never looked at it. Too many memories and illusions were
+      pressed between its pages; and he knew just at what page he had felt Ellie
+      Vanderlyn bending over him from behind, caught a whiff of her scent, and
+      heard her breathless &ldquo;I had to thank you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My book&rsquo;s hung up,&rdquo; he said impatiently, annoyed with Miss Hicks&rsquo;s lack
+      of tact. There was a girl who never put out feelers....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; I thought it was,&rdquo; she went on quietly, and he gave her a startled
+      glance. What the devil else did she think, he wondered? He had never
+      supposed her capable of getting far enough out of her own thick carapace
+      of self-sufficiency to penetrate into any one else&rsquo;s feelings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The truth is,&rdquo; he continued, embarrassed, &ldquo;I suppose I dug away at it
+      rather too continuously; that&rsquo;s probably why I felt the need of a change.
+      You see I&rsquo;m only a beginner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She still continued her relentless questioning. &ldquo;But later&mdash;you&rsquo;ll go
+      on with it, of course?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I don&rsquo;t know.&rdquo; He paused, glanced down the glittering deck, and then
+      out across the glittering water. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been dreaming dreams, you see. I
+      rather think I shall have to drop the book altogether, and try to look out
+      for a job that will pay. To indulge in my kind of literature one must
+      first have an assured income.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was instantly annoyed with himself for having spoken. Hitherto in his
+      relations with the Hickses he had carefully avoided the least allusion
+      that might make him feel the heavy hand of their beneficence. But the idle
+      procrastinating weeks had weakened him and he had yielded to the need of
+      putting into words his vague intentions. To do so would perhaps help to
+      make them more definite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To his relief Miss Hicks made no immediate reply; and when she spoke it
+      was in a softer voice and with an unwonted hesitation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It seems a shame that with gifts like yours you shouldn&rsquo;t find some kind
+      of employment that would leave you leisure enough to do your real
+      work....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He shrugged ironically. &ldquo;Yes&mdash;there are a goodish number of us
+      hunting for that particular kind of employment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her tone became more business-like. &ldquo;I know it&rsquo;s hard to find&mdash;almost
+      impossible. But would you take it, I wonder, if it were offered to you&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned her head slightly, and their eyes met. For an instant blank
+      terror loomed upon him; but before he had time to face it she continued,
+      in the same untroubled voice: &ldquo;Mr. Buttles&rsquo;s place, I mean. My parents
+      must absolutely have some one they can count on. You know what an easy
+      place it is.... I think you would find the salary satisfactory.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nick drew a deep breath of relief. For a moment her eyes had looked as
+      they had in the Scalzi&mdash;and he liked the girl too much not to shrink
+      from reawakening that look. But Mr. Buttles&rsquo;s place: why not?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor Buttles!&rdquo; he murmured, to gain time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;you won&rsquo;t find the same reasons as he did for throwing up
+      the job. He was the martyr of his artistic convictions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He glanced at her sideways, wondering. After all she did not know of his
+      meeting with Mr. Buttles in Genoa, nor of the latter&rsquo;s confidences;
+      perhaps she did not even know of Mr. Buttles&rsquo;s hopeless passion. At any
+      rate her face remained calm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not consider it&mdash;at least just for a few months? Till after our
+      expedition to Mesopotamia?&rdquo; she pressed on, a little breathlessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re awfully kind: but I don&rsquo;t know&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stood up with one of her abrupt movements. &ldquo;You needn&rsquo;t, all at once.
+      Take time think it over. Father wanted me to ask you,&rdquo; she appended.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He felt the inadequacy of his response. &ldquo;It tempts me awfully, of course.
+      But I must wait, at any rate&mdash;wait for letters. The fact is I shall
+      have to wire from Rhodes to have them sent. I had chucked everything, even
+      letters, for a few weeks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you are tired,&rdquo; she murmured, giving him a last downward glance as
+      she turned away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From Rhodes Nick Lansing telegraphed to his Paris bank to send his letters
+      to Candia; but when the Ibis reached Candia, and the mail was brought on
+      board, the thick envelope handed to him contained no letter from Susy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Why should it, since he had not yet written to her?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had not written, no: but in sending his address to the bank he knew he
+      had given her the opportunity of reaching him if she wished to. And she
+      had made no sign.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Late that afternoon, when they returned to the yacht from their first
+      expedition, a packet of newspapers lay on the deck-house table. Nick
+      picked up one of the London journals, and his eye ran absently down the
+      list of social events.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He read:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Among the visitors expected next week at Ruan Castle (let for the season
+      to Mr. Frederick J. Gillow of New York) are Prince Altineri of Rome, the
+      Earl of Altringham and Mrs. Nicholas Lansing, who arrived in London last
+      week from Paris.&rdquo; Nick threw down the paper. It was just a month since he
+      had left the Palazzo Vanderlyn and flung himself into the night express
+      for Milan. A whole month&mdash;and Susy had not written. Only a month&mdash;and
+      Susy and Strefford were already together!
+    </p>
+
+
+<h3>XVII.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">Susy</span> had decided to wait for Strefford in London.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The new Lord Altringham was with his family in the north, and though she
+      found a telegram on arriving, saying that he would join her in town the
+      following week, she had still an interval of several days to fill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      London was a desert; the rain fell without ceasing, and alone in the
+      shabby family hotel which, even out of season, was the best she could
+      afford, she sat at last face to face with herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the moment when Violet Melrose had failed to carry out her plan for
+      the Fulmer children her interest in Susy had visibly waned. Often before,
+      in the old days, Susy Branch had felt the same abrupt change of
+      temperature in the manner of the hostess of the moment; and often&mdash;how
+      often&mdash;had yielded, and performed the required service, rather than
+      risk the consequences of estrangement. To that, at least, thank heaven,
+      she need never stoop again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But as she hurriedly packed her trunks at Versailles, scraped together an
+      adequate tip for Mrs. Match, and bade good-bye to Violet (grown suddenly
+      fond and demonstrative as she saw her visitor safely headed for the
+      station)&mdash;as Susy went through the old familiar mummery of the
+      enforced leave-taking, there rose in her so deep a disgust for the life of
+      makeshifts and accommodations, that if at that moment Nick had reappeared
+      and held out his arms to her, she was not sure she would have had the
+      courage to return to them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In her London solitude the thirst for independence grew fiercer.
+      Independence with ease, of course. Oh, her hateful useless love of
+      beauty... the curse it had always been to her, the blessing it might have
+      been if only she had had the material means to gratify and to express it!
+      And instead, it only gave her a morbid loathing of that hideous hotel
+      bedroom drowned in yellow rain-light, of the smell of soot and cabbage
+      through the window, the blistered wall-paper, the dusty wax bouquets under
+      glass globes, and the electric lighting so contrived that as you turned on
+      the feeble globe hanging from the middle of the ceiling the feebler one
+      beside the bed went out!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What a sham world she and Nick had lived in during their few months
+      together! What right had either of them to those exquisite settings of the
+      life of leisure: the long white house hidden in camellias and cypresses
+      above the lake, or the great rooms on the Giudecca with the shimmer of the
+      canal always playing over their frescoed ceilings! Yet she had come to
+      imagine that these places really belonged to them, that they would always
+      go on living, fondly and irreproachably, in the frame of other people&rsquo;s
+      wealth.... That, again, was the curse of her love of beauty, the way she
+      always took to it as if it belonged to her!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, the awakening was bound to come, and it was perhaps better that it
+      should have come so soon. At any rate there was no use in letting her
+      thoughts wander back to that shattered fool&rsquo;s paradise of theirs. Only, as
+      she sat there and reckoned up the days till Strefford arrived, what else
+      in the world was there to think of?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her future and his?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she knew that future by heart already! She had not spent her life
+      among the rich and fashionable without having learned every detail of the
+      trappings of a rich and fashionable marriage. She had calculated long ago
+      just how many dinner-dresses, how many tea-gowns and how much lacy
+      lingerie would go to make up the outfit of the future Countess of
+      Altringham. She had even decided to which dressmaker she would go for her
+      chinchilla cloak&mdash;for she meant to have one, and down to her feet, and
+      softer and more voluminous and more extravagantly sumptuous than Violet&rsquo;s
+      or Ursula&rsquo;s... not to speak of silver foxes and sables... nor yet of the
+      Altringham jewels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She knew all this by heart; had always known it. It all belonged to the
+      make-up of the life of elegance: there was nothing new about it. What had
+      been new to her was just that short interval with Nick&mdash;a life unreal
+      indeed in its setting, but so real in its essentials: the one reality she
+      had ever known. As she looked back on it she saw how much it had given her
+      besides the golden flush of her happiness, the sudden flowering of
+      sensuous joy in heart and body. Yes&mdash;there had been the flowering
+      too, in pain like birth-pangs, of something graver, stronger, fuller of
+      future power, something she had hardly heeded in her first light rapture,
+      but that always came back and possessed her stilled soul when the rapture
+      sank: the deep disquieting sense of something that Nick and love had
+      taught her, but that reached out even beyond love and beyond Nick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her nerves were racked by the ceaseless swish, swish of the rain on the
+      dirty panes and the smell of cabbage and coal that came in under the door
+      when she shut the window. This nauseating foretaste of the luncheon she
+      must presently go down to was more than she could bear. It brought with it
+      a vision of the dank coffee-room below, the sooty Smyrna rug, the rain on
+      the sky-light, the listless waitresses handing about food that tasted as
+      if it had been rained on too. There was really no reason why she should
+      let such material miseries add to her depression....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She sprang up, put on her hat and jacket, and calling for a taxi drove to
+      the London branch of the Nouveau Luxe hotel. It was just one o&rsquo;clock and
+      she was sure to pick up a luncheon, for though London was empty that great
+      establishment was not. It never was. Along those sultry velvet-carpeted
+      halls, in that great flowered and scented dining-room, there was always a
+      come-and-go of rich aimless people, the busy people who, having nothing to
+      do, perpetually pursue their inexorable task from one end of the earth to
+      the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh, the monotony of those faces&mdash;the faces one always knew, whether
+      one knew the people they belonged to or not! A fresh disgust seized her at
+      the sight of them: she wavered, and then turned and fled. But on the
+      threshold a still more familiar figure met her: that of a lady in
+      exaggerated pearls and sables, descending from an exaggerated motor, like
+      the motors in magazine advertisements, the huge arks in which jewelled
+      beauties and slender youths pause to gaze at snowpeaks from an Alpine
+      summit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Ursula Gillow&mdash;dear old Ursula, on her way to Scotland&mdash;and
+      she and Susy fell on each other&rsquo;s necks. It appeared that Ursula, detained
+      till the next evening by a dress-maker&rsquo;s delay, was also out of a job and
+      killing time, and the two were soon smiling at each other over the
+      exquisite preliminaries of a luncheon which the head-waiter had
+      authoritatively asked Mrs. Gillow to &ldquo;leave to him, as usual.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ursula was in a good humour. It did not often happen; but when it did her
+      benevolence knew no bounds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Like Mrs. Melrose, like all her tribe in fact, she was too much absorbed
+      in her own affairs to give more than a passing thought to any one else&rsquo;s;
+      but she was delighted at the meeting with Susy, as her wandering kind
+      always were when they ran across fellow-wanderers, unless the meeting
+      happened to interfere with choicer pleasures. Not to be alone was the
+      urgent thing; and Ursula, who had been forty-eight hours alone in London,
+      at once exacted from her friend a promise that they should spend the rest
+      of the day together. But once the bargain struck her mind turned again to
+      her own affairs, and she poured out her confidences to Susy over a
+      succession of dishes that manifested the head-waiter&rsquo;s understanding of
+      the case.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ursula&rsquo;s confidences were always the same, though they were usually about
+      a different person. She demolished and rebuilt her sentimental life with
+      the same frequency and impetuosity as that with which she changed her
+      dress-makers, did over her drawing-rooms, ordered new motors, altered the
+      mounting of her jewels, and generally renewed the setting of her life.
+      Susy knew in advance what the tale would be; but to listen to it over
+      perfect coffee, an amber-scented cigarette at her lips, was pleasanter
+      than consuming cold mutton alone in a mouldy coffee-room. The contrast was
+      so soothing that she even began to take a languid interest in her friend&rsquo;s
+      narrative.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After luncheon they got into the motor together and began a systematic
+      round of the West End shops: furriers, jewellers and dealers in old
+      furniture. Nothing could be more unlike Violet Melrose&rsquo;s long hesitating
+      sessions before the things she thought she wanted till the moment came to
+      decide. Ursula pounced on silver foxes and old lacquer as promptly and
+      decisively as on the objects of her surplus sentimentality: she knew at
+      once what she wanted, and valued it more after it was hers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now&mdash;I wonder if you couldn&rsquo;t help me choose a grand piano?&rdquo; she
+      suggested, as the last antiquarian bowed them out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A piano?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes: for Ruan. I&rsquo;m sending one down for Grace Fulmer. She&rsquo;s coming to
+      stay... did I tell you? I want people to hear her. I want her to get
+      engagements in London. My dear, she&rsquo;s a Genius.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A Genius&mdash;Grace!&rdquo; Susy gasped. &ldquo;I thought it was Nat....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nat&mdash;Nat Fulmer?&rdquo; Ursula laughed derisively. &ldquo;Ah, of course&mdash;you&rsquo;ve
+      been staying with that silly Violet! The poor thing is off her head about
+      Nat&mdash;it&rsquo;s really pitiful. Of course he has talent: I saw that long
+      before Violet had ever heard of him. Why, on the opening day of the
+      American Artists&rsquo; exhibition, last winter, I stopped short before his
+      &lsquo;Spring Snow-Storm&rsquo; (which nobody else had noticed till that moment), and
+      said to the Prince, who was with me: &lsquo;The man has talent.&rsquo; But genius&mdash;why,
+      it&rsquo;s his wife who has genius! Have you never heard Grace play the violin?
+      Poor Violet, as usual, is off on the wrong tack. I&rsquo;ve given Fulmer my
+      garden-house to do&mdash;no doubt Violet told you&mdash;because I wanted
+      to help him. But Grace is my discovery, and I&rsquo;m determined to make her
+      known, and to have every one understand that she is the genius of the two.
+      I&rsquo;ve told her she simply must come to Ruan, and bring the best
+      accompanyist she can find. You know poor Nerone is dreadfully bored by
+      sport, though of course he goes out with the guns. And if one didn&rsquo;t have
+      a little art in the evening.... Oh, Susy, do you mean to tell me you don&rsquo;t
+      know how to choose a piano? I thought you were so fond of music!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am fond of it; but without knowing anything about it&mdash;in the way
+      we&rsquo;re all of us fond of the worthwhile things in our stupid set,&rdquo; she
+      added to herself&mdash;since it was obviously useless to impart such
+      reflections to Ursula.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But are you sure Grace is coming?&rdquo; she questioned aloud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite sure. Why shouldn&rsquo;t she? I wired to her yesterday. I&rsquo;m giving her a
+      thousand dollars and all her expenses.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not till they were having tea in a Piccadilly tea-room that Mrs.
+      Gillow began to manifest some interest in her companion&rsquo;s plans. The
+      thought of losing Susy became suddenly intolerable to her. The Prince, who
+      did not see why he should be expected to linger in London out of season,
+      was already at Ruan, and Ursula could not face the evening and the whole
+      of the next day by herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what are you doing in town, darling, I don&rsquo;t remember if I&rsquo;ve asked
+      you,&rdquo; she said, resting her firm elbows on the tea-table while she took a
+      light from Susy&rsquo;s cigarette.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy hesitated. She had foreseen that the time must soon come when she
+      should have to give some account of herself; and why should she not begin
+      by telling Ursula?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But telling her what?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her silence appeared to strike Mrs. Gillow as a reproach, and she
+      continued with compunction: &ldquo;And Nick? Nick&rsquo;s with you? How is he, I
+      thought you and he still were in Venice with Ellie Vanderlyn.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We were, for a few weeks.&rdquo; She steadied her voice. &ldquo;It was delightful.
+      But now we&rsquo;re both on our own again&mdash;for a while.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Gillow scrutinized her more searchingly. &ldquo;Oh, you&rsquo;re alone here,
+      then; quite alone?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes: Nick&rsquo;s cruising with some friends in the Mediterranean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ursula&rsquo;s shallow gaze deepened singularly. &ldquo;But, Susy darling, then if
+      you&rsquo;re alone&mdash;and out of a job, just for the moment?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy smiled. &ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;m not sure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, but if you are, darling, and you would come to Ruan! I know Fred
+      asked you didn&rsquo;t he? And he told me that both you and Nick had refused. He
+      was awfully huffed at your not coming; but I suppose that was because Nick
+      had other plans. We couldn&rsquo;t have him now, because there&rsquo;s no room for
+      another gun; but since he&rsquo;s not here, and you&rsquo;re free, why you know,
+      dearest, don&rsquo;t you, how we&rsquo;d love to have you? Fred would be too glad&mdash;too
+      outrageously glad&mdash;but you don&rsquo;t much mind Fred&rsquo;s love-making, do
+      you? And you&rsquo;d be such a help to me&mdash;if that&rsquo;s any argument! With
+      that big house full of men, and people flocking over every night to dine,
+      and Fred caring only for sport, and Nerone simply loathing it and
+      ridiculing it, and not a minute to myself to try to keep him in a good
+      humour.... Oh, Susy darling, don&rsquo;t say no, but let me telephone at once
+      for a place in the train to-morrow night!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy leaned back, letting the ash lengthen on her cigarette. How familiar,
+      how hatefully familiar, was that old appeal! Ursula felt the pressing need
+      of someone to flirt with Fred for a few weeks... and here was the very
+      person she needed. Susy shivered at the thought. She had never really
+      meant to go to Ruan. She had simply used the moor as a pretext when Violet
+      Melrose had gently put her out of doors. Rather than do what Ursula asked
+      she would borrow a few hundred pounds of Strefford, as he had suggested,
+      and then look about for some temporary occupation until&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Until she became Lady Altringham? Well, perhaps. At any rate, she was not
+      going back to slave for Ursula.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She shook her head with a faint smile. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m so sorry, Ursula: of course I
+      want awfully to oblige you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Gillow&rsquo;s gaze grew reproachful. &ldquo;I should have supposed you would,&rdquo;
+       she murmured. Susy, meeting her eyes, looked into them down a long vista
+      of favours bestowed, and perceived that Ursula was not the woman to forget
+      on which side the obligation lay between them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy hesitated: she remembered the weeks of ecstasy she had owed to the
+      Gillows&rsquo; wedding cheque, and it hurt her to appear ungrateful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I could, Ursula... but really... I&rsquo;m not free at the moment.&rdquo; She
+      paused, and then took an abrupt decision. &ldquo;The fact is, I&rsquo;m waiting here
+      to see Strefford.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Strefford&rsquo; Lord Altringham?&rdquo; Ursula stared. &ldquo;Ah, yes-I remember. You and
+      he used to be great friends, didn&rsquo;t you?&rdquo; Her roving attention
+      deepened.... But if Susy were waiting to see Lord Altringham&mdash;one of
+      the richest men in England! Suddenly Ursula opened her gold-meshed bag and
+      snatched a miniature diary from it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But wait a moment&mdash;yes, it is next week! I knew it was next week
+      he&rsquo;s coming to Ruan! But, you darling, that makes everything all right.
+      You&rsquo;ll send him a wire at once, and come with me to-morrow, and meet him
+      there instead of in this nasty sloppy desert.... Oh, Susy, if you knew how
+      hard life is for me in Scotland between the Prince and Fred you couldn&rsquo;t
+      possibly say no!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy still wavered; but, after all, if Strefford were really bound for
+      Ruan, why not see him there, agreeably and at leisure, instead of spending
+      a dreary day with him in roaming the wet London streets, or screaming at
+      him through the rattle of a restaurant orchestra? She knew he would not be
+      likely to postpone his visit to Ruan in order to linger in London with
+      her: such concessions had never been his way, and were less than ever
+      likely to be, now that he could do so thoroughly and completely as he
+      pleased.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the first time she fully understood how different his destiny had
+      become. Now of course all his days and hours were mapped out in advance:
+      invitations assailed him, opportunities pressed on him, he had only to
+      choose.... And the women! She had never before thought of the women. All
+      the girls in England would be wanting to marry him, not to mention her own
+      enterprising compatriots. And there were the married women, who were even
+      more to be feared. Streff might, for the time, escape marriage; though she
+      could guess the power of persuasion, family pressure, all the converging
+      traditional influences he had so often ridiculed, yet, as she knew, had
+      never completely thrown off.... Yes, those quiet invisible women at
+      Altringham&mdash;his uncle&rsquo;s widow, his mother, the spinster sisters&mdash;it
+      was not impossible that, with tact and patience&mdash;and the stupidest
+      women could be tactful and patient on such occasions&mdash;they might
+      eventually persuade him that it was his duty, they might put just the
+      right young loveliness in his way.... But meanwhile, now, at once, there
+      were the married women. Ah, they wouldn&rsquo;t wait, they were doubtless laying
+      their traps already! Susy shivered at the thought. She knew too much about
+      the way the trick was done, had followed, too often, all the sinuosities
+      of such approaches. Not that they were very sinuous nowadays: more often
+      there was just a swoop and a pounce when the time came; but she knew all
+      the arts and the wiles that led up to it. She knew them, oh, how she knew
+      them&mdash;though with Streff, thank heaven, she had never been called
+      upon to exercise them! His love was there for the asking: would she not be
+      a fool to refuse it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps; though on that point her mind still wavered. But at any rate she
+      saw that, decidedly, it would be better to yield to Ursula&rsquo;s pressure;
+      better to meet him at Ruan, in a congenial setting, where she would have
+      time to get her bearings, observe what dangers threatened him, and make up
+      her mind whether, after all, it was to be her mission to save him from the
+      other women.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, if you like, then, Ursula....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you angel, you! I&rsquo;m so glad! We&rsquo;ll go to the nearest post office, and
+      send off the wire ourselves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As they got into the motor Mrs. Gillow seized Susy&rsquo;s arm with a pleading
+      pressure. &ldquo;And you will let Fred make love to you a little, won&rsquo;t you,
+      darling?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+
+
+<h3>XVIII.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<span class="smcap">But</span> I can&rsquo;t think,&rdquo; said Ellie Vanderlyn earnestly, &ldquo;why you don&rsquo;t
+      announce your engagement before waiting for your divorce. People are
+      beginning to do it, I assure you&mdash;it&rsquo;s so much safer!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Vanderlyn, on the way back from St. Moritz to England, had paused in
+      Paris to renew the depleted wardrobe which, only two months earlier, had
+      filled so many trunks to bursting. Other ladies, flocking there from all
+      points of the globe for the same purpose, disputed with her the Louis XVI
+      suites of the Nouveau Luxe, the pink-candled tables in the restaurant, the
+      hours for trying-on at the dressmakers&rsquo;; and just because they were so
+      many, and all feverishly fighting to get the same things at the same time,
+      they were all excited, happy and at ease. It was the most momentous period
+      of the year: the height of the &ldquo;dress makers&rsquo; season.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Vanderlyn had run across Susy Lansing at one of the Rue de la Paix
+      openings, where rows of ladies wan with heat and emotion sat for hours in
+      rapt attention while spectral apparitions in incredible raiment tottered
+      endlessly past them on aching feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Distracted from the regal splendours of a chinchilla cloak by the sense
+      that another lady was also examining it, Mrs. Vanderlyn turned in surprise
+      at sight of Susy, whose head was critically bent above the fur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Susy! I&rsquo;d no idea you were here! I saw in the papers that you were with
+      the Gillows.&rdquo; The customary embraces followed; then Mrs. Vanderlyn, her
+      eyes pursuing the matchless cloak as it disappeared down a vista of
+      receding mannequins, interrogated sharply: &ldquo;Are you shopping for Ursula?
+      If you mean to order that cloak for her I&rsquo;d rather know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy smiled, and paused a moment before answering. During the pause she
+      took in all the exquisite details of Ellie Vanderlyn&rsquo;s perpetually
+      youthful person, from the plumed crown of her head to the perfect arch of
+      her patent-leather shoes. At last she said quietly: &ldquo;No&mdash;to-day I&rsquo;m
+      shopping for myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yourself? Yourself?&rdquo; Mrs. Vanderlyn echoed with a stare of incredulity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; just for a change,&rdquo; Susy serenely acknowledged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But the cloak&mdash;I meant the chinchilla cloak... the one with the
+      ermine lining....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; it is awfully good, isn&rsquo;t it? But I mean to look elsewhere before I
+      decide.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ah, how often she had heard her friends use that phrase; and how amusing
+      it was, now, to see Ellie&rsquo;s amazement as she heard it tossed off in her
+      own tone of contemptuous satiety! Susy was becoming more and more
+      dependent on such diversions; without them her days, crowded as they were,
+      would nevertheless have dragged by heavily. But it still amused her to go
+      to the big dressmakers&rsquo;, watch the mannequins sweep by, and be seen by her
+      friends superciliously examining all the most expensive dresses in the
+      procession. She knew the rumour was abroad that she and Nick were to be
+      divorced, and that Lord Altringham was &ldquo;devoted&rdquo; to her. She neither
+      confirmed nor denied the report: she just let herself be luxuriously
+      carried forward on its easy tide. But although it was now three months
+      since Nick had left the Palazzo Vanderlyn she had not yet written to him&mdash;nor
+      he to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile, in spite of all that she packed into them, the days passed more
+      and more slowly, and the excitements she had counted on no longer excited
+      her. Strefford was hers: she knew that he would marry her as soon as she
+      was free. They had been together at Ruan for ten days, and after that she
+      had motored south with him, stopping on the way to see Altringham, from
+      which, at the moment, his mourning relatives were absent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At Altringham they had parted; and after one or two more visits in England
+      she had come back to Paris, where he was now about to join her. After her
+      few hours at Altringham she had understood that he would wait for her as
+      long as was necessary: the fear of the &ldquo;other women&rdquo; had ceased to trouble
+      her. But, perhaps for that very reason, the future seemed less exciting
+      than she had expected. Sometimes she thought it was the sight of that
+      great house which had overwhelmed her: it was too vast, too venerable, too
+      like a huge monument built of ancient territorial traditions and
+      obligations. Perhaps it had been lived in for too long by too many
+      serious-minded and conscientious women: somehow she could not picture it
+      invaded by bridge and debts and adultery. And yet that was what would have
+      to be, of course... she could hardly picture either Strefford or herself
+      continuing there the life of heavy county responsibilities, dull parties,
+      laborious duties, weekly church-going, and presiding over local
+      committees.... What a pity they couldn&rsquo;t sell it and have a little house
+      on the Thames!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless she was not sorry to let it be known that Altringham was hers
+      when she chose to take it. At times she wondered whether Nick knew...
+      whether rumours had reached him. If they had, he had only his own letter
+      to thank for it. He had told her what course to pursue; and she was
+      pursuing it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment the meeting with Ellie Vanderlyn had been a shock to her; she
+      had hoped never to see Ellie again. But now that they were actually face
+      to face Susy perceived how dulled her sensibilities were. In a few moments
+      she had grown used to Ellie, as she was growing used to everybody and to
+      everything in the old life she had returned to. What was the use of making
+      such a fuss about things? She and Mrs. Vanderlyn left the dress-maker&rsquo;s
+      together, and after an absorbing session at a new milliner&rsquo;s were now
+      taking tea in Ellie&rsquo;s drawing-room at the Nouveau Luxe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ellie, with her spoiled child&rsquo;s persistency, had come back to the question
+      of the chinchilla cloak. It was the only one she had seen that she fancied
+      in the very least, and as she hadn&rsquo;t a decent fur garment left to her name
+      she was naturally in somewhat of a hurry... but, of course, if Susy had
+      been choosing that model for a friend....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy, leaning back against her cushions, examined through half-closed lids
+      Mrs. Vanderlyn&rsquo;s small delicately-restored countenance, which wore the
+      same expression of childish eagerness as when she discoursed of the young
+      Davenant of the moment. Once again Susy remarked that, in Ellie&rsquo;s agitated
+      existence, every interest appeared to be on exactly the same plane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The poor shivering dear,&rdquo; she answered laughing, &ldquo;of course it shall have
+      its nice warm winter cloak, and I&rsquo;ll choose another one instead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you darling, you! If you would! Of course, whoever you were ordering
+      it for need never know....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you can&rsquo;t comfort yourself with that, I&rsquo;m afraid. I&rsquo;ve already told
+      you that I was ordering it for myself.&rdquo; Susy paused to savour to the full
+      Ellie&rsquo;s look of blank bewilderment; then her amusement was checked by an
+      indefinable change in her friend&rsquo;s expression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, dearest&mdash;seriously? I didn&rsquo;t know there was someone....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy flushed to the forehead. A horror of humiliation overwhelmed her.
+      That Ellie should dare to think that of her&mdash;that anyone should dare
+      to!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Someone buying chinchilla cloaks for me? Thanks!&rdquo; she flared out. &ldquo;I
+      suppose I ought to be glad that the idea didn&rsquo;t immediately occur to you.
+      At least there was a decent interval of doubt....&rdquo; She stood up, laughing
+      again, and began to wander about the room. In the mirror above the mantel
+      she caught sight of her flushed angry face, and of Mrs. Vanderlyn&rsquo;s
+      disconcerted stare. She turned toward her friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose everybody else will think it if you do; so perhaps I&rsquo;d better
+      explain.&rdquo; She paused, and drew a quick breath. &ldquo;Nick and I mean to part&mdash;have
+      parted, in fact. He&rsquo;s decided that the whole thing was a mistake. He will
+      probably; marry again soon&mdash;and so shall I.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She flung the avowal out breathlessly, in her nervous dread of letting
+      Ellie Vanderlyn think for an instant longer that any other explanation was
+      conceivable. She had not meant to be so explicit; but once the words were
+      spoken she was not altogether sorry. Of course people would soon begin to
+      wonder why she was again straying about the world alone; and since it was
+      by Nick&rsquo;s choice, why should she not say so? Remembering the burning
+      anguish of those last hours in Venice she asked herself what possible
+      consideration she owed to the man who had so humbled her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ellie Vanderlyn glanced at her in astonishment. &ldquo;You? You and Nick&mdash;are
+      going to part?&rdquo; A light appeared to dawn on her. &ldquo;Ah&mdash;then that&rsquo;s why
+      he sent me back my pin, I suppose?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your pin?&rdquo; Susy wondered, not at once remembering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The poor little scarf-pin I gave him before I left Venice. He sent it
+      back almost at once, with the oddest note&mdash;just: &lsquo;I haven&rsquo;t earned
+      it, really.&rsquo; I couldn&rsquo;t think why he didn&rsquo;t care for the pin. But, now I
+      suppose it was because you and he had quarrelled; though really, even so,
+      I can&rsquo;t see why he should bear me a grudge....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy&rsquo;s quick blood surged up. Nick had sent back the pin&mdash;the fatal pin!
+      And she, Susy, had kept the bracelet&mdash;locked it up out of sight,
+      shrunk away from the little packet whenever her hand touched it in packing
+      or unpacking&mdash;but never thought of returning it, no, not once! Which
+      of the two, she wondered, had been right? Was it not an indirect slight to
+      her that Nick should fling back the gift to poor uncomprehending Ellie? Or
+      was it not rather another proof of his finer moral sensitiveness!... And
+      how could one tell, in their bewildering world, &ldquo;It was not because we&rsquo;ve
+      quarrelled; we haven&rsquo;t quarrelled,&rdquo; she said slowly, moved by the sudden
+      desire to defend her privacy and Nick&rsquo;s, to screen from every eye their
+      last bitter hour together. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve simply decided that our experiment was
+      impossible&mdash;for two paupers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, well&mdash;of course we all felt that at the time. And now somebody
+      else wants to marry you! And it&rsquo;s your trousseau you were choosing that
+      cloak for?&rdquo; Ellie cried in incredulous rapture; then she flung her arms
+      about Susy&rsquo;s shrinking shoulders. &ldquo;You lucky lucky girl! You clever clever
+      darling! But who on earth can he be?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And it was then that Susy, for the first time, had pronounced the name of
+      Lord Altringham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Streff&mdash;Streff? Our dear old Streff, You mean to say he wants to
+      marry you?&rdquo; As the news took possession of her mind Ellie became
+      dithyrambic. &ldquo;But, my dearest, what a miracle of luck! Of course I always
+      knew he was awfully gone on you: Fred Davenant used to say so, I
+      remember... and even Nelson, who&rsquo;s so stupid about such things, noticed it
+      in Venice.... But then it was so different. No one could possibly have
+      thought of marrying him then; whereas now of course every woman is trying
+      for him. Oh, Susy, whatever you do, don&rsquo;t miss your chance! You can&rsquo;t
+      conceive of the wicked plotting and intriguing there will be to get him&mdash;on
+      all sides, and even where one least suspects it. You don&rsquo;t know what
+      horrors women will do&mdash;and even girls!&rdquo; A shudder ran through her at the
+      thought, and she caught Susy&rsquo;s wrists in vehement fingers. &ldquo;But I can&rsquo;t
+      think, my dear, why you don&rsquo;t announce your engagement at once. People are
+      beginning to do it, I assure you&mdash;it&rsquo;s so much safer!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy looked at her, wondering. Not a word of sympathy for the ruin of her
+      brief bliss, not even a gleam of curiosity as to its cause! No doubt Ellie
+      Vanderlyn, like all Susy&rsquo;s other friends, had long since &ldquo;discounted&rdquo; the
+      brevity of her dream, and perhaps planned a sequel to it before she
+      herself had seen the glory fading. She and Nick had spent the greater part
+      of their few weeks together under Ellie Vanderlyn&rsquo;s roof; but to Ellie,
+      obviously, the fact meant no more than her own escapade, at the same
+      moment, with young Davenant&rsquo;s supplanter&mdash;the &ldquo;bounder&rdquo; whom
+      Strefford had never named. Her one thought for her friend was that Susy
+      should at last secure her prize&mdash;her incredible prize. And therein at
+      any rate Ellie showed the kind of cold disinterestedness that raised her
+      above the smiling perfidy of the majority of her kind. At least her advice
+      was sincere; and perhaps it was wise. Why should Susy not let every one
+      know that she meant to marry Strefford as soon as the &ldquo;formalities&rdquo; were
+      fulfilled?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She did not immediately answer Mrs. Vanderlyn&rsquo;s question; and the latter,
+      repeating it, added impatiently: &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand you; if Nick agrees&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, he agrees,&rdquo; said Susy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then what more do you want! Oh, Susy, if you&rsquo;d only follow my example!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your example?&rdquo; Susy paused, weighed the word, was struck by something
+      embarrassed, arch yet half-apologetic in her friend&rsquo;s expression. &ldquo;Your
+      example?&rdquo; she repeated. &ldquo;Why, Ellie, what on earth do you mean? Not that
+      you&rsquo;re going to part from poor Nelson?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Vanderlyn met her reproachful gaze with a crystalline glance. &ldquo;I
+      don&rsquo;t want to, heaven knows&mdash;poor dear Nelson! I assure you I simply
+      hate it. He&rsquo;s always such an angel to Clarissa... and then we&rsquo;re used to
+      each other. But what in the world am I to do? Algie&rsquo;s so rich, so
+      appallingly rich, that I have to be perpetually on the watch to keep other
+      women away from him&mdash;and it&rsquo;s too exhausting....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Algie?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Vanderlyn&rsquo;s lovely eyebrows rose. &ldquo;Algie: Algie Bockheimer. Didn&rsquo;t
+      you know, I think he said you&rsquo;ve dined with his parents. Nobody else in
+      the world is as rich as the Bockheimers; and Algie&rsquo;s their only child.
+      Yes, it was with him... with him I was so dreadfully happy last spring...
+      and now I&rsquo;m in mortal terror of losing him. And I do assure you there&rsquo;s no
+      other way of keeping them, when they&rsquo;re as hideously rich as that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy rose to her feet. A little shudder ran over her. She remembered, now,
+      having seen Algie Bockheimer at one of his parents&rsquo; first entertainments,
+      in their newly-inaugurated marble halls in Fifth Avenue. She recalled his
+      too faultless clothes and his small glossy furtive countenance. She looked
+      at Ellie Vanderlyn with sudden scorn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think you&rsquo;re abominable,&rdquo; she exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other&rsquo;s perfect little face collapsed. &ldquo;A-bo-minable? A-bo-mi-nable?
+      Susy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes... with Nelson... and Clarissa... and your past together... and all
+      the money you can possibly want... and that man! Abominable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ellie stood up trembling: she was not used to scenes, and they disarranged
+      her thoughts as much as her complexion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re very cruel, Susy&mdash;so cruel and dreadful that I hardly know
+      how to answer you,&rdquo; she stammered. &ldquo;But you simply don&rsquo;t know what you&rsquo;re
+      talking about. As if anybody ever had all the money they wanted!&rdquo; She
+      wiped her dark-rimmed eyes with a cautious handkerchief, glanced at
+      herself in the mirror, and added magnanimously: &ldquo;But I shall try to forget
+      what you&rsquo;ve said.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+
+
+<h3>XIX.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">Just</span> such a revolt as she had felt as a girl, such a disgusted recoil from
+      the standards and ideals of everybody about her as had flung her into her
+      mad marriage with Nick, now flamed in Susy Lansing&rsquo;s bosom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How could she ever go back into that world again? How echo its appraisals
+      of life and bow down to its judgments? Alas, it was only by marrying
+      according to its standards that she could escape such subjection. Perhaps
+      the same thought had actuated Nick: perhaps he had understood sooner than
+      she that to attain moral freedom they must both be above material cares.
+      Perhaps...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her talk with Ellie Vanderlyn had left Susy so oppressed and humiliated
+      that she almost shrank from her meeting with Altringham the next day. She
+      knew that he was coming to Paris for his final answer; he would wait as
+      long as was necessary if only she would consent to take immediate steps
+      for a divorce. She was staying at a modest hotel in the Faubourg St.
+      Germain, and had once more refused his suggestion that they should lunch
+      at the Nouveau Luxe, or at some fashionable restaurant of the Boulevards.
+      As before, she insisted on going to an out-of-the-way place near the
+      Luxembourg, where the prices were moderate enough for her own purse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t understand,&rdquo; Strefford objected, as they turned from her hotel
+      door toward this obscure retreat, &ldquo;why you insist on giving me bad food,
+      and depriving me of the satisfaction of being seen with you. Why must we
+      be so dreadfully clandestine? Don&rsquo;t people know by this time that we&rsquo;re to
+      be married?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy winced a little: she wondered if the word would always sound so
+      unnatural on his lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she said, with a laugh, &ldquo;they simply think, for the present, that
+      you&rsquo;re giving me pearls and chinchilla cloaks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He wrinkled his brows good-humouredly. &ldquo;Well, so I would, with joy&mdash;at
+      this particular minute. Don&rsquo;t you think perhaps you&rsquo;d better take
+      advantage of it? I don&rsquo;t wish to insist&mdash;but I foresee that I&rsquo;m much
+      too rich not to become stingy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She gave a slight shrug. &ldquo;At present there&rsquo;s nothing I loathe more than
+      pearls and chinchilla, or anything else in the world that&rsquo;s expensive and
+      enviable....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly she broke off, colouring with the consciousness that she had said
+      exactly the kind of thing that all the women who were trying for him
+      (except the very cleverest) would be sure to say; and that he would
+      certainly suspect her of attempting the conventional comedy of
+      disinterestedness, than which nothing was less likely to deceive or to
+      flatter him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His twinkling eyes played curiously over her face, and she went on,
+      meeting them with a smile: &ldquo;But don&rsquo;t imagine, all the same, that if I
+      should... decide... it would be altogether for your beaux yeux....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He laughed, she thought, rather drily. &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t suppose
+      that&rsquo;s ever likely to happen to me again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Streff&mdash;&rdquo; she faltered with compunction. It was odd&mdash;once upon a
+      time she had known exactly what to say to the man of the moment, whoever
+      he was, and whatever kind of talk he required; she had even, in the
+      difficult days before her marriage, reeled off glibly enough the sort of
+      lime-light sentimentality that plunged poor Fred Gillow into such
+      speechless beatitude. But since then she had spoken the language of real
+      love, looked with its eyes, embraced with its hands; and now the other
+      trumpery art had failed her, and she was conscious of bungling and groping
+      like a beginner under Strefford&rsquo;s ironic scrutiny.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had reached their obscure destination and he opened the door and
+      glanced in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s jammed&mdash;not a table. And stifling! Where shall we go? Perhaps
+      they could give us a room to ourselves&mdash;&rdquo; he suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She assented, and they were led up a cork-screw staircase to a
+      squat-ceilinged closet lit by the arched top of a high window, the lower
+      panes of which served for the floor below. Strefford opened the window,
+      and Susy, throwing her cloak on the divan, leaned on the balcony while he
+      ordered luncheon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the whole she was glad they were to be alone. Just because she felt so
+      sure of Strefford it seemed ungenerous to keep him longer in suspense. The
+      moment had come when they must have a decisive talk, and in the crowded
+      rooms below it would have been impossible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford, when the waiter had brought the first course and left them to
+      themselves, made no effort to revert to personal matters. He turned
+      instead to the topic always most congenial to him: the humours and ironies
+      of the human comedy, as presented by his own particular group. His
+      malicious commentary on life had always amused Susy because of the shrewd
+      flashes of philosophy he shed on the social antics they had so often
+      watched together. He was in fact the one person she knew (excepting Nick)
+      who was in the show and yet outside of it; and she was surprised, as the
+      talk proceeded, to find herself so little interested in his scraps of
+      gossip, and so little amused by his comments on them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With an inward shrug of discouragement she said to herself that probably
+      nothing would ever really amuse her again; then, as she listened, she
+      began to understand that her disappointment arose from the fact that
+      Strefford, in reality, could not live without these people whom he saw
+      through and satirized, and that the rather commonplace scandals he
+      narrated interested him as much as his own racy considerations on them;
+      and she was filled with terror at the thought that the inmost core of the
+      richly-decorated life of the Countess of Altringham would be just as poor
+      and low-ceilinged a place as the little room in which he and she now sat,
+      elbow to elbow yet so unapproachably apart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If Strefford could not live without these people, neither could she and
+      Nick; but for reasons how different! And if his opportunities had been
+      theirs, what a world they would have created for themselves! Such
+      imaginings were vain, and she shrank back from them into the present.
+      After all, as Lady Altringham she would have the power to create that
+      world which she and Nick had dreamed... only she must create it alone.
+      Well, that was probably the law of things. All human happiness was thus
+      conditioned and circumscribed, and hers, no doubt, must always be of the
+      lonely kind, since material things did not suffice for it, even though it
+      depended on them as Grace Fulmer&rsquo;s, for instance, never had. Yet even
+      Grace Fulmer had succumbed to Ursula&rsquo;s offer, and had arrived at Ruan the
+      day before Susy left, instead of going to Spain with her husband and
+      Violet Melrose. But then Grace was making the sacrifice for her children,
+      and somehow one had the feeling that in giving up her liberty she was not
+      surrendering a tittle of herself. All the difference was there....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How I do bore you!&rdquo; Susy heard Strefford exclaim. She became aware that
+      she had not been listening: stray echoes of names of places and people&mdash;Violet
+      Melrose, Ursula, Prince Altineri, others of their group and persuasion&mdash;had
+      vainly knocked at her barricaded brain; what had he been telling her about
+      them? She turned to him and their eyes met; his were full of a melancholy
+      irony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Susy, old girl, what&rsquo;s wrong?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She pulled herself together. &ldquo;I was thinking, Streff, just now&mdash;when
+      I said I hated the very sound of pearls and chinchilla&mdash;how
+      impossible it was that you should believe me; in fact, what a blunder I&rsquo;d
+      made in saying it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He smiled. &ldquo;Because it was what so many other women might be likely to say
+      so awfully unoriginal, in fact?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She laughed for sheer joy at his insight. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s going to be easier than I
+      imagined,&rdquo; she thought. Aloud she rejoined: &ldquo;Oh, Streff&mdash;how you&rsquo;re
+      always going to find me out! Where on earth shall I ever hide from you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where?&rdquo; He echoed her laugh, laying his hand lightly on hers. &ldquo;In my
+      heart, I&rsquo;m afraid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In spite of the laugh his accent shook her: something about it took all
+      the mockery from his retort, checked on her lips the: &ldquo;What? A valentine!&rdquo;
+       and made her suddenly feel that, if he were afraid, so was she. Yet she
+      was touched also, and wondered half exultingly if any other woman had ever
+      caught that particular deep inflexion of his shrill voice. She had never
+      liked him as much as at that moment; and she said to herself, with an odd
+      sense of detachment, as if she had been rather breathlessly observing the
+      vacillations of someone whom she longed to persuade but dared not: &ldquo;Now&mdash;NOW,
+      if he speaks, I shall say yes!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not speak; but abruptly, and as startlingly to her as if she had
+      just dropped from a sphere whose inhabitants had other methods of
+      expressing their sympathy, he slipped his arm around her and bent his keen
+      ugly melting face to hers....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the lightest touch&mdash;in an instant she was free again. But
+      something within her gasped and resisted long after his arm and his lips
+      were gone, and he was proceeding, with a too-studied ease, to light a
+      cigarette and sweeten his coffee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had kissed her.... Well, naturally: why not? It was not the first time
+      she had been kissed. It was true that one didn&rsquo;t habitually associate
+      Streff with such demonstrations; but she had not that excuse for surprise,
+      for even in Venice she had begun to notice that he looked at her
+      differently, and avoided her hand when he used to seek it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No&mdash;she ought not to have been surprised; nor ought a kiss to have
+      been so disturbing. Such incidents had punctuated the career of Susy
+      Branch: there had been, in particular, in far-off discarded times, Fred
+      Gillow&rsquo;s large but artless embraces. Well&mdash;nothing of that kind had
+      seemed of any more account than the click of a leaf in a woodland walk. It
+      had all been merely epidermal, ephemeral, part of the trivial accepted
+      &ldquo;business&rdquo; of the social comedy. But this kiss of Strefford&rsquo;s was what
+      Nick&rsquo;s had been, under the New Hampshire pines, on the day that had
+      decided their fate. It was a kiss with a future in it: like a ring slipped
+      upon her soul. And now, in the dreadful pause that followed&mdash;while
+      Strefford fidgeted with his cigarette-case and rattled the spoon in his
+      cup, Susy remembered what she had seen through the circle of Nick&rsquo;s kiss:
+      that blue illimitable distance which was at once the landscape at their
+      feet and the future in their souls....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps that was what Strefford&rsquo;s sharply narrowed eyes were seeing now,
+      that same illimitable distance that she had lost forever&mdash;perhaps he
+      was saying to himself, as she had said to herself when her lips left
+      Nick&rsquo;s: &ldquo;Each time we kiss we shall see it all again....&rdquo; Whereas all she
+      herself had felt was the gasping recoil from Strefford&rsquo;s touch, and an
+      intenser vision of the sordid room in which he and she sat, and of their
+      two selves, more distant from each other than if their embrace had been a
+      sudden thrusting apart....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The moment prolonged itself, and they sat numb. How long had it lasted?
+      How long ago was it that she had thought: &ldquo;It&rsquo;s going to be easier than I
+      imagined&rdquo;? Suddenly she felt Strefford&rsquo;s queer smile upon her, and saw in
+      his eyes a look, not of reproach or disappointment, but of deep and
+      anxious comprehension. Instead of being angry or hurt, he had seen, he had
+      understood, he was sorry for her!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Impulsively she slipped her hand into his, and they sat silent for another
+      moment. Then he stood up and took her cloak from the divan. &ldquo;Shall we go
+      now! I&rsquo;ve got cards for the private view of the Reynolds exhibition at the
+      Petit Palais. There are some portraits from Altringham. It might amuse
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the taxi she had time, through their light rattle of talk, to readjust
+      herself and drop back into her usual feeling of friendly ease with him. He
+      had been extraordinarily considerate, for anyone who always so
+      undisguisedly sought his own satisfaction above all things; and if his
+      considerateness were just an indirect way of seeking that satisfaction
+      now, well, that proved how much he cared for her, how necessary to his
+      happiness she had become. The sense of power was undeniably pleasant;
+      pleasanter still was the feeling that someone really needed her, that the
+      happiness of the man at her side depended on her yes or no. She abandoned
+      herself to the feeling, forgetting the abysmal interval of his caress, or
+      at least saying to herself that in time she would forget it, that really
+      there was nothing to make a fuss about in being kissed by anyone she liked
+      as much as Streff....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had guessed at once why he was taking her to see the Reynoldses.
+      Fashionable and artistic Paris had recently discovered English eighteenth
+      century art. The principal collections of England had yielded up their
+      best examples of the great portrait painter&rsquo;s work, and the private view
+      at the Petit Palais was to be the social event of the afternoon. Everybody&mdash;Strefford&rsquo;s
+      everybody and Susy&rsquo;s&mdash;was sure to be there; and these, as she knew,
+      were the occasions that revived Strefford&rsquo;s intermittent interest in art.
+      He really liked picture shows as much as the races, if one could be sure
+      of seeing as many people there. With Nick how different it would have
+      been! Nick hated openings and varnishing days, and worldly aesthetics in
+      general; he would have waited till the tide of fashion had ebbed, and
+      slipped off with Susy to see the pictures some morning when they were sure
+      to have the place to themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Susy divined that there was another reason for Strefford&rsquo;s suggestion.
+      She had never yet shown herself with him publicly, among their own group
+      of people: now he had determined that she should do so, and she knew why.
+      She had humbled his pride; he had understood, and forgiven her. But she
+      still continued to treat him as she had always treated the Strefford of
+      old, Charlie Strefford, dear old negligible impecunious Streff; and he
+      wanted to show her, ever so casually and adroitly, that the man who had
+      asked her to marry him was no longer Strefford, but Lord Altringham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the very threshold, his Ambassador&rsquo;s greeting marked the difference: it
+      was followed, wherever they turned, by ejaculations of welcome from the
+      rulers of the world they moved in. Everybody rich enough or titled enough,
+      or clever enough or stupid enough, to have forced a way into the social
+      citadel, was there, waving and flag-flying from the battlements; and to
+      all of them Lord Altringham had become a marked figure. During their slow
+      progress through the dense mass of important people who made the approach
+      to the pictures so well worth fighting for, he never left Susy&rsquo;s side, or
+      failed to make her feel herself a part of his triumphal advance. She heard
+      her name mentioned: &ldquo;Lansing&mdash;a Mrs. Lansing&mdash;an American...
+      Susy Lansing? Yes, of course.... You remember her? At Newport, At St.
+      Moritz? Exactly.... Divorced already? They say so... Susy darling! I&rsquo;d no
+      idea you were here... and Lord Altringham! You&rsquo;ve forgotten me, I know,
+      Lord Altringham.... Yes, last year, in Cairo... or at Newport... or in
+      Scotland ... Susy, dearest, when will you bring Lord Altringham to dine?
+      Any night that you and he are free I&rsquo;ll arrange to be....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You and he&rdquo;: they were &ldquo;you and he&rdquo; already!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, there&rsquo;s one of them&mdash;of my great-grandmothers,&rdquo; Strefford
+      explained, giving a last push that drew him and Susy to the front rank,
+      before a tall isolated portrait which, by sheer majesty of presentment,
+      sat in its great carved golden frame as on a throne above the other
+      pictures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy read on the scroll beneath it: &ldquo;The Hon&rsquo;ble Diana Lefanu, fifteenth
+      Countess of Altringham&rdquo;&mdash;and heard Strefford say: &ldquo;Do you remember?
+      It hangs where you noticed the empty space above the mantel-piece, in the
+      Vandyke room. They say Reynolds stipulated that it should be put with the
+      Vandykes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had never before heard him speak of his possessions, whether ancestral
+      or merely material, in just that full and satisfied tone of voice: the
+      rich man&rsquo;s voice. She saw that he was already feeling the influence of his
+      surroundings, that he was glad the portrait of a Countess of Altringham
+      should occupy the central place in the principal room of the exhibition,
+      that the crowd about it should be denser there than before any of the
+      other pictures, and that he should be standing there with Susy, letting
+      her feel, and letting all the people about them guess, that the day she
+      chose she could wear the same name as his pictured ancestress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the way back to her hotel, Strefford made no farther allusion to their
+      future; they chatted like old comrades in their respective corners of the
+      taxi. But as the carriage stopped at her door he said: &ldquo;I must go back to
+      England the day after to-morrow, worse luck! Why not dine with me to-night
+      at the Nouveau Luxe? I&rsquo;ve got to have the Ambassador and Lady Ascot, with
+      their youngest girl and my old Dunes aunt, the Dowager Duchess, who&rsquo;s over
+      here hiding from her creditors; but I&rsquo;ll try to get two or three amusing
+      men to leaven the lump. We might go on to a boite afterward, if you&rsquo;re
+      bored. Unless the dancing amuses you more....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She understood that he had decided to hasten his departure rather than
+      linger on in uncertainty; she also remembered having heard the Ascots&rsquo;
+      youngest daughter, Lady Joan Senechal, spoken of as one of the prettiest
+      girls of the season; and she recalled the almost exaggerated warmth of the
+      Ambassador&rsquo;s greeting at the private view.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I&rsquo;ll come, Streff dear!&rdquo; she cried, with an effort at gaiety
+      that sounded successful to her own strained ears, and reflected itself in
+      the sudden lighting up of his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She waved a good-bye from the step, saying to herself, as she looked after
+      him: &ldquo;He&rsquo;ll drive me home to-night, and I shall say &lsquo;yes&rsquo;; and then he&rsquo;ll
+      kiss me again. But the next time it won&rsquo;t be nearly as disagreeable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned into the hotel, glanced automatically at the empty pigeon-hole
+      for letters under her key-hook, and mounted the stairs following the same
+      train of images. &ldquo;Yes, I shall say &lsquo;yes&rsquo; to-night,&rdquo; she repeated firmly,
+      her hand on the door of her room. &ldquo;That is, unless, they&rsquo;ve brought up a
+      letter....&rdquo; She never re-entered the hotel without imagining that the
+      letter she had not found below had already been brought up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Opening the door, she turned on the light and sprang to the table on which
+      her correspondence sometimes awaited her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no letter; but the morning papers, still unread, lay at hand,
+      and glancing listlessly down the column which chronicles the doings of
+      society, she read:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After an extended cruise in the AEgean and the Black Sea on their
+      steam-yacht Ibis, Mr. and Mrs. Mortimer Hicks and their daughter are
+      established at the Nouveau Luxe in Rome. They have lately had the honour
+      of entertaining at dinner the Reigning Prince of Teutoburger-Waldhain and
+      his mother the Princess Dowager, with their suite. Among those invited to
+      meet their Serene Highnesses were the French and Spanish Ambassadors, the
+      Duchesse de Vichy, Prince and Princess Bagnidilucca, Lady Penelope
+      Pantiles&mdash;&rdquo; Susy&rsquo;s eye flew impatiently on over the long list of
+      titles&mdash;&ldquo;and Mr. Nicholas Lansing of New York, who has been cruising
+      with Mr. and Mrs. Hicks on the Ibis for the last few months.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+
+
+<h3>XX.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">The</span> Mortimer Hickses were in Rome; not, as they would in former times have
+      been, in one of the antiquated hostelries of the Piazza di Spagna or the
+      Porta del Popolo, where of old they had so gaily defied fever and
+      nourished themselves on local colour; but spread out, with all the
+      ostentation of philistine millionaires, under the piano nobile ceilings of
+      one of the high-perched &ldquo;Palaces,&rdquo; where, as Mrs. Hicks shamelessly
+      declared, they could &ldquo;rely on the plumbing,&rdquo; and &ldquo;have the privilege of
+      over-looking the Queen Mother&rsquo;s Gardens.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was that speech, uttered with beaming aplomb at a dinner-table
+      surrounded by the cosmopolitan nobility of the Eternal City, that had
+      suddenly revealed to Lansing the profound change in the Hicks point of
+      view.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he looked back over the four months since he had so unexpectedly joined
+      the Ibis at Genoa, he saw that the change, at first insidious and
+      unperceived, dated from the ill-fated day when the Hickses had run across
+      a Reigning Prince on his travels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hitherto they had been proof against such perils: both Mr. and Mrs. Hicks
+      had often declared that the aristocracy of the intellect was the only one
+      which attracted them. But in this case the Prince possessed an intellect,
+      in addition to his few square miles of territory, and to one of the most
+      beautiful Field Marshal&rsquo;s uniforms that had ever encased a royal warrior.
+      The Prince was not a warrior, however; he was stooping, pacific and
+      spectacled, and his possession of the uniform had been revealed to Mrs.
+      Hicks only by the gift of a full-length photograph in a Bond Street frame,
+      with Anastasius written slantingly across its legs. The Prince&mdash;and
+      herein lay the Hickses&rsquo; undoing&mdash;the Prince was an archaeologist: an
+      earnest anxious enquiring and scrupulous archaeologist. Delicate health
+      (so his suite hinted) banished him for a part of each year from his cold
+      and foggy principality; and in the company of his mother, the active and
+      enthusiastic Dowager Princess, he wandered from one Mediterranean shore to
+      another, now assisting at the exhumation of Ptolemaic mummies, now at the
+      excavation of Delphic temples or of North African basilicas. The beginning
+      of winter usually brought the Prince and his mother to Rome or Nice,
+      unless indeed they were summoned by family duties to Berlin, Vienna or
+      Madrid; for an extended connection with the principal royal houses of
+      Europe compelled them, as the Princess Mother said, to be always burying
+      or marrying a cousin. At other moments they were seldom seen in the
+      glacial atmosphere of courts, preferring to royal palaces those of the
+      other, and more modern type, in one of which the Hickses were now lodged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes: the Prince and his mother (they gaily avowed it) revelled in Palace
+      Hotels; and, being unable to afford the luxury of inhabiting them, they
+      liked, as often as possible, to be invited to dine there by their friends&mdash;&ldquo;or
+      even to tea, my dear,&rdquo; the Princess laughingly avowed, &ldquo;for I&rsquo;m so awfully
+      fond of buttered scones; and Anastasius gives me so little to eat in the
+      desert.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The encounter with these ambulant Highnesses had been fatal&mdash;Lansing
+      now perceived it&mdash;to Mrs. Hicks&rsquo;s principles. She had known a great
+      many archaeologists, but never one as agreeable as the Prince, and above
+      all never one who had left a throne to camp in the desert and delve in
+      Libyan tombs. And it seemed to her infinitely pathetic that these two
+      gifted beings, who grumbled when they had to go to &ldquo;marry a cousin&rdquo; at the
+      Palace of St. James or of Madrid, and hastened back breathlessly to the
+      far-off point where, metaphorically speaking, pick-axe and spade had
+      dropped from their royal hands&mdash;that these heirs of the ages should
+      be unable to offer themselves the comforts of up-to-date hotel life, and
+      should enjoy themselves &ldquo;like babies&rdquo; when they were invited to the other
+      kind of &ldquo;Palace,&rdquo; to feast on buttered scones and watch the tango.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She simply could not bear the thought of their privations; and neither,
+      after a time, could Mr. Hicks, who found the Prince more democratic than
+      anyone he had ever known at Apex City, and was immensely interested by the
+      fact that their spectacles came from the same optician.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it was, above all, the artistic tendencies of the Prince and his
+      mother which had conquered the Hickses. There was fascination in the
+      thought that, among the rabble of vulgar uneducated royalties who overran
+      Europe from Biarritz to the Engadine, gambling, tangoing, and sponging on
+      no less vulgar plebeians, they, the unobtrusive and self-respecting
+      Hickses, should have had the luck to meet this cultivated pair, who joined
+      them in gentle ridicule of their own frivolous kinsfolk, and whose tastes
+      were exactly those of the eccentric, unreliable and sometimes
+      money-borrowing persons who had hitherto represented the higher life to
+      the Hickses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now at last Mrs. Hicks saw the possibility of being at once artistic and
+      luxurious, of surrendering herself to the joys of modern plumbing and yet
+      keeping the talk on the highest level. &ldquo;If the poor dear Princess wants to
+      dine at the Nouveau Luxe why shouldn&rsquo;t we give her that pleasure?&rdquo; Mrs.
+      Hicks smilingly enquired; &ldquo;and as for enjoying her buttered scones like a
+      baby, as she says, I think it&rsquo;s the sweetest thing about her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Coral Hicks did not join in this chorus; but she accepted, with her
+      curious air of impartiality, the change in her parents&rsquo; manner of life,
+      and for the first time (as Nick observed) occupied herself with her
+      mother&rsquo;s toilet, with the result that Mrs. Hicks&rsquo;s outline became firmer,
+      her garments soberer in hue and finer in material; so that, should anyone
+      chance to detect the daughter&rsquo;s likeness to her mother, the result was
+      less likely to be disturbing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such precautions were the more needful&mdash;Lansing could not but note
+      because of the different standards of the society in which the Hickses now
+      moved. For it was a curious fact that admission to the intimacy of the
+      Prince and his mother&mdash;who continually declared themselves to be the
+      pariahs, the outlaws, the Bohemians among crowned heads nevertheless
+      involved not only living in Palace Hotels but mixing with those who
+      frequented them. The Prince&rsquo;s aide-de-camp&mdash;an agreeable young man of
+      easy manners&mdash;had smilingly hinted that their Serene Highnesses,
+      though so thoroughly democratic and unceremonious, were yet accustomed to
+      inspecting in advance the names of the persons whom their hosts wished to
+      invite with them; and Lansing noticed that Mrs. Hicks&rsquo;s lists, having been
+      &ldquo;submitted,&rdquo; usually came back lengthened by the addition of numerous
+      wealthy and titled guests. Their Highnesses never struck out a name; they
+      welcomed with enthusiasm and curiosity the Hickses&rsquo; oddest and most
+      inexplicable friends, at most putting off some of them to a later day on
+      the plea that it would be &ldquo;cosier&rdquo; to meet them on a more private
+      occasion; but they invariably added to the list any friends of their own,
+      with the gracious hint that they wished these latter (though socially so
+      well-provided for) to have the &ldquo;immense privilege&rdquo; of knowing the Hickses.
+      And thus it happened that when October gales necessitated laying up the
+      Ibis, the Hickses, finding again in Rome the august travellers from whom
+      they had parted the previous month in Athens, also found their
+      visiting-list enlarged by all that the capital contained of fashion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was true enough, as Lansing had not failed to note, that the Princess
+      Mother adored prehistoric art, and Russian music, and the paintings of
+      Gauguin and Matisse; but she also, and with a beaming unconsciousness of
+      perspective, adored large pearls and powerful motors, caravan tea and
+      modern plumbing, perfumed cigarettes and society scandals; and her son,
+      while apparently less sensible to these forms of luxury, adored his
+      mother, and was charmed to gratify her inclinations without cost to
+      himself&mdash;&ldquo;Since poor Mamma,&rdquo; as he observed, &ldquo;is so courageous when
+      we are roughing it in the desert.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The smiling aide-de-camp, who explained these things to Lansing, added
+      with an intenser smile that the Prince and his mother were under
+      obligations, either social or cousinly, to most of the titled persons whom
+      they begged Mrs. Hicks to invite; &ldquo;and it seems to their Serene
+      Highnesses,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;the most flattering return they can make for the
+      hospitality of their friends to give them such an intellectual
+      opportunity.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The dinner-table at which their Highnesses&rsquo; friends were seated on the
+      evening in question represented, numerically, one of the greatest
+      intellectual opportunities yet afforded them. Thirty guests were grouped
+      about the flower-wreathed board, from which Eldorada and Mr. Beck had been
+      excluded on the plea that the Princess Mother liked cosy parties and
+      begged her hosts that there should never be more than thirty at table.
+      Such, at least, was the reason given by Mrs. Hicks to her faithful
+      followers; but Lansing had observed that, of late, the same skilled hand
+      which had refashioned the Hickses&rsquo; social circle usually managed to
+      exclude from it the timid presences of the two secretaries. Their
+      banishment was the more displeasing to Lansing from the fact that, for the
+      last three months, he had filled Mr. Buttles&rsquo;s place, and was himself
+      their salaried companion. But since he had accepted the post, his obvious
+      duty was to fill it in accordance with his employers&rsquo; requirements; and it
+      was clear even to Eldorada and Mr. Beck that he had, as Eldorada
+      ungrudgingly said, &ldquo;Something of Mr. Buttles&rsquo;s marvellous social gifts.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      During the cruise his task had not been distasteful to him. He was glad of
+      any definite duties, however trivial, he felt more independent as the
+      Hickses&rsquo; secretary than as their pampered guest, and the large cheque
+      which Mr. Hicks handed over to him on the first of each month refreshed
+      his languishing sense of self-respect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He considered himself absurdly over-paid, but that was the Hickses&rsquo;
+      affair; and he saw nothing humiliating in being in the employ of people he
+      liked and respected. But from the moment of the ill-fated encounter with
+      the wandering Princes, his position had changed as much as that of his
+      employers. He was no longer, to Mr. and Mrs. Hicks, a useful and estimable
+      assistant, on the same level as Eldorada and Mr. Beck; he had become a
+      social asset of unsuspected value, equalling Mr. Buttles in his capacity
+      for dealing with the mysteries of foreign etiquette, and surpassing him in
+      the art of personal attraction. Nick Lansing, the Hickses found, already
+      knew most of the Princess Mother&rsquo;s rich and aristocratic friends. Many of
+      them hailed him with enthusiastic &ldquo;Old Nicks&rdquo;, and he was almost as
+      familiar as His Highness&rsquo;s own aide-de-camp with all those secret
+      ramifications of love and hate that made dinner-giving so much more of a
+      science in Rome than at Apex City.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Hicks, at first, had hopelessly lost her way in this labyrinth of
+      subterranean scandals, rivalries and jealousies; and finding Lansing&rsquo;s
+      hand within reach she clung to it with pathetic tenacity. But if the young
+      man&rsquo;s value had risen in the eyes of his employers it had deteriorated in
+      his own. He was condemned to play a part he had not bargained for, and it
+      seemed to him more degrading when paid in bank-notes than if his
+      retribution had consisted merely in good dinners and luxurious lodgings.
+      The first time the smiling aide-de-camp had caught his eye over a verbal
+      slip of Mrs. Hicks&rsquo;s, Nick had flushed to the forehead and gone to bed
+      swearing that he would chuck his job the next day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two months had passed since then, and he was still the paid secretary. He
+      had contrived to let the aide-de-camp feel that he was too deficient in
+      humour to be worth exchanging glances with; but even this had not restored
+      his self-respect, and on the evening in question, as he looked about the
+      long table, he said to himself for the hundredth time that he would give
+      up his position on the morrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Only&mdash;what was the alternative? The alternative, apparently, was
+      Coral Hicks. He glanced down the line of diners, beginning with the tall
+      lean countenance of the Princess Mother, with its small inquisitive eyes
+      perched as high as attic windows under a frizzled thatch of hair and a
+      pediment of uncleaned diamonds; passed on to the vacuous and overfed or
+      fashionably haggard masks of the ladies next in rank; and finally caught,
+      between branching orchids, a distant glimpse of Miss Hicks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In contrast with the others, he thought, she looked surprisingly noble.
+      Her large grave features made her appear like an old monument in a street
+      of Palace Hotels; and he marvelled at the mysterious law which had brought
+      this archaic face out of Apex City, and given to the oldest society of
+      Europe a look of such mixed modernity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing perceived that the aide-de-camp, who was his neighbour, was also
+      looking at Miss Hicks. His expression was serious, and even thoughtful;
+      but as his eyes met Lansing&rsquo;s he readjusted his official smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was admiring our hostess&rsquo;s daughter. Her absence of jewels is&mdash;er&mdash;an
+      inspiration,&rdquo; he remarked in the confidential tone which Lansing had come
+      to dread.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Miss Hicks is full of inspirations,&rdquo; he returned curtly, and the
+      aide-de-camp bowed with an admiring air, as if inspirations were rarer
+      than pearls, as in his milieu they undoubtedly were. &ldquo;She is the equal of
+      any situation, I am sure,&rdquo; he replied; and then abandoned the subject with
+      one of his automatic transitions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After dinner, in the embrasure of a drawing-room window, he surprised Nick
+      by returning to the same topic, and this time without thinking it needful
+      to readjust his smile. His face remained serious, though his manner was
+      studiously informal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was admiring, at dinner, Miss Hicks&rsquo;s invariable sense of
+      appropriateness. It must permit her friends to foresee for her almost any
+      future, however exalted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing hesitated, and controlled his annoyance. Decidedly he wanted to
+      know what was in his companion&rsquo;s mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean by exalted?&rdquo; he asked, with a smile of faint amusement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;equal to her marvellous capacity for shining in the public
+      eye.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing still smiled. &ldquo;The question is, I suppose, whether her desire to
+      shine equals her capacity.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The aide-de-camp stared. &ldquo;You mean, she&rsquo;s not ambitious?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On the contrary; I believe her to be immeasurably ambitious.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Immeasurably?&rdquo; The aide-de-camp seemed to try to measure it. &ldquo;But not,
+      surely, beyond&mdash;beyond what we can offer,&rdquo; his eyes completed the
+      sentence; and it was Lansing&rsquo;s turn to stare. The aide-de-camp faced the
+      stare. &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; his eyes concluded in a flash, while his lips let fall: &ldquo;The
+      Princess Mother admires her immensely.&rdquo; But at that moment a wave of Mrs.
+      Hicks&rsquo;s fan drew them hurriedly from their embrasure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Professor Darchivio had promised to explain to us the difference between
+      the Sassanian and Byzantine motives in Carolingian art; but the Manager
+      has sent up word that the two new Creole dancers from Paris have arrived,
+      and her Serene Highness wants to pop down to the ball-room and take a peep
+      at them.... She&rsquo;s sure the Professor will understand....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And accompany us, of course,&rdquo; the Princess irresistibly added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing&rsquo;s brief colloquy in the Nouveau Luxe window had lifted the scales
+      from his eyes. Innumerable dim corners of memory had been flooded with
+      light by that one quick glance of the aide-de-camp&rsquo;s: things he had heard,
+      hints he had let pass, smiles, insinuations, cordialities, rumours of the
+      improbability of the Prince&rsquo;s founding a family, suggestions as to the
+      urgent need of replenishing the Teutoburger treasury....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Hicks, perforce, had accompanied her parents and their princely
+      guests to the ballroom; but as she did not dance, and took little interest
+      in the sight of others so engaged, she remained aloof from the party,
+      absorbed in an archaeological discussion with the baffled but smiling
+      savant who was to have enlightened the party on the difference between
+      Sassanian and Byzantine ornament.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing, also aloof, had picked out a post from which he could observe the
+      girl: she wore a new look to him since he had seen her as the centre of
+      all these scattered threads of intrigue. Yes; decidedly she was growing
+      handsomer; or else she had learned how to set off her massive lines
+      instead of trying to disguise them. As she held up her long eye-glass to
+      glance absently at the dancers he was struck by the large beauty of her
+      arm and the careless assurance of the gesture. There was nothing nervous
+      or fussy about Coral Hicks; and he was not surprised that, plastically at
+      least, the Princess Mother had discerned her possibilities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nick Lansing, all that night, sat up and stared at his future. He knew
+      enough of the society into which the Hickses had drifted to guess that,
+      within a very short time, the hint of the Prince&rsquo;s aide-de-camp would
+      reappear in the form of a direct proposal. Lansing himself would probably&mdash;as
+      the one person in the Hicks entourage with whom one could intelligibly
+      commune&mdash;be entrusted with the next step in the negotiations: he would be
+      asked, as the aide-de-camp would have said, &ldquo;to feel the ground.&rdquo; It was
+      clearly part of the state policy of Teutoburg to offer Miss Hicks, with
+      the hand of its sovereign, an opportunity to replenish its treasury.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What would the girl do? Lansing could not guess; yet he dimly felt that
+      her attitude would depend in a great degree upon his own. And he knew no
+      more what his own was going to be than on the night, four months earlier,
+      when he had flung out of his wife&rsquo;s room in Venice to take the midnight
+      express for Genoa.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The whole of his past, and above all the tendency, on which he had once
+      prided himself, to live in the present and take whatever chances it
+      offered, now made it harder for him to act. He began to see that he had
+      never, even in the closest relations of life, looked ahead of his
+      immediate satisfaction. He had thought it rather fine to be able to give
+      himself so intensely to the fullness of each moment instead of hurrying
+      past it in pursuit of something more, or something else, in the manner of
+      the over-scrupulous or the under-imaginative, whom he had always grouped
+      together and equally pitied. It was not till he had linked his life with
+      Susy&rsquo;s that he had begun to feel it reaching forward into a future he
+      longed to make sure of, to fasten upon and shape to his own wants and
+      purposes, till, by an imperceptible substitution, that future had become
+      his real present, his all-absorbing moment of time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now the moment was shattered, and the power to rebuild it failed him. He
+      had never before thought about putting together broken bits: he felt like
+      a man whose house has been wrecked by an earthquake, and who, for lack of
+      skilled labour, is called upon for the first time to wield a trowel and
+      carry bricks. He simply did not know how.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Will-power, he saw, was not a thing one could suddenly decree oneself to
+      possess. It must be built up imperceptibly and laboriously out of a
+      succession of small efforts to meet definite objects, out of the facing of
+      daily difficulties instead of cleverly eluding them, or shifting their
+      burden on others. The making of the substance called character was a
+      process about as slow and arduous as the building of the Pyramids; and the
+      thing itself, like those awful edifices, was mainly useful to lodge one&rsquo;s
+      descendants in, after they too were dust. Yet the Pyramid-instinct was the
+      one which had made the world, made man, and caused his fugitive joys to
+      linger like fading frescoes on imperishable walls....
+    </p>
+
+
+<h3>XXI.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">On</span> the drive back from her dinner at the Nouveau Luxe, events had followed
+      the course foreseen by Susy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had promised Strefford to seek legal advice about her divorce, and he
+      had kissed her; and the promise had been easier to make than she had
+      expected, the kiss less difficult to receive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had gone to the dinner a-quiver with the mortification of learning
+      that her husband was still with the Hickses. Morally sure of it though she
+      had been, the discovery was a shock, and she measured for the first time
+      the abyss between fearing and knowing. No wonder he had not written&mdash;the
+      modern husband did not have to: he had only to leave it to time and the
+      newspapers to make known his intentions. Susy could imagine Nick&rsquo;s saying
+      to himself, as he sometimes used to say when she reminded him of an
+      unanswered letter: &ldquo;But there are lots of ways of answering a letter&mdash;and
+      writing doesn&rsquo;t happen to be mine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Well&mdash;he had done it in his way, and she was answered. For a minute,
+      as she laid aside the paper, darkness submerged her, and she felt herself
+      dropping down into the bottomless anguish of her dreadful vigil in the
+      Palazzo Vanderlyn. But she was weary of anguish: her healthy body and
+      nerves instinctively rejected it. The wave was spent, and she felt herself
+      irresistibly struggling back to light and life and youth. He didn&rsquo;t want
+      her! Well, she would try not to want him! There lay all the old expedients
+      at her hand&mdash;the rouge for her white lips, the atropine for her
+      blurred eyes, the new dress on her bed, the thought of Strefford and his
+      guests awaiting her, and of the conclusions that the diners of the Nouveau
+      Luxe would draw from seeing them together. Thank heaven no one would say:
+      &ldquo;Poor old Susy&mdash;did you know Nick had chucked her?&rdquo; They would all
+      say: &ldquo;Poor old Nick! Yes, I daresay she was sorry to chuck him; but
+      Altringham&rsquo;s mad to marry her, and what could she do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And once again events had followed the course she had foreseen. Seeing her
+      at Lord Altringham&rsquo;s table, with the Ascots and the old Duchess of Dunes,
+      the interested spectators could not but regard the dinner as confirming
+      the rumour of her marriage. As Ellie said, people didn&rsquo;t wait nowadays to
+      announce their &ldquo;engagements&rdquo; till the tiresome divorce proceedings were
+      over. Ellie herself, prodigally pearled and ermined, had floated in late
+      with Algie Bockheimer in her wake, and sat, in conspicuous tête-à-tête,
+      nodding and signalling her sympathy to Susy. Approval beamed from every
+      eye: it was awfully exciting, they all seemed to say, seeing Susy Lansing
+      pull it off! As the party, after dinner, drifted from the restaurant back
+      into the hall, she caught, in the smiles and hand-pressures crowding about
+      her, the scarcely-repressed hint of official congratulations; and Violet
+      Melrose, seated in a corner with Fulmer, drew her down with a wan
+      jade-circled arm, to whisper tenderly: &ldquo;It&rsquo;s most awfully clever of you,
+      darling, not to be wearing any jewels.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In all the women&rsquo;s eyes she read the reflected lustre of the jewels she
+      could wear when she chose: it was as though their glitter reached her from
+      the far-off bank where they lay sealed up in the Altringham strong-box.
+      What a fool she had been to think that Strefford would ever believe she
+      didn&rsquo;t care for them!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Ambassadress, a blank perpendicular person, had been a shade less
+      affable than Susy could have wished; but then there was Lady Joan&mdash;and
+      the girl was handsome, alarmingly handsome to account for that: probably
+      every one in the room had guessed it. And the old Duchess of Dunes was
+      delightful. She looked rather like Strefford in a wig and false pearls
+      (Susy was sure they were as false as her teeth); and her cordiality was so
+      demonstrative that the future bride found it more difficult to account for
+      than Lady Ascot&rsquo;s coldness, till she heard the old lady, as they passed
+      into the hall, breathe in a hissing whisper to her nephew: &ldquo;Streff,
+      dearest, when you have a minute&rsquo;s time, and can drop in at my wretched
+      little pension, I know you can explain in two words what I ought to do to
+      pacify those awful money-lenders.... And you&rsquo;ll bring your exquisite
+      American to see me, won&rsquo;t you!... No, Joan Senechal&rsquo;s too fair for my
+      taste.... Insipid....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes: the taste of it all was again sweet on her lips. A few days later she
+      began to wonder how the thought of Strefford&rsquo;s endearments could have been
+      so alarming. To be sure he was not lavish of them; but when he did touch
+      her, even when he kissed her, it no longer seemed to matter. An almost
+      complete absence of sensation had mercifully succeeded to the first wild
+      flurry of her nerves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so it would be, no doubt, with everything else in her new life. If it
+      failed to provoke any acute reactions, whether of pain or pleasure, the
+      very absence of sensation would make for peace. And in the meanwhile she
+      was tasting what, she had begun to suspect, was the maximum of bliss to
+      most of the women she knew: days packed with engagements, the exhilaration
+      of fashionable crowds, the thrill of snapping up a jewel or a bibelot or a
+      new &ldquo;model&rdquo; that one&rsquo;s best friend wanted, or of being invited to some
+      private show, or some exclusive entertainment, that one&rsquo;s best friend
+      couldn&rsquo;t get to. There was nothing, now, that she couldn&rsquo;t buy, nowhere
+      that she couldn&rsquo;t go: she had only to choose and to triumph. And for a
+      while the surface-excitement of her life gave her the illusion of
+      enjoyment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford, as she had expected, had postponed his return to England, and
+      they had now been for nearly three weeks together in their new, and
+      virtually avowed, relation. She had fancied that, after all, the easiest
+      part of it would be just the being with Strefford&mdash;the falling back
+      on their old tried friendship to efface the sense of strangeness. But,
+      though she had so soon grown used to his caresses, he himself remained
+      curiously unfamiliar: she was hardly sure, at times, that it was the old
+      Strefford she was talking to. It was not that his point of view had
+      changed, but that new things occupied and absorbed him. In all the small
+      sides of his great situation he took an almost childish satisfaction; and
+      though he still laughed at both its privileges and its obligations, it was
+      now with a jealous laughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It amused him inexhaustibly, for instance, to be made up to by all the
+      people who had always disapproved of him, and to unite at the same table
+      persons who had to dissemble their annoyance at being invited together
+      lest they should not be invited at all. Equally exhilarating was the
+      capricious favouring of the dull and dowdy on occasions when the brilliant
+      and disreputable expected his notice. It enchanted him, for example, to
+      ask the old Duchess of Dunes and Violet Melrose to dine with the Vicar of
+      Altringham, on his way to Switzerland for a month&rsquo;s holiday, and to watch
+      the face of the Vicar&rsquo;s wife while the Duchess narrated her last
+      difficulties with book-makers and money-lenders, and Violet proclaimed the
+      rights of Love and Genius to all that had once been supposed to belong
+      exclusively to Respectability and Dulness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy had to confess that her own amusements were hardly of a higher order;
+      but then she put up with them for lack of better, whereas Strefford, who
+      might have had what he pleased, was completely satisfied with such
+      triumphs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Somehow, in spite of his honours and his opportunities, he seemed to have
+      shrunk. The old Strefford had certainly been a larger person, and she
+      wondered if material prosperity were always a beginning of ossification.
+      Strefford had been much more fun when he lived by his wits. Sometimes,
+      now, when he tried to talk of politics, or assert himself on some question
+      of public interest, she was startled by his limitations. Formerly, when he
+      was not sure of his ground, it had been his way to turn the difficulty by
+      glib nonsense or easy irony; now he was actually dull, at times almost
+      pompous. She noticed too, for the first time, that he did not always hear
+      clearly when several people were talking at once, or when he was at the
+      theatre; and he developed a habit of saying over and over again: &ldquo;Does
+      so-and-so speak indistinctly? Or am I getting deaf, I wonder?&rdquo; which wore
+      on her nerves by its suggestion of a corresponding mental infirmity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These thoughts did not always trouble her. The current of idle activity on
+      which they were both gliding was her native element as well as his; and
+      never had its tide been as swift, its waves as buoyant. In his relation to
+      her, too, he was full of tact and consideration. She saw that he still
+      remembered their frightened exchange of glances after their first kiss;
+      and the sense of this little hidden spring of imagination in him was
+      sometimes enough for her thirst.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had always had a rather masculine punctuality in keeping her word, and
+      after she had promised Strefford to take steps toward a divorce she had
+      promptly set about doing it. A sudden reluctance prevented her asking the
+      advice of friends like Ellie Vanderlyn, whom she knew to be in the thick
+      of the same negotiations, and all she could think of was to consult a
+      young American lawyer practicing in Paris, with whom she felt she could
+      talk the more easily because he was not from New York, and probably
+      unacquainted with her history.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was so ignorant of the procedure in such matters that she was
+      surprised and relieved at his asking few personal questions; but it was a
+      shock to learn that a divorce could not be obtained, either in New York or
+      Paris, merely on the ground of desertion or incompatibility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought nowadays... if people preferred to live apart... it could
+      always be managed,&rdquo; she stammered, wondering at her own ignorance, after
+      the many conjugal ruptures she had assisted at.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young lawyer smiled, and coloured slightly. His lovely client
+      evidently intimidated him by her grace, and still more by her
+      inexperience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It can be&mdash;generally,&rdquo; he admitted; &ldquo;and especially so if... as I
+      gather is the case... your husband is equally anxious....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, quite!&rdquo; she exclaimed, suddenly humiliated by having to admit it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then&mdash;may I suggest that, to bring matters to a point, the
+      best way would be for you to write to him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She recoiled slightly. It had never occurred to her that the lawyers would
+      not &ldquo;manage it&rdquo; without her intervention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Write to him... but what about?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, expressing your wish... to recover your freedom.... The rest, I
+      assume,&rdquo; said the young lawyer, &ldquo;may be left to Mr. Lansing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She did not know exactly what he meant, and was too much perturbed by the
+      idea of having to communicate with Nick to follow any other train of
+      thought. How could she write such a letter? And yet how could she confess
+      to the lawyer that she had not the courage to do so? He would, of course,
+      tell her to go home and be reconciled. She hesitated perplexedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wouldn&rsquo;t it be better,&rdquo; she suggested, &ldquo;if the letter were to come from&mdash;from
+      your office?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He considered this politely. &ldquo;On the whole: no. If, as I take it, an
+      amicable arrangement is necessary&mdash;to secure the requisite evidence
+      then a line from you, suggesting an interview, seems to me more
+      advisable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An interview? Is an interview necessary?&rdquo; She was ashamed to show her
+      agitation to this cautiously smiling young man, who must wonder at her
+      childish lack of understanding; but the break in her voice was
+      uncontrollable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, please write to him&mdash;I can&rsquo;t! And I can&rsquo;t see him! Oh, can&rsquo;t you
+      arrange it for me?&rdquo; she pleaded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She saw now that her idea of a divorce had been that it was something one
+      went out&mdash;or sent out&mdash;to buy in a shop: something concrete and
+      portable, that Strefford&rsquo;s money could pay for, and that it required no
+      personal participation to obtain. What a fool the lawyer must think her!
+      Stiffening herself, she rose from her seat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My husband and I don&rsquo;t wish to see each other again.... I&rsquo;m sure it would
+      be useless... and very painful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are the best judge, of course. But in any case, a letter from you, a
+      friendly letter, seems wiser... considering the apparent lack of
+      evidence....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, then; I&rsquo;ll write,&rdquo; she agreed, and hurried away, scarcely
+      hearing his parting injunction that she should take a copy of her letter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That night she wrote. At the last moment it might have been impossible, if
+      at the theatre little Breckenridge had not bobbed into her box. He was
+      just back from Rome, where he had dined with the Hickses (&ldquo;a bang-up show&mdash;they&rsquo;re
+      really lances&mdash;you wouldn&rsquo;t know them!&rdquo;), and had met there Lansing, whom
+      he reported as intending to marry Coral &ldquo;as soon as things were settled&rdquo;.
+      &ldquo;You were dead right, weren&rsquo;t you, Susy,&rdquo; he snickered, &ldquo;that night in
+      Venice last summer, when we all thought you were joking about their
+      engagement? Pity now you chucked our surprise visit to the Hickses, and
+      sent Streff up to drag us back just as we were breaking in! You remember?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He flung off the &ldquo;Streff&rdquo; airily, in the old way, but with a tentative
+      side-glance at his host; and Lord Altringham, leaning toward Susy, said
+      coldly: &ldquo;Was Breckenridge speaking about me? I didn&rsquo;t catch what he said.
+      Does he speak indistinctly&mdash;or am I getting deaf, I wonder?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After that it seemed comparatively easy, when Strefford had dropped her at
+      her hotel, to go upstairs and write. She dashed off the date and her
+      address, and then stopped; but suddenly she remembered Breckenridge&rsquo;s
+      snicker, and the words rushed from her. &ldquo;Nick dear, it was July when you
+      left Venice, and I have had no word from you since the note in which you
+      said you had gone for a few days, and that I should hear soon again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You haven&rsquo;t written yet, and it is five months since you left me. That
+      means, I suppose, that you want to take back your freedom and give me
+      mine. Wouldn&rsquo;t it be kinder, in that case, to tell me so? It is worse than
+      anything to go on as we are now. I don&rsquo;t know how to put these things but
+      since you seem unwilling to write to me perhaps you would prefer to send
+      your answer to Mr. Frederic Spearman, the American lawyer here. His
+      address is 100, Boulevard Haussmann. I hope&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She broke off on the last word. Hope? What did she hope, either for him or
+      for herself? Wishes for his welfare would sound like a mockery&mdash;and
+      she would rather her letter should seem bitter than unfeeling. Above all,
+      she wanted to get it done. To have to re-write even those few lines would
+      be torture. So she left &ldquo;I hope,&rdquo; and simply added: &ldquo;to hear before long
+      what you have decided.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She read it over, and shivered. Not one word of the past&mdash;not one allusion
+      to that mysterious interweaving of their lives which had enclosed them one
+      in the other like the flower in its sheath! What place had such memories
+      in such a letter? She had the feeling that she wanted to hide that other
+      Nick away in her own bosom, and with him the other Susy, the Susy he had
+      once imagined her to be.... Neither of them seemed concerned with the
+      present business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The letter done, she stared at the sealed envelope till its presence in
+      the room became intolerable, and she understood that she must either tear
+      it up or post it immediately. She went down to the hall of the sleeping
+      hotel, and bribed the night-porter to carry the letter to the nearest post
+      office, though he objected that, at that hour, no time would be gained. &ldquo;I
+      want it out of the house,&rdquo; she insisted: and waited sternly by the desk,
+      in her dressing-gown, till he had performed the errand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As she re-entered her room, the disordered writing-table struck her; and
+      she remembered the lawyer&rsquo;s injunction to take a copy of her letter. A
+      copy to be filed away with the documents in &ldquo;Lansing versus Lansing!&rdquo; She
+      burst out laughing at the idea. What were lawyers made of, she wondered?
+      Didn&rsquo;t the man guess, by the mere look in her eyes and the sound of her
+      voice, that she would never, as long as she lived, forget a word of that
+      letter&mdash;that night after night she would lie down, as she was lying
+      down to-night, to stare wide-eyed for hours into the darkness, while a
+      voice in her brain monotonously hammered out: &ldquo;Nick dear, it was July when
+      you left me...&rdquo; and so on, word after word, down to the last fatal
+      syllable?
+    </p>
+
+
+<h3>XXII.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">Strefford</span> was leaving for England.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once assured that Susy had taken the first step toward freeing herself, he
+      frankly regarded her as his affianced wife, and could see no reason for
+      further mystery. She understood his impatience to have their plans
+      settled; it would protect him from the formidable menace of the
+      marriageable, and cause people, as he said, to stop meddling. Now that the
+      novelty of his situation was wearing off, his natural indolence reasserted
+      itself, and there was nothing he dreaded more than having to be on his
+      guard against the innumerable plans that his well-wishers were perpetually
+      making for him. Sometimes Susy fancied he was marrying her because to do
+      so was to follow the line of least resistance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To marry me is the easiest way of not marrying all the others,&rdquo; she
+      laughed, as he stood before her one day in a quiet alley of the Bois de
+      Boulogne, insisting on the settlement of various preliminaries. &ldquo;I believe
+      I&rsquo;m only a protection to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      An odd gleam passed behind his eyes, and she instantly guessed that he was
+      thinking: &ldquo;And what else am I to you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She changed colour, and he rejoined, laughing also: &ldquo;Well, you&rsquo;re that at
+      any rate, thank the Lord!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She pondered, and then questioned: &ldquo;But in the interval&mdash;how are you going
+      to defend yourself for another year?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you&rsquo;ve got to see to that; you&rsquo;ve got to take a little house in
+      London. You&rsquo;ve got to look after me, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was on the tip of her tongue to flash back: &ldquo;Oh, if that&rsquo;s all you care&mdash;!&rdquo;
+       But caring was exactly the factor she wanted, as much as possible, to keep
+      out of their talk and their thoughts. She could not ask him how much he
+      cared without laying herself open to the same question; and that way
+      terror lay. As a matter of fact, though Strefford was not an ardent wooer&mdash;perhaps
+      from tact, perhaps from temperament, perhaps merely from the long habit of
+      belittling and disintegrating every sentiment and every conviction&mdash;yet
+      she knew he did care for her as much as he was capable of caring for
+      anyone. If the element of habit entered largely into the feeling&mdash;if
+      he liked her, above all, because he was used to her, knew her views, her
+      indulgences, her allowances, knew he was never likely to be bored, and
+      almost certain to be amused, by her; why, such ingredients though not of
+      the fieriest, were perhaps those most likely to keep his feeling for her
+      at a pleasant temperature. She had had a taste of the tropics, and wanted
+      more equable weather; but the idea of having to fan his flame gently for a
+      year was unspeakably depressing to her. Yet all this was precisely what
+      she could not say. The long period of probation, during which, as she
+      knew, she would have to amuse him, to guard him, to hold him, and to keep
+      off the other women, was a necessary part of their situation. She was sure
+      that, as little Breckenridge would have said, she could &ldquo;pull it off&rdquo;; but
+      she did not want to think about it. What she would have preferred would
+      have been to go away&mdash;no matter where and not see Strefford again
+      till they were married. But she dared not tell him that either.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A little house in London&mdash;?&rdquo; She wondered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I suppose you&rsquo;ve got to have some sort of a roof over your head.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat down beside her. &ldquo;If you like me well enough to live at Altringham
+      some day, won&rsquo;t you, in the meantime, let me provide you with a smaller
+      and more convenient establishment?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Still she hesitated. The alternative, she knew, would be to live on Ursula
+      Gillow, Violet Melrose, or some other of her rich friends, any one of whom
+      would be ready to lavish the largest hospitality on the prospective Lady
+      Altringham. Such an arrangement, in the long run, would be no less
+      humiliating to her pride, no less destructive to her independence, than
+      Altringham&rsquo;s little establishment. But she temporized. &ldquo;I shall go over to
+      London in December, and stay for a while with various people&mdash;then we
+      can look about.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right; as you like.&rdquo; He obviously considered her hesitation
+      ridiculous, but was too full of satisfaction at her having started divorce
+      proceedings to be chilled by her reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now, look here, my dear; couldn&rsquo;t I give you some sort of a ring?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A ring?&rdquo; She flushed at the suggestion. &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the use, Streff, dear?
+      With all those jewels locked away in London&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I daresay you&rsquo;ll think them old-fashioned. And, hang it, why
+      shouldn&rsquo;t I give you something new, I ran across Ellie and Bockheimer
+      yesterday, in the rue de la Paix, picking out sapphires. Do you like
+      sapphires, or emeralds? Or just a diamond? I&rsquo;ve seen a thumping one....
+      I&rsquo;d like you to have it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ellie and Bockheimer! How she hated the conjunction of the names! Their
+      case always seemed to her like a caricature of her own, and she felt an
+      unreasoning resentment against Ellie for having selected the same season
+      for her unmating and re-mating.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish you wouldn&rsquo;t speak of them, Streff... as if they were like us! I
+      can hardly bear to sit in the same room with Ellie Vanderlyn.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hullo? What&rsquo;s wrong? You mean because of her giving up Clarissa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not that only.... You don&rsquo;t know.... I can&rsquo;t tell you....&rdquo; She shivered
+      at the memory, and rose restlessly from the bench where they had been
+      sitting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford gave his careless shrug. &ldquo;Well, my dear, you can hardly expect
+      me to agree, for after all it was to Ellie I owed the luck of being so
+      long alone with you in Venice. If she and Algie hadn&rsquo;t prolonged their
+      honeymoon at the villa&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stopped abruptly, and looked at Susy. She was conscious that every drop
+      of blood had left her face. She felt it ebbing away from her heart,
+      flowing out of her as if from all her severed arteries, till it seemed as
+      though nothing were left of life in her but one point of irreducible pain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ellie&mdash;at your villa? What do you mean? Was it Ellie and Bockheimer
+      who&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford still stared. &ldquo;You mean to say you didn&rsquo;t know?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who came after Nick and me...?&rdquo; she insisted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, do you suppose I&rsquo;d have turned you out otherwise? That beastly
+      Bockheimer simply smothered me with gold. Ah, well, there&rsquo;s one good
+      thing: I shall never have to let the villa again! I rather like the little
+      place myself, and I daresay once in a while we might go there for a day or
+      two.... Susy, what&rsquo;s the matter?&rdquo; he exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She returned his stare, but without seeing him. Everything swam and danced
+      before her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then she was there while I was posting all those letters for her&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Letters&mdash;what letters? What makes you look so frightfully upset?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She pursued her thought as if he had not spoken. &ldquo;She and Algie Bockheimer
+      arrived there the very day that Nick and I left?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose so. I thought she&rsquo;d told you. Ellie always tells everybody
+      everything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She would have told me, I daresay&mdash;but I wouldn&rsquo;t let her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, my dear, that was hardly my fault, was it? Though I really don&rsquo;t
+      see&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Susy, still blind to everything but the dance of dizzy sparks before
+      her eyes, pressed on as if she had not heard him. &ldquo;It was their motor,
+      then, that took us to Milan! It was Algie Bockheimer&rsquo;s motor!&rdquo; She did not
+      know why, but this seemed to her the most humiliating incident in the
+      whole hateful business. She remembered Nick&rsquo;s reluctance to use the
+      motor&mdash;she remembered his look when she had boasted of her &ldquo;managing.&rdquo; The
+      nausea mounted to her throat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford burst out laughing. &ldquo;I say&mdash;you borrowed their motor? And
+      you didn&rsquo;t know whose it was?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How could I know? I persuaded the chauffeur... for a little tip.... It
+      was to save our railway fares to Milan... extra luggage costs so
+      frightfully in Italy....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good old Susy! Well done! I can see you doing it&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, how horrible&mdash;how horrible!&rdquo; she groaned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Horrible? What&rsquo;s horrible?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, your not seeing... not feeling...&rdquo; she began impetuously; and then
+      stopped. How could she explain to him that what revolted her was not so
+      much the fact of his having given the little house, as soon as she and
+      Nick had left it, to those two people of all others&mdash;though the
+      vision of them in the sweet secret house, and under the plane-trees of the
+      terrace, drew such a trail of slime across her golden hours? No, it was
+      not that from which she most recoiled, but from the fact that Strefford,
+      living in luxury in Nelson Vanderlyn&rsquo;s house, should at the same time have
+      secretly abetted Ellie Vanderlyn&rsquo;s love-affairs, and allowed her&mdash;for
+      a handsome price&mdash;to shelter them under his own roof. The reproach
+      trembled on her lip&mdash;but she remembered her own part in the wretched
+      business, and the impossibility of avowing it to Strefford, and of
+      revealing to him that Nick had left her for that very reason. She was not
+      afraid that the discovery would diminish her in Strefford&rsquo;s eyes: he was
+      untroubled by moral problems, and would laugh away her avowal, with a
+      sneer at Nick in his new part of moralist. But that was just what she
+      could not bear: that anyone should cast a doubt on the genuineness of
+      Nick&rsquo;s standards, or should know how far below them she had fallen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She remained silent, and Strefford, after a moment, drew her gently down
+      to the seat beside him. &ldquo;Susy, upon my soul I don&rsquo;t know what you&rsquo;re
+      driving at. Is it me you&rsquo;re angry with&mdash;or yourself? And what&rsquo;s it all
+      about! Are you disgusted because I let the villa to a couple who weren&rsquo;t
+      married! But, hang it, they&rsquo;re the kind that pay the highest price and I
+      had to earn my living somehow! One doesn&rsquo;t run across a bridal pair every
+      day....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She lifted her eyes to his puzzled incredulous face. Poor Streff! No, it
+      was not with him that she was angry. Why should she be? Even that
+      ill-advised disclosure had told her nothing she had not already known
+      about him. It had simply revealed to her once more the real point of view
+      of the people he and she lived among had shown her that, in spite of the
+      superficial difference, he felt as they felt, judged as they judged, was
+      blind as they were&mdash;and as she would be expected to be, should she once
+      again become one of them. What was the use of being placed by fortune
+      above such shifts and compromises, if in one&rsquo;s heart one still condoned
+      them? And she would have to&mdash;she would catch the general note, grow
+      blunted as those other people were blunted, and gradually come to wonder
+      at her own revolt, as Strefford now honestly wondered at it. She felt as
+      though she were on the point of losing some new-found treasure, a treasure
+      precious only to herself, but beside which all he offered her was nothing,
+      the triumph of her wounded pride nothing, the security of her future
+      nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it, Susy?&rdquo; he asked, with the same puzzled gentleness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ah, the loneliness of never being able to make him understand! She had
+      felt lonely enough when the flaming sword of Nick&rsquo;s indignation had shut
+      her out from their Paradise; but there had been a cruel bliss in the pain.
+      Nick had not opened her eyes to new truths, but had waked in her again
+      something which had lain unconscious under years of accumulated
+      indifference. And that re-awakened sense had never left her since, and had
+      somehow kept her from utter loneliness because it was a secret shared with
+      Nick, a gift she owed to Nick, and which, in leaving her, he could not
+      take from her. It was almost, she suddenly felt, as if he had left her
+      with a child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear girl,&rdquo; Strefford said, with a resigned glance at his watch, &ldquo;you
+      know we&rsquo;re dining at the Embassy....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the Embassy? She looked at him vaguely: then she remembered. Yes, they
+      were dining that night at the Ascots&rsquo;, with Strefford&rsquo;s cousin, the Duke
+      of Dunes, and his wife, the handsome irreproachable young Duchess; with
+      the old gambling Dowager Duchess, whom her son and daughter-in-law had
+      come over from England to see; and with other English and French guests of
+      a rank and standing worthy of the Duneses. Susy knew that her inclusion in
+      such a dinner could mean but one thing: it was her definite recognition as
+      Altringham&rsquo;s future wife. She was &ldquo;the little American&rdquo; whom one had to
+      ask when one invited him, even on ceremonial occasions. The family had
+      accepted her; the Embassy could but follow suit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s late, dear; and I&rsquo;ve got to see someone on business first,&rdquo;
+       Strefford reminded her patiently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Streff&mdash;I can&rsquo;t, I can&rsquo;t!&rdquo; The words broke from her without her
+      knowing what she was saying. &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t go with you&mdash;I can&rsquo;t go to the
+      Embassy. I can&rsquo;t go on any longer like this....&rdquo; She lifted her eyes to
+      his in desperate appeal. &ldquo;Oh, understand&mdash;do please understand!&rdquo; she
+      wailed, knowing, while she spoke, the utter impossibility of what she
+      asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford&rsquo;s face had gradually paled and hardened. From sallow it turned
+      to a dusky white, and lines of obstinacy deepened between the ironic
+      eyebrows and about the weak amused mouth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Understand? What do you want me to understand,&rdquo; He laughed. &ldquo;That you&rsquo;re
+      trying to chuck me already?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She shrank at the sneer of the &ldquo;already,&rdquo; but instantly remembered that it
+      was the only thing he could be expected to say, since it was just because
+      he couldn&rsquo;t understand that she was flying from him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Streff&mdash;if I knew how to tell you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It doesn&rsquo;t so much matter about the how. Is that what you&rsquo;re trying to
+      say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her head drooped, and she saw the dead leaves whirling across the path at
+      her feet, lifted on a sudden wintry gust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The reason,&rdquo; he continued, clearing his throat with a stiff smile, &ldquo;is
+      not quite as important to me as the fact.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stood speechless, agonized by his pain. But still, she thought, he had
+      remembered the dinner at the Embassy. The thought gave her courage to go
+      on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It wouldn&rsquo;t do, Streff. I&rsquo;m not a bit the kind of person to make you
+      happy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, leave that to me, please, won&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I can&rsquo;t. Because I should be unhappy too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He clicked at the leaves as they whirled past. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve taken a rather long
+      time to find it out.&rdquo; She saw that his new-born sense of his own
+      consequence was making him suffer even more than his wounded affection;
+      and that again gave her courage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I&rsquo;ve taken long it&rsquo;s all the more reason why I shouldn&rsquo;t take longer.
+      If I&rsquo;ve made a mistake it&rsquo;s you who would have suffered from it....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thanks,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;for your extreme solicitude.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at him helplessly, penetrated by the despairing sense of their
+      inaccessibility to each other. Then she remembered that Nick, during their
+      last talk together, had seemed as inaccessible, and wondered if, when
+      human souls try to get too near each other, they do not inevitably become
+      mere blurs to each other&rsquo;s vision. She would have liked to say this to
+      Streff&mdash;but he would not have understood it either. The sense of loneliness
+      once more enveloped her, and she groped in vain for a word that should
+      reach him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me go home alone, won&rsquo;t you?&rdquo; she appealed to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alone?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She nodded. &ldquo;To-morrow&mdash;to-morrow....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He tried, rather valiantly, to smile. &ldquo;Hang to-morrow! Whatever is wrong,
+      it needn&rsquo;t prevent my seeing you home.&rdquo; He glanced toward the taxi that
+      awaited them at the end of the deserted drive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, please. You&rsquo;re in a hurry; take the taxi. I want immensely a long
+      long walk by myself... through the streets, with the lights coming
+      out....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He laid his hand on her arm. &ldquo;I say, my dear, you&rsquo;re not ill?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; I&rsquo;m not ill. But you may say I am, to-night at the Embassy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He released her and drew back. &ldquo;Oh, very well,&rdquo; he answered coldly; and
+      she understood by his tone that the knot was cut, and that at that moment
+      he almost hated her. She turned away, hastening down the deserted alley,
+      flying from him, and knowing, as she fled, that he was still standing
+      there motionless, staring after her, wounded, humiliated, uncomprehending.
+      It was neither her fault nor his....
+    </p>
+
+
+<h3>XXIII.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">As</span> she fled on toward the lights of the streets a breath of freedom seemed
+      to blow into her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Like a weary load the accumulated hypocrisies of the last months had
+      dropped from her: she was herself again, Nick&rsquo;s Susy, and no one else&rsquo;s.
+      She sped on, staring with bright bewildered eyes at the stately facades of
+      the La Muette quarter, the perspectives of bare trees, the awakening
+      glitter of shop-windows holding out to her all the things she would never
+      again be able to buy....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In an avenue of shops she paused before a milliner&rsquo;s window, and said to
+      herself: &ldquo;Why shouldn&rsquo;t I earn my living by trimming hats?&rdquo; She met
+      work-girls streaming out under a doorway, and scattering to catch trams
+      and omnibuses; and she looked with newly-wakened interest at their tired
+      independent faces. &ldquo;Why shouldn&rsquo;t I earn my living as well as they do?&rdquo;
+       she thought. A little farther on she passed a Sister of Charity with
+      softly trotting feet, a calm anonymous glance, and hands hidden in her
+      capacious sleeves. Susy looked at her and thought: &ldquo;Why shouldn&rsquo;t I be a
+      Sister, and have no money to worry about, and trot about under a white
+      coif helping poor people?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All these strangers on whom she smiled in passing, and glanced back at
+      enviously, were free from the necessities that enslaved her, and would not
+      have known what she meant if she had told them that she must have so much
+      money for her dresses, so much for her cigarettes, so much for bridge and
+      cabs and tips, and all kinds of extras, and that at that moment she ought
+      to be hurrying back to a dinner at the British Embassy, where her
+      permanent right to such luxuries was to be solemnly recognized and
+      ratified.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The artificiality and unreality of her life overcame her as with stifling
+      fumes. She stopped at a street-corner, drawing long panting breaths as if
+      she had been running a race. Then, slowly and aimlessly, she began to
+      saunter along a street of small private houses in damp gardens that led to
+      the Avenue du Bois. She sat down on a bench. Not far off, the Arc de
+      Triomphe raised its august bulk, and beyond it a river of lights streamed
+      down toward Paris, and the stir of the city&rsquo;s heart-beats troubled the
+      quiet in her bosom. But not for long. She seemed to be looking at it all
+      from the other side of the grave; and as she got up and wandered down the
+      Champs Elysees, half empty in the evening lull between dusk and dinner,
+      she felt as if the glittering avenue were really changed into the Field of
+      Shadows from which it takes its name, and as if she were a ghost among
+      ghosts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Halfway home, a weakness of loneliness overcame her, and she seated
+      herself under the trees near the Rond Point. Lines of motors and carriages
+      were beginning to animate the converging thoroughfares, streaming abreast,
+      crossing, winding in and out of each other in a tangle of hurried
+      pleasure-seeking. She caught the light on jewels and shirt-fronts and hard
+      bored eyes emerging from dim billows of fur and velvet. She seemed to hear
+      what the couples were saying to each other, she pictured the
+      drawing-rooms, restaurants, dance-halls they were hastening to, the
+      breathless routine that was hurrying them along, as Time, the old
+      vacuum-cleaner, swept them away with the dust of their carriage-wheels.
+      And again the loneliness vanished in a sense of release....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the corner of the Place de la Concorde she stopped, recognizing a man
+      in evening dress who was hailing a taxi. Their eyes met, and Nelson
+      Vanderlyn came forward. He was the last person she cared to run across,
+      and she shrank back involuntarily. What did he know, what had he guessed,
+      of her complicity in his wife&rsquo;s affairs? No doubt Ellie had blabbed it all
+      out by this time; she was just as likely to confide her love-affairs to
+      Nelson as to anyone else, now that the Bockheimer prize was landed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;well&mdash;well&mdash;so I&rsquo;ve caught you at it! Glad to see
+      you, Susy, my dear.&rdquo; She found her hand cordially clasped in Vanderlyn&rsquo;s,
+      and his round pink face bent on her with all its old urbanity. Did nothing
+      matter, then, in this world she was fleeing from, did no one love or hate
+      or remember?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No idea you were in Paris&mdash;just got here myself,&rdquo; Vanderlyn
+      continued, visibly delighted at the meeting. &ldquo;Look here, don&rsquo;t suppose
+      you&rsquo;re out of a job this evening by any chance, and would come and cheer
+      up a lone bachelor, eh? No? You are? Well, that&rsquo;s luck for once! I say,
+      where shall we go? One of the places where they dance, I suppose? Yes, I
+      twirl the light fantastic once in a while myself. Got to keep up with the
+      times! Hold on, taxi! Here&mdash;I&rsquo;ll drive you home first, and wait while
+      you jump into your toggery. Lots of time.&rdquo; As he steered her toward the
+      carriage she noticed that he had a gouty limp, and pulled himself in after
+      her with difficulty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mayn&rsquo;t I come as I am, Nelson, I don&rsquo;t feel like dancing. Let&rsquo;s go and
+      dine in one of those nice smoky little restaurants by the Place de la
+      Bourse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He seemed surprised but relieved at the suggestion, and they rolled off
+      together. In a corner at Bauge&rsquo;s they found a quiet table, screened from
+      the other diners, and while Vanderlyn adjusted his eyeglasses to study the
+      carte Susy stole a long look at him. He was dressed with even more than
+      his usual formal trimness, and she detected, in an ultra-flat wrist-watch
+      and discreetly expensive waistcoat buttons, an attempt at smartness
+      altogether new. His face had undergone the same change: its familiar look
+      of worn optimism had been, as it were, done up to match his clothes, as
+      though a sort of moral cosmetic had made him pinker, shinier and
+      sprightlier without really rejuvenating him. A thin veil of high spirits
+      had merely been drawn over his face, as the shining strands of hair were
+      skilfully brushed over his baldness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here! Carte des vins, waiter! What champagne, Susy?&rdquo; He chose,
+      fastidiously, the best the cellar could produce, grumbling a little at the
+      bourgeois character of the dishes. &ldquo;Capital food of its kind, no doubt,
+      but coarsish, don&rsquo;t you think? Well, I don&rsquo;t mind... it&rsquo;s rather a jolly
+      change from the Luxe cooking. A new sensation&mdash;I&rsquo;m all for new
+      sensations, ain&rsquo;t you, my dear?&rdquo; He re-filled their champagne glasses,
+      flung an arm sideways over his chair, and smiled at her with a foggy
+      benevolence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the champagne flowed his confidences flowed with it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Suppose you know what I&rsquo;m here for&mdash;this divorce business? We wanted
+      to settle it quietly without a fuss, and of course Paris is the best place
+      for that sort of job. Live and let live; no questions asked. None of your
+      dirty newspapers. Great country, this. No hypocrisy... they understand
+      Life over here!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy gazed and listened. She remembered that people had thought Nelson
+      would make a row when he found out. He had always been addicted to
+      truculent anecdotes about unfaithful wives, and the very formula of his
+      perpetual ejaculation&mdash;&ldquo;Caught you at it, eh?&rdquo;&mdash;seemed to hint
+      at a constant preoccupation with such ideas. But now it was evident that,
+      as the saying was, he had &ldquo;swallowed his dose&rdquo; like all the others. No
+      strong blast of indignation had momentarily lifted him above his normal
+      stature: he remained a little man among little men, and his eagerness to
+      rebuild his life with all the old smiling optimism reminded Susy of the
+      patient industry of an ant remaking its ruined ant-heap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell you what, great thing, this liberty! Everything&rsquo;s changed nowadays;
+      why shouldn&rsquo;t marriage be too? A man can get out of a business partnership
+      when he wants to; but the parsons want to keep us noosed up to each other
+      for life because we&rsquo;ve blundered into a church one day and said &lsquo;Yes&rsquo;
+      before one of ’em. No, no&mdash;that&rsquo;s too easy. We&rsquo;ve got beyond that.
+      Science, and all these new discoveries.... I say the Ten Commandments were
+      made for man, and not man for the Commandments; and there ain&rsquo;t a word
+      against divorce in ’em, anyhow! That&rsquo;s what I tell my poor old mother, who
+      builds everything on her Bible. Find me the place where it says: &lsquo;Thou
+      shalt not sue for divorce.&rsquo; It makes her wild, poor old lady, because she
+      can&rsquo;t; and she doesn&rsquo;t know how they happen to have left it out.... I
+      rather think Moses left it out because he knew more about human nature
+      than these snivelling modern parsons do. Not that they&rsquo;ll always bear
+      investigating either; but I don&rsquo;t care about that. Live and let live, eh,
+      Susy? Haven&rsquo;t we all got a right to our Affinities? I hear you&rsquo;re
+      following our example yourself. First-rate idea: I don&rsquo;t mind telling you
+      I saw it coming on last summer at Venice. Caught you at it, so to speak!
+      Old Nelson ain&rsquo;t as blind as people think. Here, let&rsquo;s open another bottle
+      to the health of Streff and Mrs. Streff!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She caught the hand with which he was signalling to the sommelier. This
+      flushed and garrulous Nelson moved her more poignantly than a more heroic
+      figure. &ldquo;No more champagne, please, Nelson. Besides,&rdquo; she suddenly added,
+      &ldquo;it&rsquo;s not true.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stared. &ldquo;Not true that you&rsquo;re going to marry Altringham?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By George then what on earth did you chuck Nick for? Ain&rsquo;t you got an
+      Affinity, my dear?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She laughed and shook her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean to tell me it&rsquo;s all Nick&rsquo;s doing, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know. Let&rsquo;s talk of you instead, Nelson. I&rsquo;m glad you&rsquo;re in such
+      good spirits. I rather thought&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He interrupted her quickly. &ldquo;Thought I&rsquo;d cut up a rumpus&mdash;do some shooting?
+      I know&mdash;people did.&rdquo; He twisted his moustache, evidently proud of his
+      reputation. &ldquo;Well, maybe I did see red for a day or two&mdash;but I&rsquo;m a
+      philosopher, first and last. Before I went into banking I&rsquo;d made and lost
+      two fortunes out West. Well, how did I build ’em up again? Not by shooting
+      anybody even myself. By just buckling to, and beginning all over again.
+      That&rsquo;s how... and that&rsquo;s what I am doing now. Beginning all over again.&rdquo;
+       His voice dropped from boastfulness to a note of wistful melancholy, the
+      look of strained jauntiness fell from his face like a mask, and for an
+      instant she saw the real man, old, ruined, lonely. Yes, that was it: he
+      was lonely, desperately lonely, foundering in such deep seas of solitude
+      that any presence out of the past was like a spar to which he clung.
+      Whatever he knew or guessed of the part she had played in his disaster, it
+      was not callousness that had made him greet her with such forgiving
+      warmth, but the same sense of smallness, insignificance and isolation
+      which perpetually hung like a cold fog on her own horizon. Suddenly she
+      too felt old&mdash;old and unspeakably tired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s been nice seeing you, Nelson. But now I must be getting home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He offered no objection, but asked for the bill, resumed his jaunty air
+      while he scattered largesse among the waiters, and sauntered out behind
+      her after calling for a taxi.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They drove off in silence. Susy was thinking: &ldquo;And Clarissa?&rdquo; but dared
+      not ask. Vanderlyn lit a cigarette, hummed a dance-tune, and stared out of
+      the window. Suddenly she felt his hand on hers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Susy&mdash;do you ever see her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;See&mdash;Ellie?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He nodded, without turning toward her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not often... sometimes....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you do, for God&rsquo;s sake tell her I&rsquo;m happy... happy as a king... tell
+      her you could see for yourself that I was....&rdquo; His voice broke in a little
+      gasp. &ldquo;I... I&rsquo;ll be damned if... if she shall ever be unhappy about me...
+      if I can help it....&rdquo; The cigarette dropped from his fingers, and with a
+      sob he covered his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, poor Nelson&mdash;poor Nelson,&rdquo; Susy breathed. While their cab
+      rattled across the Place du Carrousel, and over the bridge, he continued
+      to sit beside her with hidden face. At last he pulled out a scented
+      handkerchief, rubbed his eyes with it, and groped for another cigarette.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m all right! Tell her that, will you, Susy? There are some of our old
+      times I don&rsquo;t suppose I shall ever forget; but they make me feel kindly to
+      her, and not angry. I didn&rsquo;t know it would be so, beforehand&mdash;but it
+      is.... And now the thing&rsquo;s settled I&rsquo;m as right as a trivet, and you can
+      tell her so.... Look here, Susy...&rdquo; he caught her by the arm as the taxi
+      drew up at her hotel.... &ldquo;Tell her I understand, will you? I&rsquo;d rather like
+      her to know that....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll tell her, Nelson,&rdquo; she promised; and climbed the stairs alone to her
+      dreary room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy&rsquo;s one fear was that Strefford, when he returned the next day, should
+      treat their talk of the previous evening as a fit of &ldquo;nerves&rdquo; to be jested
+      away. He might, indeed, resent her behaviour too deeply to seek to see her
+      at once; but his easygoing modern attitude toward conduct and convictions
+      made that improbable. She had an idea that what he had most minded was her
+      dropping so unceremoniously out of the Embassy Dinner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, after all, why should she see him again? She had had enough of
+      explanations during the last months to have learned how seldom they
+      explain anything. If the other person did not understand at the first
+      word, at the first glance even, subsequent elucidations served only to
+      deepen the obscurity. And she wanted above all&mdash;and especially since
+      her hour with Nelson Vanderlyn&mdash;to keep herself free, aloof, to
+      retain her hold on her precariously recovered self. She sat down and wrote
+      to Strefford&mdash;and the letter was only a little less painful to write
+      than the one she had despatched to Nick. It was not that her own feelings
+      were in any like measure engaged; but because, as the decision to give up
+      Strefford affirmed itself, she remembered only his kindness, his
+      forbearance, his good humour, and all the other qualities she had always
+      liked in him; and because she felt ashamed of the hesitations which must
+      cause him so much pain and humiliation. Yes: humiliation chiefly. She knew
+      that what she had to say would hurt his pride, in whatever way she framed
+      her renunciation; and her pen wavered, hating its task. Then she
+      remembered Vanderlyn&rsquo;s words about his wife: &ldquo;There are some of our old
+      times I don&rsquo;t suppose I shall ever forget&mdash;&rdquo; and a phrase of Grace
+      Fulmer&rsquo;s that she had but half grasped at the time: &ldquo;You haven&rsquo;t been
+      married long enough to understand how trifling such things seem in the
+      balance of one&rsquo;s memories.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here were two people who had penetrated farther than she into the
+      labyrinth of the wedded state, and struggled through some of its thorniest
+      passages; and yet both, one consciously, the other half-unaware, testified
+      to the mysterious fact which was already dawning on her: that the
+      influence of a marriage begun in mutual understanding is too deep not to
+      reassert itself even in the moment of flight and denial.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The real reason is that you&rsquo;re not Nick&rdquo; was what she would have said to
+      Strefford if she had dared to set down the bare truth; and she knew that,
+      whatever she wrote, he was too acute not to read that into it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;ll think it&rsquo;s because I&rsquo;m still in love with Nick... and perhaps I am.
+      But even if I were, the difference doesn&rsquo;t seem to lie there, after all,
+      but deeper, in things we&rsquo;ve shared that seem to be meant to outlast love,
+      or to change it into something different.&rdquo; If she could have hoped to make
+      Strefford understand that, the letter would have been easy enough to write&mdash;but
+      she knew just at what point his imagination would fail, in what obvious
+      and superficial inferences it would rest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor Streff&mdash;poor me!&rdquo; she thought as she sealed the letter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After she had despatched it a sense of blankness descended on her. She had
+      succeeded in driving from her mind all vain hesitations, doubts, returns
+      upon herself: her healthy system naturally rejected them. But they left a
+      queer emptiness in which her thoughts rattled about as thoughts might, she
+      supposed, in the first moments after death&mdash;before one got used to
+      it. To get used to being dead: that seemed to be her immediate business.
+      And she felt such a novice at it&mdash;felt so horribly alive! How had
+      those others learned to do without living? Nelson&mdash;well, he was still
+      in the throes; and probably never would understand, or be able to
+      communicate, the lesson when he had mastered it. But Grace Fulmer&mdash;she
+      suddenly remembered that Grace was in Paris, and set forth to find her.
+    </p>
+
+
+<h3>XXIV.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">Nick Lansing</span> had walked out a long way into the Campagna. His hours were
+      seldom his own, for both Mr. and Mrs. Hicks were becoming more and more
+      addicted to sudden and somewhat imperious demands upon his time; but on
+      this occasion he had simply slipped away after luncheon, and taking the
+      tram to the Porta Salaria, had wandered on thence in the direction of the
+      Ponte Nomentano.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He wanted to get away and think; but now that he had done it the business
+      proved as unfruitful as everything he had put his hand to since he had
+      left Venice. Think&mdash;think about what? His future seemed to him a
+      negligible matter since he had received, two months earlier, the few lines
+      in which Susy had asked him for her freedom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The letter had been a shock&mdash;though he had fancied himself so
+      prepared for it&mdash;yet it had also, in another sense, been a relief,
+      since, now that at last circumstances compelled him to write to her, they
+      also told him what to say. And he had said it as briefly and simply as
+      possible, telling her that he would put no obstacle in the way of her
+      release, that he held himself at her lawyer&rsquo;s disposal to answer any
+      further communication&mdash;and that he would never forget their days
+      together, or cease to bless her for them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That was all. He gave his Roman banker&rsquo;s address, and waited for another
+      letter; but none came. Probably the &ldquo;formalities,&rdquo; whatever they were,
+      took longer than he had supposed; and being in no haste to recover his own
+      liberty, he did not try to learn the cause of the delay. From that moment,
+      however, he considered himself virtually free, and ceased, by the same
+      token, to take any interest in his own future. His life seemed as flat as
+      a convalescent&rsquo;s first days after the fever has dropped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The only thing he was sure of was that he was not going to remain in the
+      Hickses&rsquo; employ: when they left Rome for Central Asia he had no intention
+      of accompanying them. The part of Mr. Buttles&rsquo; successor was becoming
+      daily more intolerable to him, for the very reasons that had probably made
+      it most gratifying to Mr. Buttles. To be treated by Mr. and Mrs. Hicks as
+      a paid oracle, a paraded and petted piece of property, was a good deal
+      more distasteful than he could have imagined any relation with these
+      kindly people could be. And since their aspirations had become frankly
+      social he found his task, if easier, yet far less congenial than during
+      his first months with them. He preferred patiently explaining to Mrs.
+      Hicks, for the hundredth time, that Sassanian and Saracenic were not
+      interchangeable terms, to unravelling for her the genealogies of her
+      titled guests, and reminding her, when she &ldquo;seated&rdquo; her dinner-parties,
+      that Dukes ranked higher than Princes. No&mdash;the job was decidedly
+      intolerable; and he would have to look out for another means of earning
+      his living. But that was not what he had really got away to think about.
+      He knew he should never starve; he had even begun to believe again in his
+      book. What he wanted to think of was Susy&mdash;or rather, it was Susy
+      that he could not help thinking of, on whatever train of thought he set
+      out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again and again he fancied he had established a truce with the past: had
+      come to terms&mdash;the terms of defeat and failure with that bright enemy
+      called happiness. And, in truth, he had reached the point of definitely
+      knowing that he could never return to the kind of life that he and Susy
+      had embarked on. It had been the tragedy, of their relation that loving
+      her roused in him ideals she could never satisfy. He had fallen in love
+      with her because she was, like himself, amused, unprejudiced and
+      disenchanted; and he could not go on loving her unless she ceased to be
+      all these things. From that circle there was no issue, and in it he
+      desperately revolved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If he had not heard such persistent rumours of her re-marriage to Lord
+      Altringham he might have tried to see her again; but, aware of the danger
+      and the hopelessness of a meeting, he was, on the whole, glad to have a
+      reason for avoiding it. Such, at least, he honestly supposed to be his
+      state of mind until he found himself, as on this occasion, free to follow
+      out his thought to its end. That end, invariably, was Susy; not the bundle
+      of qualities and defects into which his critical spirit had tried to sort
+      her out, but the soft blur of identity, of personality, of eyes, hair,
+      mouth, laugh, tricks of speech and gesture, that were all so solely and
+      profoundly her own, and yet so mysteriously independent of what she might
+      do, say, think, in crucial circumstances. He remembered her once saying to
+      him: &ldquo;After all, you were right when you wanted me to be your mistress,&rdquo;
+       and the indignant stare of incredulity with which he had answered her. Yet
+      in these hours it was the palpable image of her that clung closest, till,
+      as invariably happened, his vision came full circle, and feeling her on
+      his breast he wanted her also in his soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well&mdash;such all-encompassing loves were the rarest of human
+      experiences; he smiled at his presumption in wanting no other. Wearily he
+      turned, and tramped homeward through the winter twilight....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the door of the hotel he ran across the Prince of Teutoburg&rsquo;s
+      aide-de-camp. They had not met for some days, and Nick had a vague feeling
+      that if the Prince&rsquo;s matrimonial designs took definite shape he himself
+      was not likely, after all, to be their chosen exponent. He had surprised,
+      now and then, a certain distrustful coldness under the Princess Mother&rsquo;s
+      cordial glance, and had concluded that she perhaps suspected him of being
+      an obstacle to her son&rsquo;s aspirations. He had no idea of playing that part,
+      but was not sorry to appear to; for he was sincerely attached to Coral
+      Hicks, and hoped for her a more human fate than that of becoming Prince
+      Anastasius&rsquo;s consort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This evening, however, he was struck by the beaming alacrity of the
+      aide-de-camp&rsquo;s greeting. Whatever cloud had hung between them had lifted:
+      the Teutoburg clan, for one reason or another, no longer feared or
+      distrusted him. The change was conveyed in a mere hand-pressure, a brief
+      exchange of words, for the aide-de-camp was hastening after a well-known
+      dowager of the old Roman world, whom he helped into a large coronetted
+      brougham which looked as if it had been extracted, for some ceremonial
+      purpose, from a museum of historic vehicles. And in an instant it flashed
+      on Lansing that this lady had been the person chosen to lay the Prince&rsquo;s
+      offer at Miss Hicks&rsquo;s feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The discovery piqued him; and instead of making straight for his own room
+      he went up to Mrs. Hicks&rsquo;s drawing-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The room was empty, but traces of elaborate tea pervaded it, and an
+      immense bouquet of stiff roses lay on the centre table. As he turned away,
+      Eldorada Tooker, flushed and tear-stained, abruptly entered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Mr. Lansing&mdash;we were looking everywhere for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Looking for me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Coral especially... she wants to see you. She wants you to come to
+      her own sitting-room.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She led him across the ante-chamber and down the passage to the separate
+      suite which Miss Hicks inhabited. On the threshold Eldorada gasped out
+      emotionally: &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll find her looking lovely&mdash;&rdquo; and jerked away with
+      a sob as he entered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Coral Hicks was never lovely: but she certainly looked unusually handsome.
+      Perhaps it was the long dress of black velvet which, outlined against a
+      shaded lamp, made her strong build seem slenderer, or perhaps the slight
+      flush on her dusky cheek: a bloom of womanhood hung upon her which she
+      made no effort to dissemble. Indeed, it was one of her originalities that
+      she always gravely and courageously revealed the utmost of whatever mood
+      possessed her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How splendid you look!&rdquo; he said, smiling at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She threw her head back and gazed him straight in the eyes. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s going
+      to be my future job.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To look splendid?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And wear a crown?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And wear a crown....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They continued to consider each other without speaking. Nick&rsquo;s heart
+      contracted with pity and perplexity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Coral&mdash;it&rsquo;s not decided?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She scrutinized him for a last penetrating moment; then she looked away.
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m never long deciding.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He hesitated, choking with contradictory impulses, and afraid to formulate
+      any, lest they should either mislead or pain her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why didn&rsquo;t you tell me?&rdquo; he questioned lamely; and instantly perceived
+      his blunder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She sat down, and looked up at him under brooding lashes&mdash;had he ever
+      noticed the thickness of her lashes before?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would it have made any difference if I had told you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Any difference&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sit down by me,&rdquo; she commanded. &ldquo;I want to talk to you. You can say now
+      whatever you might have said sooner. I&rsquo;m not married yet: I&rsquo;m still free.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You haven&rsquo;t given your answer?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It doesn&rsquo;t matter if I have.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The retort frightened him with the glimpse of what she still expected of
+      him, and what he was still so unable to give.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That means you&rsquo;ve said yes?&rdquo; he pursued, to gain time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes or no&mdash;it doesn&rsquo;t matter. I had to say something. What I want is
+      your advice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At the eleventh hour?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Or the twelfth.&rdquo; She paused. &ldquo;What shall I do?&rdquo; she questioned, with a
+      sudden accent of helplessness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at her as helplessly. He could not say: &ldquo;Ask yourself&mdash;ask
+      your parents.&rdquo; Her next word would sweep away such frail hypocrisies. Her
+      &ldquo;What shall I do?&rdquo; meant &ldquo;What are you going to do?&rdquo; and he knew it, and
+      knew that she knew it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m a bad person to give any one matrimonial advice,&rdquo; he began, with a
+      strained smile; &ldquo;but I had such a different vision for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What kind of a vision?&rdquo; She was merciless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Merely what people call happiness, dear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;People call&rsquo;&mdash;you see you don&rsquo;t believe in it yourself! Well,
+      neither do I&mdash;in that form, at any rate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He considered. &ldquo;I believe in trying for it&mdash;even if the trying&rsquo;s the
+      best of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;ve tried, and failed. And I&rsquo;m twenty-two, and I never was young.
+      I suppose I haven&rsquo;t enough imagination.&rdquo; She drew a deep breath. &ldquo;Now I
+      want something different.&rdquo; She appeared to search for the word. &ldquo;I want to
+      be&mdash;prominent,&rdquo; she declared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Prominent?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She reddened swarthily. &ldquo;Oh, you smile&mdash;you think it&rsquo;s ridiculous: it
+      doesn&rsquo;t seem worth while to you. That&rsquo;s because you&rsquo;ve always had all
+      those things. But I haven&rsquo;t. I know what father pushed up from, and I want
+      to push up as high again&mdash;higher. No, I haven&rsquo;t got much imagination.
+      I&rsquo;ve always liked Facts. And I find I shall like the fact of being a
+      Princess&mdash;choosing the people I associate with, and being up above
+      all these European grandees that father and mother bow down to, though
+      they think they despise them. You can be up above these people by just
+      being yourself; you know how. But I need a platform&mdash;a sky-scraper.
+      Father and mother slaved to give me my education. They thought education
+      was the important thing; but, since we&rsquo;ve all three of us got mediocre
+      minds, it has just landed us among mediocre people. Don&rsquo;t you suppose I
+      see through all the sham science and sham art and sham everything we&rsquo;re
+      surrounded with? That&rsquo;s why I want to buy a place at the very top, where I
+      shall be powerful enough to get about me the people I want, the big
+      people, the right people, and to help them I want to promote culture, like
+      those Renaissance women you&rsquo;re always talking about. I want to do it for
+      Apex City; do you understand? And for father and mother too. I want all
+      those titles carved on my tombstone. They&rsquo;re facts, anyhow! Don&rsquo;t laugh at
+      me....&rdquo; She broke off with one of her clumsy smiles, and moved away from
+      him to the other end of the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat looking at her with a curious feeling of admiration. Her harsh
+      positivism was like a tonic to his disenchanted mood, and he thought:
+      &ldquo;What a pity!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Aloud he said: &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t feel like laughing at you. You&rsquo;re a great woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I shall be a great Princess.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh&mdash;but you might have been something so much greater!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her face flamed again. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t say that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood up involuntarily, and drew near her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because you&rsquo;re the only man with whom I can imagine the other kind of
+      greatness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It moved him&mdash;moved him unexpectedly. He got as far as saying to
+      himself: &ldquo;Good God, if she were not so hideously rich&mdash;&rdquo; and then of
+      yielding for a moment to the persuasive vision of all that he and she
+      might do with those very riches which he dreaded. After all, there was
+      nothing mean in her ideals they were hard and material, in keeping with
+      her primitive and massive person; but they had a certain grim nobility.
+      And when she spoke of &ldquo;the other kind of greatness&rdquo; he knew that she
+      understood what she was talking of, and was not merely saying something to
+      draw him on, to get him to commit himself. There was not a drop of guile
+      in her, except that which her very honesty distilled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The other kind of greatness?&rdquo; he repeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, isn&rsquo;t that what you said happiness was? I wanted to be happy... but
+      one can&rsquo;t choose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He went up to her. &ldquo;No, one can&rsquo;t choose. And how can anyone give you
+      happiness who hasn&rsquo;t got it himself?&rdquo; He took her hands, feeling how
+      large, muscular and voluntary they were, even as they melted in his palms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My poor Coral, of what use can I ever be to you? What you need is to be
+      loved.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She drew back and gave him one of her straight strong glances: &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she
+      said gallantly, &ldquo;but just to love.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_PART3" id="link2H_PART3">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PART III
+    </h2>
+
+    <h3>
+      XXV.
+    </h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">In</span> the persistent drizzle of a Paris winter morning Susy Lansing walked
+      back alone from the school at which she had just deposited the four eldest
+      Fulmers to the little house in Passy where, for the last two months, she
+      had been living with them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had on ready-made boots, an old waterproof and a last year&rsquo;s hat; but
+      none of these facts disturbed her, though she took no particular pride in
+      them. The truth was that she was too busy to think much about them. Since
+      she had assumed the charge of the Fulmer children, in the absence of both
+      their parents in Italy, she had had to pass through such an arduous
+      apprenticeship of motherhood that every moment of her waking hours was
+      packed with things to do at once, and other things to remember to do
+      later. There were only five Fulmers; but at times they were like an army
+      with banners, and their power of self-multiplication was equalled only by
+      the manner in which they could dwindle, vanish, grow mute, and become as
+      it were a single tumbled brown head bent over a book in some corner of the
+      house in which nobody would ever have thought of hunting for them&mdash;and
+      which, of course, were it the bonne&rsquo;s room in the attic, or the
+      subterranean closet where the trunks were kept, had been singled out by
+      them for that very reason.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These changes from ubiquity to invisibility would have seemed to Susy, a
+      few months earlier, one of the most maddening of many characteristics not
+      calculated to promote repose. But now she felt differently. She had grown
+      interested in her charges, and the search for a clue to their methods,
+      whether tribal or individual, was as exciting to her as the development of
+      a detective story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What interested her most in the whole stirring business was the discovery
+      that they had a method. These little creatures, pitched upward into
+      experience on the tossing waves of their parents&rsquo; agitated lives, had
+      managed to establish a rough-and-ready system of self-government. Junie,
+      the eldest (the one who already chose her mother&rsquo;s hats, and tried to put
+      order in her wardrobe) was the recognized head of the state. At twelve she
+      knew lots of things which her mother had never thoroughly learned, and
+      Susy, her temporary mother, had never even guessed at: she spoke with
+      authority on all vital subjects, from castor-oil to flannel under-clothes,
+      from the fair sharing of stamps or marbles to the number of helpings of
+      rice-pudding or jam which each child was entitled to.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was hardly any appeal from her verdict; yet each of her subjects
+      revolved in his or her own orbit of independence, according to laws which
+      Junie acknowledged and respected; and the interpreting of this mysterious
+      charter of rights and privileges had not been without difficulty for Susy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Besides this, there were material difficulties to deal with. The six of
+      them, and the breathless bonne who cooked and slaved for them all, had but
+      a slim budget to live on; and, as Junie remarked, you&rsquo;d have thought the
+      boys ate their shoes, the way they vanished. They ate, certainly, a great
+      deal else, and mostly of a nourishing and expensive kind. They had
+      definite views about the amount and quality of their food, and were
+      capable of concerted rebellion when Susy&rsquo;s catering fell beneath their
+      standard. All this made her life a hurried and harassing business, but
+      never&mdash;what she had most feared it would be a dull or depressing one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not, she owned to herself, that the society of the Fulmer children
+      had roused in her any abstract passion for the human young. She knew&mdash;had
+      known since Nick&rsquo;s first kiss&mdash;how she would love any child of his
+      and hers; and she had cherished poor little Clarissa Vanderlyn with a
+      shrinking and wistful solicitude. But in these rough young Fulmers she
+      took a positive delight, and for reasons that were increasingly clear to
+      her. It was because, in the first place, they were all intelligent; and
+      because their intelligence had been fed only on things worth caring for.
+      However inadequate Grace Fulmer&rsquo;s bringing-up of her increasing tribe had
+      been, they had heard in her company nothing trivial or dull: good music,
+      good books and good talk had been their daily food, and if at times they
+      stamped and roared and crashed about like children unblessed by such
+      privileges, at others they shone with the light of poetry and spoke with
+      the voice of wisdom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That had been Susy&rsquo;s discovery: for the first time she was among awakening
+      minds which had been wakened only to beauty. From their cramped and
+      uncomfortable household Grace and Nat Fulmer had managed to keep out mean
+      envies, vulgar admirations, shabby discontents; above all the din and
+      confusion the great images of beauty had brooded, like those ancestral
+      figures that stood apart on their shelf in the poorest Roman households.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No, the task she had undertaken for want of a better gave Susy no sense of
+      a missed vocation: &ldquo;mothering&rdquo; on a large scale would never, she
+      perceived, be her job. Rather it gave her, in odd ways, the sense of being
+      herself mothered, of taking her first steps in the life of immaterial
+      values which had begun to seem so much more substantial than any she had
+      known.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the day when she had gone to Grace Fulmer for counsel and comfort she
+      had little guessed that they would come to her in this form. She had found
+      her friend, more than ever distracted and yet buoyant, riding the large
+      untidy waves of her life with the splashed ease of an amphibian. Grace was
+      probably the only person among Susy&rsquo;s friends who could have understood
+      why she could not make up her mind to marry Altringham; but at the moment
+      Grace was too much absorbed in her own problems to pay much attention to
+      her friend&rsquo;s, and, according to her wont, she immediately &ldquo;unpacked&rdquo; her
+      difficulties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nat was not getting what she had hoped out of his European opportunity.
+      Oh, she was enough of an artist herself to know that there must be fallow
+      periods&mdash;that the impact of new impressions seldom produced immediate
+      results. She had allowed for all that. But her past experience of Nat&rsquo;s
+      moods had taught her to know just when he was assimilating, when
+      impressions were fructifying in him. And now they were not, and he knew it
+      as well as she did. There had been too much rushing about, too much
+      excitement and sterile flattery... Mrs. Melrose? Well, yes, for a while...
+      the trip to Spain had been a love-journey, no doubt. Grace spoke calmly,
+      but the lines of her face sharpened: she had suffered, oh horribly, at his
+      going to Spain without her. Yet she couldn&rsquo;t, for the children&rsquo;s sake,
+      afford to miss the big sum that Ursula Gillow had given her for her
+      fortnight at Ruan. And her playing had struck people, and led, on the way
+      back, to two or three profitable engagements in private houses in London.
+      Fashionable society had made &ldquo;a little fuss&rdquo; about her, and it had
+      surprised and pleased Nat, and given her a new importance in his eyes. &ldquo;He
+      was beginning to forget that I wasn&rsquo;t only a nursery-maid, and it&rsquo;s been a
+      good thing for him to be reminded... but the great thing is that with what
+      I&rsquo;ve earned he and I can go off to southern Italy and Sicily for three
+      months. You know I know how to manage... and, alone with me, Nat will
+      settle down to work: to observing, feeling, soaking things in. It&rsquo;s the
+      only way. Mrs. Melrose wants to take him, to pay all the expenses
+      again&mdash;well she shan&rsquo;t. I&rsquo;ll pay them.&rdquo; Her worn cheek flushed with
+      triumph. &ldquo;And you&rsquo;ll see what wonders will come of it.... Only there&rsquo;s the
+      problem of the children. Junie quite agrees that we can&rsquo;t take them....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thereupon she had unfolded her idea. If Susy was at a loose end, and hard
+      up, why shouldn&rsquo;t she take charge of the children while their parents were
+      in Italy? For three months at most&mdash;Grace could promise it shouldn&rsquo;t be
+      longer. They couldn&rsquo;t pay her much, of course, but at least she would be
+      lodged and fed. &ldquo;And, you know, it will end by interesting you&mdash;I&rsquo;m
+      sure it will,&rdquo; the mother concluded, her irrepressible hopefulness rising
+      even to this height, while Susy stood before her with a hesitating smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Take care of five Fulmers for three months! The prospect cowed her. If
+      there had been only Junie and Geordie, the oldest and youngest of the
+      band, she might have felt less hesitation. But there was Nat, the second
+      in age, whose motor-horn had driven her and Nick out to the hill-side on
+      their fatal day at the Fulmers&rsquo; and there were the twins, Jack and Peggy,
+      of whom she had kept memories almost equally disquieting. To rule this
+      uproarious tribe would be a sterner business than trying to beguile
+      Clarissa Vanderlyn&rsquo;s ladylike leisure; and she would have refused on the
+      spot, as she had refused once before, if the only possible alternatives
+      had not come to seem so much less bearable, and if Junie, called in for
+      advice, and standing there, small, plain and competent, had not said in
+      her quiet grown-up voice: &ldquo;Oh, yes, I&rsquo;m sure Mrs. Lansing and I can manage
+      while you&rsquo;re away&mdash;especially if she reads aloud well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Reads aloud well! The stipulation had enchanted Susy. She had never before
+      known children who cared to be read aloud to; she remembered with a shiver
+      her attempts to interest Clarissa in anything but gossip and the fashions,
+      and the tone in which the child had said, showing Strefford&rsquo;s trinket to
+      her father: &ldquo;Because I said I&rsquo;d rather have it than a book.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And here were children who consented to be left for three months by their
+      parents, but on condition that a good reader was provided for them!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well&mdash;I will! But what shall I be expected to read to you?&rdquo; she
+      had gaily questioned; and Junie had answered, after one of her sober
+      pauses of reflection: &ldquo;The little ones like nearly everything; but Nat and
+      I want poetry particularly, because if we read it to ourselves we so often
+      pronounce the puzzling words wrong, and then it sounds so horrid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I hope I shall pronounce them right,&rdquo; Susy murmured, stricken with
+      self-distrust and humility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Apparently she did; for her reading was a success, and even the twins and
+      Geordie, once they had grown used to her, seemed to prefer a ringing page
+      of Henry V, or the fairy scenes from the Midsummer Night&rsquo;s Dream, to their
+      own more specialized literature, though that had also at times to be
+      provided.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were, in fact, no lulls in her life with the Fulmers; but its
+      commotions seemed to Susy less meaningless, and therefore less fatiguing,
+      than those that punctuated the existence of people like Altringham, Ursula
+      Gillow, Ellie Vanderlyn and their train; and the noisy uncomfortable
+      little house at Passy was beginning to greet her with the eyes of home
+      when she returned there after her tramps to and from the children&rsquo;s
+      classes. At any rate she had the sense of doing something useful and even
+      necessary, and of earning her own keep, though on so modest a scale; and
+      when the children were in their quiet mood, and demanded books or music
+      (or, even, on one occasion, at the surprising Junie&rsquo;s instigation, a
+      collective visit to the Louvre, where they recognized the most unlikely
+      pictures, and the two elders emitted startling technical judgments, and
+      called their companion&rsquo;s attention to details she had not observed); on
+      these occasions, Susy had a surprised sense of being drawn back into her
+      brief life with Nick, or even still farther and deeper, into those visions
+      of Nick&rsquo;s own childhood on which the trivial later years had heaped their
+      dust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was curious to think that if he and she had remained together, and she
+      had had a child&mdash;the vision used to come to her, in her sleepless
+      hours, when she looked at little Geordie, in his cot by her bed&mdash;their
+      life together might have been very much like the life she was now leading,
+      a small obscure business to the outer world, but to themselves how wide
+      and deep and crowded!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She could not bear, at that moment, the thought of giving up this mystic
+      relation to the life she had missed. In spite of the hurry and fatigue of
+      her days, the shabbiness and discomfort of everything, and the hours when
+      the children were as &ldquo;horrid&rdquo; as any other children, and turned a
+      conspiracy of hostile faces to all her appeals; in spite of all this she
+      did not want to give them up, and had decided, when their parents
+      returned, to ask to go back to America with them. Perhaps, if Nat&rsquo;s
+      success continued, and Grace was able to work at her music, they would
+      need a kind of governess-companion. At any rate, she could picture no
+      future less distasteful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had not sent to Mr. Spearman Nick&rsquo;s answer to her letter. In the
+      interval between writing to him and receiving his reply she had broken
+      with Strefford; she had therefore no object in seeking her freedom. If
+      Nick wanted his, he knew he had only to ask for it; and his silence, as
+      the weeks passed, woke a faint hope in her. The hope flamed high when she
+      read one day in the newspapers a vague but evidently &ldquo;inspired&rdquo; allusion
+      to the possibility of an alliance between his Serene Highness the reigning
+      Prince of Teutoburg-Waldhain and Miss Coral Hicks of Apex City; it sank to
+      ashes when, a few days later, her eye lit on a paragraph wherein Mr. and
+      Mrs. Mortimer Hicks &ldquo;requested to state&rdquo; that there was no truth in the
+      report.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the foundation of these two statements Susy raised one watch-tower of
+      hope after another, feverish edifices demolished or rebuilt by every
+      chance hint from the outer world wherein Nick&rsquo;s name figured with the
+      Hickses&rsquo;. And still, as the days passed and she heard nothing, either from
+      him or from her lawyer, her flag continued to fly from the quaking
+      structures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Apart from the custody of the children there was indeed little to distract
+      her mind from these persistent broodings. She winced sometimes at the
+      thought of the ease with which her fashionable friends had let her drop
+      out of sight. In the perpetual purposeless rush of their days, the
+      feverish making of winter plans, hurrying off to the Riviera or St.
+      Moritz, Egypt or New York, there was no time to hunt up the vanished or to
+      wait for the laggard. Had they learned that she had broken her
+      &ldquo;engagement&rdquo; (how she hated the word!) to Strefford, and had the fact gone
+      about that she was once more only a poor hanger-on, to be taken up when it
+      was convenient, and ignored in the intervals? She did not know; though she
+      fancied Strefford&rsquo;s newly-developed pride would prevent his revealing to
+      any one what had passed between them. For several days after her abrupt
+      flight he had made no sign; and though she longed to write and ask his
+      forgiveness she could not find the words. Finally it was he who wrote: a
+      short note, from Altringham, typical of all that was best in the old
+      Strefford. He had gone down to Altringham, he told her, to think quietly
+      over their last talk, and try to understand what she had been driving at.
+      He had to own that he couldn&rsquo;t; but that, he supposed, was the very head
+      and front of his offending. Whatever he had done to displease her, he was
+      sorry for; but he asked, in view of his invincible ignorance, to be
+      allowed not to regard his offence as a cause for a final break. The
+      possibility of that, he found, would make him even more unhappy than he
+      had foreseen; as she knew, his own happiness had always been his first
+      object in life, and he therefore begged her to suspend her decision a
+      little longer. He expected to be in Paris within another two months, and
+      before arriving he would write again, and ask her to see him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The letter moved her but did not make her waver. She simply wrote that she
+      was touched by his kindness, and would willingly see him if he came to
+      Paris later; though she was bound to tell him that she had not yet changed
+      her mind, and did not believe it would promote his happiness to have her
+      try to do so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not reply to this, and there was nothing further to keep her
+      thoughts from revolving endlessly about her inmost hopes and fears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the rainy afternoon in question, tramping home from the &ldquo;cours&rdquo; (to
+      which she was to return at six), she had said to herself that it was two
+      months that very day since Nick had known she was ready to release him&mdash;and
+      that after such a delay he was not likely to take any further steps. The
+      thought filled her with a vague ecstasy. She had had to fix an arbitrary
+      date as the term of her anguish, and she had fixed that one; and behold
+      she was justified. For what could his silence mean but that he too....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the hall-table lay a typed envelope with the Paris postage-mark. She
+      opened it carelessly, and saw that the letter-head bore Mr. Spearman&rsquo;s
+      office address. The words beneath spun round before her eyes.... &ldquo;Has
+      notified us that he is at your disposal... carry out your wishes...
+      arriving in Paris... fix an appointment with his lawyers....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nick&mdash;it was Nick the words were talking of! It was the fact of
+      Nick&rsquo;s return to Paris that was being described in those preposterous
+      terms! She sank down on the bench beside the dripping umbrella-stand and
+      stared vacantly before her. It had fallen at last&mdash;this blow in which
+      she now saw that she had never really believed! And yet she had imagined
+      she was prepared for it, had expected it, was already planning her future
+      life in view of it&mdash;an effaced impersonal life in the service of
+      somebody else&rsquo;s children&mdash;when, in reality, under that thin surface
+      of abnegation and acceptance, all the old hopes had been smouldering
+      red-hot in their ashes! What was the use of any self-discipline, any
+      philosophy, any experience, if the lawless self underneath could in an
+      instant consume them like tinder?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She tried to collect herself&mdash;to understand what had happened. Nick
+      was coming to Paris&mdash;coming not to see her but to consult his lawyer!
+      It meant, of course, that he had definitely resolved to claim his freedom;
+      and that, if he had made up his mind to this final step, after more than
+      six months of inaction and seeming indifference, it could be only because
+      something unforeseen and decisive had happened to him. Feverishly, she put
+      together again the stray scraps of gossip and the newspaper paragraphs
+      that had reached her in the last months. It was evident that Miss Hicks&rsquo;s
+      projected marriage with the Prince of Teutoburg-Waldhain had been broken
+      off at the last moment; and broken off because she intended to marry Nick.
+      The announcement of his arrival in Paris and the publication of Mr. and
+      Mrs. Hicks&rsquo;s formal denial of their daughter&rsquo;s betrothal coincided too
+      closely to admit of any other inference. Susy tried to grasp the reality
+      of these assembled facts, to picture to herself their actual tangible
+      results. She thought of Coral Hicks bearing the name of Mrs. Nick Lansing&mdash;her
+      name, Susy&rsquo;s own!&mdash;and entering drawing-rooms with Nick in her wake,
+      gaily welcomed by the very people who, a few months before, had welcomed
+      Susy with the same warmth. In spite of Nick&rsquo;s growing dislike of society,
+      and Coral&rsquo;s attitude of intellectual superiority, their wealth would
+      fatally draw them back into the world to which Nick was attached by all
+      his habits and associations. And no doubt it would amuse him to re-enter
+      that world as a dispenser of hospitality, to play the part of host where
+      he had so long been a guest; just as Susy had once fancied it would amuse
+      her to re-enter it as Lady Altringham.... But, try as she would, now that
+      the reality was so close on her, she could not visualize it or relate it
+      to herself. The mere juxtaposition of the two names&mdash;Coral, Nick&mdash;which
+      in old times she had so often laughingly coupled, now produced a blur in
+      her brain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She continued to sit helplessly beside the hall-table, the tears running
+      down her cheeks. The appearance of the bonne aroused her. Her youngest
+      charge, Geordie, had been feverish for a day or two; he was better, but
+      still confined to the nursery, and he had heard Susy unlock the
+      house-door, and could not imagine why she had not come straight up to him.
+      He now began to manifest his indignation in a series of racking howls, and
+      Susy, shaken out of her trance, dropped her cloak and umbrella and hurried
+      up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, that child!&rdquo; she groaned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Under the Fulmer roof there was little time or space for the indulgence of
+      private sorrows. From morning till night there was always some immediate
+      practical demand on one&rsquo;s attention; and Susy was beginning to see how, in
+      contracted households, children may play a part less romantic but not less
+      useful than that assigned to them in fiction, through the mere fact of
+      giving their parents no leisure to dwell on irremediable grievances.
+      Though her own apprenticeship to family life had been so short, she had
+      already acquired the knack of rapid mental readjustment, and as she
+      hurried up to the nursery her private cares were dispelled by a dozen
+      problems of temperature, diet and medicine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such readjustment was of course only momentary; yet each time it happened
+      it seemed to give her more firmness and flexibility of temper. &ldquo;What a
+      child I was myself six months ago!&rdquo; she thought, wondering that Nick&rsquo;s
+      influence, and the tragedy of their parting, should have done less to
+      mature and steady her than these few weeks in a house full of children.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pacifying Geordie was not easy, for he had long since learned to use his
+      grievances as a pretext for keeping the offender at his beck with a
+      continuous supply of stories, songs and games. &ldquo;You&rsquo;d better be careful
+      never to put yourself in the wrong with Geordie,&rdquo; the astute Junie had
+      warned Susy at the outset, &ldquo;because he&rsquo;s got such a memory, and he won&rsquo;t
+      make it up with you till you&rsquo;ve told him every fairy-tale he&rsquo;s ever heard
+      before.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But on this occasion, as soon as he saw her, Geordie&rsquo;s indignation melted.
+      She was still in the doorway, compunctious, abject and racking her dazed
+      brain for his favourite stories, when she saw, by the smoothing out of his
+      mouth and the sudden serenity of his eyes, that he was going to give her
+      the delicious but not wholly reassuring shock of being a good boy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thoughtfully he examined her face as she knelt down beside the cot; then
+      he poked out a finger and pressed it on her tearful cheek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor Susy got a pain too,&rdquo; he said, putting his arms about her; and as
+      she hugged him close, he added philosophically: &ldquo;Tell Geordie a new story,
+      darling, and you&rsquo;ll forget all about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+
+
+<h3>XXVI.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">Nick Lansing</span> arrived in Paris two days after his lawyer had announced his
+      coming to Mr. Spearman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had left Rome with the definite purpose of freeing himself and Susy;
+      and though he was not pledged to Coral Hicks he had not concealed from her
+      the object of his journey. In vain had he tried to rouse in himself any
+      sense of interest in his own future. Beyond the need of reaching a
+      definite point in his relation to Susy his imagination could not travel.
+      But he had been moved by Coral&rsquo;s confession, and his reason told him that
+      he and she would probably be happy together, with the temperate happiness
+      based on a community of tastes and an enlargement of opportunities. He
+      meant, on his return to Rome, to ask her to marry him; and he knew that
+      she knew it. Indeed, if he had not spoken before leaving it was with no
+      idea of evading his fate, or keeping her longer in suspense, but simply
+      because of the strange apathy that had fallen on him since he had received
+      Susy&rsquo;s letter. In his incessant self-communings he dressed up this apathy
+      as a discretion which forbade his engaging Coral&rsquo;s future till his own was
+      assured. But in truth he knew that Coral&rsquo;s future was already engaged, and
+      his with it: in Rome the fact had seemed natural and even inevitable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In Paris, it instantly became the thinnest of unrealities. Not because
+      Paris was not Rome, nor because it was Paris; but because hidden away
+      somewhere in that vast unheeding labyrinth was the half-forgotten part of
+      himself that was Susy.... For weeks, for months past, his mind had been
+      saturated with Susy: she had never seemed more insistently near him than
+      as their separation lengthened, and the chance of reunion became less
+      probable. It was as if a sickness long smouldering in him had broken out
+      and become acute, enveloping him in the Nessus-shirt of his memories.
+      There were moments when, to his memory, their actual embraces seemed
+      perfunctory, accidental, compared with this deep deliberate imprint of her
+      soul on his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet now it had become suddenly different. Now that he was in the same
+      place with her, and might at any moment run across her, meet her eyes,
+      hear her voice, avoid her hand&mdash;now that penetrating ghost of her
+      with which he had been living was sucked back into the shadows, and he
+      seemed, for the first time since their parting, to be again in her actual
+      presence. He woke to the fact on the morning of his arrival, staring down
+      from his hotel window on a street she would perhaps walk through that very
+      day, and over a limitless huddle of roofs, one of which covered her at
+      that hour. The abruptness of the transition startled him; he had not known
+      that her mere geographical nearness would take him by the throat in that
+      way. What would it be, then, if she were to walk into the room?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thank heaven that need never happen! He was sufficiently informed as to
+      French divorce proceedings to know that they would not necessitate a
+      confrontation with his wife; and with ordinary luck, and some precautions,
+      he might escape even a distant glimpse of her. He did not mean to remain
+      in Paris more than a few days; and during that time it would be easy&mdash;knowing,
+      as he did, her tastes and Altringham&rsquo;s&mdash;to avoid the places where she
+      was likely to be met. He did not know where she was living, but imagined
+      her to be staying with Mrs. Melrose, or some other rich friend, or else
+      lodged, in prospective affluence, at the Nouveau Luxe, or in a pretty flat
+      of her own. Trust Susy&mdash;ah, the pang of it&mdash;to &ldquo;manage&rdquo;!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His first visit was to his lawyer&rsquo;s; and as he walked through the familiar
+      streets each approaching face, each distant figure seemed hers. The
+      obsession was intolerable. It would not last, of course; but meanwhile he
+      had the exposed sense of a fugitive in a nightmare, who feels himself the
+      only creature visible in a ghostly and besetting multitude. The eye of the
+      metropolis seemed fixed on him in an immense unblinking stare.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the lawyer&rsquo;s he was told that, as a first step to freedom, he must
+      secure a domicile in Paris. He had of course known of this necessity: he
+      had seen too many friends through the Divorce Court, in one country or
+      another, not to be fairly familiar with the procedure. But the fact
+      presented a different aspect as soon as he tried to relate it to himself
+      and Susy: it was as though Susy&rsquo;s personality were a medium through which
+      events still took on a transfiguring colour. He found the &ldquo;domicile&rdquo; that
+      very day: a tawdrily furnished rez-de-chaussee, obviously destined to far
+      different uses. And as he sat there, after the concierge had discreetly
+      withdrawn with the first quarter&rsquo;s payment in her pocket, and stared about
+      him at the vulgar plushy place, he burst out laughing at what it was about
+      to figure in the eyes of the law: a Home, and a Home desecrated by his own
+      act! The Home in which he and Susy had reared their precarious bliss, and
+      seen it crumble at the brutal touch of his unfaithfulness and his cruelty&mdash;for
+      he had been told that he must be cruel to her as well as unfaithful! He
+      looked at the walls hung with sentimental photogravures, at the shiny
+      bronze &ldquo;nudes,&rdquo; the moth-eaten animal-skins and the bedizened bed&mdash;and once
+      more the unreality, the impossibility, of all that was happening to him
+      entered like a drug into his veins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To rouse himself he stood up, turned the key on the hideous place, and
+      returned to his lawyer&rsquo;s. He knew that in the hard dry atmosphere of the
+      office the act of giving the address of the flat would restore some kind
+      of reality to the phantasmal transaction. And with wonder he watched the
+      lawyer, as a matter of course, pencil the street and the number on one of
+      the papers enclosed in a folder on which his own name was elaborately
+      engrossed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he took leave it occurred to him to ask where Susy was living. At least
+      he imagined that it had just occurred to him, and that he was making the
+      enquiry merely as a measure of precaution, in order to know what quarter
+      of Paris to avoid; but in reality the question had been on his lips since
+      he had first entered the office, and lurking in his mind since he had
+      emerged from the railway station that morning. The fact of not knowing
+      where she lived made the whole of Paris a meaningless unintelligible
+      place, as useless to him as the face of a huge clock that has lost its
+      hour hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The address in Passy surprised him: he had imagined that she would be
+      somewhere in the neighborhood of the Champs Elysees or the Place de
+      l&rsquo;Etoile. But probably either Mrs. Melrose or Ellie Vanderlyn had taken a
+      house at Passy. Well&mdash;it was something of a relief to know that she
+      was so far off. No business called him to that almost suburban region
+      beyond the Trocadero, and there was much less chance of meeting her than
+      if she had been in the centre of Paris.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All day he wandered, avoiding the fashionable quarters, the streets in
+      which private motors glittered five deep, and furred and feathered
+      silhouettes glided from them into tea-rooms, picture-galleries and
+      jewellers&rsquo; shops. In some such scenes Susy was no doubt figuring:
+      slenderer, finer, vivider, than the other images of clay, but imitating
+      their gestures, chattering their jargon, winding her hand among the same
+      pearls and sables. He struck away across the Seine, along the quays to the
+      Cite, the net-work of old Paris, the great grey vaults of St. Eustache,
+      the swarming streets of the Marais. He gazed at monuments dawdled before
+      shop-windows, sat in squares and on quays, watching people bargain, argue,
+      philander, quarrel, work-girls stroll past in linked bands, beggars whine
+      on the bridges, derelicts doze in the pale winter sun, mothers in mourning
+      hasten by taking children to school, and street-walkers beat their weary
+      rounds before the cafes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The day drifted on. Toward evening he began to grow afraid of his
+      solitude, and to think of dining at the Nouveau Luxe, or some other
+      fashionable restaurant where he would be fairly sure to meet
+      acquaintances, and be carried off to a theatre, a boite or a dancing-hall.
+      Anything, anything now, to get away from the maddening round of his
+      thoughts. He felt the same blank fear of solitude as months ago in
+      Genoa.... Even if he were to run across Susy and Altringham, what of it?
+      Better get the job over. People had long since ceased to take on tragedy
+      airs about divorce: dividing couples dined together to the last, and met
+      afterward in each other&rsquo;s houses, happy in the consciousness that their
+      respective remarriages had provided two new centres of entertainment. Yet
+      most of the couples who took their re-matings so philosophically had
+      doubtless had their hour of enchantment, of belief in the immortality of
+      loving; whereas he and Susy had simply and frankly entered into a business
+      contract for their mutual advantage. The fact gave the last touch of
+      incongruity to his agonies and exaltations, and made him appear to himself
+      as grotesque and superannuated as the hero of a romantic novel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood up from a bench on which he had been lounging in the Luxembourg
+      gardens, and hailed a taxi. Dusk had fallen, and he meant to go back to
+      his hotel, take a rest, and then go out to dine. But instead, he threw
+      Susy&rsquo;s address to the driver, and settled down in the cab, resting both
+      hands on the knob of his umbrella and staring straight ahead of him as if
+      he were accomplishing some tiresome duty that had to be got through with
+      before he could turn his mind to more important things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s the easiest way,&rdquo; he heard himself say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the street-corner&mdash;her street-corner&mdash;he stopped the cab, and
+      stood motionless while it rattled away. It was a short vague street, much
+      farther off than he had expected, and fading away at the farther end in a
+      dusky blur of hoardings overhung by trees. A thin rain was beginning to
+      fall, and it was already night in this inadequately lit suburban quarter.
+      Lansing walked down the empty street. The houses stood a few yards apart,
+      with bare-twigged shrubs between, and gates and railings dividing them
+      from the pavement. He could not, at first, distinguish their numbers; but
+      presently, coming abreast of a street-lamp, he discovered that the small
+      shabby facade it illuminated was precisely the one he sought. The
+      discovery surprised him. He had imagined that, as frequently happened in
+      the outlying quarters of Passy and La Muette, the mean street would lead
+      to a stately private hotel, built upon some bowery fragment of an old
+      country-place. It was the latest whim of the wealthy to establish
+      themselves on these outskirts of Paris, where there was still space for
+      verdure; and he had pictured Susy behind some pillared house-front, with
+      lights pouring across glossy turf to sculptured gateposts. Instead, he saw
+      a six-windowed house, huddled among neighbours of its kind, with the
+      family wash fluttering between meagre bushes. The arc-light beat
+      ironically on its front, which had the worn look of a tired work-woman&rsquo;s
+      face; and Lansing, as he leaned against the opposite railing, vainly tried
+      to fit his vision of Susy into so humble a setting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The probable explanation was that his lawyer had given him the wrong
+      address; not only the wrong number but the wrong street. He pulled out the
+      slip of paper, and was crossing over to decipher it under the lamp, when
+      an errand-boy appeared out of the obscurity, and approached the house.
+      Nick drew back, and the boy, unlatching the gate, ran up the steps and
+      gave the bell a pull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Almost immediately the door opened; and there stood Susy, the light full
+      upon her, and upon a red-checked child against her shoulder. The space
+      behind them was dark, or so dimly lit that it formed a black background to
+      her vivid figure. She looked at the errand-boy without surprise, took his
+      parcel, and after he had turned away, lingered a moment in the door,
+      glancing down the empty street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That moment, to her watcher, seemed quicker than a flash yet as long as a
+      life-time. There she was, a stone&rsquo;s throw away, but utterly unconscious of
+      his presence: his Susy, the old Susy, and yet a new Susy, curiously
+      transformed, transfigured almost, by the new attitude in which he beheld
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the first shock of the vision he forgot his surprise at her being in
+      such a place, forgot to wonder whose house she was in, or whose was the
+      sleepy child in her arms. For an instant she stood out from the blackness
+      behind her, and through the veil of the winter night, a thing apart, an
+      unconditioned vision, the eternal image of the woman and the child; and in
+      that instant everything within him was changed and renewed. His eyes were
+      still absorbing her, finding again the familiar curves of her light body,
+      noting the thinness of the lifted arm that upheld the little boy, the
+      droop of the shoulder he weighed on, the brooding way in which her cheek
+      leaned to his even while she looked away; then she drew back, the door
+      closed, and the street-lamp again shone on blankness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But she&rsquo;s mine!&rdquo; Nick cried, in a fierce triumph of recovery...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His eyes were so full of her that he shut them to hold in the crowding
+      vision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It remained with him, at first, as a complete picture; then gradually it
+      broke up into its component parts, the child vanished, the strange house
+      vanished, and Susy alone stood before him, his own Susy, only his Susy,
+      yet changed, worn, tempered&mdash;older, even&mdash;with sharper shadows
+      under the cheek-bones, the brows drawn, the joint of the slim wrist more
+      prominent. It was not thus that his memory had evoked her, and he
+      recalled, with a remorseful pang, the fact that something in her look, her
+      dress, her tired and drooping attitude, suggested poverty, dependence,
+      seemed to make her after all a part of the shabby house in which, at first
+      sight, her presence had seemed so incongruous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But she looks poor!&rdquo; he thought, his heart tightening. And instantly it
+      occurred to him that these must be the Fulmer children whom she was living
+      with while their parents travelled in Italy. Rumours of Nat Fulmer&rsquo;s
+      sudden ascension had reached him, and he had heard that the couple had
+      lately been seen in Naples and Palermo. No one had mentioned Susy&rsquo;s name
+      in connection with them, and he could hardly tell why he had arrived at
+      this conclusion, except perhaps because it seemed natural that, if Susy
+      were in trouble, she should turn to her old friend Grace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But why in trouble? What trouble? What could have happened to check her
+      triumphant career?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s what I mean to find out!&rdquo; he exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His heart was beating with a tumult of new hopes and old memories. The
+      sight of his wife, so remote in mien and manner from the world in which he
+      had imagined her to be re-absorbed, changed in a flash his own relation to
+      life, and flung a mist of unreality over all that he had been trying to
+      think most solid and tangible. Nothing now was substantial to him but the
+      stones of the street in which he stood, the front of the house which hid
+      her, the bell-handle he already felt in his grasp. He started forward, and
+      was halfway to the threshold when a private motor turned the corner, the
+      twin glitter of its lamps carpeting the wet street with gold to Susy&rsquo;s
+      door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing drew back into the shadow as the motor swept up to the house. A
+      man jumped out, and the light fell on Strefford&rsquo;s shambling figure, its
+      lazy disjointed movements so unmistakably the same under his fur coat, and
+      in the new setting of prosperity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing stood motionless, staring at the door. Strefford rang, and waited.
+      Would Susy appear again? Perhaps she had done so before only because she
+      had been on the watch....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But no: after a slight delay a bonne appeared&mdash;the breathless
+      maid-of-all-work of a busy household&mdash;and at once effaced herself,
+      letting the visitor in. Lansing was sure that not a word passed between
+      the two, of enquiry on Lord Altringham&rsquo;s part, or of acquiescence on the
+      servant&rsquo;s. There could be no doubt that he was expected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The door closed on him, and a light appeared behind the blind of the
+      adjoining window. The maid had shown the visitor into the sitting-room and
+      lit the lamp. Upstairs, meanwhile, Susy was no doubt running skilful
+      fingers through her tumbled hair and daubing her pale lips with red. Ah,
+      how Lansing knew every movement of that familiar rite, even to the pucker
+      of the brow and the pouting thrust-out of the lower lip! He was seized
+      with a sense of physical sickness as the succession of remembered gestures
+      pressed upon his eyes.... And the other man? The other man, inside the
+      house, was perhaps at that very instant smiling over the remembrance of
+      the same scene!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the thought, Lansing plunged away into the night.
+    </p>
+
+
+<h3>XXVII.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">Susy</span> and Lord Altringham sat in the little drawing-room, divided from each
+      other by a table carrying a smoky lamp and heaped with tattered
+      school-books.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In another half hour the bonne, despatched to fetch the children from
+      their classes, would be back with her flock; and at any moment Geordie&rsquo;s
+      imperious cries might summon his slave up to the nursery. In the scant
+      time allotted them, the two sat, and visibly wondered what to say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford, on entering, had glanced about the dreary room, with its piano
+      laden with tattered music, the children&rsquo;s toys littering the lame sofa,
+      the bunches of dyed grass and impaled butterflies flanking the cast-bronze
+      clock. Then he had turned to Susy and asked simply: &ldquo;Why on earth are you
+      here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had not tried to explain; from the first, she had understood the
+      impossibility of doing so. And she would not betray her secret longing to
+      return to Nick, now that she knew that Nick had taken definite steps for
+      his release. In dread lest Strefford should have heard of this, and should
+      announce it to her, coupling it with the news of Nick&rsquo;s projected
+      marriage, and lest, hearing her fears thus substantiated, she should lose
+      her self-control, she had preferred to say, in a voice that she tried to
+      make indifferent: &ldquo;The &lsquo;proceedings,&rsquo; or whatever the lawyers call them,
+      have begun. While they&rsquo;re going on I like to stay quite by myself.... I
+      don&rsquo;t know why....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford, at that, had looked at her keenly. &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; he murmured; and his
+      lips were twisted into their old mocking smile. &ldquo;Speaking of proceedings,&rdquo;
+       he went on carelessly, &ldquo;what stage have Ellie&rsquo;s reached, I wonder? I saw
+      her and Vanderlyn and Bockheimer all lunching cheerfully together to-day
+      at Larue&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The blood rushed to Susy&rsquo;s forehead. She remembered her tragic evening
+      with Nelson Vanderlyn, only two months earlier, and thought to herself.
+      &ldquo;In time, then, I suppose, Nick and I....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Aloud she said: &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t imagine how Nelson and Ellie can ever want to see
+      each other again. And in a restaurant, of all places!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford continued to smile. &ldquo;My dear, you&rsquo;re incorrigibly old-fashioned.
+      Why should two people who&rsquo;ve done each other the best turn they could by
+      getting out of each other&rsquo;s way at the right moment behave like sworn
+      enemies ever afterward? It&rsquo;s too absurd; the humbug&rsquo;s too flagrant.
+      Whatever our generation has failed to do, it&rsquo;s got rid of humbug; and
+      that&rsquo;s enough to immortalize it. I daresay Nelson and Ellie never liked
+      each other better than they do to-day. Twenty years ago, they&rsquo;d have been
+      afraid to confess it; but why shouldn&rsquo;t they now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy looked at Strefford, conscious that under his words was the ache of
+      the disappointment she had caused him; and yet conscious also that that
+      very ache was not the overwhelming penetrating emotion he perhaps wished
+      it to be, but a pang on a par with a dozen others; and that even while he
+      felt it he foresaw the day when he should cease to feel it. And she
+      thought to herself that this certainty of oblivion must be bitterer than
+      any certainty of pain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A silence had fallen between them. He broke it by rising from his seat,
+      and saying with a shrug: &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll end by driving me to marry Joan
+      Senechal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy smiled. &ldquo;Well, why not? She&rsquo;s lovely.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; but she&rsquo;ll bore me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor Streff! So should I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps. But nothing like as soon&mdash;&rdquo; He grinned sardonically.
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;d be more margin.&rdquo; He appeared to wait for her to speak. &ldquo;And what
+      else on earth are you going to do?&rdquo; he concluded, as she still remained
+      silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Streff, I couldn&rsquo;t marry you for a reason like that!&rdquo; she murmured at
+      length.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then marry me, and find your reason afterward.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her lips made a movement of denial, and still in silence she held out her
+      hand for good-bye. He clasped it, and then turned away; but on the
+      threshold he paused, his screwed-up eyes fixed on her wistfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The look moved her, and she added hurriedly: &ldquo;The only reason I can find
+      is one for not marrying you. It&rsquo;s because I can&rsquo;t yet feel unmarried
+      enough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Unmarried enough? But I thought Nick was doing his best to make you feel
+      that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. But even when he has&mdash;sometimes I think even that won&rsquo;t make
+      any difference.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He still scrutinized her hesitatingly, with the gravest eyes she had ever
+      seen in his careless face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear, that&rsquo;s rather the way I feel about you,&rdquo; he said simply as he
+      turned to go.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That evening after the children had gone to bed Susy sat up late in the
+      cheerless sitting-room. She was not thinking of Strefford but of Nick. He
+      was coming to Paris&mdash;perhaps he had already arrived. The idea that he
+      might be in the same place with her at that very moment, and without her
+      knowing it, was so strange and painful that she felt a violent revolt of
+      all her strong and joy-loving youth. Why should she go on suffering so
+      unbearably, so abjectly, so miserably? If only she could see him, hear his
+      voice, even hear him say again such cruel and humiliating words as he had
+      spoken on that dreadful day in Venice when that would be better than this
+      blankness, this utter and final exclusion from his life! He had been cruel
+      to her, unimaginably cruel: hard, arrogant, unjust; and had been so,
+      perhaps, deliberately, because he already wanted to be free. But she was
+      ready to face even that possibility, to humble herself still farther than
+      he had humbled her&mdash;she was ready to do anything, if only she might
+      see him once again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She leaned her aching head on her hands and pondered. Do anything? But
+      what could she do? Nothing that should hurt him, interfere with his
+      liberty, be false to the spirit of their pact: on that she was more than
+      ever resolved. She had made a bargain, and she meant to stick to it, not
+      for any abstract reason, but simply because she happened to love him in
+      that way. Yes&mdash;but to see him again, only once!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly she remembered what Strefford had said about Nelson Vanderlyn and
+      his wife. &ldquo;Why should two people who&rsquo;ve just done each other the best turn
+      they could behave like sworn enemies ever after?&rdquo; If in offering Nick his
+      freedom she had indeed done him such a service as that, perhaps he no
+      longer hated her, would no longer be unwilling to see her.... At any rate,
+      why should she not write to him on that assumption, write in a spirit of
+      simple friendliness, suggesting that they should meet and &ldquo;settle things&rdquo;?
+      The business-like word &ldquo;settle&rdquo; (how she hated it) would prove to him that
+      she had no secret designs upon his liberty; and besides he was too
+      unprejudiced, too modern, too free from what Strefford called humbug, not
+      to understand and accept such a suggestion. After all, perhaps Strefford
+      was right; it was something to have rid human relations of hypocrisy, even
+      if, in the process, so many exquisite things seemed somehow to have been
+      torn away with it....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She ran up to her room, scribbled a note, and hurried with it through the
+      rain and darkness to the post-box at the corner. As she returned through
+      the empty street she had an odd feeling that it was not empty&mdash;that
+      perhaps Nick was already there, somewhere near her in the night, about to
+      follow her to the door, enter the house, go up with her to her bedroom in
+      the old way. It was strange how close he had been brought by the mere fact
+      of her having written that little note to him!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the bedroom, Geordie lay in his crib in ruddy slumber, and she blew out
+      the candle and undressed softly for fear of waking him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nick Lansing, the next day, received Susy&rsquo;s letter, transmitted to his
+      hotel from the lawyer&rsquo;s office.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He read it carefully, two or three times over, weighing and scrutinizing
+      the guarded words. She proposed that they should meet to &ldquo;settle things.&rdquo;
+       What things? And why should he accede to such a request? What secret
+      purpose had prompted her? It was horrible that nowadays, in thinking of
+      Susy, he should always suspect ulterior motives, be meanly on the watch
+      for some hidden tortuousness. What on earth was she trying to &ldquo;manage&rdquo;
+       now, he wondered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A few hours ago, at the sight of her, all his hardness had melted, and he
+      had charged himself with cruelty, with injustice, with every sin of pride
+      against himself and her; but the appearance of Strefford, arriving at that
+      late hour, and so evidently expected and welcomed, had driven back the
+      rising tide of tenderness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet, after all, what was there to wonder at? Nothing was changed in their
+      respective situations. He had left his wife, deliberately, and for reasons
+      which no subsequent experience had caused him to modify. She had
+      apparently acquiesced in his decision, and had utilized it, as she was
+      justified in doing, to assure her own future.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In all this, what was there to wail or knock the breast between two people
+      who prided themselves on looking facts in the face, and making their grim
+      best of them, without vain repinings? He had been right in thinking their
+      marriage an act of madness. Her charms had overruled his judgment, and
+      they had had their year... their mad year... or at least all but two or
+      three months of it. But his first intuition had been right; and now they
+      must both pay for their madness. The Fates seldom forget the bargains made
+      with them, or fail to ask for compound interest. Why not, then, now that
+      the time had come, pay up gallantly, and remember of the episode only what
+      had made it seem so supremely worth the cost?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sent a pneumatic telegram to Mrs. Nicholas Lansing to say that he would
+      call on her that afternoon at four. &ldquo;That ought to give us time,&rdquo; he
+      reflected drily, &ldquo;to &lsquo;settle things,&rsquo; as she calls it, without interfering
+      with Strefford&rsquo;s afternoon visit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+
+
+<h3>XXVIII.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">Her</span> husband&rsquo;s note had briefly said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To-day at four o&rsquo;clock. N.L.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All day she pored over the words in an agony of longing, trying to read
+      into them regret, emotion, memories, some echo of the tumult in her own
+      bosom. But she had signed &ldquo;Susy,&rdquo; and he signed &ldquo;N.L.&rdquo; That seemed to put
+      an abyss between them. After all, she was free and he was not. Perhaps, in
+      view of his situation, she had only increased the distance between them by
+      her unconventional request for a meeting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She sat in the little drawing-room, and the cast-bronze clock ticked out
+      the minutes. She would not look out of the window: it might bring bad luck
+      to watch for him. And it seemed to her that a thousand invisible spirits,
+      hidden demons of good and evil, pressed about her, spying out her
+      thoughts, counting her heart-beats, ready to pounce upon the least symptom
+      of over-confidence and turn it deftly to derision. Oh, for an altar on
+      which to pour out propitiatory offerings! But what sweeter could they have
+      than her smothered heart-beats, her choked-back tears?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bell rang, and she stood up as if a spring had jerked her to her feet.
+      In the mirror between the dried grasses her face looked long pale
+      inanimate. Ah, if he should find her too changed&mdash;! If there were but
+      time to dash upstairs and put on a touch of red....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The door opened; it shut on him; he was there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He said: &ldquo;You wanted to see me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She answered: &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo; And her heart seemed to stop beating.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At first she could not make out what mysterious change had come over him,
+      and why it was that in looking at him she seemed to be looking at a
+      stranger; then she perceived that his voice sounded as it used to sound
+      when he was talking to other people; and she said to herself, with a sick
+      shiver of understanding, that she had become an &ldquo;other person&rdquo; to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a deathly pause; then she faltered out, not knowing what she
+      said: &ldquo;Nick&mdash;you&rsquo;ll sit down?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He said: &ldquo;Thanks,&rdquo; but did not seem to have heard her, for he continued to
+      stand motionless, half the room between them. And slowly the uselessness,
+      the hopelessness of his being there overcame her. A wall of granite seemed
+      to have built itself up between them. She felt as if it hid her from him,
+      as if with those remote new eyes of his he were staring into the wall and
+      not at her. Suddenly she said to herself: &ldquo;He&rsquo;s suffering more than I am,
+      because he pities me, and is afraid to tell me that he is going to be
+      married.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The thought stung her pride, and she lifted her head and met his eyes with
+      a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you think,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;it&rsquo;s more sensible&mdash;with everything so
+      changed in our lives&mdash;that we should meet as friends, in this way? I
+      wanted to tell you that you needn&rsquo;t feel&mdash;feel in the least unhappy
+      about me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A deep flush rose to his forehead. &ldquo;Oh, I know&mdash;I know that&mdash;&rdquo;
+       he declared hastily; and added, with a factitious animation: &ldquo;But thank
+      you for telling me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s nothing, is there,&rdquo; she continued, &ldquo;to make our meeting in this
+      way in the least embarrassing or painful to either of us, when both have
+      found....&rdquo; She broke off, and held her hand out to him. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve heard about
+      you and Coral,&rdquo; she ended.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He just touched her hand with cold fingers, and let it drop. &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo;
+       he said for the third time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You won&rsquo;t sit down?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you think,&rdquo; she continued, &ldquo;that the new way of... of meeting as
+      friends... and talking things over without ill-will... is much pleasanter
+      and more sensible, after all?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He smiled. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s immensely kind of you to feel that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I do feel it!&rdquo; She stopped short, and wondered what on earth she had
+      meant to say next, and why she had so abruptly lost the thread of her
+      discourse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the pause she heard him cough slightly and clear his throat. &ldquo;Let me
+      say, then,&rdquo; he began, &ldquo;that I&rsquo;m glad too&mdash;immensely glad that your
+      own future is so satisfactorily settled.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She lifted her glance again to his walled face, in which not a muscle
+      stirred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes: it&mdash;it makes everything easier for you, doesn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For you too, I hope.&rdquo; He paused, and then went on: &ldquo;I want also to tell
+      you that I perfectly understand&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; she interrupted, &ldquo;so do I; your point of view, I mean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They were again silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nick, why can&rsquo;t we be friends real friends? Won&rsquo;t it be easier?&rdquo; she
+      broke out at last with twitching lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Easier&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean, about talking things over&mdash;arrangements. There are
+      arrangements to be made, I suppose?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose so.&rdquo; He hesitated. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m doing what I&rsquo;m told&mdash;simply following
+      out instructions. The business is easy enough, apparently. I&rsquo;m taking the
+      necessary steps&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She reddened a little, and drew a gasping breath. &ldquo;The necessary steps:
+      what are they? Everything the lawyers tell one is so confusing.... I don&rsquo;t
+      yet understand&mdash;how it&rsquo;s done.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My share, you mean? Oh, it&rsquo;s very simple.&rdquo; He paused, and added in a tone
+      of laboured ease: &ldquo;I&rsquo;m going down to Fontainebleau to-morrow&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stared, not understanding. &ldquo;To Fontainebleau&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her bewilderment drew from him his first frank smile. &ldquo;Well&mdash;I chose
+      Fontainebleau&mdash;I don&rsquo;t know why... except that we&rsquo;ve never been there
+      together.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At that she suddenly understood, and the blood rushed to her forehead. She
+      stood up without knowing what she was doing, her heart in her throat. &ldquo;How
+      grotesque&mdash;how utterly disgusting!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He gave a slight shrug. &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t make the laws....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But isn&rsquo;t it too stupid and degrading that such things should be
+      necessary when two people want to part&mdash;?&rdquo; She broke off again,
+      silenced by the echo of that fatal &ldquo;want to part.&rdquo;...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He seemed to prefer not to dwell farther on the legal obligations
+      involved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You haven&rsquo;t yet told me,&rdquo; he suggested, &ldquo;how you happen to be living
+      here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here&mdash;with the Fulmer children?&rdquo; She roused herself, trying to catch
+      his easier note. &ldquo;Oh, I&rsquo;ve simply been governessing them for a few weeks,
+      while Nat and Grace are in Sicily.&rdquo; She did not say: &ldquo;It&rsquo;s because I&rsquo;ve
+      parted with Strefford.&rdquo; Somehow it helped her wounded pride a little to
+      keep from him the secret of her precarious independence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked his wonder. &ldquo;All alone with that bewildered bonne? But how many
+      of them are there? Five? Good Lord!&rdquo; He contemplated the clock with
+      unseeing eyes, and then turned them again on her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should have thought a lot of children would rather get on your nerves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, not these children. They&rsquo;re so good to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, well, I suppose it won&rsquo;t be for long.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He sent his eyes again about the room, which his absent-minded gaze seemed
+      to reduce to its dismal constituent elements, and added, with an obvious
+      effort at small talk: &ldquo;I hear the Fulmers are not hitting it off very well
+      since his success. Is it true that he&rsquo;s going to marry Violet Melrose?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The blood rose to Susy&rsquo;s face. &ldquo;Oh, never, never! He and Grace are
+      travelling together now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I didn&rsquo;t know. People say things....&rdquo; He was visibly embarrassed with
+      the subject, and sorry that he had broached it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some of the things that people say are true. But Grace doesn&rsquo;t mind. She
+      says she and Nat belong to each other. They can&rsquo;t help it, she thinks,
+      after having been through such a lot together.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear old Grace!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had risen from his chair, and this time she made no effort to detain
+      him. He seemed to have recovered his self-composure, and it struck her
+      painfully, humiliatingly almost, that he should have spoken in that light
+      way of the expedition to Fontainebleau on the morrow.... Well, men were
+      different, she supposed; she remembered having felt that once before about
+      Nick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was on the tip of her tongue to cry out: &ldquo;But wait&mdash;wait! I&rsquo;m not
+      going to marry Strefford after all!&rdquo;&mdash;but to do so would seem like an
+      appeal to his compassion, to his indulgence; and that was not what she
+      wanted. She could never forget that he had left her because he had not
+      been able to forgive her for &ldquo;managing&rdquo;&mdash;and not for the world would
+      she have him think that this meeting had been planned for such a purpose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he doesn&rsquo;t see that I am different, in spite of appearances... and
+      that I never was what he said I was that day&mdash;if in all these months
+      it hasn&rsquo;t come over him, what&rsquo;s the use of trying to make him see it now?&rdquo;
+       she mused. And then, her thoughts hurrying on: &ldquo;Perhaps he&rsquo;s suffering too&mdash;I
+      believe he is suffering&mdash;at any rate, he&rsquo;s suffering for me, if not for
+      himself. But if he&rsquo;s pledged to Coral, what can he do? What would he think
+      of me if I tried to make him break his word to her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There he stood&mdash;the man who was &ldquo;going to Fontainebleau to-morrow&rdquo;;
+      who called it &ldquo;taking the necessary steps!&rdquo; Who could smile as he made the
+      careless statement! A world seemed to divide them already: it was as if
+      their parting were already over. All the words, cries, arguments beating
+      loud wings in her dropped back into silence. The only thought left was:
+      &ldquo;How much longer does he mean to go on standing there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He may have read the question in her face, for turning back from an
+      absorbed contemplation of the window curtains he said: &ldquo;There&rsquo;s nothing
+      else?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing else?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean: you spoke of things to be settled&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She flushed, suddenly remembering the pretext she had used to summon him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; she faltered, &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t know... I thought there might be.... But the
+      lawyers, I suppose....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She saw the relief on his contracted face. &ldquo;Exactly. I&rsquo;ve always thought
+      it was best to leave it to them. I assure you&rdquo;&mdash;again for a moment
+      the smile strained his lips&mdash;&ldquo;I shall do nothing to interfere with a
+      quick settlement.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stood motionless, feeling herself turn to stone. He appeared already a
+      long way off, like a figure vanishing down a remote perspective.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then&mdash;good-bye,&rdquo; she heard him say from its farther end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&mdash;good-bye,&rdquo; she faltered, as if she had not had the word ready,
+      and was relieved to have him supply it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stopped again on the threshold, looked back at her, began to speak.
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve&mdash;&rdquo; he said; then he repeated &ldquo;Good-bye,&rdquo; as though to make sure
+      he had not forgotten to say it; and the door closed on him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was over; she had had her last chance and missed it. Now, whatever
+      happened, the one thing she had lived and longed for would never be. He
+      had come, and she had let him go again....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How had it come about? Would she ever be able to explain it to herself?
+      How was it that she, so fertile in strategy, so practiced in feminine
+      arts, had stood there before him, helpless, inarticulate, like a
+      school-girl a-choke with her first love-longing? If he was gone, and gone
+      never to return, it was her own fault, and none but hers. What had she
+      done to move him, detain him, make his heart beat and his head swim as
+      hers were beating and swimming? She stood aghast at her own inadequacy,
+      her stony inexpressiveness....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And suddenly she lifted her hands to her throbbing forehead and cried out:
+      &ldquo;But this is love! This must be love!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had loved him before, she supposed; for what else was she to call the
+      impulse that had drawn her to him, taught her how to overcome his
+      scruples, and whirled him away with her on their mad adventure? Well, if
+      that was love, this was something so much larger and deeper that the other
+      feeling seemed the mere dancing of her blood in tune with his....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, no! Real love, great love, the love that poets sang, and privileged
+      and tortured beings lived and died of, that love had its own superior
+      expressiveness, and the sure command of its means. The petty arts of
+      coquetry were no farther from it than the numbness of the untaught girl.
+      Great love was wise, strong, powerful, like genius, like any other
+      dominant form of human power. It knew itself, and what it wanted, and how
+      to attain its ends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not great love, then... but just the common humble average of human love
+      was hers. And it had come to her so newly, so overwhelmingly, with a face
+      so grave, a touch so startling, that she had stood there petrified,
+      humbled at the first look of its eyes, recognizing that what she had once
+      taken for love was merely pleasure and spring-time, and the flavour of
+      youth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But how was I to know? And now it&rsquo;s too late!&rdquo; she wailed.
+    </p>
+
+
+<h3>XXIX.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">The</span> inhabitants of the little house in Passy were of necessity early
+      risers; but when Susy jumped out of bed the next morning no one else was
+      astir, and it lacked nearly an hour of the call of the bonne&rsquo;s
+      alarm-clock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment Susy leaned out of her dark room into the darker night. A
+      cold drizzle fell on her face, and she shivered and drew back. Then,
+      lighting a candle, and shading it, as her habit was, from the sleeping
+      child, she slipped on her dressing-gown and opened the door. On the
+      threshold she paused to look at her watch. Only half-past five! She
+      thought with compunction of the unkindness of breaking in on Junie
+      Fulmer&rsquo;s slumbers; but such scruples did not weigh an ounce in the balance
+      of her purpose. Poor Junie would have to oversleep herself on Sunday, that
+      was all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy stole into the passage, opened a door, and cast her light on the
+      girl&rsquo;s face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Junie! Dearest Junie, you must wake up!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Junie lay in the abandonment of youthful sleep; but at the sound of her
+      name she sat up with the promptness of a grown person on whom domestic
+      burdens have long weighed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which one of them is it?&rdquo; she asked, one foot already out of bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Junie dear, no... it&rsquo;s nothing wrong with the children... or with
+      anybody,&rdquo; Susy stammered, on her knees by the bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the candlelight, she saw Junie&rsquo;s anxious brow darken reproachfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Susy, then why&mdash;? I was just dreaming we were all driving about
+      Rome in a great big motor-car with father and mother!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m so sorry, dear. What a lovely dream! I&rsquo;m a brute to have interrupted
+      it&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She felt the little girl&rsquo;s awakening scrutiny. &ldquo;If there&rsquo;s nothing wrong
+      with anybody, why are you crying, Susy? Is it you there&rsquo;s something wrong
+      with? What has happened?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Am I crying?&rdquo; Susy rose from her knees and sat down on the counterpane.
+      &ldquo;Yes, it is me. And I had to disturb you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Susy, darling, what is it?&rdquo; Junie&rsquo;s arms were about her in a flash,
+      and Susy grasped them in burning fingers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Junie, listen! I&rsquo;ve got to go away at once&mdash;to leave you all for the
+      whole day. I may not be back till late this evening; late to-night; I
+      can&rsquo;t tell. I promised your mother I&rsquo;d never leave you; but I&rsquo;ve got to&mdash;I&rsquo;ve
+      got to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Junie considered her agitated face with fully awakened eyes. &ldquo;Oh, I won&rsquo;t
+      tell, you know, you old brick,&rdquo; she said with simplicity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy hugged her. &ldquo;Junie, Junie, you darling! But that wasn&rsquo;t what I meant.
+      Of course you may tell&mdash;you must tell. I shall write to your mother
+      myself. But what worries me is the idea of having to go away&mdash;away
+      from Paris&mdash;for the whole day, with Geordie still coughing a little,
+      and no one but that silly Angele to stay with him while you&rsquo;re out&mdash;and
+      no one but you to take yourself and the others to school. But Junie,
+      Junie, I&rsquo;ve got to do it!&rdquo; she sobbed out, clutching the child tighter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Junie Fulmer, with her strangely mature perception of the case, and
+      seemingly of every case that fate might call on her to deal with, sat for
+      a moment motionless in Susy&rsquo;s hold. Then she freed her wrists with an
+      adroit twist, and leaning back against the pillows said judiciously:
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll never in the world bring up a family of your own if you take on
+      like this over other people&rsquo;s children.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Through all her turmoil of spirit the observation drew a laugh from Susy.
+      &ldquo;Oh, a family of my own&mdash;I don&rsquo;t deserve one, the way I&rsquo;m behaving to
+      your&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Junie still considered her. &ldquo;My dear, a change will do you good: you need
+      it,&rdquo; she pronounced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy rose with a laughing sigh. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not at all sure it will! But I&rsquo;ve got
+      to have it, all the same. Only I do feel anxious&mdash;and I can&rsquo;t even
+      leave you my address!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Junie still seemed to examine the case.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can&rsquo;t you even tell me where you&rsquo;re going?&rdquo; she ventured, as if not quite
+      sure of the delicacy of asking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;no, I don&rsquo;t think I can; not till I get back. Besides, even if
+      I could it wouldn&rsquo;t be much use, because I couldn&rsquo;t give you my address
+      there. I don&rsquo;t know what it will be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what does it matter, if you&rsquo;re coming back to-night?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I&rsquo;m coming back! How could you possibly imagine I should think
+      of leaving you for more than a day?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I shouldn&rsquo;t be afraid&mdash;not much, that is, with the poker, and
+      Nat&rsquo;s water-pistol,&rdquo; emended Junie, still judicious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy again enfolded her vehemently, and then turned to more practical
+      matters. She explained that she wished if possible to catch an
+      eight-thirty train from the Gare de Lyon, and that there was not a moment
+      to lose if the children were to be dressed and fed, and full instructions
+      written out for Junie and Angele, before she rushed for the underground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While she bathed Geordie, and then hurried into her own clothes, she could
+      not help wondering at her own extreme solicitude for her charges. She
+      remembered, with a pang, how often she had deserted Clarissa Vanderlyn for
+      the whole day, and even for two or three in succession&mdash;poor little
+      Clarissa, whom she knew to be so unprotected, so exposed to evil
+      influences. She had been too much absorbed in her own greedy bliss to be
+      more than intermittently aware of the child; but now, she felt, no sorrow
+      however ravaging, no happiness however absorbing, would ever again isolate
+      her from her kind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then these children were so different! The exquisite Clarissa was
+      already the predestined victim of her surroundings: her budding soul was
+      divided from Susy&rsquo;s by the same barrier of incomprehension that separated
+      the latter from Mrs. Vanderlyn. Clarissa had nothing to teach Susy but the
+      horror of her own hard little appetites; whereas the company of the noisy
+      argumentative Fulmers had been a school of wisdom and abnegation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As she applied the brush to Geordie&rsquo;s shining head and the handkerchief to
+      his snuffling nose, the sense of what she owed him was so borne in on Susy
+      that she interrupted the process to catch him to her bosom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll have such a story to tell you when I get back to-night, if you&rsquo;ll
+      promise me to be good all day,&rdquo; she bargained with him; and Geordie,
+      always astute, bargained back: &ldquo;Before I promise, I&rsquo;d like to know what
+      story.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At length all was in order. Junie had been enlightened, and Angele
+      stunned, by the minuteness of Susy&rsquo;s instructions; and the latter,
+      waterproofed and stoutly shod, descended the doorstep, and paused to wave
+      at the pyramid of heads yearning to her from an upper window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was hardly light, and still raining, when she turned into the dismal
+      street. As usual, it was empty; but at the corner she perceived a
+      hesitating taxi, with luggage piled beside the driver. Perhaps it was some
+      early traveller, just arriving, who would release the carriage in time for
+      her to catch it, and thus avoid the walk to the metro, and the subsequent
+      strap-hanging; for it was the work-people&rsquo;s hour. Susy raced toward the
+      vehicle, which, overcoming its hesitation, was beginning to move in her
+      direction. Observing this, she stopped to see where it would discharge its
+      load. Thereupon the taxi stopped also, and the load discharged itself in
+      front of her in the shape of Nick Lansing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two stood staring at each other through the rain till Nick broke out:
+      &ldquo;Where are you going? I came to get you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To get me? To get me?&rdquo; she repeated. Beside the driver she had suddenly
+      remarked the old suit-case from which her husband had obliged her to
+      extract Strefford&rsquo;s cigars as they were leaving Como; and everything that
+      had happened since seemed to fall away and vanish in the pang and rapture
+      of that memory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To get you; yes. Of course.&rdquo; He spoke the words peremptorily, almost as
+      if they were an order. &ldquo;Where were you going?&rdquo; he repeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Without answering, she turned toward the house. He followed her, and the
+      laden taxi closed the procession.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why are you out in such weather without an umbrella?&rdquo; he continued, in
+      the same severe tone, drawing her under the shelter of his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, because Junie&rsquo;s umbrella is in tatters, and I had to leave her mine,
+      as I was going away for the whole day.&rdquo; She spoke the words like a person
+      in a trance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For the whole day? At this hour? Where?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They were on the doorstep, and she fumbled automatically for her key, let
+      herself in, and led the way to the sitting-room. It had not been tidied up
+      since the night before. The children&rsquo;s school books lay scattered on the
+      table and sofa, and the empty fireplace was grey with ashes. She turned to
+      Nick in the pallid light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was going to see you,&rdquo; she stammered, &ldquo;I was going to follow you to
+      Fontainebleau, if necessary, to tell you... to prevent you....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He repeated in the same aggressive tone: &ldquo;Tell me what? Prevent what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell you that there must be some other way... some decent way... of our
+      separating... without that horror, that horror of your going off with a
+      woman....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stared, and then burst into a laugh. The blood rushed to her face. She
+      had caught a familiar ring in his laugh, and it wounded her. What business
+      had he, at such a time, to laugh in the old way?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry; but there is no other way, I&rsquo;m afraid. No other way but one,&rdquo;
+       he corrected himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She raised her head sharply. &ldquo;Well?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That you should be the woman.&mdash;Oh, my dear!&rdquo; He had dropped his
+      mocking smile, and was at her side, her hands in his. &ldquo;Oh, my dear, don&rsquo;t
+      you see that we&rsquo;ve both been feeling the same thing, and at the same hour?
+      You lay awake thinking of it all night, didn&rsquo;t you? So did I. Whenever the
+      clock struck, I said to myself: &lsquo;She&rsquo;s hearing it too.&rsquo; And I was up
+      before daylight, and packed my traps&mdash;for I never want to set foot
+      again in that awful hotel where I&rsquo;ve lived in hell for the last three
+      days. And I swore to myself that I&rsquo;d go off with a woman by the first
+      train I could catch&mdash;and so I mean to, my dear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stood before him numb. Yes, numb: that was the worst of it! The
+      violence of the reaction had been too great, and she could hardly
+      understand what he was saying. Instead, she noticed that the tassel of the
+      window-blind was torn off again (oh, those children!), and vaguely
+      wondered if his luggage were safe on the waiting taxi. One heard such
+      stories....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His voice came back to her. &ldquo;Susy! Listen!&rdquo; he was entreating. &ldquo;You must
+      see yourself that it can&rsquo;t be. We&rsquo;re married&mdash;isn&rsquo;t that all that
+      matters? Oh, I know&mdash;I&rsquo;ve behaved like a brute: a cursed arrogant
+      ass! You couldn&rsquo;t wish that ass a worse kicking than I&rsquo;ve given him! But
+      that&rsquo;s not the point, you see. The point is that we&rsquo;re married....
+      Married.... Doesn&rsquo;t it mean something to you, something&mdash;inexorable?
+      It does to me. I didn&rsquo;t dream it would&mdash;in just that way. But all I
+      can say is that I suppose the people who don&rsquo;t feel it aren&rsquo;t really
+      married&mdash;and they&rsquo;d better separate; much better. As for us&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Through her tears she gasped out: &ldquo;That&rsquo;s what I felt... that&rsquo;s what I
+      said to Streff....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was upon her with a great embrace. &ldquo;My darling! My darling! You have
+      told him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she panted. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s why I&rsquo;m living here.&rdquo; She paused. &ldquo;And you&rsquo;ve
+      told Coral?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She felt his embrace relax. He drew away a little, still holding her, but
+      with lowered head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No... I... haven&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Nick! But then&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He caught her to him again, resentfully. &ldquo;Well&mdash;then what? What do
+      you mean? What earthly difference does it make?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But if you&rsquo;ve told her you were going to marry her&mdash;&rdquo; (Try as she
+      would, her voice was full of silver chimes.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Marry her? Marry her?&rdquo; he echoed. &ldquo;But how could I? What does marriage
+      mean anyhow? If it means anything at all it means&mdash;you! And I can&rsquo;t
+      ask Coral Hicks just to come and live with me, can I?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Between crying and laughing she lay on his breast, and his hand passed
+      over her hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were silent for a while; then he began again: &ldquo;You said it yourself
+      yesterday, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She strayed back from sunlit distances. &ldquo;Yesterday?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes: that Grace Fulmer says you can&rsquo;t separate two people who&rsquo;ve been
+      through a lot of things&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, been through them together&mdash;it&rsquo;s not the things, you see, it&rsquo;s
+      the togetherness,&rdquo; she interrupted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The togetherness&mdash;that&rsquo;s it!&rdquo; He seized on the word as if it had
+      just been coined to express their case, and his mind could rest in it
+      without farther labour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The door-bell rang, and they started. Through the window they saw the
+      taxi-driver gesticulating enquiries as to the fate of the luggage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He wants to know if he&rsquo;s to leave it here,&rdquo; Susy laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&mdash;no! You&rsquo;re to come with me,&rdquo; her husband declared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come with you?&rdquo; She laughed again at the absurdity of the suggestion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course: this very instant. What did you suppose? That I was going away
+      without you? Run up and pack your things,&rdquo; he commanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My things? My things? But I can&rsquo;t leave the children!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stared, between indignation and amusement. &ldquo;Can&rsquo;t leave the children?
+      Nonsense! Why, you said yourself you were going to follow me to
+      Fontainebleau&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She reddened again, this time a little painfully &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t know what I was
+      doing.... I had to find you... but I should have come back this evening,
+      no matter what happened.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No matter what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She nodded, and met his gaze resolutely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; but really&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Really, I can&rsquo;t leave the children till Nat and Grace come back. I
+      promised I wouldn&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; but you didn&rsquo;t know then.... Why on earth can&rsquo;t their nurse look
+      after them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There isn&rsquo;t any nurse but me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good Lord!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it&rsquo;s only for two weeks more,&rdquo; she pleaded. &ldquo;Two weeks! Do you know
+      how long I&rsquo;ve been without you!&rdquo; He seized her by both wrists, and drew
+      them against his breast. &ldquo;Come with me at least for two days&mdash;Susy!&rdquo;
+       he entreated her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;that&rsquo;s the very first time you&rsquo;ve said my name!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Susy, Susy, then&mdash;my Susy&mdash;Susy! And you&rsquo;ve only said mine
+      once, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nick!&rdquo; she sighed, at peace, as if the one syllable were a magic seed
+      that hung out great branches to envelop them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, Susy, be reasonable. Come!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Reasonable&mdash;oh, reasonable!&rdquo; she sobbed through laughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Unreasonable, then! That&rsquo;s even better.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She freed herself, and drew back gently. &ldquo;Nick, I swore I wouldn&rsquo;t leave
+      them; and I can&rsquo;t. It&rsquo;s not only my promise to their mother&mdash;it&rsquo;s
+      what they&rsquo;ve been to me themselves. You don&rsquo;t, know... You can&rsquo;t imagine
+      the things they&rsquo;ve taught me. They&rsquo;re awfully naughty at times, because
+      they&rsquo;re so clever; but when they&rsquo;re good they&rsquo;re the wisest people I
+      know.&rdquo; She paused, and a sudden inspiration illuminated her. &ldquo;But why
+      shouldn&rsquo;t we take them with us?&rdquo; she exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her husband&rsquo;s arms fell away from her, and he stood dumfounded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take them with us?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All five of them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course&mdash;I couldn&rsquo;t possibly separate them. And Junie and Nat will
+      help us to look after the young ones.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Help us!&rdquo; he groaned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you&rsquo;ll see; they won&rsquo;t bother you. Just leave it to me; I&rsquo;ll manage&mdash;&rdquo;
+       The word stopped her short, and an agony of crimson suffused her from brow
+      to throat. Their eyes met; and without a word he stooped and laid his lips
+      gently on the stain of red on her neck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nick,&rdquo; she breathed, her hands in his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But those children&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Instead of answering, she questioned: &ldquo;Where are we going?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His face lit up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Anywhere, dearest, that you choose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;I choose Fontainebleau!&rdquo; she exulted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So do I! But we can&rsquo;t take all those children to an hotel at
+      Fontainebleau, can we?&rdquo; he questioned weakly. &ldquo;You see, dear, there&rsquo;s the
+      mere expense of it&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her eyes were already travelling far ahead of him. &ldquo;The expense won&rsquo;t
+      amount to much. I&rsquo;ve just remembered that Angele, the bonne, has a sister
+      who is cook there in a nice old-fashioned pension which must be almost
+      empty at this time of year. I&rsquo;m sure I can ma&mdash;arrange easily,&rdquo; she
+      hurried on, nearly tripping again over the fatal word. &ldquo;And just think of
+      the treat it will be to them! This is Friday, and I can get them let off
+      from their afternoon classes, and keep them in the country till Monday.
+      Poor darlings, they haven&rsquo;t been out of Paris for months! And I daresay
+      the change will cure Geordie&rsquo;s cough&mdash;Geordie&rsquo;s the youngest,&rdquo; she
+      explained, surprised to find herself, even in the rapture of reunion, so
+      absorbed in the welfare of the Fulmers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was conscious that her husband was surprised also; but instead of
+      prolonging the argument he simply questioned: &ldquo;Was Geordie the chap you
+      had in your arms when you opened the front door the night before last?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She echoed: &ldquo;I opened the front door the night before last?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To a boy with a parcel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; she sobbed, &ldquo;you were there? You were watching?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He held her to him, and the currents flowed between them warm and full as
+      on the night of their moon over Como.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a trice, after that, she had the matter in hand and her forces
+      marshalled. The taxi was paid, Nick&rsquo;s luggage deposited in the vestibule,
+      and the children, just piling down to breakfast, were summoned in to hear
+      the news.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was apparent that, seasoned to surprises as they were, Nick&rsquo;s presence
+      took them aback. But when, between laughter and embraces, his identity,
+      and his right to be where he was, had been made clear to them, Junie
+      dismissed the matter by asking him in her practical way: &ldquo;Then I suppose
+      we may talk about you to Susy now?&rdquo;&mdash;and thereafter all five
+      addressed themselves to the vision of their imminent holiday.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From that moment the little house became the centre of a whirlwind. Treats
+      so unforeseen, and of such magnitude, were rare in the young Fulmers&rsquo;
+      experience, and had it not been for Junie&rsquo;s steadying influence Susy&rsquo;s
+      charges would have got out of hand. But young Nat, appealed to by Nick on
+      the ground of their common manhood, was induced to forego celebrating the
+      event on his motor horn (the very same which had tortured the New
+      Hampshire echoes), and to assert his authority over his juniors; and
+      finally a plan began to emerge from the chaos, and each child to fit into
+      it like a bit of a picture puzzle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy, riding the whirlwind with her usual firmness, nevertheless felt an
+      undercurrent of anxiety. There had been no time as yet, between her and
+      Nick, to revert to money matters; and where there was so little money it
+      could not, obviously, much matter. But that was the more reason for being
+      secretly aghast at her intrepid resolve not to separate herself from her
+      charges. A three days&rsquo; honey-moon with five children in the party&mdash;and
+      children with the Fulmer appetite&mdash;could not but be a costly
+      business; and while she settled details, packed them off to school, and
+      routed out such nondescript receptacles as the house contained in the way
+      of luggage, her thoughts remained fixed on the familiar financial problem.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes&mdash;it was cruel to have it rear its hated head, even through the
+      bursting boughs of her new spring; but there it was, the perpetual serpent
+      in her Eden, to be bribed, fed, sent to sleep with such scraps as she
+      could beg, borrow or steal for it. And she supposed it was the price that
+      fate meant her to pay for her blessedness, and was surer than ever that
+      the blessedness was worth it. Only, how was she to compound the business
+      with her new principles?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With the children&rsquo;s things to pack, luncheon to be got ready, and the
+      Fontainebleau pension to be telephoned to, there was little time to waste
+      on moral casuistry; and Susy asked herself with a certain irony if the
+      chronic lack of time to deal with money difficulties had not been the
+      chief cause of her previous lapses. There was no time to deal with this
+      question either; no time, in short, to do anything but rush forward on a
+      great gale of plans and preparations, in the course of which she whirled
+      Nick forth to buy some charcuterie for luncheon, and telephone to
+      Fontainebleau.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once he was gone&mdash;and after watching him safely round the corner&mdash;she
+      too got into her wraps, and transferring a small packet from her
+      dressing-case to her pocket, hastened out in a different direction.
+    </p>
+
+
+<h3>XXX.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">It</span> took two brimming taxi-cabs to carry the Nicholas Lansings to the
+      station on their second honey-moon. In the first were Nick, Susy and the
+      luggage of the whole party (little Nat&rsquo;s motor horn included, as a last
+      concession, and because he had hitherto forborne to play on it); and in
+      the second, the five Fulmers, the bonne, who at the eleventh hour had
+      refused to be left, a cage-full of canaries, and a foundling kitten who
+      had murderous designs on them; all of which had to be taken because, if
+      the bonne came, there would be nobody left to look after them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the corner Susy tore herself from Nick&rsquo;s arms and held up the
+      procession while she ran back to the second taxi to make sure that the
+      bonne had brought the house-key. It was found of course that she hadn&rsquo;t
+      but that Junie had; whereupon the caravan got under way again, and reached
+      the station just as the train was starting; and there, by some miracle of
+      good nature on the part of the guard, they were all packed together into
+      an empty compartment&mdash;no doubt, as Susy remarked, because train
+      officials never failed to spot a newly-married couple, and treat them
+      kindly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The children, sentinelled by Junie, at first gave promise of superhuman
+      goodness; but presently their feelings overflowed, and they were not to be
+      quieted till it had been agreed that Nat should blow his motor-horn at
+      each halt, while the twins called out the names of the stations, and
+      Geordie, with the canaries and kitten, affected to change trains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Luckily the halts were few; but the excitement of travel, combined with
+      over-indulgence in the chocolates imprudently provided by Nick,
+      overwhelmed Geordie with a sudden melancholy that could be appeased only
+      by Susy&rsquo;s telling him stories till they arrived at Fontainebleau.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The day was soft, with mild gleams of sunlight on decaying foliage; and
+      after luggage and livestock had been dropped at the pension Susy confessed
+      that she had promised the children a scamper in the forest, and buns in a
+      tea-shop afterward. Nick placidly agreed, and darkness had long fallen,
+      and a great many buns been consumed, when at length the procession turned
+      down the street toward the pension, headed by Nick with the sleeping
+      Geordie on his shoulder, while the others, speechless with fatigue and
+      food, hung heavily on Susy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It had been decided that, as the bonne was of the party, the children
+      might be entrusted to her for the night, and Nick and Susy establish
+      themselves in an adjacent hotel. Nick had flattered himself that they
+      might remove their possessions there when they returned from the tea-room;
+      but Susy, manifestly surprised at the idea, reminded him that her charges
+      must first be given their supper and put to bed. She suggested that he
+      should meanwhile take the bags to the hotel, and promised to join him as
+      soon as Geordie was asleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was a long time coming, but waiting for her was sweet, even in a
+      deserted hotel reading-room insufficiently heated by a sulky stove; and
+      after he had glanced through his morning&rsquo;s mail, hurriedly thrust into his
+      pocket as he left Paris, he sank into a state of drowsy beatitude. It was
+      all the maddest business in the world, yet it did not give him the sense
+      of unreality that had made their first adventure a mere golden dream; and
+      he sat and waited with the security of one in whom dear habits have struck
+      deep roots. In this mood of acquiescence even the presence of the five
+      Fulmers seemed a natural and necessary consequence of all the rest; and
+      when Susy at length appeared, a little pale and tired, with the brooding
+      inward look that busy mothers bring from the nursery, that too seemed
+      natural and necessary, and part of the new order of things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had wandered out to a cheap restaurant for dinner; now, in the damp
+      December night, they were walking back to the hotel under a sky full of
+      rain-clouds. They seemed to have said everything to each other, and yet
+      barely to have begun what they had to tell; and at each step they took,
+      their heavy feet dragged a great load of bliss.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the hotel almost all the lights were already out; and they groped their
+      way to the third floor room which was the only one that Susy had found
+      cheap enough. A ray from a street-lamp struck up through the unshuttered
+      windows; and after Nick had revived the fire they drew their chairs close
+      to it, and sat quietly for a while in the dark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Their silence was so sweet that Nick could not make up his mind to break
+      it; not to do so gave his tossing spirit such a sense of permanence, of
+      having at last unlimited time before him in which to taste his joy and let
+      its sweetness stream through him. But at length he roused himself to say:
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s queer how things coincide. I&rsquo;ve had a little bit of good news in one
+      of the letters I got this morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy took the announcement serenely. &ldquo;Well, you would, you know,&rdquo; she
+      commented, as if the day had been too obviously designed for bliss to
+      escape the notice of its dispensers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he continued with a thrill of pardonable pride. &ldquo;During the cruise
+      I did a couple of articles on Crete&mdash;oh, just travel-impressions, of
+      course; they couldn&rsquo;t be more. But the editor of the New Review has
+      accepted them, and asks for others. And here&rsquo;s his cheque, if you please!
+      So you see you might have let me take the jolly room downstairs with the
+      pink curtains. And it makes me awfully hopeful about my book.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had expected a rapturous outburst, and perhaps some reassertion of
+      wifely faith in the glorious future that awaited The Pageant of Alexander;
+      and deep down under the lover&rsquo;s well-being the author felt a faint twinge
+      of mortified vanity when Susy, leaping to her feet, cried out, ravenously
+      and without preamble: &ldquo;Oh, Nick, Nick&mdash;let me see how much they&rsquo;ve
+      given you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He flourished the cheque before her in the firelight. &ldquo;A couple of
+      hundred, you mercenary wretch!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, oh&mdash;&rdquo; she gasped, as if the good news had been almost too much
+      for her tense nerves; and then surprised him by dropping to the ground,
+      and burying her face against his knees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Susy, my Susy,&rdquo; he whispered, his hand on her shaking shoulder. &ldquo;Why,
+      dear, what is it? You&rsquo;re not crying?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Nick, Nick&mdash;two hundred? Two hundred dollars? Then I&rsquo;ve got to
+      tell you&mdash;oh now, at once!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A faint chill ran over him, and involuntarily his hand drew back from her
+      bowed figure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now? Oh, why now?&rdquo; he protested. &ldquo;What on earth does it matter now&mdash;whatever
+      it is?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it does matter&mdash;it matters more than you can think!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She straightened herself, still kneeling before him, and lifted her head
+      so that the firelight behind her turned her hair into a ruddy halo. &ldquo;Oh,
+      Nick, the bracelet&mdash;Ellie&rsquo;s bracelet.... I&rsquo;ve never returned it to
+      her,&rdquo; she faltered out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He felt himself recoiling under the hands with which she clutched his
+      knees. For an instant he did not remember what she alluded to; it was the
+      mere mention of Ellie Vanderlyn&rsquo;s name that had fallen between them like
+      an icy shadow. What an incorrigible fool he had been to think they could
+      ever shake off such memories, or cease to be the slaves of such a past!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The bracelet?&mdash;Oh, yes,&rdquo; he said, suddenly understanding, and
+      feeling the chill mount slowly to his lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, the bracelet... Oh, Nick, I meant to give it back at once; I did&mdash;I
+      did; but the day you went away I forgot everything else. And when I found
+      the thing, in the bottom of my bag, weeks afterward, I thought everything
+      was over between you and me, and I had begun to see Ellie again, and she
+      was kind to me and how could I?&rdquo; To save his life he could have found no
+      answer, and she pressed on: &ldquo;And so this morning, when I saw you were
+      frightened by the expense of bringing all the children with us, and when I
+      felt I couldn&rsquo;t leave them, and couldn&rsquo;t leave you either, I remembered
+      the bracelet; and I sent you off to telephone while I rushed round the
+      corner to a little jeweller&rsquo;s where I&rsquo;d been before, and pawned it so that
+      you shouldn&rsquo;t have to pay for the children.... But now, darling, you see,
+      if you&rsquo;ve got all that money, I can get it out of pawn at once, can&rsquo;t I,
+      and send it back to her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She flung her arms about him, and he held her fast, wondering if the tears
+      he felt were hers or his. Still he did not speak; but as he clasped her
+      close she added, with an irrepressible flash of her old irony: &ldquo;Not that
+      Ellie will understand why I&rsquo;ve done it. She&rsquo;s never yet been able to make
+      out why you returned her scarf-pin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a long time she continued to lean against him, her head on his knees,
+      as she had done on the terrace of Como on the last night of their
+      honeymoon. She had ceased to talk, and he sat silent also, passing his
+      hand quietly to and fro over her hair. The first rapture had been
+      succeeded by soberer feelings. Her confession had broken up the frozen
+      pride about his heart, and humbled him to the earth; but it had also
+      roused forgotten things, memories and scruples swept aside in the first
+      rush of their reunion. He and she belonged to each other for always: he
+      understood that now. The impulse which had first drawn them together
+      again, in spite of reason, in spite of themselves almost, that deep-seated
+      instinctive need that each had of the other, would never again wholly let
+      them go. Yet as he sat there he thought of Strefford, he thought of Coral
+      Hicks. He had been a coward in regard to Coral, and Susy had been sincere
+      and courageous in regard to Strefford. Yet his mind dwelt on Coral with
+      tenderness, with compunction, with remorse; and he was almost sure that
+      Susy had already put Strefford utterly out of her mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the old contrast between the two ways of loving, the man&rsquo;s way and
+      the woman&rsquo;s; and after a moment it seemed to Nick natural enough that
+      Susy, from the very moment of finding him again, should feel neither pity
+      nor regret, and that Strefford should already be to her as if he had never
+      been. After all, there was something Providential in such arrangements.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stooped closer, pressed her dreaming head between his hands, and
+      whispered: &ldquo;Wake up; it&rsquo;s bedtime.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She rose; but as she moved away to turn on the light he caught her hand
+      and drew her to the window. They leaned on the sill in the darkness, and
+      through the clouds, from which a few drops were already falling, the moon,
+      labouring upward, swam into a space of sky, cast her troubled glory on
+      them, and was again hidden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+  <div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1263 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #1263 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1263)
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Glimpses of the Moon, by Edith Wharton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Glimpses of the Moon
+
+Author: Edith Wharton
+
+Posting Date: September 15, 2008 [EBook #1263]
+Release Date: April, 1998
+[Last Updated: August 7, 2017]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GLIMPSES OF THE MOON ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Dean Gilley
+
+
+
+
+
+THE GLIMPSES OF THE MOON
+
+By Edith Wharton
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+I
+
+IT rose for them--their honey-moon--over the waters of a lake so famed
+as the scene of romantic raptures that they were rather proud of not
+having been afraid to choose it as the setting of their own.
+
+“It required a total lack of humour, or as great a gift for it as ours,
+to risk the experiment,” Susy Lansing opined, as they hung over the
+inevitable marble balustrade and watched their tutelary orb roll its
+magic carpet across the waters to their feet.
+
+“Yes--or the loan of Strefford’s villa,” her husband emended, glancing
+upward through the branches at a long low patch of paleness to which the
+moonlight was beginning to give the form of a white house-front.
+
+“Oh, come when we’d five to choose from. At least if you count the
+Chicago flat.”
+
+“So we had--you wonder!” He laid his hand on hers, and his touch renewed
+the sense of marvelling exultation which the deliberate survey of their
+adventure always roused in her.... It was characteristic that she merely
+added, in her steady laughing tone: “Or, not counting the flat--for
+I hate to brag--just consider the others: Violet Melrose’s place at
+Versailles, your aunt’s villa at Monte Carlo--and a moor!”
+
+She was conscious of throwing in the moor tentatively, and yet with
+a somewhat exaggerated emphasis, as if to make sure that he shouldn’t
+accuse her of slurring it over. But he seemed to have no desire to
+do so. “Poor old Fred!” he merely remarked; and she breathed out
+carelessly: “Oh, well--”
+
+His hand still lay on hers, and for a long interval, while they stood
+silent in the enveloping loveliness of the night, she was aware only of
+the warm current running from palm to palm, as the moonlight below them
+drew its line of magic from shore to shore.
+
+Nick Lansing spoke at last. “Versailles in May would have been
+impossible: all our Paris crowd would have run us down within
+twenty-four hours. And Monte Carlo is ruled out because it’s exactly
+the kind of place everybody expected us to go. So--with all respect to
+you--it wasn’t much of a mental strain to decide on Como.”
+
+His wife instantly challenged this belittling of her capacity. “It took
+a good deal of argument to convince you that we could face the ridicule
+of Como!”
+
+“Well, I should have preferred something in a lower key; at least I
+thought I should till we got here. Now I see that this place is idiotic
+unless one is perfectly happy; and that then it’s--as good as any other.”
+
+She sighed out a blissful assent. “And I must say that Streffy has done
+things to a turn. Even the cigars--who do you suppose gave him those
+cigars?” She added thoughtfully: “You’ll miss them when we have to go.”
+
+“Oh, I say, don’t let’s talk to-night about going. Aren’t we outside of
+time and space...? Smell that guinea-a-bottle stuff over there: what is
+it? Stephanotis?”
+
+“Y--yes.... I suppose so. Or gardenias.... Oh, the fire-flies! Look...
+there, against that splash of moonlight on the water. Apples of silver
+in a net-work of gold....” They leaned together, one flesh from shoulder
+to finger-tips, their eyes held by the snared glitter of the ripples.
+
+“I could bear,” Lansing remarked, “even a nightingale at this
+moment....”
+
+A faint gurgle shook the magnolias behind them, and a long liquid
+whisper answered it from the thicket of laurel above their heads.
+
+“It’s a little late in the year for them: they’re ending just as we
+begin.”
+
+Susy laughed. “I hope when our turn comes we shall say good-bye to each
+other as sweetly.”
+
+It was in her husband’s mind to answer: “They’re not saying good-bye,
+but only settling down to family cares.” But as this did not happen to
+be in his plan, or in Susy’s, he merely echoed her laugh and pressed her
+closer.
+
+The spring night drew them into its deepening embrace. The ripples of
+the lake had gradually widened and faded into a silken smoothness, and
+high above the mountains the moon was turning from gold to white in
+a sky powdered with vanishing stars. Across the lake the lights of a
+little town went out, one after another, and the distant shore became a
+floating blackness. A breeze that rose and sank brushed their faces with
+the scents of the garden; once it blew out over the water a great white
+moth like a drifting magnolia petal. The nightingales had paused and the
+trickle of the fountain behind the house grew suddenly insistent.
+
+When Susy spoke it was in a voice languid with visions. “I have been
+thinking,” she said, “that we ought to be able to make it last at least
+a year longer.”
+
+Her husband received the remark without any sign of surprise or
+disapprobation; his answer showed that he not only understood her, but
+had been inwardly following the same train of thought.
+
+“You mean,” he enquired after a pause, “without counting your
+grandmother’s pearls?”
+
+“Yes--without the pearls.”
+
+He pondered a while, and then rejoined in a tender whisper: “Tell me
+again just how.”
+
+“Let’s sit down, then. No, I like the cushions best.” He stretched
+himself in a long willow chair, and she curled up on a heap of
+boat-cushions and leaned her head against his knee. Just above her,
+when she lifted her lids, she saw bits of moon-flooded sky incrusted
+like silver in a sharp black patterning of plane-boughs. All about them
+breathed of peace and beauty and stability, and her happiness was so
+acute that it was almost a relief to remember the stormy background of
+bills and borrowing against which its frail structure had been reared.
+“People with a balance can’t be as happy as all this,” Susy mused,
+letting the moonlight filter through her lazy lashes.
+
+People with a balance had always been Susy Branch’s bugbear; they were
+still, and more dangerously, to be Susy Lansing’s. She detested them,
+detested them doubly, as the natural enemies of mankind and as the
+people one always had to put one’s self out for. The greater part of her
+life having been passed among them, she knew nearly all that there was
+to know about them, and judged them with the contemptuous lucidity
+of nearly twenty years of dependence. But at the present moment her
+animosity was diminished not only by the softening effect of love but
+by the fact that she had got out of those very people more--yes, ever so
+much more--than she and Nick, in their hours of most reckless planning,
+had ever dared to hope for.
+
+“After all, we owe them this!” she mused.
+
+Her husband, lost in the drowsy beatitude of the hour, had not repeated
+his question; but she was still on the trail of the thought he had
+started. A year--yes, she was sure now that with a little management
+they could have a whole year of it! “It” was their marriage, their being
+together, and away from bores and bothers, in a comradeship of which
+both of them had long ago guessed the immediate pleasure, but she at
+least had never imagined the deeper harmony.
+
+It was at one of their earliest meetings--at one of the heterogeneous
+dinners that the Fred Gillows tried to think “literary”--that the young
+man who chanced to sit next to her, and of whom it was vaguely rumoured
+that he had “written,” had presented himself to her imagination as the
+sort of luxury to which Susy Branch, heiress, might conceivably have
+treated herself as a crowning folly. Susy Branch, pauper, was fond of
+picturing how this fancied double would employ her millions: it was one
+of her chief grievances against her rich friends that they disposed of
+theirs so unimaginatively.
+
+“I’d rather have a husband like that than a steam-yacht!” she had
+thought at the end of her talk with the young man who had written, and
+as to whom it had at once been clear to her that nothing his pen had
+produced, or might hereafter set down, would put him in a position to
+offer his wife anything more costly than a row-boat.
+
+“His wife! As if he could ever have one! For he’s not the kind to marry
+for a yacht either.” In spite of her past, Susy had preserved enough
+inner independence to detect the latent signs of it in others, and also
+to ascribe it impulsively to those of the opposite sex who happened to
+interest her. She had a natural contempt for people who gloried in what
+they need only have endured. She herself meant eventually to marry,
+because one couldn’t forever hang on to rich people; but she was going
+to wait till she found some one who combined the maximum of wealth with
+at least a minimum of companionableness.
+
+She had at once perceived young Lansing’s case to be exactly the
+opposite: he was as poor as he could be, and as companionable as it was
+possible to imagine. She therefore decided to see as much of him as her
+hurried and entangled life permitted; and this, thanks to a series of
+adroit adjustments, turned out to be a good deal. They met frequently
+all the rest of that winter; so frequently that Mrs. Fred Gillow one
+day abruptly and sharply gave Susy to understand that she was “making
+herself ridiculous.”
+
+“Ah--” said Susy with a long breath, looking her friend and patroness
+straight in the painted eyes.
+
+“Yes,” cried Ursula Gillow in a sob, “before you interfered Nick liked
+me awfully... and, of course, I don’t want to reproach you... but when I
+think....”
+
+Susy made no answer. How could she, when she thought? The dress she had
+on had been given her by Ursula; Ursula’s motor had carried her to the
+feast from which they were both returning. She counted on spending the
+following August with the Gillows at Newport... and the only alternative
+was to go to California with the Bockheimers, whom she had hitherto
+refused even to dine with.
+
+“Of course, what you fancy is perfect nonsense, Ursula; and as to my
+interfering--” Susy hesitated, and then murmured: “But if it will make
+you any happier I’ll arrange to see him less often....” She sounded the
+lowest depths of subservience in returning Ursula’s tearful kiss....
+
+Susy Branch had a masculine respect for her word; and the next day she
+put on her most becoming hat and sought out young Mr. Lansing in his
+lodgings. She was determined to keep her promise to Ursula; but she
+meant to look her best when she did it.
+
+She knew at what time the young man was likely to be found, for he was
+doing a dreary job on a popular encyclopaedia (V to X), and had told her
+what hours were dedicated to the hateful task. “Oh, if only it were a
+novel!” she thought as she mounted his dingy stairs; but immediately
+reflected that, if it were the kind that she could bear to read, it
+probably wouldn’t bring him in much more than his encyclopaedia. Miss
+Branch had her standards in literature....
+
+The apartment to which Mr. Lansing admitted her was a good deal cleaner,
+but hardly less dingy, than his staircase. Susy, knowing him to be
+addicted to Oriental archaeology, had pictured him in a bare room
+adorned by a single Chinese bronze of flawless shape, or by some
+precious fragment of Asiatic pottery. But such redeeming features were
+conspicuously absent, and no attempt had been made to disguise the
+decent indigence of the bed-sitting-room.
+
+Lansing welcomed his visitor with every sign of pleasure, and with
+apparent indifference as to what she thought of his furniture. He seemed
+to be conscious only of his luck in seeing her on a day when they had
+not expected to meet. This made Susy all the sorrier to execute her
+promise, and the gladder that she had put on her prettiest hat; and for
+a moment or two she looked at him in silence from under its conniving
+brim.
+
+Warm as their mutual liking was, Lansing had never said a word of love
+to her; but this was no deterrent to his visitor, whose habit it was
+to speak her meaning clearly when there were no reasons, worldly or
+pecuniary, for its concealment. After a moment, therefore, she told him
+why she had come; it was a nuisance, of course, but he would understand.
+Ursula Gillow was jealous, and they would have to give up seeing each
+other.
+
+The young man’s burst of laughter was music to her; for, after all, she
+had been rather afraid that being devoted to Ursula might be as much in
+his day’s work as doing the encyclopaedia.
+
+“But I give you my word it’s a raving-mad mistake! And I don’t believe
+she ever meant me, to begin with--” he protested; but Susy, her
+common-sense returning with her reassurance, promptly cut short his
+denial.
+
+“You can trust Ursula to make herself clear on such occasions. And it
+doesn’t make any difference what you think. All that matters is what she
+believes.”
+
+“Oh, come! I’ve got a word to say about that too, haven’t I?”
+
+Susy looked slowly and consideringly about the room. There was nothing
+in it, absolutely nothing, to show that he had ever possessed a spare
+dollar--or accepted a present.
+
+“Not as far as I’m concerned,” she finally pronounced.
+
+“How do you mean? If I’m as free as air--?”
+
+“I’m not.”
+
+He grew thoughtful. “Oh, then, of course--. It only seems a little odd,”
+ he added drily, “that in that case, the protest should have come from
+Mrs. Gillow.”
+
+“Instead of coming from my millionaire bridegroom, Oh, I haven’t any; in
+that respect I’m as free as you.”
+
+“Well, then--? Haven’t we only got to stay free?”
+
+Susy drew her brows together anxiously. It was going to be rather more
+difficult than she had supposed.
+
+“I said I was as free in that respect. I’m not going to marry--and I
+don’t suppose you are?”
+
+“God, no!” he ejaculated fervently.
+
+“But that doesn’t always imply complete freedom....”
+
+He stood just above her, leaning his elbow against the hideous black
+marble arch that framed his fireless grate. As she glanced up she saw
+his face harden, and the colour flew to hers.
+
+“Was that what you came to tell me?” he asked.
+
+“Oh, you don’t understand--and I don’t see why you don’t, since we’ve
+knocked about so long among exactly the same kind of people.” She stood
+up impulsively and laid her hand on his arm. “I do wish you’d help
+me--!”
+
+He remained motionless, letting the hand lie untouched.
+
+“Help you to tell me that poor Ursula was a pretext, but that there IS
+someone who--for one reason or another--really has a right to object to
+your seeing me too often?”
+
+Susy laughed impatiently. “You talk like the hero of a novel--the kind
+my governess used to read. In the first place I should never recognize
+that kind of right, as you call it--never!”
+
+“Then what kind do you?” he asked with a clearing brow.
+
+“Why--the kind I suppose you recognize on the part of your publisher.”
+ This evoked a hollow laugh from him. “A business claim, call it,” she
+pursued. “Ursula does a lot for me: I live on her for half the year.
+This dress I’ve got on now is one she gave me. Her motor is going to
+take me to a dinner to-night. I’m going to spend next summer with her
+at Newport.... If I don’t, I’ve got to go to California with the
+Bockheimers--so good-bye.”
+
+Suddenly in tears, she was out of the door and down his steep three
+flights before he could stop her--though, in thinking it over, she
+didn’t even remember if he had tried to. She only recalled having stood
+a long time on the corner of Fifth Avenue, in the harsh winter radiance,
+waiting till a break in the torrent of motors laden with fashionable
+women should let her cross, and saying to herself: “After all, I might
+have promised Ursula... and kept on seeing him....”
+
+Instead of which, when Lansing wrote the next day entreating a word with
+her, she had sent back a friendly but firm refusal; and had managed soon
+afterward to get taken to Canada for a fortnight’s ski-ing, and then to
+Florida for six weeks in a house-boat....
+
+As she reached this point in her retrospect the remembrance of Florida
+called up a vision of moonlit waters, magnolia fragrance and balmy airs;
+merging with the circumambient sweetness, it laid a drowsy spell upon
+her lids. Yes, there had been a bad moment: but it was over; and she was
+here, safe and blissful, and with Nick; and this was his knee her head
+rested on, and they had a year ahead of them... a whole year.... “Not
+counting the pearls,” she murmured, shutting her eyes....
+
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+
+
+LANSING threw the end of Strefford’s expensive cigar into the lake, and
+bent over his wife. Poor child! She had fallen asleep.... He leaned
+back and stared up again at the silver-flooded sky. How queer--how
+inexpressibly queer--it was to think that that light was shed by his
+honey-moon! A year ago, if anyone had predicted his risking such an
+adventure, he would have replied by asking to be locked up at the first
+symptoms....
+
+There was still no doubt in his mind that the adventure was a mad one.
+It was all very well for Susy to remind him twenty times a day that they
+had pulled it off--and so why should he worry? Even in the light of her
+far-seeing cleverness, and of his own present bliss, he knew the future
+would not bear the examination of sober thought. And as he sat there
+in the summer moonlight, with her head on his knee, he tried to
+recapitulate the successive steps that had landed them on Streffy’s
+lake-front.
+
+On Lansing’s side, no doubt, it dated back to his leaving Harvard with
+the large resolve not to miss anything. There stood the evergreen Tree
+of Life, the Four Rivers flowing from its foot; and on every one of the
+four currents he meant to launch his little skiff. On two of them he had
+not gone very far, on the third he had nearly stuck in the mud; but the
+fourth had carried him to the very heart of wonder. It was the stream of
+his lively imagination, of his inexhaustible interest in every form of
+beauty and strangeness and folly. On this stream, sitting in the stout
+little craft of his poverty, his insignificance and his independence, he
+had made some notable voyages.... And so, when Susy Branch, whom he had
+sought out through a New York season as the prettiest and most amusing
+girl in sight, had surprised him with the contradictory revelation of
+her modern sense of expediency and her old-fashioned standard of good
+faith, he had felt an irresistible desire to put off on one more cruise
+into the unknown.
+
+It was of the essence of the adventure that, after her one brief visit
+to his lodgings, he should have kept his promise and not tried to see
+her again. Even if her straightforwardness had not roused his emulation,
+his understanding of her difficulties would have moved his pity. He knew
+on how frail a thread the popularity of the penniless hangs, and how
+miserably a girl like Susy was the sport of other people’s moods and
+whims. It was a part of his difficulty and of hers that to get what they
+liked they so often had to do what they disliked. But the keeping of his
+promise was a greater bore than he had expected. Susy Branch had become
+a delightful habit in a life where most of the fixed things were
+dull, and her disappearance had made it suddenly clear to him that his
+resources were growing more and more limited. Much that had once amused
+him hugely now amused him less, or not at all: a good part of his world
+of wonder had shrunk to a village peep-show. And the things which had
+kept their stimulating power--distant journeys, the enjoyment of art,
+the contact with new scenes and strange societies--were becoming less
+and less attainable. Lansing had never had more than a pittance; he had
+spent rather too much of it in his first plunge into life, and the best
+he could look forward to was a middle-age of poorly-paid hack-work,
+mitigated by brief and frugal holidays. He knew that he was more
+intelligent than the average, but he had long since concluded that
+his talents were not marketable. Of the thin volume of sonnets which a
+friendly publisher had launched for him, just seventy copies had been
+sold; and though his essay on “Chinese Influences in Greek Art” had
+created a passing stir, it had resulted in controversial correspondence
+and dinner invitations rather than in more substantial benefits.
+There seemed, in short, no prospect of his ever earning money, and his
+restricted future made him attach an increasing value to the kind of
+friendship that Susy Branch had given him. Apart from the pleasure of
+looking at her and listening to her--of enjoying in her what others less
+discriminatingly but as liberally appreciated--he had the sense, between
+himself and her, of a kind of free-masonry of precocious tolerance and
+irony. They had both, in early youth, taken the measure of the world
+they happened to live in: they knew just what it was worth to them
+and for what reasons, and the community of these reasons lent to their
+intimacy its last exquisite touch. And now, because of some jealous whim
+of a dissatisfied fool of a woman, as to whom he felt himself no more to
+blame than any young man who has paid for good dinners by good manners,
+he was to be deprived of the one complete companionship he had ever
+known....
+
+His thoughts travelled on. He recalled the long dull spring in New York
+after his break with Susy, the weary grind on his last articles,
+his listless speculations as to the cheapest and least boring way of
+disposing of the summer; and then the amazing luck of going, reluctantly
+and at the last minute, to spend a Sunday with the poor Nat Fulmers, in
+the wilds of New Hampshire, and of finding Susy there--Susy, whom he had
+never even suspected of knowing anybody in the Fulmers’ set!
+
+She had behaved perfectly--and so had he--but they were obviously much
+too glad to see each other. And then it was unsettling to be with her in
+such a house as the Fulmers’, away from the large setting of luxury
+they were both used to, in the cramped cottage where their host had
+his studio in the verandah, their hostess practiced her violin in the
+dining-room, and five ubiquitous children sprawled and shouted and blew
+trumpets and put tadpoles in the water-jugs, and the mid-day dinner was
+two hours late--and proportionately bad--because the Italian cook was
+posing for Fulmer.
+
+Lansing’s first thought had been that meeting Susy in such circumstances
+would be the quickest way to cure them both of their regrets. The case
+of the Fulmers was an awful object-lesson in what happened to young
+people who lost their heads; poor Nat, whose pictures nobody bought, had
+gone to seed so terribly--and Grace, at twenty-nine, would never again be
+anything but the woman of whom people say, “I can remember her when she
+was lovely.”
+
+But the devil of it was that Nat had never been such good company, or
+Grace so free from care and so full of music; and that, in spite of
+their disorder and dishevelment, and the bad food and general crazy
+discomfort, there was more amusement to be got out of their society
+than out of the most opulently staged house-party through which Susy and
+Lansing had ever yawned their way.
+
+It was almost a relief to the young man when, on the second afternoon,
+Miss Branch drew him into the narrow hall to say: “I really can’t
+stand the combination of Grace’s violin and little Nat’s motor-horn any
+longer. Do let us slip out till the duet is over.”
+
+“How do they stand it, I wonder?” he basely echoed, as he followed her
+up the wooded path behind the house.
+
+“It might be worth finding out,” she rejoined with a musing smile.
+
+But he remained resolutely skeptical. “Oh, give them a year or two more
+and they’ll collapse--! His pictures will never sell, you know. He’ll
+never even get them into a show.”
+
+“I suppose not. And she’ll never have time to do anything worth while
+with her music.”
+
+They had reached a piny knoll high above the ledge on which the house
+was perched. All about them stretched an empty landscape of endless
+featureless wooded hills. “Think of sticking here all the year round!”
+ Lansing groaned.
+
+“I know. But then think of wandering over the world with some people!”
+
+“Oh, Lord, yes. For instance, my trip to India with the Mortimer
+Hickses. But it was my only chance and what the deuce is one to do?”
+
+“I wish I knew!” she sighed, thinking of the Bockheimers; and he turned
+and looked at her.
+
+“Knew what?”
+
+“The answer to your question. What is one to do--when one sees both
+sides of the problem? Or every possible side of it, indeed?”
+
+They had seated themselves on a commanding rock under the pines, but
+Lansing could not see the view at their feet for the stir of the brown
+lashes on her cheek.
+
+“You mean: Nat and Grace may after all be having the best of it?”
+
+“How can I say, when I’ve told you I see all the sides? Of course,”
+ Susy added hastily, “I couldn’t live as they do for a week. But it’s
+wonderful how little it’s dimmed them.”
+
+“Certainly Nat was never more coruscating. And she keeps it up even
+better.” He reflected. “We do them good, I daresay.”
+
+“Yes--or they us. I wonder which?”
+
+After that, he seemed to remember that they sat a long time silent, and
+that his next utterance was a boyish outburst against the tyranny of the
+existing order of things, abruptly followed by the passionate query why,
+since he and she couldn’t alter it, and since they both had the habit of
+looking at facts as they were, they wouldn’t be utter fools not to take
+their chance of being happy in the only way that was open to them, To
+this challenge he did not recall Susy’s making any definite answer; but
+after another interval, in which all the world seemed framed in a
+sudden kiss, he heard her murmur to herself in a brooding tone: “I don’t
+suppose it’s ever been tried before; but we might--.” And then and there
+she had laid before him the very experiment they had since hazarded.
+
+She would have none of surreptitious bliss, she began by declaring;
+and she set forth her reasons with her usual lucid impartiality. In the
+first place, she should have to marry some day, and when she made the
+bargain she meant it to be an honest one; and secondly, in the matter
+of love, she would never give herself to anyone she did not really care
+for, and if such happiness ever came to her she did not want it shorn of
+half its brightness by the need of fibbing and plotting and dodging.
+
+“I’ve seen too much of that kind of thing. Half the women I know who’ve
+had lovers have had them for the fun of sneaking and lying about it; but
+the other half have been miserable. And I should be miserable.”
+
+It was at this point that she unfolded her plan. Why shouldn’t they
+marry; belong to each other openly and honourably, if for ever so short
+a time, and with the definite understanding that whenever either of them
+got the chance to do better he or she should be immediately released?
+The law of their country facilitated such exchanges, and society was
+beginning to view them as indulgently as the law. As Susy talked, she
+warmed to her theme and began to develop its endless possibilities.
+
+“We should really, in a way, help more than we should hamper each
+other,” she ardently explained. “We both know the ropes so well; what
+one of us didn’t see the other might--in the way of opportunities, I
+mean. And then we should be a novelty as married people. We’re both
+rather unusually popular--why not be frank!--and it’s such a blessing
+for dinner-givers to be able to count on a couple of whom neither one is
+a blank. Yes, I really believe we should be more than twice the success
+we are now; at least,” she added with a smile, “if there’s that amount
+of room for improvement. I don’t know how you feel; a man’s popularity
+is so much less precarious than a girl’s--but I know it would furbish me
+up tremendously to reappear as a married woman.” She glanced away from
+him down the long valley at their feet, and added in a lower tone: “And
+I should like, just for a little while, to feel I had something in life
+of my very own--something that nobody had lent me, like a fancy-dress or
+a motor or an opera cloak.”
+
+The suggestion, at first, had seemed to Lansing as mad as it was
+enchanting: it had thoroughly frightened him. But Susy’s arguments were
+irrefutable, her ingenuities inexhaustible. Had he ever thought it all
+out? She asked. No. Well, she had; and would he kindly not interrupt? In
+the first place, there would be all the wedding-presents. Jewels, and a
+motor, and a silver dinner service, did she mean? Not a bit of it! She
+could see he’d never given the question proper thought. Cheques, my
+dear, nothing but cheques--she undertook to manage that on her side: she
+really thought she could count on about fifty, and she supposed he could
+rake up a few more? Well, all that would simply represent pocket-money!
+For they would have plenty of houses to live in: he’d see. People were
+always glad to lend their house to a newly-married couple. It was such
+fun to pop down and see them: it made one feel romantic and jolly. All
+they need do was to accept the houses in turn: go on honey-mooning for
+a year! What was he afraid of? Didn’t he think they’d be happy enough to
+want to keep it up? And why not at least try--get engaged, and then
+see what would happen? Even if she was all wrong, and her plan failed,
+wouldn’t it have been rather nice, just for a month or two, to fancy
+they were going to be happy? “I’ve often fancied it all by myself,”
+ she concluded; “but fancying it with you would somehow be so awfully
+different....”
+
+That was how it began: and this lakeside dream was what it had led up
+to. Fantastically improbable as they had seemed, all her previsions had
+come true. If there were certain links in the chain that Lansing
+had never been able to put his hand on, certain arrangements and
+contrivances that still needed further elucidation, why, he was lazily
+resolved to clear them up with her some day; and meanwhile it was worth
+all the past might have cost, and every penalty the future might exact
+of him, just to be sitting here in the silence and sweetness, her
+sleeping head on his knee, clasped in his joy as the hushed world was
+clasped in moonlight.
+
+He stooped down and kissed her. “Wake up,” he whispered, “it’s
+bed-time.”
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+
+THEIR month of Como was within a few hours of ending. Till the last
+moment they had hoped for a reprieve; but the accommodating Streffy had
+been unable to put the villa at their disposal for a longer time, since
+he had had the luck to let it for a thumping price to some beastly
+bouncers who insisted on taking possession at the date agreed on.
+
+Lansing, leaving Susy’s side at dawn, had gone down to the lake for a
+last plunge; and swimming homeward through the crystal light he looked
+up at the garden brimming with flowers, the long low house with the
+cypress wood above it, and the window behind which his wife still
+slept. The month had been exquisite, and their happiness as rare, as
+fantastically complete, as the scene before him. He sank his chin into
+the sunlit ripples and sighed for sheer content....
+
+It was a bore to be leaving the scene of such complete well-being, but
+the next stage in their progress promised to be hardly less delightful.
+Susy was a magician: everything she predicted came true. Houses were
+being showered on them; on all sides he seemed to see beneficent spirits
+winging toward them, laden with everything from a piano nobile in Venice
+to a camp in the Adirondacks. For the present, they had decided on the
+former. Other considerations apart, they dared not risk the expense of a
+journey across the Atlantic; so they were heading instead for the Nelson
+Vanderlyns’ palace on the Giudecca. They were agreed that, for reasons
+of expediency, it might be wise to return to New York for the coming
+winter. It would keep them in view, and probably lead to fresh
+opportunities; indeed, Susy already had in mind the convenient flat that
+she was sure a migratory cousin (if tactfully handled, and assured that
+they would not overwork her cook) could certainly be induced to lend
+them. Meanwhile the need of making plans was still remote; and if there
+was one art in which young Lansing’s twenty-eight years of existence had
+perfected him it was that of living completely and unconcernedly in the
+present....
+
+If of late he had tried to look into the future more insistently than
+was his habit, it was only because of Susy. He had meant, when they
+married, to be as philosophic for her as for himself; and he knew she
+would have resented above everything his regarding their partnership as
+a reason for anxious thought. But since they had been together she had
+given him glimpses of her past that made him angrily long to shelter
+and defend her future. It was intolerable that a spirit as fine as hers
+should be ever so little dulled or diminished by the kind of compromises
+out of which their wretched lives were made. For himself, he didn’t care
+a hang: he had composed for his own guidance a rough-and-ready code,
+a short set of “mays” and “mustn’ts” which immensely simplified his
+course. There were things a fellow put up with for the sake of certain
+definite and otherwise unattainable advantages; there were other things
+he wouldn’t traffic with at any price. But for a woman, he began to
+see, it might be different. The temptations might be greater, the cost
+considerably higher, the dividing line between the “mays” and “mustn’ts”
+ more fluctuating and less sharply drawn. Susy, thrown on the world
+at seventeen, with only a weak wastrel of a father to define that
+treacherous line for her, and with every circumstance soliciting her to
+overstep it, seemed to have been preserved chiefly by an innate scorn
+of most of the objects of human folly. “Such trash as he went to pieces
+for,” was her curt comment on her parent’s premature demise: as
+though she accepted in advance the necessity of ruining one’s self for
+something, but was resolved to discriminate firmly between what was
+worth it and what wasn’t.
+
+This philosophy had at first enchanted Lansing; but now it began to
+rouse vague fears. The fine armour of her fastidiousness had preserved
+her from the kind of risks she had hitherto been exposed to; but what if
+others, more subtle, found a joint in it? Was there, among her delicate
+discriminations, any equivalent to his own rules? Might not her taste
+for the best and rarest be the very instrument of her undoing; and if
+something that wasn’t “trash” came her way, would she hesitate a second
+to go to pieces for it?
+
+He was determined to stick to the compact that they should do nothing to
+interfere with what each referred to as the other’s “chance”; but what
+if, when hers came, he couldn’t agree with her in recognizing it? He
+wanted for her, oh, so passionately, the best; but his conception of
+that best had so insensibly, so subtly been transformed in the light of
+their first month together!
+
+His lazy strokes were carrying him slowly shoreward; but the hour was so
+exquisite that a few yards from the landing he laid hold of the mooring
+rope of Streffy’s boat and floated there, following his dream.... It
+was a bore to be leaving; no doubt that was what made him turn things
+inside-out so uselessly. Venice would be delicious, of course; but
+nothing would ever again be as sweet as this. And then they had only a
+year of security before them; and of that year a month was gone.
+
+Reluctantly he swam ashore, walked up to the house, and pushed open a
+window of the cool painted drawing-room. Signs of departure were already
+visible. There were trunks in the hall, tennis rackets on the stairs; on
+the landing, the cook Giulietta had both arms around a slippery hold-all
+that refused to let itself be strapped. It all gave him a chill sense
+of unreality, as if the past month had been an act on the stage, and its
+setting were being folded away and rolled into the wings to make room
+for another play in which he and Susy had no part.
+
+By the time he came down again, dressed and hungry, to the terrace
+where coffee awaited him, he had recovered his usual pleasant sense of
+security. Susy was there, fresh and gay, a rose in her breast and the
+sun in her hair: her head was bowed over Bradshaw, but she waved a fond
+hand across the breakfast things, and presently looked up to say: “Yes,
+I believe we can just manage it.”
+
+“Manage what?”
+
+“To catch the train at Milan--if we start in the motor at ten sharp.”
+
+He stared. “The motor? What motor?”
+
+“Why, the new people’s--Streffy’s tenants. He’s never told me their
+name, and the chauffeur says he can’t pronounce it. The chauffeur’s is
+Ottaviano, anyhow; I’ve been making friends with him. He arrived last
+night, and he says they’re not due at Como till this evening. He simply
+jumped at the idea of running us over to Milan.”
+
+“Good Lord--” said Lansing, when she stopped.
+
+She sprang up from the table with a laugh. “It will be a scramble; but
+I’ll manage it, if you’ll go up at once and pitch the last things into
+your trunk.”
+
+“Yes; but look here--have you any idea what it’s going to cost?”
+
+She raised her eyebrows gaily. “Why, a good deal less than our railway
+tickets. Ottaviano’s got a sweetheart in Milan, and hasn’t seen her for
+six months. When I found that out I knew he’d be going there anyhow.”
+
+It was clever of her, and he laughed. But why was it that he had grown
+to shrink from even such harmless evidence of her always knowing how to
+“manage”? “Oh, well,” he said to himself, “she’s right: the fellow would
+be sure to be going to Milan.”
+
+Upstairs, on the way to his dressing room, he found her in a cloud of
+finery which her skilful hands were forcibly compressing into a last
+portmanteau. He had never seen anyone pack as cleverly as Susy: the way
+she coaxed reluctant things into a trunk was a symbol of the way she
+fitted discordant facts into her life. “When I’m rich,” she often said,
+“the thing I shall hate most will be to see an idiot maid at my trunks.”
+
+As he passed, she glanced over her shoulder, her face pink with the
+struggle, and drew a cigar-box from the depths. “Dearest, do put a
+couple of cigars into your pocket as a tip for Ottaviano.”
+
+Lansing stared. “Why, what on earth are you doing with Streffy’s
+cigars?”
+
+“Packing them, of course.... You don’t suppose he meant them for those
+other people?” She gave him a look of honest wonder.
+
+“I don’t know whom he meant them for--but they’re not ours....”
+
+She continued to look at him wonderingly. “I don’t see what there is to
+be solemn about. The cigars are not Streffy’s either... you may be sure
+he got them out of some bounder. And there’s nothing he’d hate more than
+to have them passed on to another.”
+
+“Nonsense. If they’re not Streffy’s they’re much less mine. Hand them
+over, please, dear.”
+
+“Just as you like. But it does seem a waste; and, of course, the other
+people will never have one of them.... The gardener and Giulietta’s
+lover will see to that!”
+
+Lansing looked away from her at the waves of lace and muslin from which
+she emerged like a rosy Nereid. “How many boxes of them are left?”
+
+“Only four.”
+
+“Unpack them, please.”
+
+Before she moved there was a pause so full of challenge that Lansing had
+time for an exasperated sense of the disproportion between his anger and
+its cause. And this made him still angrier.
+
+She held out a box. “The others are in your suitcase downstairs. It’s
+locked and strapped.”
+
+“Give me the key, then.”
+
+“We might send them back from Venice, mightn’t we? That lock is so
+nasty: it will take you half an hour.”
+
+“Give me the key, please.” She gave it.
+
+He went downstairs and battled with the lock, for the allotted
+half-hour, under the puzzled eyes of Giulietta and the sardonic grin of
+the chauffeur, who now and then, from the threshold, politely reminded
+him how long it would take to get to Milan. Finally the key turned, and
+Lansing, broken-nailed and perspiring, extracted the cigars and stalked
+with them into the deserted drawing room. The great bunches of golden
+roses that he and Susy had gathered the day before were dropping their
+petals on the marble embroidery of the floor, pale camellias floated in
+the alabaster tazzas between the windows, haunting scents of the garden
+blew in on him with the breeze from the lake. Never had Streffy’s little
+house seemed so like a nest of pleasures. Lansing laid the cigar boxes
+on a console and ran upstairs to collect his last possessions. When
+he came down again, his wife, her eyes brilliant with achievement, was
+seated in their borrowed chariot, the luggage cleverly stowed away, and
+Giulietta and the gardener kissing her hand and weeping out inconsolable
+farewells.
+
+“I wonder what she’s given them?” he thought, as he jumped in beside her
+and the motor whirled them through the nightingale-thickets to the gate.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+
+CHARLIE STREFFORD’S villa was like a nest in a rose-bush; the Nelson
+Vanderlyns’ palace called for loftier analogies.
+
+Its vastness and splendour seemed, in comparison, oppressive to Susy.
+Their landing, after dark, at the foot of the great shadowy staircase,
+their dinner at a dimly-lit table under a ceiling weighed down with
+Olympians, their chilly evening in a corner of a drawing room where
+minuets should have been danced before a throne, contrasted with the
+happy intimacies of Como as their sudden sense of disaccord contrasted
+with the mutual confidence of the day before.
+
+The journey had been particularly jolly: both Susy and Lansing had had
+too long a discipline in the art of smoothing things over not to make
+a special effort to hide from each other the ravages of their first
+disagreement. But, deep down and invisible, the disagreement remained;
+and compunction for having been its cause gnawed at Susy’s bosom as she
+sat in her tapestried and vaulted bedroom, brushing her hair before a
+tarnished mirror.
+
+“I thought I liked grandeur; but this place is really out of scale,” she
+mused, watching the reflection of a pale hand move back and forward
+in the dim recesses of the mirror. “And yet,” she continued, “Ellie
+Vanderlyn’s hardly half an inch taller than I am; and she certainly
+isn’t a bit more dignified.... I wonder if it’s because I feel so
+horribly small to-night that the place seems so horribly big.”
+
+She loved luxury: splendid things always made her feel handsome and
+high ceilings arrogant; she did not remember having ever before been
+oppressed by the evidences of wealth.
+
+She laid down the brush and leaned her chin on her clasped hands....
+Even now she could not understand what had made her take the cigars.
+She had always been alive to the value of her inherited scruples: her
+reasoned opinions were unusually free, but with regard to the things
+one couldn’t reason about she was oddly tenacious. And yet she had taken
+Streffy’s cigars! She had taken them--yes, that was the point--she
+had taken them for Nick, because the desire to please him, to make
+the smallest details of his life easy and agreeable and luxurious,
+had become her absorbing preoccupation. She had committed, for him,
+precisely the kind of little baseness she would most have scorned to
+commit for herself; and, since he hadn’t instantly felt the difference,
+she would never be able to explain it to him.
+
+She stood up with a sigh, shook out her loosened hair, and glanced
+around the great frescoed room. The maid-servant had said something
+about the Signora’s having left a letter for her; and there it lay on
+the writing-table, with her mail and Nick’s; a thick envelope addressed
+in Ellie’s childish scrawl, with a glaring “Private” dashed across the
+corner.
+
+“What on earth can she have to say, when she hates writing so,” Susy
+mused.
+
+She broke open the envelope, and four or five stamped and sealed letters
+fell from it. All were addressed, in Ellie’s hand, to Nelson Vanderlyn
+Esqre; and in the corner of each was faintly pencilled a number and a
+date: one, two, three, four--with a week’s interval between the dates.
+
+“Goodness--” gasped Susy, understanding.
+
+She had dropped into an armchair near the table, and for a long time
+she sat staring at the numbered letters. A sheet of paper covered with
+Ellie’s writing had fluttered out among them, but she let it lie;
+she knew so well what it would say! She knew all about her friend, of
+course; except poor old Nelson, who didn’t, But she had never imagined
+that Ellie would dare to use her in this way. It was unbelievable... she
+had never pictured anything so vile.... The blood rushed to her face,
+and she sprang up angrily, half minded to tear the letters in bits and
+throw them all into the fire.
+
+She heard her husband’s knock on the door between their rooms, and swept
+the dangerous packet under the blotting-book.
+
+“Oh, go away, please, there’s a dear,” she called out; “I haven’t
+finished unpacking, and everything’s in such a mess.” Gathering up
+Nick’s papers and letters, she ran across the room and thrust them
+through the door. “Here’s something to keep you quiet,” she laughed,
+shining in on him an instant from the threshold.
+
+She turned back feeling weak with shame. Ellie’s letter lay on the
+floor: reluctantly she stooped to pick it up, and one by one the
+expected phrases sprang out at her.
+
+“One good turn deserves another.... Of course you and Nick are welcome
+to stay all summer.... There won’t be a particle of expense for you--the
+servants have orders.... If you’ll just be an angel and post these
+letters yourself.... It’s been my only chance for such an age; when we
+meet I’ll explain everything. And in a month at latest I’ll be back to
+fetch Clarissa....”
+
+Susy lifted the letter to the lamp to be sure she had read aright. To
+fetch Clarissa! Then Ellie’s child was here? Here, under the roof with
+them, left to their care? She read on, raging. “She’s so delighted, poor
+darling, to know you’re coming. I’ve had to sack her beastly governess
+for impertinence, and if it weren’t for you she’d be all alone with a
+lot of servants I don’t much trust. So for pity’s sake be good to my
+child, and forgive me for leaving her. She thinks I’ve gone to take a
+cure; and she knows she’s not to tell her Daddy that I’m away, because
+it would only worry him if he thought I was ill. She’s perfectly to be
+trusted; you’ll see what a clever angel she is....” And then, at the
+bottom of the page, in a last slanting postscript: “Susy darling, if
+you’ve ever owed me anything in the way of kindness, you won’t, on your
+sacred honour, say a word of this to any one, even to Nick. And I know I
+can count on you to rub out the numbers.”
+
+Susy sprang up and tossed Mrs. Vanderlyn’s letter into the fire: then
+she came slowly back to the chair. There, at her elbow, lay the four
+fatal envelopes; and her next affair was to make up her mind what to do
+with them.
+
+To destroy them on the spot had seemed, at first thought, inevitable: it
+might be saving Ellie as well as herself. But such a step seemed to Susy
+to involve departure on the morrow, and this in turn involved notifying
+Ellie, whose letter she had vainly scanned for an address. Well--perhaps
+Clarissa’s nurse would know where one could write to her mother; it was
+unlikely that even Ellie would go off without assuring some means of
+communication with her child. At any rate, there was nothing to be done
+that night: nothing but to work out the details of their flight on the
+morrow, and rack her brains to find a substitute for the hospitality
+they were rejecting. Susy did not disguise from herself how much she had
+counted on the Vanderlyn apartment for the summer: to be able to do
+so had singularly simplified the future. She knew Ellie’s largeness of
+hand, and had been sure in advance that as long as they were her guests
+their only expense would be an occasional present to the servants. And
+what would the alternative be? She and Lansing, in their endless talks,
+had so lived themselves into the vision of indolent summer days on the
+lagoon, of flaming hours on the beach of the Lido, and evenings of music
+and dreams on their broad balcony above the Giudecca, that the idea of
+having to renounce these joys, and deprive her Nick of them, filled Susy
+with a wrath intensified by his having confided in her that when they
+were quietly settled in Venice he “meant to write.” Already nascent in
+her breast was the fierce resolve of the author’s wife to defend her
+husband’s privacy and facilitate his encounters with the Muse. It was
+abominable, simply abominable, that Ellie Vanderlyn should have drawn
+her into such a trap!
+
+Well--there was nothing for it but to make a clean breast of the whole
+thing to Nick. The trivial incident of the cigars--how trivial it now
+seemed!--showed her the kind of stand he would take, and communicated to
+her something of his own uncompromising energy. She would tell him the
+whole story in the morning, and try to find a way out with him: Susy’s
+faith in her power of finding a way out was inexhaustible. But suddenly
+she remembered the adjuration at the end of Mrs. Vanderlyn’s letter: “If
+you’re ever owed me anything in the way of kindness, you won’t, on your
+sacred honour, say a word to Nick....”
+
+It was, of course, exactly what no one had the right to ask of her: if
+indeed the word “right”, could be used in any conceivable relation to
+this coil of wrongs. But the fact remained that, in the way of kindness,
+she did owe much to Ellie; and that this was the first payment her
+friend had ever exacted. She found herself, in fact, in exactly the same
+position as when Ursula Gillow, using the same argument, had appealed
+to her to give up Nick Lansing. Yes, Susy reflected; but then Nelson
+Vanderlyn had been kind to her too; and the money Ellie had been so kind
+with was Nelson’s.... The queer edifice of Susy’s standards tottered on
+its base she honestly didn’t know where fairness lay, as between so much
+that was foul.
+
+The very depth of her perplexity puzzled her. She had been in “tight
+places” before; had indeed been in so few that were not, in one way or
+another, constricting! As she looked back on her past it lay before her
+as a very network of perpetual concessions and contrivings. But
+never before had she had such a sense of being tripped up, gagged and
+pinioned. The little misery of the cigars still galled her, and now
+this big humiliation superposed itself on the raw wound. Decidedly, the
+second month of their honey-moon was beginning cloudily....
+
+She glanced at the enamel led travelling-clock on her dressing
+table--one of the few wedding-presents she had consented to accept in
+kind--and was startled at the lateness of the hour. In a moment Nick
+would be coming; and an uncomfortable sensation in her throat warned
+her that through sheer nervousness and exasperation she might blurt out
+something ill-advised. The old habit of being always on her guard made
+her turn once more to the looking-glass. Her face was pale and haggard;
+and having, by a swift and skilful application of cosmetics, increased
+its appearance of fatigue, she crossed the room and softly opened her
+husband’s door.
+
+He too sat by a lamp, reading a letter which he put aside as she
+entered. His face was grave, and she said to herself that he was
+certainly still thinking about the cigars.
+
+“I’m very tired, dearest, and my head aches so horribly that I’ve come
+to bid you good-night.” Bending over the back of his chair, she laid
+her arms on his shoulders. He lifted his hands to clasp hers, but, as
+he threw his head back to smile up at her she noticed that his look was
+still serious, almost remote. It was as if, for the first time, a faint
+veil hung between his eyes and hers.
+
+“I’m so sorry: it’s been a long day for you,” he said absently, pressing
+his lips to her hands
+
+She felt the dreaded twitch in her throat.
+
+“Nick!” she burst out, tightening her embrace, “before I go, you’ve got
+to swear to me on your honour that you know I should never have taken
+those cigars for myself!”
+
+For a moment he stared at her, and she stared back at him with equal
+gravity; then the same irresistible mirth welled up in both, and Susy’s
+compunctions were swept away on a gale of laughter.
+
+When she woke the next morning the sun was pouring in between her
+curtains of old brocade, and its refraction from the ripples of the
+Canal was drawing a network of golden scales across the vaulted ceiling.
+The maid had just placed a tray on a slim marquetry table near the bed,
+and over the edge of the tray Susy discovered the small serious face
+of Clarissa Vanderlyn. At the sight of the little girl all her dormant
+qualms awoke.
+
+Clarissa was just eight, and small for her age: her little round chin
+was barely on a level with the tea-service, and her clear brown eyes
+gazed at Susy between the ribs of the toast-rack and the single tea-rose
+in an old Murano glass. Susy had not seen her for two years, and she
+seemed, in the interval, to have passed from a thoughtful infancy to
+complete ripeness of feminine experience. She was looking with approval
+at her mother’s guest.
+
+“I’m so glad you’ve come,” she said in a small sweet voice. “I like you
+so very much. I know I’m not to be often with you; but at least you’ll
+have an eye on me, won’t you?”
+
+“An eye on you! I shall never want to have it off you, if you say such
+nice things to me!” Susy laughed, leaning from her pillows to draw the
+little girl up to her side.
+
+Clarissa smiled and settled herself down comfortably on the silken
+bedspread. “Oh, I know I’m not to be always about, because you’re just
+married; but could you see to it that I have my meals regularly?”
+
+“Why, you poor darling! Don’t you always?”
+
+“Not when mother’s away on these cures. The servants don’t always obey
+me: you see I’m so little for my age. In a few years, of course, they’ll
+have to--even if I don’t grow much,” she added judiciously. She put out
+her hand and touched the string of pearls about Susy’s throat. “They’re
+small, but they’re very good. I suppose you don’t take the others when
+you travel?”
+
+“The others? Bless you! I haven’t any others--and never shall have,
+probably.”
+
+“No other pearls?”
+
+“No other jewels at all.”
+
+Clarissa stared. “Is that really true?” she asked, as if in the presence
+of the unprecedented.
+
+“Awfully true,” Susy confessed. “But I think I can make the servants
+obey me all the same.”
+
+This point seemed to have lost its interest for Clarissa, who was still
+gravely scrutinizing her companion. After a while she brought forth
+another question.
+
+“Did you have to give up all your jewels when you were divorced?”
+
+“Divorced--?” Susy threw her head back against the pillows and laughed.
+“Why, what are you thinking of? Don’t you remember that I wasn’t even
+married the last time you saw me?”
+
+“Yes; I do. But that was two years ago.” The little girl wound her arms
+about Susy’s neck and leaned against her caressingly. “Are you going to
+be soon, then? I’ll promise not to tell if you don’t want me to.”
+
+“Going to be divorced? Of course not! What in the world made you think
+so? ”
+
+“Because you look so awfully happy,” said Clarissa Vanderlyn simply.
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+
+IT was a trifling enough sign, but it had remained in Susy’s mind: that
+first morning in Venice Nick had gone out without first coming in to see
+her. She had stayed in bed late, chatting with Clarissa, and expecting
+to see the door open and her husband appear; and when the child left,
+and she had jumped up and looked into Nick’s room, she found it empty,
+and a line on his dressing table informed her that he had gone out to
+send a telegram.
+
+It was lover-like, and even boyish, of him to think it necessary to
+explain his absence; but why had he not simply come in and told her! She
+instinctively connected the little fact with the shade of preoccupation
+she had noticed on his face the night before, when she had gone to his
+room and found him absorbed in letter; and while she dressed she had
+continued to wonder what was in the letter, and whether the telegram he
+had hurried out to send was an answer to it.
+
+She had never found out. When he reappeared, handsome and happy as the
+morning, he proffered no explanation; and it was part of her life-long
+policy not to put uncalled-for questions. It was not only that her
+jealous regard for her own freedom was matched by an equal respect for
+that of others; she had steered too long among the social reefs and
+shoals not to know how narrow is the passage that leads to peace of
+mind, and she was determined to keep her little craft in mid-channel.
+But the incident had lodged itself in her memory, acquiring a sort of
+symbolic significance, as of a turning-point in her relations with her
+husband. Not that these were less happy, but that she now beheld them,
+as she had always formerly beheld such joys, as an unstable islet in
+a sea of storms. Her present bliss was as complete as ever, but it was
+ringed by the perpetual menace of all she knew she was hiding from Nick,
+and of all she suspected him of hiding from her....
+
+She was thinking of these things one afternoon about three weeks after
+their arrival in Venice. It was near sunset, and she sat alone on the
+balcony, watching the cross-lights on the water weave their pattern
+above the flushed reflection of old palace-basements. She was
+almost always alone at that hour. Nick had taken to writing in the
+afternoons--he had been as good as his word, and so, apparently, had the
+Muse and it was his habit to join his wife only at sunset, for a late
+row on the lagoon. She had taken Clarissa, as usual, to the Giardino
+Pubblico, where that obliging child had politely but indifferently
+“played”--Clarissa joined in the diversions of her age as if conforming
+to an obsolete tradition--and had brought her back for a music lesson,
+echoes of which now drifted down from a distant window.
+
+Susy had come to be extremely thankful for Clarissa. But for the little
+girl, her pride in her husband’s industry might have been tinged with
+a faint sense of being at times left out and forgotten; and as Nick’s
+industry was the completest justification for their being where they
+were, and for her having done what she had, she was grateful to Clarissa
+for helping her to feel less alone. Clarissa, indeed, represented the
+other half of her justification: it was as much on the child’s account
+as on Nick’s that Susy had held her tongue, remained in Venice, and
+slipped out once a week to post one of Ellie’s numbered letters. A
+day’s experience of the Palazzo Vanderlyn had convinced Susy of the
+impossibility of deserting Clarissa. Long experience had shown her that
+the most crowded households often contain the loneliest nurseries,
+and that the rich child is exposed to evils unknown to less pampered
+infancy; but hitherto such things had merely been to her one of the
+uglier bits in the big muddled pattern of life. Now she found herself
+feeling where before she had only judged: her precarious bliss came to
+her charged with a new weight of pity.
+
+She was thinking of these things, and of the approaching date of Ellie
+Vanderlyn’s return, and of the searching truths she was storing up for
+that lady’s private ear, when she noticed a gondola turning its
+prow toward the steps below the balcony. She leaned over, and a tall
+gentleman in shabby clothes, glancing up at her as he jumped out, waved
+a mouldy Panama in joyful greeting.
+
+“Streffy!” she exclaimed as joyfully; and she was half-way down the
+stairs when he ran up them followed by his luggage-laden boatman.
+
+“It’s all right, I suppose?--Ellie said I might come,” he explained in
+a shrill cheerful voice; “and I’m to have my same green room with the
+parrot-panels, because its furniture is already so frightfully stained
+with my hair-wash.”
+
+Susy was beaming on him with the deep sense of satisfaction which his
+presence always produced in his friends. There was no one in the world,
+they all agreed, half as ugly and untidy and delightful as Streffy; no
+one who combined such outspoken selfishness with such imperturbable good
+humour; no one who knew so well how to make you believe he was being
+charming to you when it was you who were being charming to him.
+
+In addition to these seductions, of which none estimated the value
+more accurately than their possessor, Strefford had for Susy another
+attraction of which he was probably unconscious. It was that of being
+the one rooted and stable being among the fluid and shifting figures
+that composed her world. Susy had always lived among people so
+denationalized that those one took for Russians generally turned out to
+be American, and those one was inclined to ascribe to New York proved to
+have originated in Rome or Bucharest. These cosmopolitan people, who, in
+countries not their own, lived in houses as big as hotels, or in
+hotels where the guests were as international as the waiters, had
+inter-married, inter-loved and inter-divorced each other over the whole
+face of Europe, and according to every code that attempts to regulate
+human ties. Strefford, too, had his home in this world, but only one
+of his homes. The other, the one he spoke of, and probably thought
+of, least often, was a great dull English country-house in a northern
+county, where a life as monotonous and self-contained as his own was
+chequered and dispersed had gone on for generation after generation;
+and it was the sense of that house, and of all it typified even to his
+vagrancy and irreverence, which, coming out now and then in his talk, or
+in his attitude toward something or somebody, gave him a firmer
+outline and a steadier footing than the other marionettes in the dance.
+Superficially so like them all, and so eager to outdo them in detachment
+and adaptability, ridiculing the prejudices he had shaken off, and the
+people to whom he belonged, he still kept, under his easy pliancy, the
+skeleton of old faiths and old fashions. “He talks every language as
+well as the rest of us,” Susy had once said of him, “but at least he
+talks one language better than the others”; and Strefford, told of the
+remark, had laughed, called her an idiot, and been pleased.
+
+As he shambled up the stairs with her, arm in arm, she was thinking of
+this quality with a new appreciation of its value. Even she and Lansing,
+in spite of their unmixed Americanism, their substantial background of
+old-fashioned cousinships in New York and Philadelphia, were as
+mentally detached, as universally at home, as touts at an International
+Exhibition. If they were usually recognized as Americans it was only
+because they spoke French so well, and because Nick was too fair to be
+“foreign,” and too sharp-featured to be English. But Charlie Strefford
+was English with all the strength of an inveterate habit; and something
+in Susy was slowly waking to a sense of the beauty of habit.
+
+Lounging on the balcony, whither he had followed her without pausing
+to remove the stains of travel, Strefford showed himself immensely
+interested in the last chapter of her history, greatly pleased at its
+having been enacted under his roof, and hugely and flippantly amused
+at the firmness with which she refused to let him see Nick till the
+latter’s daily task was over.
+
+“Writing? Rot! What’s he writing? He’s breaking you in, my dear; that’s
+what he’s doing: establishing an alibi. What’ll you bet he’s just
+sitting there smoking and reading Le Rire? Let’s go and see.”
+
+But Susy was firm. “He’s read me his first chapter: it’s wonderful. It’s
+a philosophic romance--rather like Marius, you know.”
+
+“Oh, yes--I do!” said Strefford, with a laugh that she thought idiotic.
+
+She flushed up like a child. “You’re stupid, Streffy. You forget that
+Nick and I don’t need alibis. We’ve got rid of all that hyprocrisy by
+agreeing that each will give the other a hand up when either of us wants
+a change. We’ve not married to spy and lie, and nag each other; we’ve
+formed a partnership for our mutual advantage.”
+
+“I see; that’s capital. But how can you be sure that, when Nick wants a
+change, you’ll consider it for his advantage to have one?”
+
+It was the point that had always secretly tormented Susy; she often
+wondered if it equally tormented Nick.
+
+“I hope I shall have enough common sense--” she began.
+
+“Oh, of course: common sense is what you’re both bound to base your
+argument on, whichever way you argue.”
+
+This flash of insight disconcerted her, and she said, a little
+irritably: “What should you do then, if you married?--Hush, Streffy! I
+forbid you to shout like that--all the gondolas are stopping to look!”
+
+“How can I help it?” He rocked backward and forward in his chair. “‘If
+you marry,’ she says: ‘Streffy, what have you decided to do if you
+suddenly become a raving maniac?’”
+
+“I said no such thing. If your uncle and your cousin died, you’d marry
+to-morrow; you know you would.”
+
+“Oh, now you’re talking business.” He folded his long arms and leaned
+over the balcony, looking down at the dusky ripples streaked with fire.
+“In that case I should say: ‘Susan, my dear--Susan--now that by
+the merciful intervention of Providence you have become Countess of
+Altringham in the peerage of Great Britain, and Baroness Dunsterville
+and d’Amblay in the peerages of Ireland and Scotland, I’ll thank you to
+remember that you are a member of one of the most ancient houses in the
+United Kingdom--and not to get found out.’”
+
+Susy laughed. “We know what those warnings mean! I pity my namesake.”
+
+He swung about and gave her a quick look out of his small ugly twinkling
+eyes. “Is there any other woman in the world named Susan?”
+
+“I hope so, if the name’s an essential. Even if Nick chucks me, don’t
+count on me to carry out that programme. I’ve seen it in practice too
+often.”
+
+“Oh, well: as far as I know, everybody’s in perfect health at
+Altringham.” He fumbled in his pocket and drew out a fountain pen,
+a handkerchief over which it had leaked, and a packet of dishevelled
+cigarettes. Lighting one, and restoring the other objects to his pocket,
+he continued calmly: “Tell me how did you manage to smooth things over
+with the Gillows? Ursula was running amuck when I was in Newport last
+Summer; it was just when people were beginning to say that you were
+going to marry Nick. I was afraid she’d put a spoke in your wheel; and I
+hear she put a big cheque in your hand instead.”
+
+Susy was silent. From the first moment of Strefford’s appearance she had
+known that in the course of time he would put that question. He was as
+inquisitive as a monkey, and when he had made up his mind to find out
+anything it was useless to try to divert his attention. After a moment’s
+hesitation she said: “I flirted with Fred. It was a bore but he was very
+decent.”
+
+“He would be--poor Fred. And you got Ursula thoroughly frightened!”
+
+“Well--enough. And then luckily that young Nerone Altineri turned up
+from Rome: he went over to New York to look for a job as an engineer,
+and Ursula made Fred put him in their iron works.” She paused again,
+and then added abruptly: “Streffy! If you knew how I hate that kind of
+thing. I’d rather have Nick come in now and tell me frankly, as I know
+he would, that he’s going off with--”
+
+“With Coral Hicks?” Strefford suggested.
+
+She laughed. “Poor Coral Hicks! What on earth made you think of the
+Hickses?”
+
+“Because I caught a glimpse of them the other day at Capri. They’re
+cruising about: they said they were coming in here.”
+
+“What a nuisance! I do hope they won’t find us out. They were
+awfully kind to Nick when he went to India with them, and they’re so
+simple-minded that they would expect him to be glad to see them.”
+
+Strefford aimed his cigarette-end at a tourist on a puggaree who was
+gazing up from his guidebook at the palace. “Ah,” he murmured with
+satisfaction, seeing the shot take effect; then he added: “Coral Hicks
+is growing up rather pretty.”
+
+“Oh, Streff--you’re dreaming! That lump of a girl with spectacles and
+thick ankles! Poor Mrs. Hicks used to say to Nick: ‘When Mr. Hicks and
+I had Coral educated we presumed culture was in greater demand in Europe
+than it appears to be.’”
+
+“Well, you’ll see: that girl’s education won’t interfere with her, once
+she’s started. So then: if Nick came in and told you he was going off--”
+
+“I should be so thankful if it was with a fright like Coral! But you
+know,” she added with a smile, “we’ve agreed that it’s not to happen for
+a year.”
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+
+SUSY found Strefford, after his first burst of nonsense, unusually kind
+and responsive. The interest he showed in her future and Nick’s seemed
+to proceed not so much from his habitual spirit of scientific curiosity
+as from simple friendliness. He was privileged to see Nick’s first
+chapter, of which he formed so favourable an impression that he spoke
+sternly to Susy on the importance of respecting her husband’s working
+hours; and he even carried his general benevolence to the length
+of showing a fatherly interest in Clarissa Vanderlyn. He was always
+charming to children, but fitfully and warily, with an eye on his
+independence, and on the possibility of being suddenly bored by them;
+Susy had never seen him abandon these precautions so completely as he
+did with Clarissa.
+
+“Poor little devil! Who looks after her when you and Nick are off
+together? Do you mean to tell me Ellie sacked the governess and went
+away without having anyone to take her place?”
+
+“I think she expected me to do it,” said Susy with a touch of asperity.
+There were moments when her duty to Clarissa weighed on her somewhat
+heavily; whenever she went off alone with Nick she was pursued by the
+vision of a little figure waving wistful farewells from the balcony.
+
+“Ah, that’s like Ellie: you might have known she’d get an equivalent
+when she lent you all this. But I don’t believe she thought you’d be so
+conscientious about it.”
+
+Susy considered. “I don’t suppose she did; and perhaps I shouldn’t have
+been, a year ago. But you see”--she hesitated--“Nick’s so awfully good:
+it’s made me look; at a lot of things differently....”
+
+“Oh, hang Nick’s goodness! It’s happiness that’s done it, my dear.
+You’re just one of the people with whom it happens to agree.”
+
+Susy, leaning back, scrutinized between her lashes his crooked ironic
+face.
+
+“What is it that’s agreeing with you, Streffy? I’ve never seen you so
+human. You must be getting an outrageous price for the villa.”
+
+Strefford laughed and clapped his hand on his breast-pocket. “I should
+be an ass not to: I’ve got a wire here saying they must have it for
+another month at any price.”
+
+“What luck! I’m so glad. Who are they, by the way?”
+
+He drew himself up out of the long chair in which he was disjointedly
+lounging, and looked down at her with a smile. “Another couple of
+love-sick idiots like you and Nick.... I say, before I spend it all
+let’s go out and buy something ripping for Clarissa.”
+
+The days passed so quickly and radiantly that, but for her concern
+for Clarissa, Susy would hardly have been conscious of her hostess’s
+protracted absence. Mrs. Vanderlyn had said: “Four weeks at the latest,”
+ and the four weeks were over, and she had neither arrived nor written
+to explain her non-appearance. She had, in fact, given no sign of life
+since her departure, save in the shape of a post-card which had
+reached Clarissa the day after the Lansings’ arrival, and in which Mrs.
+Vanderlyn instructed her child to be awfully good, and not to forget
+to feed the mongoose. Susy noticed that this missive had been posted in
+Milan.
+
+She communicated her apprehensions to Strefford. “I don’t trust
+that green-eyed nurse. She’s forever with the younger gondolier; and
+Clarissa’s so awfully sharp. I don’t see why Ellie hasn’t come: she was
+due last Monday.”
+
+Her companion laughed, and something in the sound of his laugh suggested
+that he probably knew as much of Ellie’s movements as she did, if not
+more. The sense of disgust which the subject always roused in her made
+her look away quickly from his tolerant smile. She would have given
+the world, at that moment, to have been free to tell Nick what she had
+learned on the night of their arrival, and then to have gone away with
+him, no matter where. But there was Clarissa--!
+
+To fortify herself against the temptation, she resolutely fixed her
+thoughts on her husband. Of Nick’s beatitude there could be no doubt.
+He adored her, he revelled in Venice, he rejoiced in his work; and
+concerning the quality of that work her judgment was as confident as
+her heart. She still doubted if he would ever earn a living by what
+he wrote, but she no longer doubted that he would write something
+remarkable. The mere fact that he was engaged on a philosophic romance,
+and not a mere novel, seemed the proof of an intrinsic superiority. And
+if she had mistrusted her impartiality Strefford’s approval would have
+reassured her. Among their friends Strefford passed as an authority on
+such matters: in summing him up his eulogists always added: “And you
+know he writes.” As a matter of fact, the paying public had remained
+cold to his few published pages; but he lived among the kind of people
+who confuse taste with talent, and are impressed by the most artless
+attempts at literary expression; and though he affected to disdain their
+judgment, and his own efforts, Susy knew he was not sorry to have it
+said of him: “Oh, if only Streffy had chosen--!”
+
+Strefford’s approval of the philosophic romance convinced her that it
+had been worth while staying in Venice for Nick’s sake; and if
+only Ellie would come back, and carry off Clarissa to St. Moritz or
+Deauville, the disagreeable episode on which their happiness was based
+would vanish like a cloud, and leave them to complete enjoyment.
+
+Ellie did not come; but the Mortimer Hickses did, and Nick Lansing was
+assailed by the scruples his wife had foreseen. Strefford, coming back
+one evening from the Lido, reported having recognized the huge outline
+of the Ibis among the pleasure craft of the outer harbour; and the very
+next evening, as the guests of Palazzo Vanderlyn were sipping their ices
+at Florian’s, the Hickses loomed up across the Piazza.
+
+Susy pleaded in vain with her husband in defence of his privacy.
+“Remember you’re here to write, dearest; it’s your duty not to let any
+one interfere with that. Why shouldn’t we tell them we’re just leaving!”
+
+“Because it’s no use: we’re sure to be always meeting them. And besides,
+I’ll be hanged if I’m going to shirk the Hickses. I spent five whole
+months on the Ibis, and if they bored me occasionally, India didn’t.”
+
+“We’ll make them take us to Aquileia anyhow,” said Strefford
+philosophically; and the next moment the Hickses were bearing down on
+the defenceless trio.
+
+They presented a formidable front, not only because of their mere
+physical bulk--Mr. and Mrs. Hicks were equally and majestically
+three-dimensional--but because they never moved abroad without the
+escort of two private secretaries (one for the foreign languages), Mr.
+Hicks’s doctor, a maiden lady known as Eldoradder Tooker, who was Mrs.
+Hicks’s cousin and stenographer, and finally their daughter, Coral
+Hicks.
+
+Coral Hicks, when Susy had last encountered the party, had been a
+fat spectacled school-girl, always lagging behind her parents, with a
+reluctant poodle in her wake. Now the poodle had gone, and his mistress
+led the procession. The fat school-girl had changed into a young lady
+of compact if not graceful outline; a long-handled eyeglass had replaced
+the spectacles, and through it, instead of a sullen glare, Miss Coral
+Hicks projected on the world a glance at once confident and critical.
+She looked so strong and so assured that Susy, taking her measure in
+a flash, saw that her position at the head of the procession was not
+fortuitous, and murmured inwardly: “Thank goodness she’s not pretty
+too!”
+
+If she was not pretty, she was well-dressed; and if she was
+overeducated, she seemed capable, as Strefford had suggested, of
+carrying off even this crowning disadvantage. At any rate, she was above
+disguising it; and before the whole party had been seated five minutes
+in front of a fresh supply of ices (with Eldorada and the secretaries
+at a table slightly in the background) she had taken up with Nick the
+question of exploration in Mesopotamia.
+
+“Queer child, Coral,” he said to Susy that night as they smoked a last
+cigarette on their balcony. “She told me this afternoon that she’d
+remembered lots of things she heard me say in India. I thought at the
+time that she cared only for caramels and picture-puzzles, but it seems
+she was listening to everything, and reading all the books she could lay
+her hands on; and she got so bitten with Oriental archaeology that she
+took a course last year at Bryn Mawr. She means to go to Bagdad next
+spring, and back by the Persian plateau and Turkestan.”
+
+Susy laughed luxuriously: she was sitting with her hand in Nick’s, while
+the late moon--theirs again--rounded its orange-coloured glory above the
+belfry of San Giorgio.
+
+“Poor Coral! How dreary--” Susy murmured
+
+“Dreary? Why? A trip like that is about as well worth doing as anything
+I know.”
+
+“Oh, I meant: dreary to do it without you or me,” she laughed, getting up
+lazily to go indoors. A broad band of moonlight, dividing her room onto
+two shadowy halves, lay on the painted Venetian bed with its folded-back
+sheet, its old damask coverlet and lace-edged pillows. She felt the
+warmth of Nick’s enfolding arm and lifted her face to his.
+
+The Hickses retained the most tender memory of Nick’s sojourn on the
+Ibis, and Susy, moved by their artless pleasure in meeting him again,
+was glad he had not followed her advice and tried to elude them. She had
+always admired Strefford’s ruthless talent for using and discarding the
+human material in his path, but now she began to hope that Nick would
+not remember her suggestion that he should mete out that measure to the
+Hickses. Even if it had been less pleasant to have a big yacht at their
+door during the long golden days and the nights of silver fire, the
+Hickses’ admiration for Nick would have made Susy suffer them gladly.
+She even began to be aware of a growing liking for them, a liking
+inspired by the very characteristics that would once have provoked her
+disapproval. Susy had had plenty of training in liking common people
+with big purses; in such cases her stock of allowances and extenuations
+was inexhaustible. But they had to be successful common people; and the
+trouble was that the Hickses, judged by her standards, were failures.
+It was not only that they were ridiculous; so, heaven knew, were many
+of their rivals. But the Hickses were both ridiculous and unsuccessful.
+They had consistently resisted the efforts of the experienced advisers
+who had first descried them on the horizon and tried to help them
+upward. They were always taking up the wrong people, giving the wrong
+kind of party, and spending millions on things that nobody who mattered
+cared about. They all believed passionately in “movements” and “causes”
+ and “ideals,” and were always attended by the exponents of their latest
+beliefs, always asking you to hear lectures by haggard women in peplums,
+and having their portraits painted by wild people who never turned out
+to be the fashion.
+
+All this would formerly have increased Susy’s contempt; now she found
+herself liking the Hickses most for their failings. She was touched by
+their simple good faith, their isolation in the midst of all their
+queer apostles and parasites, their way of drifting about an alien
+and indifferent world in a compactly clinging group of which Eldorada
+Tooker, the doctor and the two secretaries formed the outer fringe, and
+by their view of themselves as a kind of collective re-incarnation of
+some past state of princely culture, symbolised for Mrs. Hicks in what
+she called “the court of the Renaissance.” Eldorada, of course, was
+their chief prophetess; but even the intensely “bright” and modern young
+secretaries, Mr. Beck and Mr. Buttles, showed a touching tendency to
+share her view, and spoke of Mr. Hicks as “promoting art,” in the spirit
+of Pandolfino celebrating the munificence of the Medicis.
+
+“I’m getting really fond of the Hickses; I believe I should be nice to
+them even if they were staying at Danieli’s,” Susy said to Strefford.
+
+“And even if you owned the yacht?” he answered; and for once his banter
+struck her as beside the point.
+
+The Ibis carried them, during the endless June days, far and wide along
+the enchanted shores; they roamed among the Euganeans, they saw Aquileia
+and Pomposa and Ravenna. Their hosts would gladly have taken them
+farther, across the Adriatic and on into the golden network of the
+Ægean; but Susy resisted this infraction of Nick’s rules, and he
+himself preferred to stick to his task. Only now he wrote in the early
+mornings, so that on most days they could set out before noon and steam
+back late to the low fringe of lights on the lagoon. His work continued
+to progress, and as page was added to page Susy obscurely but surely
+perceived that each one corresponded with a hidden secretion of energy,
+the gradual forming within him of something that might eventually alter
+both their lives. In what sense she could not conjecture: she merely
+felt that the fact of his having chosen a job and stuck to it, if only
+through a few rosy summer weeks, had already given him a new way of
+saying “Yes” and “No.”
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+
+OF some new ferment at work in him Nick Lansing himself was equally
+aware. He was a better judge of the book he was trying to write than
+either Susy or Strefford; he knew its weaknesses, its treacheries,
+its tendency to slip through his fingers just as he thought his grasp
+tightest; but he knew also that at the very moment when it seemed to
+have failed him it would suddenly be back, beating its loud wings in his
+face.
+
+He had no delusions as to its commercial value, and had winced more than
+he triumphed when Susy produced her allusion to Marius. His book was to
+be called The Pageant of Alexander. His imagination had been enchanted
+by the idea of picturing the young conqueror’s advance through the
+fabulous landscapes of Asia: he liked writing descriptions, and vaguely
+felt that under the guise of fiction he could develop his theory of
+Oriental influences in Western art at the expense of less learning than
+if he had tried to put his ideas into an essay. He knew enough of his
+subject to know that he did not know enough to write about it; but he
+consoled himself by remembering that Wilhelm Meister has survived many
+weighty volumes on aesthetics; and between his moments of self-disgust
+he took himself at Susy’s valuation, and found an unmixed joy in his
+task.
+
+Never--no, never!--had he been so boundlessly, so confidently happy. His
+hack-work had given him the habit of application, and now habit wore the
+glow of inspiration. His previous literary ventures had been timid and
+tentative: if this one was growing and strengthening on his hands, it
+must be because the conditions were so different. He was at ease, he was
+secure, he was satisfied; and he had also, for the first time since his
+early youth, before his mother’s death, the sense of having some one to
+look after, some one who was his own particular care, and to whom he
+was answerable for himself and his actions, as he had never felt himself
+answerable to the hurried and indifferent people among whom he had
+chosen to live.
+
+Susy had the same standards as these people: she spoke their language,
+though she understood others, she required their pleasures if she did
+not revere their gods. But from the moment that she had become his
+property he had built up in himself a conception of her answering to
+some deep-seated need of veneration. She was his, he had chosen her,
+she had taken her place in the long line of Lansing women who had been
+loved, honoured, and probably deceived, by bygone Lansing men. He didn’t
+pretend to understand the logic of it; but the fact that she was his
+wife gave purpose and continuity to his scattered impulses, and a
+mysterious glow of consecration to his task.
+
+Once or twice, in the first days of his marriage, he had asked himself
+with a slight shiver what would happen if Susy should begin to bore
+him. The thing had happened to him with other women as to whom his first
+emotions had not differed in intensity from those she inspired. The part
+he had played in his previous love-affairs might indeed have been summed
+up in the memorable line: “I am the hunter and the prey,” for he had
+invariably ceased to be the first only to regard himself as the second.
+This experience had never ceased to cause him the liveliest pain, since
+his sympathy for his pursuer was only less keen than his commiseration
+for himself; but as he was always a little sorrier for himself, he had
+always ended by distancing the pursuer.
+
+All these pre-natal experiences now seemed utterly inapplicable to the
+new man he had become. He could not imagine being bored by Susy--or
+trying to escape from her if he were. He could not think of her as
+an enemy, or even as an accomplice, since accomplices are potential
+enemies: she was some one with whom, by some unheard-of miracle, joys
+above the joys of friendship were to be tasted, but who, even through
+these fleeting ecstasies, remained simply and securely his friend.
+
+These new feelings did not affect his general attitude toward life: they
+merely confirmed his faith in its ultimate “jolliness.” Never had he
+more thoroughly enjoyed the things he had always enjoyed. A good dinner
+had never been as good to him, a beautiful sunset as beautiful; he still
+rejoiced in the fact that he appreciated both with an equal acuity. He
+was as proud as ever of Susy’s cleverness and freedom from prejudice:
+she couldn’t be too “modern” for him now that she was his. He shared to
+the full her passionate enjoyment of the present, and all her feverish
+eagerness to make it last. He knew when she was thinking of ways of
+extending their golden opportunity, and he secretly thought with her,
+wondering what new means they could devise. He was thankful that Ellie
+Vanderlyn was still absent, and began to hope they might have the palace
+to themselves for the remainder of the summer. If they did, he would
+have time to finish his book, and Susy to lay up a little interest on
+their wedding cheques; and thus their enchanted year might conceivably
+be prolonged to two.
+
+Late as the season was, their presence and Strefford’s in Venice had
+already drawn thither several wandering members of their set. It was
+characteristic of these indifferent but agglutinative people that they
+could never remain long parted from each other without a dim sense of
+uneasiness. Lansing was familiar with the feeling. He had known slight
+twinges of it himself, and had often ministered to its qualms in others.
+It was hardly stronger than the faint gnawing which recalls the tea-hour
+to one who has lunched well and is sure of dining as abundantly; but it
+gave a purpose to the purposeless, and helped many hesitating spirits
+over the annual difficulty of deciding between Deauville and St. Moritz,
+Biarritz and Capri.
+
+Nick was not surprised to learn that it was becoming the fashion, that
+summer, to pop down to Venice and take a look at the Lansings. Streffy
+had set the example, and Streffy’s example was always followed. And then
+Susy’s marriage was still a subject of sympathetic speculation. People
+knew the story of the wedding cheques, and were interested in seeing
+how long they could be made to last. It was going to be the thing,
+that year, to help prolong the honey-moon by pressing houses on the
+adventurous couple. Before June was over a band of friends were basking
+with the Lansings on the Lido.
+
+Nick found himself unexpectedly disturbed by their arrival. To avoid
+comment and banter he put his book aside and forbade Susy to speak
+of it, explaining to her that he needed an interval of rest. His wife
+instantly and exaggeratedly adopted this view, guarding him from the
+temptation to work as jealously as she had discouraged him from idling;
+and he was careful not to let her find out that the change in his habits
+coincided with his having reached a difficult point in his book. But
+though he was not sorry to stop writing he found himself unexpectedly
+oppressed by the weight of his leisure. For the first time communal
+dawdling had lost its charm for him; not because his fellow dawdlers
+were less congenial than of old, but because in the interval he had
+known something so immeasurably better. He had always felt himself to be
+the superior of his habitual associates, but now the advantage was too
+great: really, in a sense, it was hardly fair to them.
+
+He had flattered himself that Susy would share this feeling; but he
+perceived with annoyance that the arrival of their friends heightened
+her animation. It was as if the inward glow which had given her a new
+beauty were now refracted upon her by the presence of the very people
+they had come to Venice to avoid.
+
+Lansing was vaguely irritated; and when he asked her how she liked being
+with their old crowd again his irritation was increased by her answering
+with a laugh that she only hoped the poor dears didn’t see too plainly
+how they bored her. The patent insincerity of the reply was a shock to
+Lansing. He knew that Susy was not really bored, and he understood that
+she had simply guessed his feelings and instinctively adopted them: that
+henceforth she was always going to think as he thought. To confirm this
+fear he said carelessly: “Oh, all the same, it’s rather jolly knocking
+about with them again for a bit;” and she answered at once, and with
+equal conviction: “Yes, isn’t it? The old darlings--all the same!”
+
+A fear of the future again laid its cold touch on Lansing. Susy’s
+independence and self-sufficiency had been among her chief attractions;
+if she were to turn into an echo their delicious duet ran the risk of
+becoming the dullest of monologues. He forgot that five minutes earlier
+he had resented her being glad to see their friends, and for a moment
+he found himself leaning dizzily over that insoluble riddle of the
+sentimental life: that to be differed with is exasperating, and to be
+agreed with monotonous.
+
+Once more he began to wonder if he were not fundamentally unfitted for
+the married state; and was saved from despair only by remembering that
+Susy’s subjection to his moods was not likely to last. But even then
+it never occurred to him to reflect that his apprehensions were
+superfluous, since their tie was avowedly a temporary one. Of the
+special understanding on which their marriage had been based not a trace
+remained in his thoughts of her; the idea that he or she might ever
+renounce each other for their mutual good had long since dwindled to the
+ghost of an old joke.
+
+It was borne in on him, after a week or two of unbroken sociability,
+that of all his old friends it was the Mortimer Hickses who bored him
+the least. The Hickses had left the Ibis for an apartment in a vast
+dilapidated palace near the Canareggio. They had hired the apartment
+from a painter (one of their newest discoveries), and they put up
+philosophically with the absence of modern conveniences in order to
+secure the inestimable advantage of “atmosphere.” In this privileged
+air they gathered about them their usual mixed company of quiet
+studious people and noisy exponents of new theories, themselves totally
+unconscious of the disparity between their different guests, and
+beamingly convinced that at last they were seated at the source of
+wisdom.
+
+In old days Lansing would have got half an hour’s amusement, followed
+by a long evening of boredom, from the sight of Mrs. Hicks, vast and
+jewelled, seated between a quiet-looking professor of archaeology and a
+large-browed composer, or the high priest of a new dance-step, while
+Mr. Hicks, beaming above his vast white waistcoat, saw to it that the
+champagne flowed more abundantly than the talk, and the bright young
+secretaries industriously “kept up” with the dizzy cross-current of
+prophecy and erudition. But a change had come over Lansing. Hitherto
+it was in contrast to his own friends that the Hickses had seemed most
+insufferable; now it was as an escape from these same friends that they
+had become not only sympathetic but even interesting. It was something,
+after all, to be with people who did not regard Venice simply as
+affording exceptional opportunities for bathing and adultery, but who
+were reverently if confusedly aware that they were in the presence of
+something unique and ineffable, and determined to make the utmost of
+their privilege.
+
+“After all,” he said to himself one evening, as his eyes wandered, with
+somewhat of a convalescent’s simple joy, from one to another of their
+large confiding faces, “after all, they’ve got a religion....” The
+phrase struck him, in the moment of using it, as indicating a new
+element in his own state of mind, and as being, in fact, the key to his
+new feeling about the Hickses. Their muddled ardour for great things
+was related to his own new view of the universe: the people who felt,
+however dimly, the wonder and weight of life must ever after be nearer
+to him than those to whom it was estimated solely by one’s balance at
+the bank. He supposed, on reflexion, that that was what he meant when he
+thought of the Hickses as having “a religion”....
+
+A few days later, his well-being was unexpectedly disturbed by the
+arrival of Fred Gillow. Lansing had always felt a tolerant liking for
+Gillow, a large smiling silent young man with an intense and serious
+desire to miss nothing attainable by one of his fortune and standing.
+What use he made of his experiences, Lansing, who had always gone into
+his own modest adventures rather thoroughly, had never been able to
+guess; but he had always suspected the prodigal Fred of being no more
+than a well-disguised looker-on. Now for the first time he began to view
+him with another eye. The Gillows were, in fact, the one uneasy point in
+Nick’s conscience. He and Susy from the first, had talked of them less
+than of any other members of their group: they had tacitly avoided the
+name from the day on which Susy had come to Lansing’s lodgings to say
+that Ursula Gillow had asked her to renounce him, till that other day,
+just before their marriage, when she had met him with the rapturous cry:
+“Here’s our first wedding present! Such a thumping big cheque from Fred
+and Ursula!”
+
+Plenty of sympathizing people were ready, Lansing knew, to tell him just
+what had happened in the interval between those two dates; but he had
+taken care not to ask. He had even affected an initiation so complete
+that the friends who burned to enlighten him were discouraged by his so
+obviously knowing more than they; and gradually he had worked himself
+around to their view, and had taken it for granted that he really did.
+
+Now he perceived that he knew nothing at all, and that the “Hullo, old
+Fred!” with which Susy hailed Gillow’s arrival might be either the usual
+tribal welcome--since they were all “old,” and all nicknamed, in their
+private jargon--or a greeting that concealed inscrutable depths of
+complicity.
+
+Susy was visibly glad to see Gillow; but she was glad of everything just
+then, and so glad to show her gladness! The fact disarmed her husband
+and made him ashamed of his uneasiness. “You ought to have thought this
+all out sooner, or else you ought to chuck thinking of it at all,”
+ was the sound but ineffectual advice he gave himself on the day after
+Gillow’s arrival; and immediately set to work to rethink the whole
+matter.
+
+Fred Gillow showed no consciousness of disturbing any one’s peace of
+mind. Day after day he sprawled for hours on the Lido sands, his arms
+folded under his head, listening to Streffy’s nonsense and watching Susy
+between sleepy lids; but he betrayed no desire to see her alone, or
+to draw her into talk apart from the others. More than ever he seemed
+content to be the gratified spectator of a costly show got up for his
+private entertainment. It was not until he heard her, one morning,
+grumble a little at the increasing heat and the menace of mosquitoes,
+that he said, quite as if they had talked the matter over long before,
+and finally settled it: “The moor will be ready any time after the first
+of August.”
+
+Nick fancied that Susy coloured a little, and drew herself up more
+defiantly than usual as she sent a pebble skimming across the dying
+ripples at their feet.
+
+“You’ll be a lot cooler in Scotland,” Fred added, with what, for him,
+was an unusual effort at explicitness.
+
+“Oh, shall we?” she retorted gaily; and added with an air of mystery
+and importance, pivoting about on her high heels: “Nick’s got work to do
+here. It will probably keep us all summer.”
+
+“Work? Rot! You’ll die of the smells.” Gillow stared perplexedly skyward
+from under his tilted hat-brim; and then brought out, as from the depth
+of a rankling grievance: “I thought it was all understood.”
+
+“Why,” Nick asked his wife that night, as they re-entered Ellie’s cool
+drawing-room after a late dinner at the Lido, “did Gillow think it was
+understood that we were going to his moor in August?” He was conscious
+of the oddness of speaking of their friend by his surname, and reddened
+at his blunder.
+
+Susy had let her lace cloak slide to her feet, and stood before him
+in the faintly-lit room, slim and shimmering-white through black
+transparencies.
+
+She raised her eyebrows carelessly. “I told you long ago he’d asked us
+there for August.”
+
+“You didn’t tell me you’d accepted.”
+
+She smiled as if he had said something as simple as Fred. “I accepted
+everything--from everybody!”
+
+What could he answer? It was the very principle on which their bargain
+had been struck. And if he were to say: “Ah, but this is different,
+because I’m jealous of Gillow,” what light would such an answer shed on
+his past? The time for being jealous--if so antiquated an attitude were
+on any ground defensible--would have been before his marriage, and before
+the acceptance of the bounties which had helped to make it possible. He
+wondered a little now that in those days such scruples had not troubled
+him. His inconsistency irritated him, and increased his irritation
+against Gillow. “I suppose he thinks he owns us!” he grumbled inwardly.
+
+He had thrown himself into an armchair, and Susy, advancing across the
+shining arabesques of the floor, slid down at his feet, pressed her
+slender length against him, and whispered with lifted face and lips
+close to his: “We needn’t ever go anywhere you don’t want to.” For
+once her submission was sweet, and folding her close he whispered back
+through his kiss: “Not there, then.”
+
+In her response to his embrace he felt the acquiescence of her whole
+happy self in whatever future he decided on, if only it gave them enough
+of such moments as this; and as they held each other fast in silence his
+doubts and distrust began to seem like a silly injustice.
+
+“Let us stay here as long as ever Ellie will let us,” he said, as if the
+shadowy walls and shining floors were a magic boundary drawn about his
+happiness.
+
+She murmured her assent and stood up, stretching her sleepy arm above
+her shoulders. “How dreadfully late it is.... Will you unhook me?... Oh,
+there’s a telegram.”
+
+She picked it up from the table, and tearing it open stared a moment at
+the message. “It’s from Ellie. She’s coming to-morrow.”
+
+She turned to the window and strayed out onto the balcony. Nick followed
+her with enlacing arm. The canal below them lay in moonless shadow,
+barred with a few lingering lights. A last snatch of gondola-music came
+from far off, carried upward on a sultry gust.
+
+“Dear old Ellie. All the same... I wish all this belonged to you and
+me.” Susy sighed.
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+
+IT was not Mrs. Vanderlyn’s fault if, after her arrival, her palace
+seemed to belong any less to the Lansings.
+
+She arrived in a mood of such general benevolence that it was impossible
+for Susy, when they finally found themselves alone, to make her view
+even her own recent conduct in any but the most benevolent light.
+
+“I knew you’d be the veriest angel about it all, darling, because I knew
+you’d understand me--especially now,” she declared, her slim hands
+in Susy’s, her big eyes (so like Clarissa’s) resplendent with past
+pleasures and future plans.
+
+The expression of her confidence was unexpectedly distasteful to Susy
+Lansing, who had never lent so cold an ear to such warm avowals. She had
+always imagined that being happy one’s self made one--as Mrs. Vanderlyn
+appeared to assume--more tolerant of the happiness of others, of however
+doubtful elements composed; and she was almost ashamed of responding so
+languidly to her friend’s outpourings. But she herself had no desire to
+confide her bliss to Ellie; and why should not Ellie observe a similar
+reticence?
+
+“It was all so perfect--you see, dearest, I was meant to be happy,”
+ that lady continued, as if the possession of so unusual a characteristic
+singled her out for special privileges.
+
+Susy, with a certain sharpness, responded that she had always supposed
+we all were.
+
+“Oh, no, dearest: not governesses and mothers-in-law and companions, and
+that sort of people. They wouldn’t know how if they tried. But you and
+I, darling--”
+
+“Oh, I don’t consider myself in any way exceptional,” Susy intervened.
+She longed to add: “Not in your way, at any rate--” but a few minutes
+earlier Mrs. Vanderlyn had told her that the palace was at her disposal
+for the rest of the summer, and that she herself was only going to perch
+there--if they’d let her!--long enough to gather up her things and
+start for St. Moritz. The memory of this announcement had the effect of
+curbing Susy’s irony, and of making her shift the conversation to the
+safer if scarcely less absorbing topic of the number of day and evening
+dresses required for a season at St. Moritz.
+
+As she listened to Mrs. Vanderlyn--no less eloquent on this theme
+than on the other--Susy began to measure the gulf between her past and
+present. “This is the life I used to lead; these are the things I used
+to live for,” she thought, as she stood before the outspread glories of
+Mrs. Vanderlyn’s wardrobe. Not that she did not still care: she could
+not look at Ellie’s laces and silks and furs without picturing herself
+in them, and wondering by what new miracle of management she could give
+herself the air of being dressed by the same consummate artists. But
+these had become minor interests: the past few months had given her a
+new perspective, and the thing that most puzzled and disconcerted her
+about Ellie was the fact that love and finery and bridge and dining-out
+were seemingly all on the same plane to her.
+
+The inspection of the dresses lasted a long time, and was marked by
+many fluctuations of mood on the part of Mrs. Vanderlyn, who passed
+from comparative hopefulness to despair at the total inadequacy of her
+wardrobe. It wouldn’t do to go to St. Moritz looking like a frump, and
+yet there was no time to get anything sent from Paris, and, whatever she
+did, she wasn’t going to show herself in any dowdy re-arrangements done
+at home. But suddenly light broke on her, and she clasped her hands
+for joy. “Why, Nelson’ll bring them--I’d forgotten all about Nelson!
+There’ll be just time if I wire to him at once.”
+
+“Is Nelson going to join you at St. Moritz?” Susy asked, surprised.
+
+“Heavens, no! He’s coming here to pick up Clarissa and take her to some
+stuffy cure in Austria with his mother. It’s too lucky: there’s just
+time to telegraph him to bring my things. I didn’t mean to wait for him;
+but it won’t delay me more than day or two.”
+
+Susy’s heart sank. She was not much afraid of Ellie alone, but Ellie and
+Nelson together formed an incalculable menace. No one could tell what
+spark of truth might dash from their collision. Susy felt that she could
+deal with the two dangers separately and successively, but not together
+and simultaneously.
+
+“But, Ellie, why should you wait for Nelson? I’m certain to find someone
+here who’s going to St. Moritz and will take your things if he brings
+them. It’s a pity to risk losing your rooms.”
+
+This argument appealed for a moment to Mrs. Vanderlyn. “That’s
+true; they say all the hotels are jammed. You dear, you’re always
+so practical!” She clasped Susy to her scented bosom. “And you know,
+darling, I’m sure you’ll be glad to get rid of me--you and Nick! Oh,
+don’t be hypocritical and say ‘Nonsense!’ You see, I understand... I
+used to think of you so often, you two... during those blessed weeks
+when we two were alone....”
+
+The sudden tears, brimming over Ellie’s lovely eyes, and threatening to
+make the blue circles below them run into the adjoining carmine, filled
+Susy with compunction.
+
+“Poor thing--oh, poor thing!” she thought; and hearing herself called
+by Nick, who was waiting to take her out for their usual sunset on the
+lagoon, she felt a wave of pity for the deluded creature who would
+never taste that highest of imaginable joys. “But all the same,” Susy
+reflected, as she hurried down to her husband, “I’m glad I persuaded her
+not to wait for Nelson.”
+
+Some days had elapsed since Susy and Nick had had a sunset to
+themselves, and in the interval Susy had once again learned the superior
+quality of the sympathy that held them together. She now viewed all the
+rest of life as no more than a show: a jolly show which it would have
+been a thousand pities to miss, but which, if the need arose, they could
+get up and leave at any moment--provided that they left it together.
+
+In the dusk, while their prow slid over inverted palaces, and through
+the scent of hidden gardens, she leaned against him and murmured, her
+mind returning to the recent scene with Ellie: “Nick, should you hate me
+dreadfully if I had no clothes?”
+
+Her husband was kindling a cigarette, and the match lit up the grin
+with which he answered: “But, my dear, have I ever shown the slightest
+symptom--?”
+
+“Oh, rubbish! When a woman says: ‘No clothes,’ she means: ‘Not the right
+clothes.’”
+
+He took a meditative puff. “Ah, you’ve been going over Ellie’s finery
+with her.”
+
+“Yes: all those trunks and trunks full. And she finds she’s got nothing
+for St. Moritz!”
+
+“Of course,” he murmured, drowsy with content, and manifesting but a
+languid interest in the subject of Mrs. Vanderlyn’s wardrobe.
+
+“Only fancy--she very nearly decided to stop over for Nelson’s arrival
+next week, so that he might bring her two or three more trunkfuls from
+Paris. But mercifully I’ve managed to persuade her that it would be
+foolish to wait.”
+
+Susy felt a hardly perceptible shifting of her husband’s lounging body,
+and was aware, through all her watchful tentacles, of a widening of his
+half-closed lids.
+
+“You ‘managed’--?” She fancied he paused on the word ironically. “But
+why?”
+
+“Why--what?”
+
+“Why on earth should you try to prevent Ellie’s waiting for Nelson, if
+for once in her life she wants to?”
+
+Susy, conscious of reddening suddenly, drew back as though the leap
+of her tell-tale heart might have penetrated the blue flannel shoulder
+against which she leaned.
+
+“Really, dearest--!” she murmured; but with a sudden doggedness he
+renewed his “Why?”
+
+“Because she’s in such a fever to get to St. Moritz--and in such a funk
+lest the hotel shouldn’t keep her rooms,” Susy somewhat breathlessly
+produced.
+
+“Ah--I see.” Nick paused again. “You’re a devoted friend, aren’t you!”
+
+“What an odd question! There’s hardly anyone I’ve reason to be more
+devoted to than Ellie,” his wife answered; and she felt his contrite
+clasp on her hand.
+
+“Darling! No; nor I--. Or more grateful to for leaving us alone in this
+heaven.”
+
+Dimness had fallen on the waters, and her lifted lips met his bending
+ones.
+
+Trailing late into dinner that evening, Ellie announced that, after all,
+she had decided it was safest to wait for Nelson.
+
+“I should simply worry myself ill if I weren’t sure of getting my
+things,” she said, in the tone of tender solicitude with which she
+always discussed her own difficulties. “After all, people who deny
+themselves everything do get warped and bitter, don’t they?” she argued
+plaintively, her lovely eyes wandering from one to the other of her
+assembled friends.
+
+Strefford remarked gravely that it was the complaint which had fatally
+undermined his own health; and in the laugh that followed the party
+drifted into the great vaulted dining-room.
+
+“Oh, I don’t mind your laughing at me, Streffy darling,” his hostess
+retorted, pressing his arm against her own; and Susy, receiving the
+shock of their rapidly exchanged glance, said to herself, with a sharp
+twinge of apprehension: “Of course Streffy knows everything; he showed
+no surprise at finding Ellie away when he arrived. And if he knows,
+what’s to prevent Nelson’s finding out?” For Strefford, in a mood of
+mischief, was no more to be trusted than a malicious child.
+
+Susy instantly resolved to risk speaking to him, if need be even
+betraying to him the secret of the letters. Only by revealing the depth
+of her own danger could she hope to secure his silence.
+
+On the balcony, late in the evening, while the others were listening
+indoors to the low modulations of a young composer who had embroidered
+his fancies on Browning’s “Toccata,” Susy found her chance. Strefford,
+unsummoned, had followed her out, and stood silently smoking at her
+side.
+
+“You see, Streff--oh, why should you and I make mysteries to each
+other?” she suddenly began.
+
+“Why, indeed: but do we?”
+
+Susy glanced back at the group around the piano. “About Ellie, I
+mean--and Nelson.”
+
+“Lord! Ellie and Nelson? You call that a mystery? I should as soon apply
+the term to one of the million candle-power advertisements that adorn
+your native thoroughfares.”
+
+“Well, yes. But--” She stopped again. Had she not tacitly promised Ellie
+not to speak?
+
+“My Susan, what’s wrong?” Strefford asked.
+
+“I don’t know....”
+
+“Well, I do, then: you’re afraid that, if Ellie and Nelson meet here,
+she’ll blurt out something--injudicious.”
+
+“Oh, she won’t!” Susy cried with conviction.
+
+“Well, then--who will! I trust that superhuman child not to. And you and
+I and Nick--”
+
+“Oh,” she gasped, interrupting him, “that’s just it. Nick doesn’t
+know... doesn’t even suspect. And if he did....”
+
+Strefford flung away his cigar and turned to scrutinize her. “I don’t
+see--hanged if I do. What business is it of any of us, after all?”
+
+That, of course, was the old view that cloaked connivance in an air of
+decency. But to Susy it no longer carried conviction, and she hesitated.
+
+“If Nick should find out that I know....”
+
+“Good Lord--doesn’t he know that you know? After all, I suppose it’s not
+the first time--”
+
+She remained silent.
+
+“The first time you’ve received confidences--from married friends. Does
+Nick suppose you’ve lived even to your tender age without... Hang it,
+what’s come over you, child?”
+
+What had, indeed, that she could make clear to him? And yet more than
+ever she felt the need of having him securely on her side. Once his word
+was pledged, he was safe: otherwise there was no limit to his capacity
+for wilful harmfulness.
+
+“Look here, Streff, you and I know that Ellie hasn’t been away for a
+cure; and that if poor Clarissa was sworn to secrecy it was not because
+it ‘worries father’ to think that mother needs to take care of her
+health.” She paused, hating herself for the ironic note she had tried to
+sound.
+
+“Well--?” he questioned, from the depths of the chair into which he had
+sunk.
+
+“Well, Nick doesn’t... doesn’t dream of it. If he knew that we owed our
+summer here to... to my knowing....”
+
+Strefford sat silent: she felt his astonished stare through the
+darkness. “Jove!” he said at last, with a low whistle Susy bent over the
+balustrade, her heart thumping against the stone rail.
+
+“What was left of soul, I wonder--?” the young composer’s voice shrilled
+through the open windows.
+
+Strefford sank into another silence, from which he roused himself only
+as Susy turned back toward the lighted threshold.
+
+“Well, my dear, we’ll see it through between us; you and I--and
+Clarissa,” he said with his rasping laugh, rising to follow her. He
+caught her hand and gave it a short pressure as they re-entered the
+drawing-room, where Ellie was saying plaintively to Fred Gillow: “I can
+never hear that thing sung without wanting to cry like a baby.”
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+
+NELSON VANDERLYN, still in his travelling clothes, paused on the
+threshold of his own dining-room and surveyed the scene with pardonable
+satisfaction.
+
+He was a short round man, with a grizzled head, small facetious eyes and
+a large and credulous smile.
+
+At the luncheon table sat his wife, between Charlie Strefford and Nick
+Lansing. Next to Strefford, perched on her high chair, Clarissa throned
+in infant beauty, while Susy Lansing cut up a peach for her. Through
+wide orange awnings the sun slanted in upon the white-clad group.
+
+“Well--well--well! So I’ve caught you at it!” cried the happy father,
+whose inveterate habit it was to address his wife and friends as if he
+had surprised them at an inopportune moment. Stealing up from behind, he
+lifted his daughter into the air, while a chorus of “Hello, old Nelson,”
+ hailed his appearance.
+
+It was two or three years since Nick Lansing had seen Mr. Vanderlyn, who
+was now the London representative of the big New York bank of Vanderlyn
+& Co., and had exchanged his sumptuous house in Fifth Avenue for
+another, more sumptuous still, in Mayfair; and the young man looked
+curiously and attentively at his host.
+
+Mr. Vanderlyn had grown older and stouter, but his face still kept
+its look of somewhat worn optimism. He embraced his wife, greeted Susy
+affectionately, and distributed cordial hand-grasps to the two men.
+
+“Hullo,” he exclaimed, suddenly noticing a pearl and coral trinket
+hanging from Clarissa’s neck. “Who’s been giving my daughter jewellery,
+I’d like to know!”
+
+“Oh, Streffy did--just think, father! Because I said I’d rather have it
+than a book, you know,” Clarissa lucidly explained, her arms tight about
+her father’s neck, her beaming eyes on Strefford.
+
+Nelson Vanderlyn’s own eyes took on the look of shrewdness which came
+into them whenever there was a question of material values.
+
+“What, Streffy? Caught you at it, eh? Upon my soul-spoiling the brat
+like that! You’d no business to, my dear chap-a lovely baroque pearl--”
+ he protested, with the half-apologetic tone of the rich man embarrassed
+by too costly a gift from an impecunious friend.
+
+“Oh, hadn’t I? Why? Because it’s too good for Clarissa, or too expensive
+for me? Of course you daren’t imply the first; and as for me--I’ve had a
+windfall, and am blowing it in on the ladies.”
+
+Strefford, Lansing had noticed, always used American slang when he was
+slightly at a loss, and wished to divert attention from the main point.
+But why was he embarrassed, whose attention did he wish to divert, It
+was plain that Vanderlyn’s protest had been merely formal: like most of
+the wealthy, he had only the dimmest notion of what money represented
+to the poor. But it was unusual for Strefford to give any one a present,
+and especially an expensive one: perhaps that was what had fixed
+Vanderlyn’s attention.
+
+“A windfall?” he gaily repeated.
+
+“Oh, a tiny one: I was offered a thumping rent for my little place at
+Como, and dashed over here to squander my millions with the rest of
+you,” said Strefford imperturbably.
+
+Vanderlyn’s look immediately became interested and sympathetic.
+“What--the scene of the honey-moon?” He included Nick and Susy in his
+friendly smile.
+
+“Just so: the reward of virtue. I say, give me a cigar, will you, old
+man, I left some awfully good ones at Como, worse luck--and I don’t mind
+telling you that Ellie’s no judge of tobacco, and that Nick’s too far
+gone in bliss to care what he smokes,” Strefford grumbled, stretching a
+hand toward his host’s cigar-case.
+
+“I do like jewellery best,” Clarissa murmured, hugging her father.
+
+Nelson Vanderlyn’s first word to his wife had been that he had
+brought her all her toggery; and she had welcomed him with appropriate
+enthusiasm. In fact, to the lookers-on her joy at seeing him seemed
+rather too patently in proportion to her satisfaction at getting her
+clothes. But no such suspicion appeared to mar Mr. Vanderlyn’s happiness
+in being, for once, and for nearly twenty-four hours, under the same
+roof with his wife and child. He did not conceal his regret at having
+promised his mother to join her the next day; and added, with a wistful
+glance at Ellie: “If only I’d known you meant to wait for me!”
+
+But being a man of duty, in domestic as well as business affairs, he did
+not even consider the possibility of disappointing the exacting old lady
+to whom he owed his being. “Mother cares for so few people,” he used to
+say, not without a touch of filial pride in the parental exclusiveness,
+“that I have to be with her rather more than if she were more sociable”;
+and with smiling resignation he gave orders that Clarissa should be
+ready to start the next evening.
+
+“And meanwhile,” he concluded, “we’ll have all the good time that’s
+going.”
+
+The ladies of the party seemed united in the desire to further this
+resolve; and it was settled that as soon as Mr. Vanderlyn had despatched
+a hasty luncheon, his wife, Clarissa and Susy should carry him off for a
+tea-picnic at Torcello. They did not even suggest that Strefford or Nick
+should be of the party, or that any of the other young men of the group
+should be summoned; as Susy said, Nelson wanted to go off alone with his
+harem. And Lansing and Strefford were left to watch the departure of the
+happy Pasha ensconced between attentive beauties.
+
+“Well--that’s what you call being married!” Strefford commented, waving
+his battered Panama at Clarissa.
+
+“Oh, no, I don’t!” Lansing laughed.
+
+“He does. But do you know--” Strefford paused and swung about on his
+companion--“do you know, when the Rude Awakening comes, I don’t care to
+be there. I believe there’ll be some crockery broken.”
+
+“Shouldn’t wonder,” Lansing answered indifferently. He wandered away to
+his own room, leaving Strefford to philosophize to his pipe.
+
+Lansing had always known about poor old Nelson: who hadn’t, except poor
+old Nelson? The case had once seemed amusing because so typical; now, it
+rather irritated Nick that Vanderlyn should be so complete an ass. But
+he would be off the next day, and so would Ellie, and then, for many
+enchanted weeks, the palace would once more be the property of Nick and
+Susy. Of all the people who came and went in it, they were the only ones
+who appreciated it, or knew how it was meant to be lived in; and that
+made it theirs in the only valid sense. In this light it became easy to
+regard the Vanderlyns as mere transient intruders.
+
+Having relegated them to this convenient distance, Lansing shut himself
+up with his book. He had returned to it with fresh energy after his few
+weeks of holiday-making, and was determined to finish it quickly. He did
+not expect that it would bring in much money; but if it were moderately
+successful it might give him an opening in the reviews and magazines,
+and in that case he meant to abandon archaeology for novels, since
+it was only as a purveyor of fiction that he could count on earning a
+living for himself and Susy.
+
+Late in the afternoon he laid down his pen and wandered out of doors.
+He loved the increasing heat of the Venetian summer, the bruised
+peach-tints of worn house-fronts, the enamelling of sunlight on dark
+green canals, the smell of half-decayed fruits and flowers thickening
+the languid air. What visions he could build, if he dared, of being
+tucked away with Susy in the attic of some tumble-down palace, above
+a jade-green waterway, with a terrace overhanging a scrap of neglected
+garden--and cheques from the publishers dropping in at convenient
+intervals! Why should they not settle in Venice if he pulled it off!
+
+He found himself before the church of the Scalzi, and pushing open the
+leathern door wandered up the nave under the whirl of rose-and-lemon
+angels in Tiepolo’s great vault. It was not a church in which one was
+likely to run across sight-seers; but he presently remarked a young lady
+standing alone near the choir, and assiduously applying her field-glass
+to the celestial vortex, from which she occasionally glanced down at an
+open manual.
+
+As Lansing’s step sounded on the pavement, the young lady, turning,
+revealed herself as Miss Hicks.
+
+“Ah--you like this too? It’s several centuries out of your line, though,
+isn’t it!” Nick asked as they shook hands.
+
+She gazed at him gravely. “Why shouldn’t one like things that are out
+of one’s line?” she answered; and he agreed, with a laugh, that it was
+often an incentive.
+
+She continued to fix her grave eyes on him, and after one or two remarks
+about the Tiepolos he perceived that she was feeling her way toward a
+subject of more personal interest.
+
+“I’m glad to see you alone,” she said at length, with an abruptness that
+might have seemed awkward had it not been so completely unconscious.
+She turned toward a cluster of straw chairs, and signed to Nick to seat
+himself beside her.
+
+“I seldom do,” she added, with the serious smile that made her heavy
+face almost handsome; and she went on, giving him no time to protest: “I
+wanted to speak to you--to explain about father’s invitation to go with
+us to Persia and Turkestan.”
+
+“To explain?”
+
+“Yes. You found the letter when you arrived here just after your
+marriage, didn’t you? You must have thought it odd, our asking you just
+then; but we hadn’t heard that you were married.”
+
+“Oh, I guessed as much: it happened very quietly, and I was remiss about
+announcing it, even to old friends.”
+
+Lansing frowned. His thoughts had wandered away to the evening when he
+had found Mrs. Hicks’s letter in the mail awaiting him at Venice.
+The day was associated in his mind with the ridiculous and mortifying
+episode of the cigars--the expensive cigars that Susy had wanted to
+carry away from Strefford’s villa. Their brief exchange of views on the
+subject had left the first blur on the perfect surface of his happiness,
+and he still felt an uncomfortable heat at the remembrance. For a few
+hours the prospect of life with Susy had seemed unendurable; and it was
+just at that moment that he had found the letter from Mrs. Hicks, with
+its almost irresistible invitation. If only her daughter had known how
+nearly he had accepted it!
+
+“It was a dreadful temptation,” he said, smiling.
+
+“To go with us? Then why--?”
+
+“Oh, everything’s different now: I’ve got to stick to my writing.”
+
+Miss Hicks still bent on him the same unblinking scrutiny. “Does that
+mean that you’re going to give up your real work?”
+
+“My real work--archaeology?” He smiled again to hide a twitch of regret.
+“Why, I’m afraid it hardly produces a living wage; and I’ve got to think
+of that.” He coloured suddenly, as if suspecting that Miss Hicks might
+consider the avowal an opening for he hardly knew what ponderous
+offer of aid. The Hicks munificence was too uncalculating not to be
+occasionally oppressive. But looking at her again he saw that her eyes
+were full of tears.
+
+“I thought it was your vocation,” she said.
+
+“So did I. But life comes along, and upsets things.”
+
+“Oh, I understand. There may be things--worth giving up all other things
+for.”
+
+“There are!” cried Nick with beaming emphasis.
+
+He was conscious that Miss Hicks’s eyes demanded of him even more than
+this sweeping affirmation.
+
+“But your novel may fail,” she said with her odd harshness.
+
+“It may--it probably will,” he agreed. “But if one stopped to consider
+such possibilities--”
+
+“Don’t you have to, with a wife?”
+
+“Oh, my dear Coral--how old are you? Not twenty?” he questioned, laying
+a brotherly hand on hers.
+
+She stared at him a moment, and sprang up clumsily from her chair. “I
+was never young... if that’s what you mean. It’s lucky, isn’t it, that
+my parents gave me such a grand education? Because, you see, art’s a
+wonderful resource.” (She pronounced it RE-source.)
+
+He continued to look at her kindly. “You won’t need it--or any
+other--when you grow young, as you will some day,” he assured her.
+
+“Do you mean, when I fall in love? But I am in love--Oh, there’s
+Eldorada and Mr. Beck!” She broke off with a jerk, signalling with her
+field-glass to the pair who had just appeared at the farther end of the
+nave. “I told them that if they’d meet me here to-day I’d try to make
+them understand Tiepolo. Because, you see, at home we never really
+have understood Tiepolo; and Mr. Beck and Eldorada are the only ones to
+realize it. Mr. Buttles simply won’t.” She turned to Lansing and held
+out her hand. “I am in love,” she repeated earnestly, “and that’s the
+reason why I find art such a RE source.”
+
+She restored her eye-glasses, opened her manual, and strode across the
+church to the expectant neophytes.
+
+Lansing, looking after her, wondered for half a moment whether Mr. Beck
+were the object of this apparently unrequited sentiment; then, with a
+queer start of introspection, abruptly decided that, no, he certainly
+was not. But then--but then--. Well, there was no use in following up
+such conjectures.... He turned home-ward, wondering if the picnickers
+had already reached Palazzo Vanderlyn.
+
+They got back only in time for a late dinner, full of chaff and
+laughter, and apparently still enchanted with each other’s society.
+Nelson Vanderlyn beamed on his wife, sent his daughter off to bed with a
+kiss, and leaning back in his armchair before the fruit-and-flower-laden
+table, declared that he’d never spent a jollier day in his life. Susy
+seemed to come in for a full share of his approbation, and Lansing
+thought that Ellie was unusually demonstrative to her friend. Strefford,
+from his hostess’s side, glanced across now and then at young Mrs.
+Lansing, and his glance seemed to Lansing a confidential comment on the
+Vanderlyn raptures. But then Strefford was always having private jokes
+with people or about them; and Lansing was irritated with himself for
+perpetually suspecting his best friends of vague complicities at his
+expense. “If I’m going to be jealous of Streffy now--!” he concluded
+with a grimace of self-derision.
+
+Certainly Susy looked lovely enough to justify the most irrational
+pangs. As a girl she had been, for some people’s taste, a trifle
+fine-drawn and sharp-edged; now, to her old lightness of line was added
+a shadowy bloom, a sort of star-reflecting depth. Her movements were
+slower, less angular; her mouth had a needing droop, her lids seemed
+weighed down by their lashes; and then suddenly the old spirit would
+reveal itself through the new languor, like the tartness at the core
+of a sweet fruit. As her husband looked at her across the flowers and
+lights he laughed inwardly at the nothingness of all things else.
+
+Vanderlyn and Clarissa left betimes the next morning; and Mrs.
+Vanderlyn, who was to start for St. Moritz in the afternoon, devoted
+her last hours to anxious conferences with her maid and Susy. Strefford,
+with Fred Gillow and the others, had gone for a swim at the Lido, and
+Lansing seized the opportunity to get back to his book.
+
+The quietness of the great echoing place gave him a foretaste of the
+solitude to come. By mid-August all their party would be scattered: the
+Hickses off on a cruise to Crete and the AEgean, Fred Gillow on the way
+to his moor, Strefford to stay with friends in Capri till his annual
+visit to Northumberland in September. One by one the others would
+follow, and Lansing and Susy be left alone in the great sun-proof
+palace, alone under the star-laden skies, alone with the great orange
+moons--still theirs!--above the bell-tower of San Giorgio. The novel, in
+that blessed quiet, would unfold itself as harmoniously as his dreams.
+
+He wrote on, forgetful of the passing hours, till the door opened and he
+heard a step behind him. The next moment two hands were clasped over his
+eyes, and the air was full of Mrs. Vanderlyn’s last new scent.
+
+“You dear thing--I’m just off, you know,” she said. “Susy told me you
+were working, and I forbade her to call you down. She and Streffy are
+waiting to take me to the station, and I’ve run up to say good-bye.”
+
+“Ellie, dear!” Full of compunction, Lansing pushed aside his writing and
+started up; but she pressed him back into his seat.
+
+“No, no! I should never forgive myself if I’d interrupted you. I
+oughtn’t to have come up; Susy didn’t want me to. But I had to tell you,
+you dear.... I had to thank you...”
+
+In her dark travelling dress and hat, so discreetly conspicuous, so
+negligent and so studied, with a veil masking her paint, and gloves
+hiding her rings, she looked younger, simpler, more natural than he had
+ever seen her. Poor Ellie such a good fellow, after all!
+
+“To thank me? For what? For being so happy here?” he laughed, taking her
+hands.
+
+She looked at him, laughed back, and flung her arms about his neck.
+
+“For helping me to be so happy elsewhere--you and Susy, you two blessed
+darlings!” she cried, with a kiss on his cheek.
+
+Their eyes met for a second; then her arms slipped slowly downward,
+dropping to her sides. Lansing sat before her like a stone.
+
+“Oh,” she gasped, “why do you stare so? Didn’t you know...?”
+
+They heard Strefford’s shrill voice on the stairs. “Ellie, where the
+deuce are you? Susy’s in the gondola. You’ll miss the train!”
+
+Lansing stood up and caught Mrs. Vanderlyn by the wrist. “What do you
+mean? What are you talking about?”
+
+“Oh, nothing... But you were both such bricks about the letters.... And
+when Nelson was here, too.... Nick, don’t hurt my wrist so! I must run!”
+
+He dropped her hand and stood motionless, staring after her and
+listening to the click of her high heels as she fled across the room and
+along the echoing corridor.
+
+When he turned back to the table he noticed that a small morocco case
+had fallen among his papers. In falling it had opened, and before him,
+on the pale velvet lining, lay a scarf-pin set with a perfect pearl. He
+picked the box up, and was about to hasten after Mrs. Vanderlyn--it
+was so like her to shed jewels on her path!--when he noticed his own
+initials on the cover.
+
+He dropped the box as if it had been a hot coal, and sat for a long
+while gazing at the gold N. L., which seemed to have burnt itself into
+his flesh.
+
+At last he roused himself and stood up.
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+
+WITH a sigh of relief Susy drew the pins from her hat and threw herself
+down on the lounge.
+
+The ordeal she had dreaded was over, and Mr. and Mrs. Vanderlyn had
+safely gone their several ways. Poor Ellie was not noted for prudence,
+and when life smiled on her she was given to betraying her gratitude too
+openly; but thanks to Susy’s vigilance (and, no doubt, to Strefford’s
+tacit co-operation), the dreaded twenty-four hours were happily over.
+Nelson Vanderlyn had departed without a shadow on his brow, and though
+Ellie’s, when she came down from bidding Nick good-bye, had seemed to
+Susy less serene than usual, she became her normal self as soon as it
+was discovered that the red morocco bag with her jewel-box was missing.
+Before it had been discovered in the depths of the gondola they had
+reached the station, and there was just time to thrust her into her
+“sleeper,” from which she was seen to wave an unperturbed farewell to
+her friends.
+
+“Well, my dear, we’ve been it through,” Strefford remarked with a deep
+breath as the St. Moritz express rolled away.
+
+“Oh,” Susy sighed in mute complicity; then, as if to cover her
+self-betrayal: “Poor darling, she does so like what she likes!”
+
+“Yes--even if it’s a rotten bounder,” Strefford agreed.
+
+“A rotten bounder? Why, I thought--”
+
+“That it was still young Davenant? Lord, no--not for the last six
+months. Didn’t she tell you--?”
+
+Susy felt herself redden. “I didn’t ask her--”
+
+“Ask her? You mean you didn’t let her!”
+
+“I didn’t let her. And I don’t let you,” Susy added sharply, as he
+helped her into the gondola.
+
+“Oh, all right: I daresay you’re right. It simplifies things,” Strefford
+placidly acquiesced.
+
+She made no answer, and in silence they glided homeward.
+
+Now, in the quiet of her own room, Susy lay and pondered on the distance
+she had travelled during the last year. Strefford had read her mind with
+his usual penetration. It was true that there had been a time when
+she would have thought it perfectly natural that Ellie should tell
+her everything; that the name of young Davenant’s successor should be
+confided to her as a matter of course. Apparently even Ellie had been
+obscurely aware of the change, for after a first attempt to force her
+confidences on Susy she had contented herself with vague expressions of
+gratitude, allusive smiles and sighs, and the pretty “surprise” of the
+sapphire bangle slipped onto her friend’s wrist in the act of their
+farewell embrace.
+
+The bangle was extremely handsome. Susy, who had an auctioneer’s eye
+for values, knew to a fraction the worth of those deep convex stones
+alternating with small emeralds and brilliants. She was glad to own the
+bracelet, and enchanted with the effect it produced on her slim wrist;
+yet, even while admiring it, and rejoicing that it was hers, she had
+already transmuted it into specie, and reckoned just how far it would go
+toward the paying of domestic necessities. For whatever came to her now
+interested her only as something more to be offered up to Nick.
+
+The door opened and Nick came in. Dusk had fallen, and she could not
+see his face; but something in the jerk of the door-handle roused her
+ever-wakeful apprehension. She hurried toward him with outstretched
+wrist.
+
+“Look, dearest--wasn’t it too darling of Ellie?”
+
+She pressed the button of the lamp that lit her dressing-table, and her
+husband’s face started unfamiliarly out of the twilight. She slipped off
+the bracelet and held it up to him.
+
+“Oh, I can go you one better,” he said with a laugh; and pulling a
+morocco case from his pocket he flung it down among the scent-bottles.
+
+Susy opened the case automatically, staring at the pearl because she was
+afraid to look again at Nick.
+
+“Ellie--gave you this?” she asked at length.
+
+“Yes. She gave me this.” There was a pause. “Would you mind telling
+me,” Lansing continued in the same dead-level tone, “exactly for what
+services we’ve both been so handsomely paid?”
+
+“The pearl is beautiful,” Susy murmured, to gain time, while her head
+spun round with unimaginable terrors.
+
+“So are your sapphires; though, on closer examination, my services would
+appear to have been valued rather higher than yours. Would you be kind
+enough to tell me just what they were?”
+
+Susy threw her head back and looked at him. “What on earth are you
+talking about, Nick! Why shouldn’t Ellie have given us these things? Do
+you forget that it’s like our giving her a pen-wiper or a button-hook?
+What is it you are trying to suggest?”
+
+It had cost her a considerable effort to hold his eyes while she put
+the questions. Something had happened between him and Ellie, that was
+evident--one of those hideous unforeseeable blunders that may cause one’s
+cleverest plans to crumble at a stroke; and again Susy shuddered at
+the frailty of her bliss. But her old training stood her in good stead.
+There had been more than one moment in her past when everything--somebody
+else’s everything--had depended on her keeping a cool head and a clear
+glance. It would have been a wonder if now, when she felt her own
+everything at stake, she had not been able to put up as good a defence.
+
+“What is it?” she repeated impatiently, as Lansing continued to remain
+silent.
+
+“That’s what I’m here to ask,” he returned, keeping his eyes as steady
+as she kept hers. “There’s no reason on earth, as you say, why Ellie
+shouldn’t give us presents--as expensive presents as she likes; and the
+pearl is a beauty. All I ask is: for what specific services were they
+given? For, allowing for all the absence of scruple that marks the
+intercourse of truly civilized people, you’ll probably agree that there
+are limits; at least up to now there have been limits....”
+
+“I really don’t know what you mean. I suppose Ellie wanted to show that
+she was grateful to us for looking after Clarissa.”
+
+“But she gave us all this in exchange for that, didn’t she?” he
+suggested, with a sweep of the hand around the beautiful shadowy room.
+“A whole summer of it if we choose.”
+
+Susy smiled. “Apparently she didn’t think that enough.”
+
+“What a doting mother! It shows the store she sets upon her child.”
+
+“Well, don’t you set store upon Clarissa?”
+
+“Clarissa is exquisite; but her mother didn’t mention her in offering me
+this recompense.”
+
+Susy lifted her head again. “Whom did she mention?”
+
+“Vanderlyn,” said Lansing.
+
+“Vanderlyn? Nelson?”
+
+“Yes--and some letters... something about letters.... What is it, my
+dear, that you and I have been hired to hide from Vanderlyn? Because I
+should like to know,” Nick broke out savagely, “if we’ve been adequately
+paid.”
+
+Susy was silent: she needed time to reckon up her forces, and study her
+next move; and her brain was in such a whirl of fear that she could at
+last only retort: “What is it that Ellie said to you?”
+
+Lansing laughed again. “That’s just what you’d like to find out--isn’t
+it?--in order to know the line to take in making your explanation.”
+
+The sneer had an effect that he could not have foreseen, and that Susy
+herself had not expected.
+
+“Oh, don’t--don’t let us speak to each other like that!” she cried; and
+sinking down by the dressing-table she hid her face in her hands.
+
+It seemed to her, now, that nothing mattered except that their love
+for each other, their faith in each other, should be saved from some
+unhealable hurt. She was willing to tell Nick everything--she wanted to
+tell him everything--if only she could be sure of reaching a responsive
+chord in him. But the scene of the cigars came back to her, and benumbed
+her. If only she could make him see that nothing was of any account as
+long as they continued to love each other!
+
+His touch fell compassionately on her shoulder. “Poor child--don’t,” he
+said.
+
+Their eyes met, but his expression checked the smile breaking through
+her tears. “Don’t you see,” he continued, “that we’ve got to have this
+thing out?”
+
+She continued to stare at him through a prism of tears. “I can’t--while
+you stand up like that,” she stammered, childishly.
+
+She had cowered down again into a corner of the lounge; but Lansing did
+not seat himself at her side. He took a chair facing her, like a caller
+on the farther side of a stately tea-tray. “Will that do?” he asked with
+a stiff smile, as if to humour her.
+
+“Nothing will do--as long as you’re not you!”
+
+“Not me?”
+
+She shook her head wearily. “What’s the use? You accept things
+theoretically--and then when they happen....”
+
+“What things? What has happened!”
+
+A sudden impatience mastered her. What did he suppose, after all--? “But
+you know all about Ellie. We used to talk about her often enough in old
+times,” she said.
+
+“Ellie and young Davenant?”
+
+“Young Davenant; or the others....”
+
+“Or the others. But what business was it of ours?”
+
+“Ah, that’s just what I think!” she cried, springing up with an
+explosion of relief. Lansing stood up also, but there was no answering
+light in his face.
+
+“We’re outside of all that; we’ve nothing to do with it, have we?” he
+pursued.
+
+“Nothing whatever.”
+
+“Then what on earth is the meaning of Ellie’s gratitude? Gratitude for
+what we’ve done about some letters--and about Vanderlyn?”
+
+“Oh, not you,” Susy cried, involuntarily.
+
+“Not I? Then you?” He came close and took her by the wrist. “Answer me.
+Have you been mixed up in some dirty business of Ellie’s?”
+
+There was a pause. She found it impossible to speak, with that burning
+grasp on the wrist where the bangle had been. At length he let her go
+and moved away. “Answer,” he repeated.
+
+“I’ve told you it was my business and not yours.”
+
+He received this in silence; then he questioned: “You’ve been sending
+letters for her, I suppose? To whom?”
+
+“Oh, why do you torment me? Nelson was not supposed to know that she’d
+been away. She left me the letters to post to him once a week. I found
+them here the night we arrived.... It was the price--for this. Oh,
+Nick, say it’s been worth it--say at least that it’s been worth it!” she
+implored him.
+
+He stood motionless, unresponding. One hand drummed on the corner of her
+dressing-table, making the jewelled bangle dance.
+
+“How many letters?”
+
+“I don’t know... four... five... What does it matter?”
+
+“And once a week, for six weeks--?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“And you took it all as a matter of course?”
+
+“No: I hated it. But what could I do?”
+
+“What could you do?”
+
+“When our being together depended on it? Oh, Nick, how could you think
+I’d give you up?”
+
+“Give me up?” he echoed.
+
+“Well--doesn’t our being together depend on--on what we can get out of
+people? And hasn’t there always got to be some give-and-take? Did you
+ever in your life get anything for nothing?” she cried with sudden
+exasperation. “You’ve lived among these people as long as I have; I
+suppose it’s not the first time--”
+
+“By God, but it is,” he exclaimed, flushing. “And that’s the
+difference--the fundamental difference.”
+
+“The difference!”
+
+“Between you and me. I’ve never in my life done people’s dirty work for
+them--least of all for favours in return. I suppose you guessed it, or
+you wouldn’t have hidden this beastly business from me.”
+
+The blood rose to Susy’s temples also. Yes, she had guessed it;
+instinctively, from the day she had first visited him in his bare
+lodgings, she had been aware of his stricter standard. But how could she
+tell him that under his influence her standard had become stricter
+too, and that it was as much to hide her humiliation from herself as to
+escape his anger that she had held her tongue?
+
+“You knew I wouldn’t have stayed here another day if I’d known,” he
+continued.
+
+“Yes: and then where in the world should we have gone?”
+
+“You mean that--in one way or another--what you call give-and-take is
+the price of our remaining together?”
+
+“Well--isn’t it,” she faltered.
+
+“Then we’d better part, hadn’t we?”
+
+He spoke in a low tone, thoughtfully and deliberately, as if this had
+been the inevitable conclusion to which their passionate argument had
+led.
+
+Susy made no answer. For a moment she ceased to be conscious of the
+causes of what had happened; the thing itself seemed to have smothered
+her under its ruins.
+
+Nick wandered away from the dressing-table and stood gazing out of the
+window at the darkening canal flecked with lights. She looked at his
+back, and wondered what would happen if she were to go up to him and
+fling her arms about him. But even if her touch could have broken the
+spell, she was not sure she would have chosen that way of breaking it.
+Beneath her speechless anguish there burned the half-conscious sense
+of having been unfairly treated. When they had entered into their
+queer compact, Nick had known as well as she on what compromises and
+concessions the life they were to live together must be based. That he
+should have forgotten it seemed so unbelievable that she wondered, with
+a new leap of fear, if he were using the wretched Ellie’s indiscretion
+as a means of escape from a tie already wearied of. Suddenly she raised
+her head with a laugh.
+
+“After all--you were right when you wanted me to be your mistress.”
+
+He turned on her with an astonished stare. “You--my mistress?”
+
+Through all her pain she thrilled with pride at the discovery that
+such a possibility had long since become unthinkable to him. But she
+insisted. “That day at the Fulmers’--have you forgotten? When you said
+it would be sheer madness for us to marry.”
+
+Lansing stood leaning in the embrasure of the window, his eyes fixed on
+the mosaic volutes of the floor.
+
+“I was right enough when I said it would be sheer madness for us to
+marry,” he rejoined at length.
+
+She sprang up trembling. “Well, that’s easily settled. Our compact--”
+
+“Oh, that compact--” he interrupted her with an impatient laugh.
+
+“Aren’t you asking me to carry it out now?”
+
+“Because I said we’d better part?” He paused. “But the compact--I’d
+almost forgotten it--was to the effect, wasn’t it, that we were to give
+each other a helping hand if either of us had a better chance? The thing
+was absurd, of course; a mere joke; from my point of view, at least. I
+shall never want any better chance... any other chance....”
+
+“Oh, Nick, oh, Nick... but then....” She was close to him, his face
+looming down through her tears; but he put her back.
+
+“It would have been easy enough, wouldn’t it,” he rejoined, “if we’d
+been as detachable as all that? As it is, it’s going to hurt horribly.
+But talking it over won’t help. You were right just now when you asked
+how else we were going to live. We’re born parasites, both, I suppose,
+or we’d have found out some way long ago. But I find there are things I
+might put up with for myself, at a pinch--and should, probably, in time
+that I can’t let you put up with for me... ever.... Those cigars at
+Como: do you suppose I didn’t know it was for me? And this too? Well, it
+won’t do... it won’t do....”
+
+He stopped, as if his courage failed him; and she moaned out: “But your
+writing--if your book’s a success....”
+
+“My poor Susy--that’s all part of the humbug. We both know that my sort
+of writing will never pay. And what’s the alternative except more of
+the same kind of baseness? And getting more and more blunted to it? At
+least, till now, I’ve minded certain things; I don’t want to go on till
+I find myself taking them for granted.”
+
+She reached out a timid hand. “But you needn’t ever, dear... if you’d
+only leave it to me....”
+
+He drew back sharply. “That seems simple to you, I suppose? Well, men
+are different.” He walked toward the dressing-table and glanced at the
+little enamelled clock which had been one of her wedding-presents.
+
+“Time to dress, isn’t it? Shall you mind if I leave you to dine with
+Streffy, and whoever else is coming? I’d rather like a long tramp, and
+no more talking just at present except with myself.”
+
+He passed her by and walked rapidly out of the room. Susy stood
+motionless, unable to lift a detaining hand or to find a final word
+of appeal. On her disordered dressing-table Mrs. Vanderlyn’s gifts
+glittered in the rosy lamp-light.
+
+Yes: men were different, as he said.
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+
+BUT there were necessary accommodations, there always had been; Nick in
+old times, had been the first to own it.... How they had laughed at the
+Perpendicular People, the people who went by on the other side (since
+you couldn’t be a good Samaritan without stooping over and poking
+into heaps of you didn’t know what)! And now Nick had suddenly become
+perpendicular....
+
+Susy, that evening, at the head of the dinner table, saw--in the breaks
+between her scudding thoughts--the nauseatingly familiar faces of the
+people she called her friends: Strefford, Fred Gillow, a giggling fool
+of a young Breckenridge, of their New York group, who had arrived that
+day, and Prince Nerone Altineri, Ursula’s Prince, who, in Ursula’s
+absence at a tiresome cure, had, quite simply and naturally, preferred
+to join her husband at Venice. Susy looked from one to the other of
+them, as if with newly-opened eyes, and wondered what life would be like
+with no faces but such as theirs to furnish it....
+
+Ah, Nick had become perpendicular!... After all, most people went
+through life making a given set of gestures, like dance-steps learned
+in advance. If your dancing manual told you at a given time to be
+perpendicular, you had to be, automatically--and that was Nick!
+
+“But what on earth, Susy,” Gillow’s puzzled voice suddenly came to her
+as from immeasurable distances, “Are you going to do in this beastly
+stifling hole for the rest of the summer?”
+
+“Ask Nick, my dear fellow,” Strefford answered for her; and: “By the
+way, where is Nick--if one may ask?” young Breckenridge interposed,
+glancing up to take belated note of his host’s absence.
+
+“Dining out,” said Susy glibly. “People turned up: blighting bores that
+I wouldn’t have dared to inflict on you.” How easily the old familiar
+fibbing came to her!
+
+“The kind to whom you say, ‘Now mind you look me up’; and then spend the
+rest of your life dodging-like our good Hickses,” Strefford amplified.
+
+The Hickses--but, of course, Nick was with the Hickses! It went through
+Susy like a knife, and the dinner she had so lightly fibbed became a
+hateful truth. She said to herself feverishly: “I’ll call him up there
+after dinner--and then he will feel silly”--but only to remember that
+the Hickses, in their mediaeval setting, had of course sternly denied
+themselves a telephone.
+
+The fact of Nick’s temporary inaccessibility--since she was now
+convinced that he was really at the Hickses’--turned her distress to a
+mocking irritation. Ah, that was where he carried his principles, his
+standards, or whatever he called the new set of rules he had suddenly
+begun to apply to the old game! It was stupid of her not to have guessed
+it at once.
+
+“Oh, the Hickses--Nick adores them, you know. He’s going to marry Coral
+next,” she laughed out, flashing the joke around the table with all her
+practiced flippancy.
+
+“Lord!” grasped Gillow, inarticulate: while the Prince displayed the
+unsurprised smile which Susy accused him of practicing every morning
+with his Mueller exercises.
+
+Suddenly Susy felt Strefford’s eyes upon her.
+
+“What’s the matter with me? Too much rouge?” she asked, passing her arm
+in his as they left the table.
+
+“No: too little. Look at yourself,” he answered in a low tone.
+
+“Oh, in these cadaverous old looking-glasses-everybody looks fished up
+from the canal!”
+
+She jerked away from him to spin down the long floor of the sala, hands
+on hips, whistling a rag-time tune. The Prince and young Breckenridge
+caught her up, and she spun back with the latter, while Gillow--it was
+believed to be his sole accomplishment--snapped his fingers in simulation
+of bones, and shuffled after the couple on stamping feet.
+
+Susy sank down on a sofa near the window, fanning herself with a
+floating scarf, and the men foraged for cigarettes, and rang for the
+gondoliers, who came in with trays of cooling drinks.
+
+“Well, what next--this ain’t all, is it?” Gillow presently queried, from
+the divan where he lolled half-asleep with dripping brow. Fred Gillow,
+like Nature, abhorred a void, and it was inconceivable to him that every
+hour of man’s rational existence should not furnish a motive for getting
+up and going somewhere else. Young Breckenridge, who took the same view,
+and the Prince, who earnestly desired to, reminded the company that
+somebody they knew was giving a dance that night at the Lido.
+
+Strefford vetoed the Lido, on the ground that he’d just come back from
+there, and proposed that they should go out on foot for a change.
+
+“Why not? What fun!” Susy was up in an instant. “Let’s pay somebody a
+surprise visit--I don’t know who! Streffy, Prince, can’t you think of
+somebody who’d be particularly annoyed by our arrival?”
+
+“Oh, the list’s too long. Let’s start, and choose our victim on the
+way,” Strefford suggested.
+
+Susy ran to her room for a light cloak, and without changing her
+high-heeled satin slippers went out with the four men. There was no
+moon--thank heaven there was no moon!--but the stars hung over them as
+close as fruit, and secret fragrances dropped on them from garden-walls.
+Susy’s heart tightened with memories of Como.
+
+They wandered on, laughing and dawdling, and yielding to the drifting
+whims of aimless people. Presently someone proposed taking a nearer look
+at the facade of San Giorgio Maggiore, and they hailed a gondola and
+were rowed out through the bobbing lanterns and twanging guitar-strings.
+When they landed again, Gillow, always acutely bored by scenery, and
+particularly resentful of midnight aesthetics, suggested a night club
+near at hand, which was said to be jolly. The Prince warmly supported
+this proposal; but on Susy’s curt refusal they started their rambling
+again, circuitously threading the vague dark lanes and making for the
+Piazza and Florian’s ices. Suddenly, at a calle-corner, unfamiliar and
+yet somehow known to her, Susy paused to stare about her with a laugh.
+
+“But the Hickses--surely that’s their palace? And the windows all lit
+up! They must be giving a party! Oh, do let’s go up and surprise them!”
+ The idea struck her as one of the drollest that she had ever originated,
+and she wondered that her companions should respond so languidly.
+
+“I can’t see anything very thrilling in surprising the Hickses,” Gillow
+protested, defrauded of possible excitements; and Strefford added: “It
+would surprise me more than them if I went.”
+
+But Susy insisted feverishly: “You don’t know. It may be awfully
+exciting! I have an idea that Coral’s announcing her engagement--her
+engagement to Nick! Come, give me a hand, Streff--and you the other,
+Fred-” she began to hum the first bars of Donna Anna’s entrance in Don
+Giovanni. “Pity I haven’t got a black cloak and a mask....”
+
+“Oh, your face will do,” said Strefford, laying his hand on her arm.
+
+She drew back, flushing crimson. Breckenridge and the Prince had sprung
+on ahead, and Gillow, lumbering after them, was already halfway up the
+stairs.
+
+“My face? My face? What’s the matter with my face? Do you know any
+reason why I shouldn’t go to the Hickses to-night?” Susy broke out in
+sudden wrath.
+
+“None whatever; except that if you do it will bore me to death,”
+ Strefford returned, with serenity.
+
+“Oh, in that case--!”
+
+“No; come on. I hear those fools banging on the door already.” He caught
+her by the hand, and they started up the stairway. But on the first
+landing she paused, twisted her hand out of his, and without a word,
+without a conscious thought, dashed down the long flight, across the
+great resounding vestibule and out into the darkness of the calle.
+
+Strefford caught up with her, and they stood a moment silent in the
+night.
+
+“Susy--what the devil’s the matter?”
+
+“The matter? Can’t you see? That I’m tired, that I’ve got a splitting
+headache--that you bore me to death, one and all of you!” She turned and
+laid a deprecating hand on his arm. “Streffy, old dear, don’t mind me:
+but for God’s sake find a gondola and send me home.”
+
+“Alone?”
+
+“Alone.”
+
+It was never any concern of Streff’s if people wanted to do things he
+did not understand, and she knew that she could count on his obedience.
+They walked on in silence to the next canal, and he picked up a passing
+gondola and put her in it.
+
+“Now go and amuse yourself,” she called after him, as the boat shot
+under the nearest bridge. Anything, anything, to be alone, away from the
+folly and futility that would be all she had left if Nick were to drop
+out of her life....
+
+“But perhaps he has dropped already--dropped for good,” she thought as
+she set her foot on the Vanderlyn threshold.
+
+The short summer night was already growing transparent: a new born
+breeze stirred the soiled surface of the water and sent it lapping
+freshly against the old palace doorways. Nearly two o’clock! Nick had no
+doubt come back long ago. Susy hurried up the stairs, reassured by the
+mere thought of his nearness. She knew that when their eyes and their
+lips met it would be impossible for anything to keep them apart.
+
+The gondolier dozing on the landing roused himself to receive her, and
+to proffer two envelopes. The upper one was a telegram for Strefford:
+she threw it down again and paused under the lantern hanging from the
+painted vault, the other envelope in her hand. The address it bore was
+in Nick’s writing. “When did the signore leave this for me? Has he gone
+out again?”
+
+Gone out again? But the signore had not come in since dinner: of that
+the gondolier was positive, as he had been on duty all the evening.
+A boy had brought the letter--an unknown boy: he had left it without
+waiting. It must have been about half an hour after the signora had
+herself gone out with her guests.
+
+Susy, hardly hearing him, fled on to her own room, and there, beside the
+very lamp which, two months before, had illuminated Ellie Vanderlyn’s
+fatal letter, she opened Nick’s.
+
+“Don’t think me hard on you, dear; but I’ve got to work this thing out
+by myself. The sooner the better--don’t you agree? So I’m taking the
+express to Milan presently. You’ll get a proper letter in a day or two.
+I wish I could think, now, of something to say that would show you I’m
+not a brute--but I can’t. N. L.”
+
+There was not much of the night left in which to sleep, even had a
+semblance of sleep been achievable. The letter fell from Susy’s hands,
+and she crept out onto the balcony and cowered there, her forehead
+pressed against the balustrade, the dawn wind stirring in her thin
+laces. Through her closed eyelids and the tightly-clenched fingers
+pressed against them, she felt the penetration of the growing light,
+the relentless advance of another day--a day without purpose and without
+meaning--a day without Nick. At length she dropped her hands, and
+staring from dry lids saw a rim of fire above the roofs across the Grand
+Canal. She sprang up, ran back into her room, and dragging the heavy
+curtains shut across the windows, stumbled over in the darkness to the
+lounge and fell among its pillows-face downward--groping, delving for a
+deeper night....
+
+She started up, stiff and aching, to see a golden wedge of sun on the
+floor at her feet. She had slept, then--was it possible?--it must
+be eight or nine o’clock already! She had slept--slept like a
+drunkard--with that letter on the table at her elbow! Ah, now she
+remembered--she had dreamed that the letter was a dream! But there,
+inexorably, it lay; and she picked it up, and slowly, painfully re-read
+it. Then she tore it into shreds hunted for a match, and kneeling before
+the empty hearth, as though she were accomplishing some funeral rite,
+she burnt every shred of it to ashes. Nick would thank her for that some
+day!
+
+After a bath and a hurried toilet she began to be aware of feeling
+younger and more hopeful. After all, Nick had merely said that he was
+going away for “a day or two.” And the letter was not cruel: there
+were tender things in it, showing through the curt words. She smiled
+at herself a little stiffly in the glass, put a dash of red on her
+colourless lips, and rang for the maid.
+
+“Coffee, Giovanna, please; and will you tell Mr. Strefford that I should
+like to see him presently.”
+
+If Nick really kept to his intention of staying away for a few days she
+must trump up some explanation of his absence; but her mind refused to
+work, and the only thing she could think of was to take Strefford into
+her confidence. She knew that he could be trusted in a real difficulty;
+his impish malice transformed itself into a resourceful ingenuity when
+his friends required it.
+
+The maid stood looking at her with a puzzled gaze, and Susy somewhat
+sharply repeated her order. “But don’t wake him on purpose,” she added,
+foreseeing the probable effect on Strefford’s temper.
+
+“But, signora, the gentleman is already out.”
+
+“Already out?” Strefford, who could hardly be routed from his bed before
+luncheon-time! “Is it so late?” Susy cried, incredulous.
+
+“After nine. And the gentleman took the eight o’clock train for England.
+Gervaso said he had received a telegram. He left word that he would
+write to the signora.”
+
+The door closed upon the maid, and Susy continued to gaze at her painted
+image in the glass, as if she had been trying to outstare an importunate
+stranger. There was no one left for her to take counsel of, then--no one
+but poor Fred Gillow! She made a grimace at the idea.
+
+But what on earth could have summoned Strefford back to England?
+
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+
+
+NICK LANSING, in the Milan express, was roused by the same bar of
+sunshine lying across his knees. He yawned, looked with disgust at his
+stolidly sleeping neighbours, and wondered why he had decided to go to
+Milan, and what on earth he should do when he got there. The difficulty
+about trenchant decisions was that the next morning they generally left
+one facing a void....
+
+When the train drew into the station at Milan, he scrambled out, got
+some coffee, and having drunk it decided to continue his journey to
+Genoa. The state of being carried passively onward postponed action and
+dulled thought; and after twelve hours of furious mental activity that
+was exactly what he wanted.
+
+He fell into a doze again, waking now and then to haggard intervals
+of more thinking, and then dropping off to the clank and rattle of the
+train. Inside his head, in his waking intervals, the same clanking and
+grinding of wheels and chains went on unremittingly. He had done all his
+lucid thinking within an hour of leaving the Palazzo Vanderlyn the
+night before; since then, his brain had simply continued to revolve
+indefatigably about the same old problem. His cup of coffee, instead of
+clearing his thoughts, had merely accelerated their pace.
+
+At Genoa he wandered about in the hot streets, bought a cheap suit-case
+and some underclothes, and then went down to the port in search of a
+little hotel he remembered there. An hour later he was sitting in the
+coffee-room, smoking and glancing vacantly over the papers while he
+waited for dinner, when he became aware of being timidly but intently
+examined by a small round-faced gentleman with eyeglasses who sat alone
+at the adjoining table.
+
+“Hullo--Buttles!” Lansing exclaimed, recognising with surprise the
+recalcitrant secretary who had resisted Miss Hicks’s endeavour to
+convert him to Tiepolo.
+
+Mr. Buttles, blushing to the roots of his scant hair, half rose and
+bowed ceremoniously.
+
+Nick Lansing’s first feeling was of annoyance at being disturbed in his
+solitary broodings; his next, of relief at having to postpone them even
+to converse with Mr. Buttles.
+
+“No idea you were here: is the yacht in harbour?” he asked, remembering
+that the Ibis must be just about to spread her wings.
+
+Mr. Buttles, at salute behind his chair, signed a mute negation: for the
+moment he seemed too embarrassed to speak.
+
+“Ah--you’re here as an advance guard? I remember now--I saw Miss Hicks
+in Venice the day before yesterday,” Lansing continued, dazed at the
+thought that hardly forty-eight hours had passed since his encounter
+with Coral in the Scalzi.
+
+Mr. Buttles, instead of speaking, had tentatively approached his table.
+“May I take this seat for a moment, Mr. Lansing? Thank you. No, I am
+not here as an advance guard--though I believe the Ibis is due some
+time to-morrow.” He cleared his throat, wiped his eyeglasses on a silk
+handkerchief, replaced them on his nose, and went on solemnly: “Perhaps,
+to clear up any possible misunderstanding, I ought to say that I am no
+longer in the employ of Mr. Hicks.”
+
+Lansing glanced at him sympathetically. It was clear that he suffered
+horribly in imparting this information, though his compact face did not
+lend itself to any dramatic display of emotion.
+
+“Really,” Nick smiled, and then ventured: “I hope it’s not owing to
+conscientious objections to Tiepolo?”
+
+Mr. Buttles’s blush became a smouldering agony. “Ah, Miss Hicks
+mentioned to you... told you...? No, Mr. Lansing. I am principled
+against the effete art of Tiepolo, and of all his contemporaries, I
+confess; but if Miss Hicks chooses to surrender herself momentarily
+to the unwholesome spell of the Italian decadence it is not for me to
+protest or to criticize. Her intellectual and aesthetic range so far
+exceeds my humble capacity that it would be ridiculous, unbecoming....”
+
+He broke off, and once more wiped a faint moisture from his eyeglasses.
+It was evident that he was suffering from a distress which he longed and
+yet dreaded to communicate. But Nick made no farther effort to bridge
+the gulf of his own preoccupations; and Mr. Buttles, after an expectant
+pause, went on: “If you see me here to-day it is only because, after
+a somewhat abrupt departure, I find myself unable to take leave of
+our friends without a last look at the Ibis--the scene of so many
+stimulating hours. But I must beg you,” he added earnestly, “should you
+see Miss Hicks--or any other member of the party--to make no allusion
+to my presence in Genoa. I wish,” said Mr. Buttles with simplicity, “to
+preserve the strictest incognito.”
+
+Lansing glanced at him kindly. “Oh, but--isn’t that a little
+unfriendly?”
+
+“No other course is possible, Mr. Lansing,” said the ex-secretary, “and
+I commit myself to your discretion. The truth is, if I am here it is not
+to look once more at the Ibis, but at Miss Hicks: once only. You will
+understand me, and appreciate what I am suffering.”
+
+He bowed again, and trotted away on his small, tightly-booted feet;
+pausing on the threshold to say: “From the first it was hopeless,”
+ before he disappeared through the glass doors.
+
+A gleam of commiseration flashed through Nick’s mind: there was
+something quaintly poignant in the sight of the brisk and efficient
+Mr. Buttles reduced to a limp image of unrequited passion. And what
+a painful surprise to the Hickses to be thus suddenly deprived of the
+secretary who possessed “the foreign languages”! Mr. Beck kept the
+accounts and settled with the hotel-keepers; but it was Mr. Buttles’s
+loftier task to entertain in their own tongues the unknown geniuses who
+flocked about the Hickses, and Nick could imagine how disconcerting his
+departure must be on the eve of their Grecian cruise which Mrs. Hicks
+would certainly call an Odyssey.
+
+The next moment the vision of Coral’s hopeless suitor had faded, and
+Nick was once more spinning around on the wheel of his own woes.
+The night before, when he had sent his note to Susy, from a little
+restaurant close to Palazzo Vanderlyn that they often patronized, he had
+done so with the firm intention of going away for a day or two in order
+to collect his wits and think over the situation. But after his letter
+had been entrusted to the landlord’s little son, who was a particular
+friend of Susy’s, Nick had decided to await the lad’s return. The
+messenger had not been bidden to ask for an answer; but Nick, knowing
+the friendly and inquisitive Italian mind, was almost sure that the boy,
+in the hope of catching a glimpse of Susy, would linger about while the
+letter was carried up. And he pictured the maid knocking at his wife’s
+darkened room, and Susy dashing some powder on her tear-stained face
+before she turned on the light--poor foolish child!
+
+The boy had returned rather sooner than Nick expected, and he had
+brought no answer, but merely the statement that the signora was out:
+that everybody was out.
+
+“Everybody?”
+
+“The signora and the four gentlemen who were dining at the palace. They
+all went out together on foot soon after dinner. There was no one to
+whom I could give the note but the gondolier on the landing, for the
+signora had said she would be very late, and had sent the maid to bed;
+and the maid had, of course, gone out immediately with her innamorato.”
+
+“Ah--” said Nick, slipping his reward into the boy’s hand, and walking
+out of the restaurant.
+
+Susy had gone out--gone out with their usual band, as she did every
+night in these sultry summer weeks, gone out after her talk with Nick,
+as if nothing had happened, as if his whole world and hers had not
+crashed in ruins at their feet. Ah, poor Susy! After all, she had merely
+obeyed the instinct of self preservation, the old hard habit of keeping
+up, going ahead and hiding her troubles; unless indeed the habit had
+already engendered indifference, and it had become as easy for her as
+for most of her friends to pass from drama to dancing, from sorrow to
+the cinema. What of soul was left, he wondered--?
+
+His train did not start till midnight, and after leaving the restaurant
+Nick tramped the sultry by-ways till his tired legs brought him to a
+standstill under the vine-covered pergola of a gondolier’s wine-shop at
+a landing close to the Piazzetta. There he could absorb cooling drinks
+until it was time to go to the station.
+
+It was after eleven, and he was beginning to look about for a boat, when
+a black prow pushed up to the steps, and with much chaff and laughter a
+party of young people in evening dress jumped out. Nick, from under the
+darkness of the vine, saw that there was only one lady among them, and
+it did not need the lamp above the landing to reveal her identity. Susy,
+bareheaded and laughing, a light scarf slipping from her bare shoulders,
+a cigarette between her fingers, took Strefford’s arm and turned in the
+direction of Florian’s, with Gillow, the Prince and young Breckenridge
+in her wake....
+
+Nick had relived this rapid scene hundreds of times during his hours
+in the train and his aimless trampings through the streets of Genoa. In
+that squirrel-wheel of a world of his and Susy’s you had to keep going
+or drop out--and Susy, it was evident, had chosen to keep going. Under
+the lamp-flare on the landing he had had a good look at her face, and
+had seen that the mask of paint and powder was carefully enough adjusted
+to hide any ravages the scene between them might have left. He even
+fancied that she had dropped a little atropine into her eyes....
+
+There was no time to spare if he meant to catch the midnight train, and
+no gondola in sight but that which his wife had just left. He sprang
+into it, and bade the gondolier carry him to the station. The cushions,
+as he leaned back, gave out a breath of her scent; and in the glare of
+electric light at the station he saw at his feet a rose which had fallen
+from her dress. He ground his heel into it as he got out.
+
+There it was, then; that was the last picture he was to have of her. For
+he knew now that he was not going back; at least not to take up their
+life together. He supposed he should have to see her once, to talk
+things over, settle something for their future. He had been sincere in
+saying that he bore her no ill-will; only he could never go back into
+that slough again. If he did, he knew he would inevitably be drawn
+under, slipping downward from concession to concession....
+
+The noises of a hot summer night in the port of Genoa would have kept
+the most care-free from slumber; but though Nick lay awake he did
+not notice them, for the tumult in his brain was more deafening. Dawn
+brought a negative relief, and out of sheer weariness he dropped into a
+heavy sleep. When he woke it was nearly noon, and from his window he saw
+the well-known outline of the Ibis standing up dark against the glitter
+of the harbour. He had no fear of meeting her owners, who had doubtless
+long since landed and betaken themselves to cooler and more fashionable
+regions: oddly enough, the fact seemed to accentuate his loneliness, his
+sense of having no one on earth to turn to. He dressed, and wandered out
+disconsolately to pick up a cup of coffee in some shady corner.
+
+As he drank his coffee his thoughts gradually cleared. It became
+obvious to him that he had behaved like a madman or a petulant child--he
+preferred to think it was like a madman. If he and Susy were to separate
+there was no reason why it should not be done decently and quietly, as
+such transactions were habitually managed among people of their kind.
+It seemed grotesque to introduce melodrama into their little world
+of unruffled Sybarites, and he felt inclined, now, to smile at the
+incongruity of his gesture.... But suddenly his eyes filled with tears.
+The future without Susy was unbearable, inconceivable. Why, after all,
+should they separate? At the question, her soft face seemed close
+to his, and that slight lift of the upper lip that made her smile so
+exquisite. Well--he would go back. But not with any presence of going to
+talk things over, come to an agreement, wind up their joint life like
+a business association. No--if he went back he would go without
+conditions, for good, forever....
+
+Only, what about the future? What about the not far-distant day when
+the wedding cheques would have been spent, and Granny’s pearls sold,
+and nothing left except unconcealed and unconditional dependence on rich
+friends, the role of the acknowledged hangers-on? Was there no other
+possible solution, no new way of ordering their lives? No--there
+was none: he could not picture Susy out of her setting of luxury and
+leisure, could not picture either of them living such a life as the Nat
+Fulmers, for instance! He remembered the shabby untidy bungalow in
+New Hampshire, the slatternly servants, uneatable food and ubiquitous
+children. How could he ask Susy to share such a life with him? If he
+did, she would probably have the sense to refuse. Their alliance had
+been based on a moment’s midsummer madness; now the score must be
+paid....
+
+He decided to write. If they were to part he could not trust himself to
+see her. He called a waiter, asked for pen and paper, and pushed aside
+a pile of unread newspapers on the corner of the table where his coffee
+had been served. As he did so, his eye lit on a Daily Mail of two days
+before. As a pretext for postponing his letter, he took up the paper and
+glanced down the first page. He read:
+
+“Tragic Yachting Accident in the Solent. The Earl of Altringham and
+his son Viscount d’Amblay drowned in midnight collision. Both bodies
+recovered.”
+
+He read on. He grasped the fact that the disaster had happened the
+night before he had left Venice and that, as the result of a fog in
+the Solent, their old friend Strefford was now Earl of Altringham, and
+possessor of one of the largest private fortunes in England. It was
+vertiginous to think of their old impecunious Streff as the hero of such
+an adventure. And what irony in that double turn of the wheel which, in
+one day, had plunged him, Nick Lansing, into nethermost misery, while it
+tossed the other to the stars!
+
+With an intenser precision he saw again Susy’s descent from the gondola
+at the calle steps, the sound of her laughter and of Strefford’s chaff,
+the way she had caught his arm and clung to it, sweeping the other men
+on in her train. Strefford--Susy and Strefford!... More than once, Nick
+had noticed the softer inflections of his friend’s voice when he spoke
+to Susy, the brooding look in his lazy eyes when they rested on her. In
+the security of his wedded bliss Nick had made light of those signs. The
+only real jealousy he had felt had been of Fred Gillow, because of his
+unlimited power to satisfy a woman’s whims. Yet Nick knew that such
+material advantages would never again suffice for Susy. With Strefford
+it was different. She had delighted in his society while he was
+notoriously ineligible; might not she find him irresistible now?
+
+The forgotten terms of their bridal compact came back to Nick: the
+absurd agreement on which he and Susy had solemnly pledged their faith.
+But was it so absurd, after all? It had been Susy’s suggestion (not his,
+thank God!); and perhaps in making it she had been more serious than he
+imagined. Perhaps, even if their rupture had not occurred, Strefford’s
+sudden honours might have caused her to ask for her freedom....
+
+Money, luxury, fashion, pleasure: those were the four cornerstones
+of her existence. He had always known it--she herself had always
+acknowledged it, even in their last dreadful talk together; and once he
+had gloried in her frankness. How could he ever have imagined that, to
+have her fill of these things, she would not in time stoop lower than
+she had yet stooped? Perhaps in giving her up to Strefford he might be
+saving her. At any rate, the taste of the past was now so bitter to him
+that he was moved to thank whatever gods there were for pushing that
+mortuary paragraph under his eye....
+
+“Susy, dear [he wrote], the fates seem to have taken our future in hand,
+and spared us the trouble of unravelling it. If I have sometimes been
+selfish enough to forget the conditions on which you agreed to marry
+me, they have come back to me during these two days of solitude. You’ve
+given me the best a man can have, and nothing else will ever be worth
+much to me. But since I haven’t the ability to provide you with what you
+want, I recognize that I’ve no right to stand in your way. We must owe
+no more Venetian palaces to underhand services. I see by the newspapers
+that Streff can now give you as many palaces as you want. Let him have
+the chance--I fancy he’ll jump at it, and he’s the best man in sight. I
+wish I were in his shoes.
+
+“I’ll write again in a day or two, when I’ve collected my wits, and can
+give you an address. NICK.”
+
+He added a line on the subject of their modest funds, put the letter
+into an envelope, and addressed it to Mrs. Nicholas Lansing. As he did
+so, he reflected that it was the first time he had ever written his
+wife’s married name.
+
+“Well--by God, no other woman shall have it after her,” he vowed, as he
+groped in his pocketbook for a stamp.
+
+He stood up with a stretch of weariness--the heat was stifling!--and put
+the letter in his pocket.
+
+“I’ll post it myself, it’s safer,” he thought; “and then what in the
+name of goodness shall I do next, I wonder?” He jammed his hat down on
+his head and walked out into the sun-blaze.
+
+As he was turning away from the square by the general Post Office, a
+white parasol waved from a passing cab, and Coral Hicks leaned forward
+with outstretched hand. “I knew I’d find you,” she triumphed. “I’ve
+been driving up and down in this broiling sun for hours, shopping and
+watching for you at the same time.”
+
+He stared at her blankly, too bewildered even to wonder how she knew he
+was in Genoa; and she continued, with the kind of shy imperiousness that
+always made him feel, in her presence, like a member of an orchestra
+under a masterful baton; “Now please get right into this carriage, and
+don’t keep me roasting here another minute.” To the cabdriver she called
+out: “Al porto.”
+
+Nick Lansing sank down beside her. As he did so he noticed a heap of
+bundles at her feet, and felt that he had simply added one more to the
+number. He supposed that she was taking her spoils to the Ibis, and
+that he would be carried up to the deck-house to be displayed with the
+others. Well, it would all help to pass the day--and by night he would
+have reached some kind of a decision about his future.
+
+On the third day after Nick’s departure the post brought to the Palazzo
+Vanderlyn three letters for Mrs. Lansing.
+
+The first to arrive was a word from Strefford, scribbled in the train
+and posted at Turin. In it he briefly said that he had been called home
+by the dreadful accident of which Susy had probably read in the daily
+papers. He added that he would write again from England, and then--in
+a blotted postscript--: “I wanted uncommonly badly to see you for
+good-bye, but the hour was impossible. Regards to Nick. Do write me just
+a word to Altringham.”
+
+The other two letters, which came together in the afternoon, were both
+from Genoa. Susy scanned the addresses and fell upon the one in her
+husband’s writing. Her hand trembled so much that for a moment she could
+not open the envelope. When she had done so, she devoured the letter in
+a flash, and then sat and brooded over the outspread page as it lay on
+her knee. It might mean so many things--she could read into it so
+many harrowing alternatives of indifference and despair, of irony and
+tenderness! Was he suffering tortures when he wrote it, or seeking
+only to inflict them upon her? Or did the words represent his actual
+feelings, no more and no less, and did he really intend her to
+understand that he considered it his duty to abide by the letter of
+their preposterous compact? He had left her in wrath and indignation,
+yet, as a closer scrutiny revealed, there was not a word of reproach in
+his brief lines. Perhaps that was why, in the last issue, they seemed so
+cold to her.... She shivered and turned to the other envelope.
+
+The large stilted characters, though half-familiar, called up no
+definite image. She opened the envelope and discovered a post-card of
+the Ibis, canvas spread, bounding over a rippled sea. On the back was
+written:
+
+“So awfully dear of you to lend us Mr. Lansing for a little cruise. You
+may count on our taking the best of care of him.
+
+“CORAL”
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+XIII
+
+WHEN Violet Melrose had said to Susy Branch, the winter before in New
+York: “But why on earth don’t you and Nick go to my little place at
+Versailles for the honeymoon? I’m off to China, and you could have it to
+yourselves all summer,” the offer had been tempting enough to make the
+lovers waver.
+
+It was such an artless ingenuous little house, so full of the
+demoralizing simplicity of great wealth, that it seemed to Susy just the
+kind of place in which to take the first steps in renunciation. But Nick
+had objected that Paris, at that time of year, would be swarming with
+acquaintances who would hunt them down at all hours; and Susy’s own
+experience had led her to remark that there was nothing the very rich
+enjoyed more than taking pot-luck with the very poor. They therefore
+gave Strefford’s villa the preference, with an inward proviso (on Susy’s
+part) that Violet’s house might very conveniently serve their purpose at
+another season.
+
+These thoughts were in her mind as she drove up to Mrs. Melrose’s door
+on a rainy afternoon late in August, her boxes piled high on the roof of
+the cab she had taken at the station. She had travelled straight through
+from Venice, stopping in Milan just long enough to pick up a reply
+to the telegram she had despatched to the perfect housekeeper whose
+permanent presence enabled Mrs. Melrose to say: “Oh, when I’m sick
+of everything I just rush off without warning to my little shanty at
+Versailles, and live there all alone on scrambled eggs.”
+
+The perfect house-keeper had replied to Susy’s enquiry: “Am sure Mrs.
+Melrose most happy”; and Susy, without further thought, had jumped
+into a Versailles train, and now stood in the thin rain before the
+sphinx-guarded threshold of the pavilion.
+
+The revolving year had brought around the season at which Mrs. Melrose’s
+house might be convenient: no visitors were to be feared at Versailles
+at the end of August, and though Susy’s reasons for seeking solitude
+were so remote from those she had once prefigured, they were none the
+less cogent. To be alone--alone! After those first exposed days when,
+in the persistent presence of Fred Gillow and his satellites, and in the
+mocking radiance of late summer on the lagoons, she had fumed and turned
+about in her agony like a trapped animal in a cramping cage, to be alone
+had seemed the only respite, the one craving: to be alone somewhere in a
+setting as unlike as possible to the sensual splendours of Venice, under
+skies as unlike its azure roof. If she could have chosen she would have
+crawled away into a dingy inn in a rainy northern town, where she had
+never been and no one knew her. Failing that unobtainable luxury, here
+she was on the threshold of an empty house, in a deserted place, under
+lowering skies. She had shaken off Fred Gillow, sulkily departing for
+his moor (where she had half-promised to join him in September); the
+Prince, young Breckenridge, and the few remaining survivors of the
+Venetian group, had dispersed in the direction of the Engadine or
+Biarritz; and now she could at least collect her wits, take stock of
+herself, and prepare the countenance with which she was to face the next
+stage in her career. Thank God it was raining at Versailles!
+
+The door opened, she heard voices in the drawing-room, and a slender
+languishing figure appeared on the threshold.
+
+“Darling!” Violet Melrose cried in an embrace, drawing her into the
+dusky perfumed room.
+
+“But I thought you were in China!” Susy stammered.
+
+“In China... in China,” Mrs. Melrose stared with dreamy eyes, and Susy
+remembered her drifting disorganised life, a life more planless, more
+inexplicable than that of any of the other ephemeral beings blown about
+upon the same winds of pleasure.
+
+“Well, Madam, I thought so myself till I got a wire from Mrs. Melrose
+last evening,” remarked the perfect house-keeper, following with Susy’s
+handbag.
+
+Mrs. Melrose clutched her cavernous temples in her attenuated hands. “Of
+course, of course! I had meant to go to China--no, India.... But I’ve
+discovered a genius... and Genius, you know....” Unable to complete
+her thought, she sank down upon a pillowy divan, stretched out an arm,
+cried: “Fulmer! Fulmer!” and, while Susy Lansing stood in the middle
+of the room with widening eyes, a man emerged from the more deeply
+cushioned and scented twilight of some inner apartment, and she saw with
+surprise Nat Fulmer, the good Nat Fulmer of the New Hampshire bungalow
+and the ubiquitous progeny, standing before her in lordly ease, his
+hands in his pockets, a cigarette between his lips, his feet solidly
+planted in the insidious depths of one of Violet Melrose’s white leopard
+skins.
+
+“Susy!” he shouted with open arms; and Mrs. Melrose murmured: “You
+didn’t know, then? You hadn’t heard of his masterpieces?”
+
+In spite of herself, Susy burst into a laugh. “Is Nat your genius?”
+
+Mrs. Melrose looked at her reproachfully.
+
+Fulmer laughed. “No; I’m Grace’s. But Mrs. Melrose has been our
+Providence, and....”
+
+“Providence?” his hostess interrupted. “Don’t talk as if you were at
+a prayer-meeting! He had an exhibition in New York... it was the most
+fabulous success. He’s come abroad to make studies for the decoration of
+my music-room in New York. Ursula Gillow has given him her garden-house
+at Roslyn to do. And Mrs. Bockheimer’s ball-room--oh, Fulmer, where are
+the cartoons?” She sprang up, tossed about some fashion-papers heaped on
+a lacquer table, and sank back exhausted by the effort. “I’d got as far
+as Brindisi. I’ve travelled day and night to be here to meet him,” she
+declared. “But, you darling,” and she held out a caressing hand to Susy,
+“I’m forgetting to ask if you’ve had tea?”
+
+An hour later, over the tea-table, Susy already felt herself
+mysteriously reabsorbed into what had so long been her native element.
+Ellie Vanderlyn had brought a breath of it to Venice; but Susy was then
+nourished on another air, the air of Nick’s presence and personality;
+now that she was abandoned, left again to her own devices, she felt
+herself suddenly at the mercy of the influences from which she thought
+she had escaped.
+
+In the queer social whirligig from which she had so lately fled, it
+seemed natural enough that a shake of the box should have tossed Nat
+Fulmer into celebrity, and sent Violet Melrose chasing back from the
+ends of the earth to bask in his success. Susy knew that Mrs. Melrose
+belonged to the class of moral parasites; for in that strange world the
+parts were sometimes reversed, and the wealthy preyed upon the pauper.
+Wherever there was a reputation to batten on, there poor Violet
+appeared, a harmless vampire in pearls who sought only to feed on the
+notoriety which all her millions could not create for her. Any one less
+versed than Susy in the shallow mysteries of her little world would have
+seen in Violet Melrose a baleful enchantress, in Nat Fulmer her helpless
+victim. Susy knew better. Violet, poor Violet, was not even that. The
+insignificant Ellie Vanderlyn, with her brief trivial passions, her
+artless mixture of amorous and social interests, was a woman with
+a purpose, a creature who fulfilled herself; but Violet was only a
+drifting interrogation.
+
+And what of Fulmer? Mustering with new eyes his short sturdily-built
+figure, his nondescript bearded face, and the eyes that dreamed and
+wandered, and then suddenly sank into you like claws, Susy seemed to
+have found the key to all his years of dogged toil, his indifference
+to neglect, indifference to poverty, indifference to the needs of
+his growing family.... Yes: for the first time she saw that he looked
+commonplace enough to be a genius--was a genius, perhaps, even though
+it was Violet Melrose who affirmed it! Susy looked steadily at Fulmer,
+their eyes met, and he smiled at her faintly through his beard.
+
+“Yes, I did discover him--I did,” Mrs. Melrose was insisting, from the
+depths of the black velvet divan in which she lay sunk like a wan Nereid
+in a midnight sea. “You mustn’t believe a word that Ursula Gillow tells
+you about having pounced on his ‘Spring Snow Storm’ in a dark corner of
+the American Artists’ exhibition--skied, if you please! They skied him
+less than a year ago! And naturally Ursula never in her life looked
+higher than the first line at a picture-show. And now she actually
+pretends... oh, for pity’s sake don’t say it doesn’t matter, Fulmer!
+Your saying that just encourages her, and makes people think she
+did. When, in reality, any one who saw me at the exhibition on
+varnishing-day.... Who? Well, Eddy Breckenridge, for instance. He was
+in Egypt, you say? Perhaps he was! As if one could remember the people
+about one, when suddenly one comes upon a great work of art, as St.
+Paul did--didn’t he?--and the scales fell from his eyes. Well... that’s
+exactly what happened to me that day... and Ursula, everybody knows, was
+down at Roslyn at the time, and didn’t come up for the opening of the
+exhibition at all. And Fulmer sits there and laughs, and says it
+doesn’t matter, and that he’ll paint another picture any day for me to
+discover!”
+
+Susy had rung the door-bell with a hand trembling with
+eagerness--eagerness to be alone, to be quiet, to stare her situation in
+the face, and collect herself before she came out again among her kind.
+She had stood on the door-step, cowering among her bags, counting the
+instants till a step sounded and the door-knob turned, letting her in
+from the searching glare of the outer world.... And now she had sat for
+an hour in Violet’s drawing-room, in the very house where her honey-moon
+might have been spent; and no one had asked her where she had come from,
+or why she was alone, or what was the key to the tragedy written on her
+shrinking face....
+
+That was the way of the world they lived in. Nobody questioned, nobody
+wondered any more--because nobody had time to remember. The old risk of
+prying curiosity, of malicious gossip, was virtually over: one was left
+with one’s drama, one’s disaster, on one’s hands, because there was
+nobody to stop and notice the little shrouded object one was carrying.
+As Susy watched the two people before her, each so frankly unaffected
+by her presence, Violet Melrose so engrossed in her feverish pursuit of
+notoriety, Fulmer so plunged in the golden sea of his success, she felt
+like a ghost making inaudible and imperceptible appeals to the grosser
+senses of the living.
+
+“If I wanted to be alone,” she thought, “I’m alone enough, in all
+conscience.” There was a deathly chill in such security. She turned to
+Fulmer.
+
+“And Grace?”
+
+He beamed back without sign of embarrassment. “Oh, she’s here,
+naturally--we’re in Paris, kids and all. In a pension, where we can
+polish up the lingo. But I hardly ever lay eyes on her, because she’s
+as deep in music as I am in paint; it was as big a chance for her as for
+me, you see, and she’s making the most of it, fiddling and listening to
+the fiddlers. Well, it’s a considerable change from New Hampshire.” He
+looked at her dreamily, as if making an intense effort to detach himself
+from his dream, and situate her in the fading past. “Remember the
+bungalow? And Nick--ah, how’s Nick?” he brought out triumphantly.
+
+“Oh, yes--darling Nick?” Mrs. Melrose chimed in; and Susy, her head
+erect, her cheeks aflame, declared with resonance: “Most awfully
+well--splendidly!”
+
+“He’s not here, though?” from Fulmer.
+
+“No. He’s off travelling--cruising.”
+
+Mrs. Melrose’s attention was faintly roused. “With anybody interesting?”
+
+“No; you wouldn’t know them. People we met....” She did not have to
+continue, for her hostess’s gaze had again strayed.
+
+“And you’ve come for your clothes, I suppose, darling? Don’t listen
+to people who say that skirts are to be wider. I’ve discovered a new
+woman--a Genius--and she absolutely swathes you.... Her name’s my
+secret; but we’ll go to her together.”
+
+Susy rose from her engulphing armchair. “Do you mind if I go up to my
+room? I’m rather tired--coming straight through.”
+
+“Of course, dear. I think there are some people coming to dinner... Mrs.
+Match will tell you. She has such a memory.... Fulmer, where on earth
+are those cartoons of the music-room?”
+
+Their voices pursued Susy upstairs, as, in Mrs. Match’s perpendicular
+wake, she mounted to the white-panelled room with its gay linen hangings
+and the low bed heaped with more cushions.
+
+“If we’d come here,” she thought, “everything might have been
+different.” And she shuddered at the sumptuous memories of the Palazzo
+Vanderlyn, and the great painted bedroom where she had met her doom.
+
+Mrs. Match, hoping she would find everything, and mentioning that dinner
+was not till nine, shut her softly in among her terrors.
+
+“Find everything?” Susy echoed the phrase. Oh, yes, she would always
+find everything: every time the door shut on her now, and the sound of
+voices ceased, her memories would be there waiting for her, every one
+of them, waiting quietly, patiently, obstinately, like poor people in a
+doctor’s office, the people who are always last to be attended to,
+but whom nothing will discourage or drive away, people to whom time is
+nothing, fatigue nothing, hunger nothing, other engagements nothing: who
+just wait.... Thank heaven, after all, that she had not found the
+house empty, if, whenever she returned to her room, she was to meet her
+memories there!
+
+It was just a week since Nick had left her. During that week, crammed
+with people, questions, packing, explaining, evading, she had believed
+that in solitude lay her salvation. Now she understood that there was
+nothing she was so unprepared for, so unfitted for. When, in all her
+life, had she ever been alone? And how was she to bear it now, with all
+these ravening memories besetting her!
+
+Dinner not till nine? What on earth was she to do till nine o’clock? She
+knelt before her boxes, and feverishly began to unpack.
+
+Gradually, imperceptibly, the subtle influences of her old life were
+stealing into her. As she pulled out her tossed and crumpled dresses she
+remembered Violet’s emphatic warning: “Don’t believe the people who tell
+you that skirts are going to be wider.” Were hers, perhaps, too wide
+as it was? She looked at her limp raiment, piling itself up on bed and
+sofa, and understood that, according to Violet’s standards, and that
+of all her set, those dresses, which Nick had thought so original and
+exquisite, were already commonplace and dowdy, fit only to be passed on
+to poor relations or given to one’s maid. And Susy would have to go on
+wearing them till they fell to bits--or else.... Well, or else begin the
+old life again in some new form....
+
+She laughed aloud at the turn of her thoughts. Dresses? How little they
+had mattered a few short weeks ago! And now, perhaps, they would again
+be one of the foremost considerations in her life. How could it be
+otherwise, if she were to return again to her old dependence on Ellie
+Vanderlyn, Ursula Gillow, Violet Melrose? And beyond that, only the
+Bockheimers and their kind awaited her....
+
+A knock on the door--what a relief! It was Mrs. Match again, with a
+telegram. To whom had Susy given her new address? With a throbbing heart
+she tore open the envelope and read:
+
+“Shall be in Paris Friday for twenty-four hours where can I see you
+write Nouveau Luxe.”
+
+Ah, yes--she remembered now: she had written to Strefford! And this was
+his answer: he was coming. She dropped into a chair, and tried to think.
+What on earth had she said in her letter? It had been mainly, of course,
+one of condolence; but now she remembered having added, in a precipitate
+postscript: “I can’t give your message to Nick, for he’s gone off with
+the Hickses--I don’t know where, or for how long. It’s all right, of
+course: it was in our bargain.”
+
+She had not meant to put in that last phrase; but as she sealed her
+letter to Strefford her eye had fallen on Nick’s missive, which lay
+beside it. Nothing in her husband’s brief lines had embittered her as
+much as the allusion to Strefford. It seemed to imply that Nick’s own
+plans were made, that his own future was secure, and that he could
+therefore freely and handsomely take thought for hers, and give her a
+pointer in the right direction. Sudden rage had possessed her at the
+thought: where she had at first read jealousy she now saw only a cold
+providence, and in a blur of tears she had scrawled her postscript to
+Strefford. She remembered that she had not even asked him to keep her
+secret. Well--after all, what would it matter if people should already
+know that Nick had left her? Their parting could not long remain a
+mystery, and the fact that it was known might help her to keep up a
+presence of indifference.
+
+“It was in the bargain--in the bargain,” rang through her brain as she
+re-read Strefford’s telegram. She understood that he had snatched the
+time for this hasty trip solely in the hope of seeing her, and her eyes
+filled. The more bitterly she thought of Nick the more this proof of
+Strefford’s friendship moved her.
+
+The clock, to her relief, reminded her that it was time to dress for
+dinner. She would go down presently, chat with Violet and Fulmer, and
+with Violet’s other guests, who would probably be odd and amusing, and
+too much out of her world to embarrass her by awkward questions. She
+would sit at a softly-lit table, breathe delicate scents, eat exquisite
+food (trust Mrs. Match!), and be gradually drawn again under the spell
+of her old associations. Anything, anything but to be alone....
+
+She dressed with even more than her habitual care, reddened her lips
+attentively, brushed the faintest bloom of pink over her drawn cheeks,
+and went down--to meet Mrs. Match coming up with a tray.
+
+“Oh, Madam, I thought you were too tired.... I was bringing it up to you
+myself--just a little morsel of chicken.”
+
+Susy, glancing past her, saw, through the open door, that the lamps were
+not lit in the drawing-room.
+
+“Oh, no, I’m not tired, thank you. I thought Mrs. Melrose expected
+friends at dinner!”
+
+“Friends at dinner-to-night?” Mrs. Match heaved a despairing sigh.
+Sometimes, the sigh seemed to say, her mistress put too great a strain
+upon her. “Why, Mrs. Melrose and Mr. Fulmer were engaged to dine in
+Paris. They left an hour ago. Mrs. Melrose told me she’d told you,” the
+house-keeper wailed.
+
+Susy kept her little fixed smile. “I must have misunderstood. In that
+case... well, yes, if it’s no trouble, I believe I will have my tray
+upstairs.”
+
+Slowly she turned, and followed the housekeeper up into the dread
+solitude she had just left.
+
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+
+
+THE next day a lot of people turned up unannounced for luncheon. They
+were not of the far-fetched and the exotic, in whom Mrs. Melrose now
+specialized, but merely commonplace fashionable people belonging to
+Susy’s own group, people familiar with the amusing romance of her
+penniless marriage, and to whom she had to explain (though none of them
+really listened to the explanation) that Nick was not with her just
+now but had gone off cruising... cruising in the AEgean with friends...
+getting up material for his book (this detail had occurred to her in the
+night).
+
+It was the kind of encounter she had most dreaded; but it proved, after
+all, easy enough to go through compared with those endless hours of
+turning to and fro, the night before, in the cage of her lonely room.
+Anything, anything, but to be alone....
+
+Gradually, from the force of habit, she found herself actually in tune
+with the talk of the luncheon table, interested in the references to
+absent friends, the light allusions to last year’s loves and quarrels,
+scandals and absurdities. The women, in their pale summer dresses,
+were so graceful, indolent and sure of themselves, the men so easy and
+good-humoured! Perhaps, after all, Susy reflected, it was the world she
+was meant for, since the other, the brief Paradise of her dreams, had
+already shut its golden doors upon her. And then, as they sat on the
+terrace after luncheon, looking across at the yellow tree-tops of the
+park, one of the women said something--made just an allusion--that Susy
+would have let pass unnoticed in the old days, but that now filled her
+with a sudden deep disgust.... She stood up and wandered away, away from
+them all through the fading garden.
+
+Two days later Susy and Strefford sat on the terrace of the Tuileries
+above the Seine. She had asked him to meet her there, with the desire to
+avoid the crowded halls and drawing-room of the Nouveau Luxe where, even
+at that supposedly “dead” season, people one knew were always
+drifting to and fro; and they sat on a bench in the pale sunlight,
+the discoloured leaves heaped at their feet, and no one to share their
+solitude but a lame working-man and a haggard woman who were lunching
+together mournfully at the other end of the majestic vista.
+
+Strefford, in his new mourning, looked unnaturally prosperous and
+well-valeted; but his ugly untidy features remained as undisciplined,
+his smile as whimsical, as of old. He had been on cool though friendly
+terms with the pompous uncle and the poor sickly cousin whose joint
+disappearance had so abruptly transformed his future; and it was his
+way to understate his feelings rather than to pretend more than he
+felt. Nevertheless, beneath his habitual bantering tone Susy discerned
+a change. The disaster had shocked him profoundly; already, in his brief
+sojourn among his people and among the great possessions so tragically
+acquired, old instincts had awakened, forgotten associations had spoken
+in him. Susy listened to him wistfully, silenced by her imaginative
+perception of the distance that these things had put between them.
+
+“It was horrible... seeing them both there together, laid out in that
+hideous Pugin chapel at Altringham... the poor boy especially. I
+suppose that’s really what’s cutting me up now,” he murmured, almost
+apologetically.
+
+“Oh, it’s more than that--more than you know,” she insisted; but he
+jerked back: “Now, my dear, don’t be edifying, please,” and fumbled for
+a cigarette in the pocket which was already beginning to bulge with his
+miscellaneous properties.
+
+“And now about you--for that’s what I came for,” he continued, turning
+to her with one of his sudden movements. “I couldn’t make head or tail
+of your letter.”
+
+She paused a moment to steady her voice. “Couldn’t you? I suppose you’d
+forgotten my bargain with Nick. He hadn’t--and he’s asked me to fulfil
+it.”
+
+Strefford stared. “What--that nonsense about your setting each other
+free if either of you had the chance to make a good match?”
+
+She signed “Yes.”
+
+“And he’s actually asked you--?”
+
+“Well: practically. He’s gone off with the Hickses. Before going he
+wrote me that we’d better both consider ourselves free. And Coral sent
+me a postcard to say that she would take the best of care of him.”
+
+Strefford mused, his eyes upon his cigarette. “But what the deuce led up
+to all this? It can’t have happened like that, out of a clear sky.”
+
+Susy flushed, hesitated, looked away. She had meant to tell Strefford
+the whole story; it had been one of her chief reasons for wishing to see
+him again, and half-unconsciously, perhaps, she had hoped, in his laxer
+atmosphere, to recover something of her shattered self-esteem. But now
+she suddenly felt the impossibility of confessing to anyone the depths
+to which Nick’s wife had stooped. She fancied that her companion guessed
+the nature of her hesitation.
+
+“Don’t tell me anything you don’t want to, you know, my dear.”
+
+“No; I do want to; only it’s difficult. You see--we had so very little
+money....”
+
+“Yes?”
+
+“And Nick--who was thinking of his book, and of all sorts of big things,
+fine things--didn’t realise... left it all to me... to manage....”
+
+She stumbled over the word, remembering how Nick had always winced
+at it. But Strefford did not seem to notice her, and she hurried on,
+unfolding in short awkward sentences the avowal of their pecuniary
+difficulties, and of Nick’s inability to understand that, to keep
+on with the kind of life they were leading, one had to put up with
+things... accept favours....
+
+“Borrow money, you mean?”
+
+“Well--yes; and all the rest.” No--decidedly she could not reveal
+to Strefford the episode of Ellie’s letters. “Nick suddenly felt, I
+suppose, that he couldn’t stand it,” she continued; “and instead of
+asking me to try--to try to live differently, go off somewhere with him
+and live, like work-people, in two rooms, without a servant, as I was
+ready to do; well, instead he wrote me that it had all been a mistake
+from the beginning, that we couldn’t keep it up, and had better
+recognize the fact; and he went off on the Hickses’ yacht. The last
+evening that you were in Venice--the day he didn’t come back to
+dinner--he had gone off to Genoa to meet them. I suppose he intends to
+marry Coral.”
+
+Strefford received this in silence. “Well--it was your bargain, wasn’t
+it?” he said at length.
+
+“Yes; but--”
+
+“Exactly: I always told you so. You weren’t ready to have him go
+yet--that’s all.”
+
+She flushed to the forehead. “Oh, Streff--is it really all?”
+
+“A question of time? If you doubt it, I’d like to see you try, for a
+while, in those two rooms without a servant; and then let me hear from
+you. Why, my dear, it’s only a question of time in a palace, with
+a steam yacht lying off the door-step, and a flock of motors in the
+garage; look around you and see. And did you ever imagine that you and
+Nick, of all people, were going to escape the common doom, and survive
+like Mr. and Mrs. Tithonus, while all about you the eternal passions
+were crumbling to pieces, and your native Divorce-states piling up their
+revenues?”
+
+She sat with bent head, the weight of the long years to come pressing
+like a leaden load on her shoulders.
+
+“But I’m so young... life’s so long. What does last, then?”
+
+“Ah, you’re too young to believe me, if I were to tell you; though
+you’re intelligent enough to understand.”
+
+“What does, then?”
+
+“Why, the hold of the things we all think we could do without.
+Habits--they outstand the Pyramids. Comforts, luxuries, the atmosphere
+of ease... above all, the power to get away from dulness and monotony,
+from constraints and uglinesses. You chose that power, instinctively,
+before you were even grown up; and so did Nick. And the only difference
+between you is that he’s had the sense to see sooner than you that those
+are the things that last, the prime necessities.”
+
+“I don’t believe it!”
+
+“Of course you don’t: at your age one doesn’t reason one’s materialism.
+And besides you’re mortally hurt that Nick has found out sooner than
+you, and hasn’t disguised his discovery under any hypocritical phrases.”
+
+“But surely there are people--”
+
+“Yes--saints and geniuses and heroes: all the fanatics! To which of
+their categories do you suppose we soft people belong? And the heroes
+and the geniuses--haven’t they their enormous frailties and their giant
+appetites? And how should we escape being the victims of our little
+ones?”
+
+She sat for a while without speaking. “But, Streff, how can you say such
+things, when I know you care: care for me, for instance!”
+
+“Care?” He put his hand on hers. “But, my dear, it’s just the
+fugitiveness of mortal caring that makes it so exquisite! It’s because
+we know we can’t hold fast to it, or to each other, or to anything....”
+
+“Yes... yes... but hush, please! Oh, don’t say it!” She stood up, the
+tears in her throat, and he rose also.
+
+“Come along, then; where do we lunch?” he said with a smile, slipping
+his hand through her arm.
+
+“Oh, I don’t know. Nowhere. I think I’m going back to Versailles.”
+
+“Because I’ve disgusted you so deeply? Just my luck--when I came over to
+ask you to marry me!”
+
+She laughed, but he had become suddenly grave. “Upon my soul, I did.”
+
+“Dear Streff! As if--now--”
+
+“Oh, not now--I know. I’m aware that even with your accelerated divorce
+methods--”
+
+“It’s not that. I told you it was no use, Streff--I told you long ago,
+in Venice.”
+
+He shrugged ironically. “It’s not Streff who’s asking you now. Streff
+was not a marrying man: he was only trifling with you. The present offer
+comes from an elderly peer of independent means. Think it over, my dear:
+as many days out as you like, and five footmen kept. There’s not the
+least hurry, of course; but I rather think Nick himself would advise
+it.”
+
+She flushed to the temples, remembering that Nick had; and the
+remembrance made Strefford’s sneering philosophy seem less unbearable.
+Why should she not lunch with him, after all? In the first days of his
+mourning he had come to Paris expressly to see her, and to offer her
+one of the oldest names and one of the greatest fortunes in England.
+She thought of Ursula Gillow, Ellie Vanderlyn, Violet Melrose, of their
+condescending kindnesses, their last year’s dresses, their Christmas
+cheques, and all the careless bounties that were so easy to bestow and
+so hard to accept. “I should rather enjoy paying them back,” something
+in her maliciously murmured.
+
+She did not mean to marry Strefford--she had not even got as far as
+contemplating the possibility of a divorce but it was undeniable that
+this sudden prospect of wealth and freedom was like fresh air in her
+lungs. She laughed again, but now without bitterness.
+
+“Very good, then; we’ll lunch together. But it’s Streff I want to lunch
+with to-day.”
+
+“Ah, well,” her companion agreed, “I rather think that for a tête-à-tête
+he’s better company.”
+
+During their repast in a little restaurant over the Seine, where she
+insisted on the cheapest dishes because she was lunching with “Streff,”
+ he became again his old whimsical companionable self. Once or twice she
+tried to turn the talk to his altered future, and the obligations and
+interests that lay before him; but he shrugged away from the subject,
+questioning her instead about the motley company at Violet Melrose’s,
+and fitting a droll or malicious anecdote to each of the people she
+named.
+
+It was not till they had finished their coffee, and she was glancing at
+her watch with a vague notion of taking the next train, that he asked
+abruptly: “But what are you going to do? You can’t stay forever at
+Violet’s.”
+
+“Oh, no!” she cried with a shiver.
+
+“Well, then--you’ve got some plan, I suppose?”
+
+“Have I?” she wondered, jerked back into grim reality from the soothing
+interlude of their hour together.
+
+“You can’t drift indefinitely, can you? Unless you mean to go back to
+the old sort of life once for all.”
+
+She reddened and her eyes filled. “I can’t do that, Streff--I know I
+can’t!”
+
+“Then what--?”
+
+She hesitated, and brought out with lowered head: “Nick said he would
+write again--in a few days. I must wait--”
+
+“Oh, naturally. Don’t do anything in a hurry.” Strefford also glanced at
+his watch. “Garcon, l’addition! I’m taking the train back to-night, and
+I’ve a lot of things left to do. But look here, my dear--when you come
+to a decision one way or the other let me know, will you? Oh, I don’t
+mean in the matter I’ve most at heart; we’ll consider that closed for
+the present. But at least I can be of use in other ways--hang it, you
+know, I can even lend you money. There’s a new sensation for our jaded
+palates!”
+
+“Oh, Streff... Streff!” she could only falter; and he pressed on gaily:
+“Try it, now do try it--I assure you there’ll be no interest to pay, and
+no conditions attached. And promise to let me know when you’ve decided
+anything.”
+
+She looked into his humorously puckered eyes, answering. Their friendly
+smile with hers.
+
+“I promise!” she said.
+
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+
+
+THAT hour with Strefford had altered her whole perspective. Instead of
+possible dependence, an enforced return to the old life of connivances
+and concessions, she saw before her--whenever she chose to take
+them--freedom, power and dignity. Dignity! It was odd what weight that
+word had come to have for her. She had dimly felt its significance,
+felt the need of its presence in her inmost soul, even in the young
+thoughtless days when she had seemed to sacrifice so little to the
+austere divinities. And since she had been Nick Lansing’s wife she had
+consciously acknowledged it, had suffered and agonized when she fell
+beneath its standard. Yes: to marry Strefford would give her that
+sense of self-respect which, in such a world as theirs, only wealth and
+position could ensure. If she had not the mental or moral training to
+attain independence in any other way, was she to blame for seeking it on
+such terms?
+
+Of course there was always the chance that Nick would come back, would
+find life without her as intolerable as she was finding it without him.
+If that happened--ah, if that happened! Then she would cease to strain
+her eyes into the future, would seize upon the present moment and plunge
+into it to the very bottom of oblivion. Nothing on earth would matter
+then--money or freedom or pride, or her precious moral dignity, if only
+she were in Nick’s arms again!
+
+But there was Nick’s icy letter, there was Coral Hicks’s insolent
+post-card, to show how little chance there was of such a solution. Susy
+understood that, even before the discovery of her transaction with Ellie
+Vanderlyn, Nick had secretly wearied, if not of his wife, at least of
+the life that their marriage compelled him to lead. His passion was not
+strong enough--had never been strong enough--to outweigh his prejudices,
+scruples, principles, or whatever one chose to call them. Susy’s dignity
+might go up like tinder in the blaze of her love; but his was made of a
+less combustible substance. She had felt, in their last talk together,
+that she had forever destroyed the inner harmony between them.
+
+Well--there it was, and the fault was doubtless neither hers nor his,
+but that of the world they had grown up in, of their own moral contempt
+for it and physical dependence on it, of his half-talents and her
+half-principles, of the something in them both that was not stout enough
+to resist nor yet pliant enough to yield. She stared at the fact on the
+journey back to Versailles, and all that sleepless night in her room;
+and the next morning, when the housemaid came in with her breakfast
+tray, she felt the factitious energy that comes from having decided,
+however half-heartedly, on a definite course.
+
+She had said to herself: “If there’s no letter from Nick this time next
+week I’ll write to Streff--” and the week had passed, and there was no
+letter.
+
+It was now three weeks since he had left her, and she had had no
+word but his note from Genoa. She had concluded that, foreseeing the
+probability of her leaving Venice, he would write to her in care of
+their Paris bank. But though she had immediately notified the bank of
+her change of address no communication from Nick had reached her; and
+she smiled with a touch of bitterness at the difficulty he was doubtless
+finding in the composition of the promised letter. Her own scrap-basket,
+for the first days, had been heaped with the fragments of the letters
+she had begun; and she told herself that, since they both found it so
+hard to write, it was probably because they had nothing left to say to
+each other.
+
+Meanwhile the days at Mrs. Melrose’s drifted by as they had been wont
+to drift when, under the roofs of the rich, Susy Branch had marked
+time between one episode and the next of her precarious existence.
+Her experience of such sojourns was varied enough to make her acutely
+conscious of their effect on her temporary hosts; and in the present
+case she knew that Violet was hardly aware of her presence. But if no
+more than tolerated she was at least not felt to be an inconvenience;
+when your hostess forgot about you it proved that at least you were not
+in her way.
+
+Violet, as usual, was perpetually on the wing, for her profound
+indolence expressed itself in a disordered activity. Nat Fulmer had
+returned to Paris; but Susy guessed that his benefactress was still
+constantly in his company, and that when Mrs. Melrose was whirled away
+in her noiseless motor it was generally toward the scene of some new
+encounter between Fulmer and the arts. On these occasions she sometimes
+offered to carry Susy to Paris, and they devoted several long and
+hectic mornings to the dress-makers, where Susy felt herself gradually
+succumbing to the familiar spell of heaped-up finery. It seemed
+impossible, as furs and laces and brocades were tossed aside, brought
+back, and at last carelessly selected from, that anything but the whim
+of the moment need count in deciding whether one should take all or
+none, or that any woman could be worth looking at who did not possess
+the means to make her choice regardless of cost.
+
+Once alone, and in the street again, the evil fumes would evaporate,
+and daylight re-enter Susy’s soul; yet she felt that the old poison was
+slowly insinuating itself into her system. To dispel it she decided
+one day to look up Grace Fulmer. She was curious to know how the
+happy-go-lucky companion of Fulmer’s evil days was bearing the weight of
+his prosperity, and she vaguely felt that it would be refreshing to see
+some one who had never been afraid of poverty.
+
+The airless pension sitting-room, where she waited while a reluctant
+maid-servant screamed about the house for Mrs. Fulmer, did not have
+the hoped-for effect. It was one thing for Grace to put up with such
+quarters when she shared them with Fulmer; but to live there while he
+basked in the lingering radiance of Versailles, or rolled from chateau
+to picture gallery in Mrs. Melrose’s motor, showed a courage that Susy
+felt unable to emulate.
+
+“My dear! I knew you’d look me up,” Grace’s joyous voice ran down the
+stairway; and in another moment she was clasping Susy to her tumbled
+person.
+
+“Nat couldn’t remember if he’d given you our address, though he promised
+me he would, the last time he was here.” She held Susy at arms’
+length, beaming upon her with blinking short-sighted eyes: the same
+old dishevelled Grace, so careless of her neglected beauty and her
+squandered youth, so amused and absent-minded and improvident, that the
+boisterous air of the New Hampshire bungalow seemed to enter with her
+into the little air-tight salon.
+
+While she poured out the tale of Nat’s sudden celebrity, and its
+unexpected consequences, Susy marvelled and dreamed. Was the secret
+of his triumph perhaps due to those long hard unrewarded years, the
+steadfast scorn of popularity, the indifference to every kind of
+material ease in which his wife had so gaily abetted him? Had it been
+bought at the cost of her own freshness and her own talent, of the
+children’s “advantages,” of everything except the closeness of the tie
+between husband and wife? Well--it was worth the price, no doubt; but
+what if, now that honours and prosperity had come, the tie were snapped,
+and Grace were left alone among the ruins?
+
+There was nothing in her tone or words to suggest such a possibility.
+Susy noticed that her ill-assorted raiment was costlier in quality and
+more professional in cut than the home-made garments which had draped
+her growing bulk at the bungalow: it was clear that she was trying to
+dress up to Nat’s new situation. But, above all, she was rejoicing in
+it, filling her hungry lungs with the strong air of his success. It had
+evidently not occurred to her as yet that those who consent to share the
+bread of adversity may want the whole cake of prosperity for themselves.
+
+“My dear, it’s too wonderful! He’s told me to take as many concert and
+opera tickets as I like; he lets me take all the children with me. The
+big concerts don’t begin till later; but of course the Opera is always
+going. And there are little things--there’s music in Paris at all
+seasons. And later it’s just possible we may get to Munich for a
+week--oh, Susy!” Her hands clasped, her eyes brimming, she drank the new
+wine of life almost sacramentally.
+
+“Do you remember, Susy, when you and Nick came to stay at the bungalow?
+Nat said you’d be horrified by our primitiveness--but I knew better! And
+I was right, wasn’t I? Seeing us so happy made you and Nick decide to
+follow our example, didn’t it?” She glowed with the remembrance. “And
+now, what are your plans? Is Nick’s book nearly done? I suppose you’ll
+have to live very economically till he finds a publisher. And the baby,
+darling--when is that to be? If you’re coming home soon I could let you
+have a lot of the children’s little old things.”
+
+“You’re always so dear, Grace. But we haven’t any special plans
+as yet--not even for a baby. And I wish you’d tell me all of yours
+instead.”
+
+Mrs. Fulmer asked nothing better: Susy perceived that, so far, the
+greater part of her European experience had consisted in talking about
+what it was to be. “Well, you see, Nat is so taken up all day with
+sight-seeing and galleries and meeting important people that he hasn’t
+had time to go about with us; and as so few theatres are open, and
+there’s so little music, I’ve taken the opportunity to catch up with
+my mending. Junie helps me with it now--she’s our eldest, you remember?
+She’s grown into a big girl since you saw her. And later, perhaps,
+we’re to travel. And the most wonderful thing of all--next to Nat’s
+recognition, I mean--is not having to contrive and skimp, and give up
+something every single minute. Just think--Nat has even made special
+arrangements here in the pension, so that the children all have second
+helpings to everything. And when I go up to bed I can think of my music,
+instead of lying awake calculating and wondering how I can make things
+come out at the end of the month. Oh, Susy, that’s simply heaven!”
+
+Susy’s heart contracted. She had come to her friend to be taught again
+the lesson of indifference to material things, and instead she was
+hearing from Grace Fulmer’s lips the long-repressed avowal of their
+tyranny. After all, that battle with poverty on the New Hampshire
+hillside had not been the easy smiling business that Grace and Nat had
+made it appear. And yet ... and yet....
+
+Susy stood up abruptly, and straightened the expensive hat which hung
+irresponsibly over Grace’s left ear.
+
+“What’s wrong with it? Junie helped me choose it, and she generally
+knows,” Mrs. Fulmer wailed with helpless hands.
+
+“It’s the way you wear it, dearest--and the bow is rather top-heavy. Let
+me have it a minute, please.” Susy lifted the hat from her friend’s
+head and began to manipulate its trimming. “This is the way Maria Guy or
+Suzanne would do it.... And now go on about Nat....”
+
+She listened musingly while Grace poured forth the tale of her husband’s
+triumph, of the notices in the papers, the demand for his work, the
+fine ladies’ battles over their priority in discovering him, and the
+multiplied orders that had resulted from their rivalry.
+
+“Of course they’re simply furious with each other--Mrs. Melrose and Mrs.
+Gillow especially--because each one pretends to have been the first to
+notice his ‘Spring Snow-Storm,’ and in reality it wasn’t either of them,
+but only poor Bill Haslett, an art-critic we’ve known for years, who
+chanced on the picture, and rushed off to tell a dealer who was looking
+for a new painter to push.” Grace suddenly raised her soft myopic eyes
+to Susy’s face. “But, do you know, the funny thing is that I believe Nat
+is beginning to forget this, and to believe that it was Mrs. Melrose who
+stopped short in front of his picture on the opening day, and screamed
+out: ‘This is genius!’ It seems funny he should care so much, when I’ve
+always known he had genius--and he has known it too. But they’re all so
+kind to him; and Mrs. Melrose especially. And I suppose it makes a thing
+sound new to hear it said in a new voice.”
+
+Susy looked at her meditatively. “And how should you feel if Nat liked
+too much to hear Mrs. Melrose say it? Too much, I mean, to care any
+longer what you felt or thought?”
+
+Her friend’s worn face flushed quickly, and then paled: Susy almost
+repented the question. But Mrs. Fulmer met it with a tranquil dignity.
+“You haven’t been married long enough, dear, to understand... how people
+like Nat and me feel about such things... or how trifling they seem, in
+the balance... the balance of one’s memories.”
+
+Susy stood up again, and flung her arms about her friend. “Oh, Grace,”
+ she laughed with wet eyes, “how can you be as wise as that, and yet not
+have sense enough to buy a decent hat?” She gave Mrs. Fulmer a quick
+embrace and hurried away. She had learned her lesson after all; but it
+was not exactly the one she had come to seek.
+
+The week she had allowed herself had passed, and still there was no word
+from Nick. She allowed herself yet another day, and that too went by
+without a letter. She then decided on a step from which her pride
+had hitherto recoiled; she would call at the bank and ask for Nick’s
+address. She called, embarrassed and hesitating; and was told, after
+enquiries in the post-office department, that Mr. Nicholas Lansing
+had given no address since that of the Palazzo Vanderlyn, three months
+previously. She went back to Versailles that afternoon with the definite
+intention of writing to Strefford unless the next morning’s post brought
+a letter.
+
+The next morning brought nothing from Nick, but a scribbled message from
+Mrs. Melrose: would Susy, as soon as possible, come into her room for
+a word, Susy jumped up, hurried through her bath, and knocked at her
+hostess’s door. In the immense low bed that faced the rich umbrage
+of the park Mrs. Melrose lay smoking cigarettes and glancing over her
+letters. She looked up with her vague smile, and said dreamily: “Susy
+darling, have you any particular plans--for the next few months, I
+mean?”
+
+Susy coloured: she knew the intonation of old, and fancied she
+understood what it implied.
+
+“Plans, dearest? Any number... I’m tearing myself away the day after
+to-morrow... to the Gillows’ moor, very probably,” she hastened to
+announce.
+
+Instead of the relief she had expected to read on Mrs. Melrose’s
+dramatic countenance she discovered there the blankest disappointment.
+
+“Oh, really? That’s too bad. Is it absolutely settled--?”
+
+“As far as I’m concerned,” said Susy crisply.
+
+The other sighed. “I’m too sorry. You see, dear, I’d meant to ask you
+to stay on here quietly and look after the Fulmer children. Fulmer and
+I are going to Spain next week--I want to be with him when he makes his
+studies, receives his first impressions; such a marvellous experience,
+to be there when he and Velasquez meet!” She broke off, lost in
+prospective ecstasy. “And, you see, as Grace Fulmer insists on coming
+with us--”
+
+“Ah, I see.”
+
+“Well, there are the five children--such a problem,” sighed the
+benefactress. “If you were at a loose end, you know, dear, while Nick’s
+away with his friends, I could really make it worth your while....”
+
+“So awfully good of you, Violet; only I’m not, as it happens.”
+
+Oh the relief of being able to say that, gaily, firmly and even
+truthfully! Take charge of the Fulmer children, indeed! Susy remembered
+how Nick and she had fled from them that autumn afternoon in New
+Hampshire. The offer gave her a salutary glimpse of the way in which, as
+the years passed, and she lost her freshness and novelty, she would more
+and more be used as a convenience, a stop-gap, writer of notes, runner
+of errands, nursery governess or companion. She called to mind several
+elderly women of her acquaintance, pensioners of her own group, who
+still wore its livery, struck its attitudes and chattered its jargon,
+but had long since been ruthlessly relegated to these slave-ant offices.
+Never in the world would she join their numbers.
+
+Mrs. Melrose’s face fell, and she looked at Susy with the plaintive
+bewilderment of the wielder of millions to whom everything that cannot
+be bought is imperceptible.
+
+“But I can’t see why you can’t change your plans,” she murmured with a
+soft persistency.
+
+“Ah, well, you know”--Susy paused on a slow inward smile--“they’re not
+mine only, as it happens.”
+
+Mrs. Melrose’s brow clouded. The unforeseen complication of Mrs.
+Fulmer’s presence on the journey had evidently tried her nerves, and
+this new obstacle to her arrangements shook her faith in the divine
+order of things.
+
+“Your plans are not yours only? But surely you won’t let Ursula Gillow
+dictate to you?... There’s my jade pendant; the one you said you liked
+the other day.... The Fulmers won’t go with me, you understand, unless
+they’re satisfied about the children; the whole plan will fall
+through. Susy darling, you were always too unselfish; I hate to see you
+sacrificed to Ursula.”
+
+Susy’s smile lingered. Time was when she might have been glad to add
+the jade pendant to the collection already enriched by Ellie Vanderlyn’s
+sapphires; more recently, she would have resented the offer as an insult
+to her newly-found principles. But already the mere fact that she
+might henceforth, if she chose, be utterly out of reach of such bribes,
+enabled her to look down on them with tolerance. Oh, the blessed moral
+freedom that wealth conferred! She recalled Mrs. Fulmer’s uncontrollable
+cry: “The most wonderful thing of all is not having to contrive and
+skimp, and give up something every single minute!” Yes; it was only on
+such terms that one could call one’s soul one’s own. The sense of it
+gave Susy the grace to answer amicably: “If I could possibly help you
+out, Violet, I shouldn’t want a present to persuade me. And, as you say,
+there’s no reason why I should sacrifice myself to Ursula--or to anybody
+else. Only, as it happens”--she paused and took the plunge--“I’m going
+to England because I’ve promised to see a friend.” That night she wrote
+to Strefford.
+
+
+
+
+
+XVI.
+
+
+
+STRETCHED out under an awning on the deck of the Ibis, Nick Lansing
+looked up for a moment at the vanishing cliffs of Malta and then plunged
+again into his book.
+
+He had had nearly three weeks of drug-taking on the Ibis. The drugs he
+had absorbed were of two kinds: visions of fleeing landscapes, looming
+up from the blue sea to vanish into it again, and visions of study
+absorbed from the volumes piled up day and night at his elbow. For the
+first time in months he was in reach of a real library, just the kind
+of scholarly yet miscellaneous library, that his restless and impatient
+spirit craved. He was aware that the books he read, like the fugitive
+scenes on which he gazed, were merely a form of anesthetic: he swallowed
+them with the careless greed of the sufferer who seeks only to still
+pain and deaden memory. But they were beginning to produce in him a
+moral languor that was not disagreeable, that, indeed, compared with the
+fierce pain of the first days, was almost pleasurable. It was exactly
+the kind of drug that he needed.
+
+There is probably no point on which the average man has more definite
+views than on the uselessness of writing a letter that is hard to write.
+In the line he had sent to Susy from Genoa Nick had told her that she
+would hear from him again in a few days; but when the few days had
+passed, and he began to consider setting himself to the task, he found
+fifty reasons for postponing it.
+
+Had there been any practical questions to write about it would have been
+different; he could not have borne for twenty-four hours the idea that
+she was in uncertainty as to money. But that had all been settled
+long ago. From the first she had had the administering of their modest
+fortune. On their marriage Nick’s own meagre income, paid in, none too
+regularly, by the agent who had managed for years the dwindling family
+properties, had been transferred to her: it was the only wedding present
+he could make. And the wedding cheques had of course all been
+deposited in her name. There were therefore no “business” reasons for
+communicating with her; and when it came to reasons of another order the
+mere thought of them benumbed him.
+
+For the first few days he reproached himself for his inertia; then he
+began to seek reasons for justifying it. After all, for both their sakes
+a waiting policy might be the wisest he could pursue. He had left Susy
+because he could not tolerate the conditions on which he had discovered
+their life together to be based; and he had told her so. What more was
+there to say?
+
+Nothing was changed in their respective situations; if they came
+together it could be only to resume the same life; and that, as the days
+went by, seemed to him more and more impossible. He had not yet reached
+the point of facing a definite separation; but whenever his thoughts
+travelled back over their past life he recoiled from any attempt to
+return to it. As long as this state of mind continued there seemed
+nothing to add to the letter he had already written, except indeed the
+statement that he was cruising with the Hickses. And he saw no pressing
+reason for communicating that.
+
+To the Hickses he had given no hint of his situation. When Coral Hicks,
+a fortnight earlier, had picked him up in the broiling streets of Genoa,
+and carried him off to the Ibis, he had thought only of a cool dinner
+and perhaps a moonlight sail. Then, in reply to their friendly urging,
+he had confessed that he had not been well--had indeed gone off
+hurriedly for a few days’ change of air--and that left him without
+defence against the immediate proposal that he should take his change
+of air on the Ibis. They were just off to Corsica and Sardinia, and from
+there to Sicily: he could rejoin the railway at Naples, and be back at
+Venice in ten days.
+
+Ten days of respite--the temptation was irresistible. And he really
+liked the kind uncomplicated Hickses. A wholesome honesty and simplicity
+breathed through all their opulence, as if the rich trappings of their
+present life still exhaled the fragrance of their native prairies. The
+mere fact of being with such people was like a purifying bath. When the
+yacht touched at Naples he agreed since they were so awfully kind--to go
+on to Sicily. And when the chief steward, going ashore at Naples for
+the last time before they got up steam, said: “Any letters for the post,
+sir?” he answered, as he had answered at each previous halt: “No, thank
+you: none.”
+
+Now they were heading for Rhodes and Crete--Crete, where he had never
+been, where he had so often longed to go. In spite of the lateness of
+the season the weather was still miraculously fine: the short waves
+danced ahead under a sky without a cloud, and the strong bows of the
+Ibis hardly swayed as she flew forward over the flying crests.
+
+Only his hosts and their daughter were on the yacht--of course with
+Eldorada Tooker and Mr. Beck in attendance. An eminent archaeologist,
+who was to have joined them at Naples, had telegraphed an excuse at the
+last moment; and Nick noticed that, while Mrs. Hicks was perpetually
+apologizing for the great man’s absence, Coral merely smiled and said
+nothing.
+
+As a matter of fact, Mr. and Mrs. Hicks were never as pleasant as
+when one had them to one’s self. In company, Mr. Hicks ran the risk of
+appearing over-hospitable, and Mrs. Hicks confused dates and names in
+the desire to embrace all culture in her conversation. But alone with
+Nick, their old travelling-companion, they shone out in their native
+simplicity, and Mr. Hicks talked soundly of investments, and Mrs. Hicks
+recalled her early married days in Apex City, when, on being brought
+home to her new house in Aeschylus Avenue, her first thought had been:
+“How on earth shall I get all those windows washed?”
+
+The loss of Mr. Buttles had been as serious to them as Nick had
+supposed: Mr. Beck could never hope to replace him. Apart from his
+mysterious gift of languages, and his almost superhuman faculty for
+knowing how to address letters to eminent people, and in what terms to
+conclude them, he had a smattering of archaeology and general culture on
+which Mrs. Hicks had learned to depend--her own memory being, alas, so
+inadequate to the range of her interests.
+
+Her daughter might perhaps have helped her; but it was not Miss Hicks’s
+way to mother her parents. She was exceedingly kind to them, but left
+them, as it were, to bring themselves up as best they could, while she
+pursued her own course of self-development. A sombre zeal for knowledge
+filled the mind of this strange girl: she appeared interested only
+in fresh opportunities of adding to her store of facts. They were
+illuminated by little imagination and less poetry; but, carefully
+catalogued and neatly sorted in her large cool brain, they were always
+as accessible as the volumes in an up-to-date public library.
+
+To Nick there was something reposeful in this lucid intellectual
+curiosity. He wanted above all things to get away from sentiment, from
+seduction, from the moods and impulses and flashing contradictions that
+were Susy. Susy was not a great reader: her store of facts was small,
+and she had grown up among people who dreaded ideas as much as if they
+had been a contagious disease. But, in the early days especially,
+when Nick had put a book in her hand, or read a poem to her, her
+swift intelligence had instantly shed a new light on the subject, and,
+penetrating to its depths, had extracted from them whatever belonged
+to her. What a pity that this exquisite insight, this intuitive
+discrimination, should for the most part have been spent upon reading
+the thoughts of vulgar people, and extracting a profit from them--should
+have been wasted, since her childhood, on all the hideous intricacies of
+“managing”!
+
+And visible beauty--how she cared for that too! He had not guessed it,
+or rather he had not been sure of it, till the day when, on their way
+through Paris, he had taken her to the Louvre, and they had stood before
+the little Crucifixion of Mantegna. He had not been looking at the
+picture, or watching to see what impression it produced on Susy. His
+own momentary mood was for Correggio and Fragonard, the laughter of the
+Music Lesson and the bold pagan joys of the Antiope; and then he
+had missed her from his side, and when he came to where she stood,
+forgetting him, forgetting everything, had seen the glare of that tragic
+sky in her face, her trembling lip, the tears on her lashes. That was
+Susy....
+
+Closing his book he stole a glance at Coral Hicks’s profile, thrown back
+against the cushions of the deck-chair at his side. There was something
+harsh and bracing in her blunt primitive build, in the projection of
+the black eyebrows that nearly met over her thick straight nose, and
+the faint barely visible black down on her upper lip. Some miracle of
+will-power, combined with all the artifices that wealth can buy, had
+turned the fat sallow girl he remembered into this commanding young
+woman, almost handsome at times indisputably handsome--in her big
+authoritative way. Watching the arrogant lines of her profile against
+the blue sea, he remembered, with a thrill that was sweet to his vanity,
+how twice--under the dome of the Scalzi and in the streets of Genoa--he
+had seen those same lines soften at his approach, turn womanly, pleading
+and almost humble. That was Coral....
+
+Suddenly she said, without turning toward him: “You’ve had no letters
+since you’ve been on board.”
+
+He looked at her, surprised. “No--thank the Lord!” he laughed.
+
+“And you haven’t written one either,” she continued in her hard
+statistical tone.
+
+“No,” he again agreed, with the same laugh.
+
+“That means that you really are free--”
+
+“Free?”
+
+He saw the cheek nearest him redden. “Really off on a holiday, I mean;
+not tied down.” After a pause he rejoined: “No, I’m not particularly
+tied down.”
+
+“And your book?”
+
+“Oh, my book--” He stopped and considered. He had thrust The Pageant of
+Alexander into his handbag on the night of his Bight from Venice; but
+since then he had never looked at it. Too many memories and illusions
+were pressed between its pages; and he knew just at what page he had
+felt Ellie Vanderlyn bending over him from behind, caught a whiff of her
+scent, and heard her breathless “I had to thank you!”
+
+“My book’s hung up,” he said impatiently, annoyed with Miss Hicks’s lack
+of tact. There was a girl who never put out feelers....
+
+“Yes; I thought it was,” she went on quietly, and he gave her a startled
+glance. What the devil else did she think, he wondered? He had never
+supposed her capable of getting far enough out of her own thick carapace
+of self-sufficiency to penetrate into any one else’s feelings.
+
+“The truth is,” he continued, embarrassed, “I suppose I dug away at
+it rather too continuously; that’s probably why I felt the need of a
+change. You see I’m only a beginner.”
+
+She still continued her relentless questioning. “But later--you’ll go on
+with it, of course?”
+
+“Oh, I don’t know.” He paused, glanced down the glittering deck, and
+then out across the glittering water. “I’ve been dreaming dreams, you
+see. I rather think I shall have to drop the book altogether, and try
+to look out for a job that will pay. To indulge in my kind of literature
+one must first have an assured income.”
+
+He was instantly annoyed with himself for having spoken. Hitherto in his
+relations with the Hickses he had carefully avoided the least allusion
+that might make him feel the heavy hand of their beneficence. But the
+idle procrastinating weeks had weakened him and he had yielded to the
+need of putting into words his vague intentions. To do so would perhaps
+help to make them more definite.
+
+To his relief Miss Hicks made no immediate reply; and when she spoke it
+was in a softer voice and with an unwonted hesitation.
+
+“It seems a shame that with gifts like yours you shouldn’t find some
+kind of employment that would leave you leisure enough to do your real
+work....”
+
+He shrugged ironically. “Yes--there are a goodish number of us hunting
+for that particular kind of employment.”
+
+Her tone became more business-like. “I know it’s hard to find--almost
+impossible. But would you take it, I wonder, if it were offered to
+you--?”
+
+She turned her head slightly, and their eyes met. For an instant blank
+terror loomed upon him; but before he had time to face it she continued,
+in the same untroubled voice: “Mr. Buttles’s place, I mean. My parents
+must absolutely have some one they can count on. You know what an easy
+place it is.... I think you would find the salary satisfactory.”
+
+Nick drew a deep breath of relief. For a moment her eyes had looked as
+they had in the Scalzi--and he liked the girl too much not to shrink
+from reawakening that look. But Mr. Buttles’s place: why not?
+
+“Poor Buttles!” he murmured, to gain time.
+
+“Oh,” she said, “you won’t find the same reasons as he did for throwing
+up the job. He was the martyr of his artistic convictions.”
+
+He glanced at her sideways, wondering. After all she did not know of
+his meeting with Mr. Buttles in Genoa, nor of the latter’s confidences;
+perhaps she did not even know of Mr. Buttles’s hopeless passion. At any
+rate her face remained calm.
+
+“Why not consider it--at least just for a few months? Till after our
+expedition to Mesopotamia?” she pressed on, a little breathlessly.
+
+“You’re awfully kind: but I don’t know--”
+
+She stood up with one of her abrupt movements. “You needn’t, all
+at once. Take time think it over. Father wanted me to ask you,” she
+appended.
+
+He felt the inadequacy of his response. “It tempts me awfully, of
+course. But I must wait, at any rate--wait for letters. The fact is
+I shall have to wire from Rhodes to have them sent. I had chucked
+everything, even letters, for a few weeks.”
+
+“Ah, you are tired,” she murmured, giving him a last downward glance as
+she turned away.
+
+From Rhodes Nick Lansing telegraphed to his Paris bank to send his
+letters to Candia; but when the Ibis reached Candia, and the mail was
+brought on board, the thick envelope handed to him contained no letter
+from Susy.
+
+Why should it, since he had not yet written to her?
+
+He had not written, no: but in sending his address to the bank he knew
+he had given her the opportunity of reaching him if she wished to. And
+she had made no sign.
+
+Late that afternoon, when they returned to the yacht from their first
+expedition, a packet of newspapers lay on the deck-house table. Nick
+picked up one of the London journals, and his eye ran absently down the
+list of social events.
+
+He read:
+
+“Among the visitors expected next week at Ruan Castle (let for the
+season to Mr. Frederick J. Gillow of New York) are Prince Altineri of
+Rome, the Earl of Altringham and Mrs. Nicholas Lansing, who arrived in
+London last week from Paris.” Nick threw down the paper. It was just a
+month since he had left the Palazzo Vanderlyn and flung himself into the
+night express for Milan. A whole month--and Susy had not written. Only a
+month--and Susy and Strefford were already together!
+
+
+
+
+
+XVII.
+
+
+
+SUSY had decided to wait for Strefford in London.
+
+The new Lord Altringham was with his family in the north, and though she
+found a telegram on arriving, saying that he would join her in town the
+following week, she had still an interval of several days to fill.
+
+London was a desert; the rain fell without ceasing, and alone in the
+shabby family hotel which, even out of season, was the best she could
+afford, she sat at last face to face with herself.
+
+From the moment when Violet Melrose had failed to carry out her plan
+for the Fulmer children her interest in Susy had visibly waned. Often
+before, in the old days, Susy Branch had felt the same abrupt change of
+temperature in the manner of the hostess of the moment; and often--how
+often--had yielded, and performed the required service, rather than risk
+the consequences of estrangement. To that, at least, thank heaven, she
+need never stoop again.
+
+But as she hurriedly packed her trunks at Versailles, scraped together
+an adequate tip for Mrs. Match, and bade good-bye to Violet (grown
+suddenly fond and demonstrative as she saw her visitor safely headed
+for the station)--as Susy went through the old familiar mummery of the
+enforced leave-taking, there rose in her so deep a disgust for the
+life of makeshifts and accommodations, that if at that moment Nick had
+reappeared and held out his arms to her, she was not sure she would have
+had the courage to return to them.
+
+In her London solitude the thirst for independence grew fiercer.
+Independence with ease, of course. Oh, her hateful useless love of
+beauty... the curse it had always been to her, the blessing it might
+have been if only she had had the material means to gratify and to
+express it! And instead, it only gave her a morbid loathing of that
+hideous hotel bedroom drowned in yellow rain-light, of the smell of soot
+and cabbage through the window, the blistered wall-paper, the dusty wax
+bouquets under glass globes, and the electric lighting so contrived that
+as you turned on the feeble globe hanging from the middle of the ceiling
+the feebler one beside the bed went out!
+
+What a sham world she and Nick had lived in during their few months
+together! What right had either of them to those exquisite settings
+of the life of leisure: the long white house hidden in camellias and
+cypresses above the lake, or the great rooms on the Giudecca with the
+shimmer of the canal always playing over their frescoed ceilings! Yet
+she had come to imagine that these places really belonged to them, that
+they would always go on living, fondly and irreproachably, in the frame
+of other people’s wealth.... That, again, was the curse of her love of
+beauty, the way she always took to it as if it belonged to her!
+
+Well, the awakening was bound to come, and it was perhaps better that
+it should have come so soon. At any rate there was no use in letting her
+thoughts wander back to that shattered fool’s paradise of theirs. Only,
+as she sat there and reckoned up the days till Strefford arrived, what
+else in the world was there to think of?
+
+Her future and his?
+
+But she knew that future by heart already! She had not spent her life
+among the rich and fashionable without having learned every detail of
+the trappings of a rich and fashionable marriage. She had calculated
+long ago just how many dinner-dresses, how many tea-gowns and how much
+lacy lingerie would go to make up the outfit of the future Countess of
+Altringham. She had even decided to which dressmaker she would go for
+her chinchilla cloak--for she meant to have one, and down to her feet,
+and softer and more voluminous and more extravagantly sumptuous than
+Violet’s or Ursula’s... not to speak of silver foxes and sables... nor
+yet of the Altringham jewels.
+
+She knew all this by heart; had always known it. It all belonged to the
+make-up of the life of elegance: there was nothing new about it. What
+had been new to her was just that short interval with Nick--a life
+unreal indeed in its setting, but so real in its essentials: the one
+reality she had ever known. As she looked back on it she saw how much
+it had given her besides the golden flush of her happiness, the sudden
+flowering of sensuous joy in heart and body. Yes--there had been the
+flowering too, in pain like birth-pangs, of something graver, stronger,
+fuller of future power, something she had hardly heeded in her first
+light rapture, but that always came back and possessed her stilled soul
+when the rapture sank: the deep disquieting sense of something that
+Nick and love had taught her, but that reached out even beyond love and
+beyond Nick.
+
+Her nerves were racked by the ceaseless swish, swish of the rain on the
+dirty panes and the smell of cabbage and coal that came in under the
+door when she shut the window. This nauseating foretaste of the luncheon
+she must presently go down to was more than she could bear. It brought
+with it a vision of the dank coffee-room below, the sooty Smyrna rug,
+the rain on the sky-light, the listless waitresses handing about food
+that tasted as if it had been rained on too. There was really no reason
+why she should let such material miseries add to her depression....
+
+She sprang up, put on her hat and jacket, and calling for a taxi drove
+to the London branch of the Nouveau Luxe hotel. It was just one o’clock
+and she was sure to pick up a luncheon, for though London was empty
+that great establishment was not. It never was. Along those sultry
+velvet-carpeted halls, in that great flowered and scented dining-room,
+there was always a come-and-go of rich aimless people, the busy people
+who, having nothing to do, perpetually pursue their inexorable task from
+one end of the earth to the other.
+
+Oh, the monotony of those faces--the faces one always knew, whether one
+knew the people they belonged to or not! A fresh disgust seized her at
+the sight of them: she wavered, and then turned and fled. But on the
+threshold a still more familiar figure met her: that of a lady in
+exaggerated pearls and sables, descending from an exaggerated motor,
+like the motors in magazine advertisements, the huge arks in which
+jewelled beauties and slender youths pause to gaze at snowpeaks from an
+Alpine summit.
+
+It was Ursula Gillow--dear old Ursula, on her way to Scotland--and she
+and Susy fell on each other’s necks. It appeared that Ursula, detained
+till the next evening by a dress-maker’s delay, was also out of a job
+and killing time, and the two were soon smiling at each other over
+the exquisite preliminaries of a luncheon which the head-waiter had
+authoritatively asked Mrs. Gillow to “leave to him, as usual.”
+
+Ursula was in a good humour. It did not often happen; but when it did
+her benevolence knew no bounds.
+
+Like Mrs. Melrose, like all her tribe in fact, she was too much absorbed
+in her own affairs to give more than a passing thought to any one
+else’s; but she was delighted at the meeting with Susy, as her wandering
+kind always were when they ran across fellow-wanderers, unless the
+meeting happened to interfere with choicer pleasures. Not to be alone
+was the urgent thing; and Ursula, who had been forty-eight hours alone
+in London, at once exacted from her friend a promise that they should
+spend the rest of the day together. But once the bargain struck her mind
+turned again to her own affairs, and she poured out her confidences
+to Susy over a succession of dishes that manifested the head-waiter’s
+understanding of the case.
+
+Ursula’s confidences were always the same, though they were usually
+about a different person. She demolished and rebuilt her sentimental
+life with the same frequency and impetuosity as that with which she
+changed her dress-makers, did over her drawing-rooms, ordered new
+motors, altered the mounting of her jewels, and generally renewed the
+setting of her life. Susy knew in advance what the tale would be; but
+to listen to it over perfect coffee, an amber-scented cigarette at
+her lips, was pleasanter than consuming cold mutton alone in a mouldy
+coffee-room. The contrast was so soothing that she even began to take a
+languid interest in her friend’s narrative.
+
+After luncheon they got into the motor together and began a systematic
+round of the West End shops: furriers, jewellers and dealers in old
+furniture. Nothing could be more unlike Violet Melrose’s long hesitating
+sessions before the things she thought she wanted till the moment came
+to decide. Ursula pounced on silver foxes and old lacquer as promptly
+and decisively as on the objects of her surplus sentimentality: she knew
+at once what she wanted, and valued it more after it was hers.
+
+“And now--I wonder if you couldn’t help me choose a grand piano?” she
+suggested, as the last antiquarian bowed them out.
+
+“A piano?”
+
+“Yes: for Ruan. I’m sending one down for Grace Fulmer. She’s coming to
+stay... did I tell you? I want people to hear her. I want her to get
+engagements in London. My dear, she’s a Genius.”
+
+“A Genius--Grace!” Susy gasped. “I thought it was Nat....”
+
+“Nat--Nat Fulmer?” Ursula laughed derisively. “Ah, of course--you’ve been
+staying with that silly Violet! The poor thing is off her head about
+Nat--it’s really pitiful. Of course he has talent: I saw that long
+before Violet had ever heard of him. Why, on the opening day of the
+American Artists’ exhibition, last winter, I stopped short before his
+‘Spring Snow-Storm’ (which nobody else had noticed till that moment),
+and said to the Prince, who was with me: ‘The man has talent.’ But
+genius--why, it’s his wife who has genius! Have you never heard Grace
+play the violin? Poor Violet, as usual, is off on the wrong tack. I’ve
+given Fulmer my garden-house to do--no doubt Violet told you--because
+I wanted to help him. But Grace is my discovery, and I’m determined to
+make her known, and to have every one understand that she is the genius
+of the two. I’ve told her she simply must come to Ruan, and bring the
+best accompanyist she can find. You know poor Nerone is dreadfully bored
+by sport, though of course he goes out with the guns. And if one didn’t
+have a little art in the evening.... Oh, Susy, do you mean to tell me
+you don’t know how to choose a piano? I thought you were so fond of
+music!”
+
+“I am fond of it; but without knowing anything about it--in the way
+we’re all of us fond of the worthwhile things in our stupid set,”
+ she added to herself--since it was obviously useless to impart such
+reflections to Ursula.
+
+“But are you sure Grace is coming?” she questioned aloud.
+
+“Quite sure. Why shouldn’t she? I wired to her yesterday. I’m giving her
+a thousand dollars and all her expenses.”
+
+It was not till they were having tea in a Piccadilly tea-room that Mrs.
+Gillow began to manifest some interest in her companion’s plans. The
+thought of losing Susy became suddenly intolerable to her. The Prince,
+who did not see why he should be expected to linger in London out of
+season, was already at Ruan, and Ursula could not face the evening and
+the whole of the next day by herself.
+
+“But what are you doing in town, darling, I don’t remember if I’ve asked
+you,” she said, resting her firm elbows on the tea-table while she took
+a light from Susy’s cigarette.
+
+Susy hesitated. She had foreseen that the time must soon come when she
+should have to give some account of herself; and why should she not
+begin by telling Ursula?
+
+But telling her what?
+
+Her silence appeared to strike Mrs. Gillow as a reproach, and she
+continued with compunction: “And Nick? Nick’s with you? How is he, I
+thought you and he still were in Venice with Ellie Vanderlyn.”
+
+“We were, for a few weeks.” She steadied her voice. “It was delightful.
+But now we’re both on our own again--for a while.”
+
+Mrs. Gillow scrutinized her more searchingly. “Oh, you’re alone here,
+then; quite alone?”
+
+“Yes: Nick’s cruising with some friends in the Mediterranean.”
+
+Ursula’s shallow gaze deepened singularly. “But, Susy darling, then if
+you’re alone--and out of a job, just for the moment?”
+
+Susy smiled. “Well, I’m not sure.”
+
+“Oh, but if you are, darling, and you would come to Ruan! I know Fred
+asked you didn’t he? And he told me that both you and Nick had refused.
+He was awfully huffed at your not coming; but I suppose that was because
+Nick had other plans. We couldn’t have him now, because there’s no room
+for another gun; but since he’s not here, and you’re free, why you
+know, dearest, don’t you, how we’d love to have you? Fred would be too
+glad--too outrageously glad--but you don’t much mind Fred’s love-making,
+do you? And you’d be such a help to me--if that’s any argument! With
+that big house full of men, and people flocking over every night to
+dine, and Fred caring only for sport, and Nerone simply loathing it and
+ridiculing it, and not a minute to myself to try to keep him in a good
+humour.... Oh, Susy darling, don’t say no, but let me telephone at once
+for a place in the train to-morrow night!”
+
+Susy leaned back, letting the ash lengthen on her cigarette. How
+familiar, how hatefully familiar, was that old appeal! Ursula felt the
+pressing need of someone to flirt with Fred for a few weeks... and here
+was the very person she needed. Susy shivered at the thought. She had
+never really meant to go to Ruan. She had simply used the moor as a
+pretext when Violet Melrose had gently put her out of doors. Rather than
+do what Ursula asked she would borrow a few hundred pounds of Strefford,
+as he had suggested, and then look about for some temporary occupation
+until--
+
+Until she became Lady Altringham? Well, perhaps. At any rate, she was
+not going back to slave for Ursula.
+
+She shook her head with a faint smile. “I’m so sorry, Ursula: of course
+I want awfully to oblige you--”
+
+Mrs. Gillow’s gaze grew reproachful. “I should have supposed you would,”
+ she murmured. Susy, meeting her eyes, looked into them down a long vista
+of favours bestowed, and perceived that Ursula was not the woman to
+forget on which side the obligation lay between them.
+
+Susy hesitated: she remembered the weeks of ecstasy she had owed to the
+Gillows’ wedding cheque, and it hurt her to appear ungrateful.
+
+“If I could, Ursula... but really... I’m not free at the moment.” She
+paused, and then took an abrupt decision. “The fact is, I’m waiting here
+to see Strefford.”
+
+“Strefford’ Lord Altringham?” Ursula stared. “Ah, yes&mdash;I remember. You
+and he used to be great friends, didn’t you?” Her roving attention
+deepened.... But if Susy were waiting to see Lord Altringham--one of the
+richest men in England! Suddenly Ursula opened her gold-meshed bag and
+snatched a miniature diary from it.
+
+“But wait a moment--yes, it is next week! I knew it was next week he’s
+coming to Ruan! But, you darling, that makes everything all right.
+You’ll send him a wire at once, and come with me to-morrow, and meet him
+there instead of in this nasty sloppy desert.... Oh, Susy, if you knew
+how hard life is for me in Scotland between the Prince and Fred you
+couldn’t possibly say no!”
+
+Susy still wavered; but, after all, if Strefford were really bound
+for Ruan, why not see him there, agreeably and at leisure, instead of
+spending a dreary day with him in roaming the wet London streets, or
+screaming at him through the rattle of a restaurant orchestra? She knew
+he would not be likely to postpone his visit to Ruan in order to linger
+in London with her: such concessions had never been his way, and were
+less than ever likely to be, now that he could do so thoroughly and
+completely as he pleased.
+
+For the first time she fully understood how different his destiny had
+become. Now of course all his days and hours were mapped out in advance:
+invitations assailed him, opportunities pressed on him, he had only to
+choose.... And the women! She had never before thought of the women. All
+the girls in England would be wanting to marry him, not to mention her
+own enterprising compatriots. And there were the married women, who were
+even more to be feared. Streff might, for the time, escape marriage;
+though she could guess the power of persuasion, family pressure, all the
+converging traditional influences he had so often ridiculed, yet, as
+she knew, had never completely thrown off.... Yes, those quiet invisible
+women at Altringham--his uncle’s widow, his mother, the spinster
+sisters--it was not impossible that, with tact and patience--and the
+stupidest women could be tactful and patient on such occasions--they
+might eventually persuade him that it was his duty, they might put just
+the right young loveliness in his way.... But meanwhile, now, at
+once, there were the married women. Ah, they wouldn’t wait, they were
+doubtless laying their traps already! Susy shivered at the thought. She
+knew too much about the way the trick was done, had followed, too often,
+all the sinuosities of such approaches. Not that they were very sinuous
+nowadays: more often there was just a swoop and a pounce when the time
+came; but she knew all the arts and the wiles that led up to it. She
+knew them, oh, how she knew them--though with Streff, thank heaven, she
+had never been called upon to exercise them! His love was there for the
+asking: would she not be a fool to refuse it?
+
+Perhaps; though on that point her mind still wavered. But at any
+rate she saw that, decidedly, it would be better to yield to Ursula’s
+pressure; better to meet him at Ruan, in a congenial setting, where she
+would have time to get her bearings, observe what dangers threatened
+him, and make up her mind whether, after all, it was to be her mission
+to save him from the other women.
+
+“Well, if you like, then, Ursula....”
+
+“Oh, you angel, you! I’m so glad! We’ll go to the nearest post office,
+and send off the wire ourselves.”
+
+As they got into the motor Mrs. Gillow seized Susy’s arm with a pleading
+pressure. “And you will let Fred make love to you a little, won’t you,
+darling?”
+
+
+
+
+
+XVIII.
+
+
+
+“BUT I can’t think,” said Ellie Vanderlyn earnestly, “why you don’t
+announce your engagement before waiting for your divorce. People are
+beginning to do it, I assure you--it’s so much safer!”
+
+Mrs. Vanderlyn, on the way back from St. Moritz to England, had paused
+in Paris to renew the depleted wardrobe which, only two months earlier,
+had filled so many trunks to bursting. Other ladies, flocking there
+from all points of the globe for the same purpose, disputed with her
+the Louis XVI suites of the Nouveau Luxe, the pink-candled tables in
+the restaurant, the hours for trying-on at the dressmakers’; and just
+because they were so many, and all feverishly fighting to get the same
+things at the same time, they were all excited, happy and at ease. It
+was the most momentous period of the year: the height of the “dress
+makers’ season.”
+
+Mrs. Vanderlyn had run across Susy Lansing at one of the Rue de la Paix
+openings, where rows of ladies wan with heat and emotion sat for hours
+in rapt attention while spectral apparitions in incredible raiment
+tottered endlessly past them on aching feet.
+
+Distracted from the regal splendours of a chinchilla cloak by the
+sense that another lady was also examining it, Mrs. Vanderlyn turned in
+surprise at sight of Susy, whose head was critically bent above the fur.
+
+“Susy! I’d no idea you were here! I saw in the papers that you were with
+the Gillows.” The customary embraces followed; then Mrs. Vanderlyn,
+her eyes pursuing the matchless cloak as it disappeared down a vista of
+receding mannequins, interrogated sharply: “Are you shopping for Ursula?
+If you mean to order that cloak for her I’d rather know.”
+
+Susy smiled, and paused a moment before answering. During the pause
+she took in all the exquisite details of Ellie Vanderlyn’s perpetually
+youthful person, from the plumed crown of her head to the perfect arch
+of her patent-leather shoes. At last she said quietly: “No--to-day I’m
+shopping for myself.”
+
+“Yourself? Yourself?” Mrs. Vanderlyn echoed with a stare of incredulity.
+
+“Yes; just for a change,” Susy serenely acknowledged.
+
+“But the cloak--I meant the chinchilla cloak... the one with the ermine
+lining....”
+
+“Yes; it is awfully good, isn’t it? But I mean to look elsewhere before
+I decide.”
+
+Ah, how often she had heard her friends use that phrase; and how amusing
+it was, now, to see Ellie’s amazement as she heard it tossed off in
+her own tone of contemptuous satiety! Susy was becoming more and more
+dependent on such diversions; without them her days, crowded as they
+were, would nevertheless have dragged by heavily. But it still amused
+her to go to the big dressmakers’, watch the mannequins sweep by, and
+be seen by her friends superciliously examining all the most expensive
+dresses in the procession. She knew the rumour was abroad that she and
+Nick were to be divorced, and that Lord Altringham was “devoted” to her.
+She neither confirmed nor denied the report: she just let herself be
+luxuriously carried forward on its easy tide. But although it was now
+three months since Nick had left the Palazzo Vanderlyn she had not yet
+written to him--nor he to her.
+
+Meanwhile, in spite of all that she packed into them, the days passed
+more and more slowly, and the excitements she had counted on no longer
+excited her. Strefford was hers: she knew that he would marry her as
+soon as she was free. They had been together at Ruan for ten days, and
+after that she had motored south with him, stopping on the way to see
+Altringham, from which, at the moment, his mourning relatives were
+absent.
+
+At Altringham they had parted; and after one or two more visits in
+England she had come back to Paris, where he was now about to join her.
+After her few hours at Altringham she had understood that he would wait
+for her as long as was necessary: the fear of the “other women” had
+ceased to trouble her. But, perhaps for that very reason, the future
+seemed less exciting than she had expected. Sometimes she thought it
+was the sight of that great house which had overwhelmed her: it was
+too vast, too venerable, too like a huge monument built of ancient
+territorial traditions and obligations. Perhaps it had been lived in for
+too long by too many serious-minded and conscientious women: somehow she
+could not picture it invaded by bridge and debts and adultery. And yet
+that was what would have to be, of course... she could hardly picture
+either Strefford or herself continuing there the life of heavy county
+responsibilities, dull parties, laborious duties, weekly church-going,
+and presiding over local committees.... What a pity they couldn’t sell
+it and have a little house on the Thames!
+
+Nevertheless she was not sorry to let it be known that Altringham was
+hers when she chose to take it. At times she wondered whether Nick
+knew... whether rumours had reached him. If they had, he had only his
+own letter to thank for it. He had told her what course to pursue; and
+she was pursuing it.
+
+For a moment the meeting with Ellie Vanderlyn had been a shock to her;
+she had hoped never to see Ellie again. But now that they were actually
+face to face Susy perceived how dulled her sensibilities were. In a
+few moments she had grown used to Ellie, as she was growing used to
+everybody and to everything in the old life she had returned to. What
+was the use of making such a fuss about things? She and Mrs. Vanderlyn
+left the dress-maker’s together, and after an absorbing session at a new
+milliner’s were now taking tea in Ellie’s drawing-room at the Nouveau
+Luxe.
+
+Ellie, with her spoiled child’s persistency, had come back to the
+question of the chinchilla cloak. It was the only one she had seen that
+she fancied in the very least, and as she hadn’t a decent fur garment
+left to her name she was naturally in somewhat of a hurry... but, of
+course, if Susy had been choosing that model for a friend....
+
+Susy, leaning back against her cushions, examined through half-closed
+lids Mrs. Vanderlyn’s small delicately-restored countenance, which wore
+the same expression of childish eagerness as when she discoursed of the
+young Davenant of the moment. Once again Susy remarked that, in Ellie’s
+agitated existence, every interest appeared to be on exactly the same
+plane.
+
+“The poor shivering dear,” she answered laughing, “of course it shall
+have its nice warm winter cloak, and I’ll choose another one instead.”
+
+“Oh, you darling, you! If you would! Of course, whoever you were
+ordering it for need never know....”
+
+“Ah, you can’t comfort yourself with that, I’m afraid. I’ve already told
+you that I was ordering it for myself.” Susy paused to savour to the
+full Ellie’s look of blank bewilderment; then her amusement was checked
+by an indefinable change in her friend’s expression.
+
+“Oh, dearest--seriously? I didn’t know there was someone....”
+
+Susy flushed to the forehead. A horror of humiliation overwhelmed her.
+That Ellie should dare to think that of her--that anyone should dare to!
+
+“Someone buying chinchilla cloaks for me? Thanks!” she flared out. “I
+suppose I ought to be glad that the idea didn’t immediately occur to
+you. At least there was a decent interval of doubt....” She stood up,
+laughing again, and began to wander about the room. In the mirror above
+the mantel she caught sight of her flushed angry face, and of Mrs.
+Vanderlyn’s disconcerted stare. She turned toward her friend.
+
+“I suppose everybody else will think it if you do; so perhaps I’d better
+explain.” She paused, and drew a quick breath. “Nick and I mean to
+part--have parted, in fact. He’s decided that the whole thing was a
+mistake. He will probably; marry again soon--and so shall I.”
+
+She flung the avowal out breathlessly, in her nervous dread of letting
+Ellie Vanderlyn think for an instant longer that any other explanation
+was conceivable. She had not meant to be so explicit; but once the words
+were spoken she was not altogether sorry. Of course people would soon
+begin to wonder why she was again straying about the world alone; and
+since it was by Nick’s choice, why should she not say so? Remembering
+the burning anguish of those last hours in Venice she asked herself what
+possible consideration she owed to the man who had so humbled her.
+
+Ellie Vanderlyn glanced at her in astonishment. “You? You and Nick--are
+going to part?” A light appeared to dawn on her. “Ah--then that’s why he
+sent me back my pin, I suppose?”
+
+“Your pin?” Susy wondered, not at once remembering.
+
+“The poor little scarf-pin I gave him before I left Venice. He sent it
+back almost at once, with the oddest note--just: ‘I haven’t earned it,
+really.’ I couldn’t think why he didn’t care for the pin. But, now I
+suppose it was because you and he had quarrelled; though really, even
+so, I can’t see why he should bear me a grudge....”
+
+Susy’s quick blood surged up. Nick had sent back the pin--the fatal pin!
+And she, Susy, had kept the bracelet--locked it up out of sight, shrunk
+away from the little packet whenever her hand touched it in packing or
+unpacking--but never thought of returning it, no, not once! Which of the
+two, she wondered, had been right? Was it not an indirect slight to her
+that Nick should fling back the gift to poor uncomprehending Ellie? Or
+was it not rather another proof of his finer moral sensitiveness!...
+And how could one tell, in their bewildering world, “It was not because
+we’ve quarrelled; we haven’t quarrelled,” she said slowly, moved by the
+sudden desire to defend her privacy and Nick’s, to screen from every
+eye their last bitter hour together. “We’ve simply decided that our
+experiment was impossible--for two paupers.”
+
+“Ah, well--of course we all felt that at the time. And now somebody else
+wants to marry you! And it’s your trousseau you were choosing that cloak
+for?” Ellie cried in incredulous rapture; then she flung her arms about
+Susy’s shrinking shoulders. “You lucky lucky girl! You clever clever
+darling! But who on earth can he be?”
+
+And it was then that Susy, for the first time, had pronounced the name
+of Lord Altringham.
+
+“Streff--Streff? Our dear old Streff, You mean to say he wants to marry
+you?” As the news took possession of her mind Ellie became dithyrambic.
+“But, my dearest, what a miracle of luck! Of course I always knew he
+was awfully gone on you: Fred Davenant used to say so, I remember... and
+even Nelson, who’s so stupid about such things, noticed it in Venice....
+But then it was so different. No one could possibly have thought of
+marrying him then; whereas now of course every woman is trying for him.
+Oh, Susy, whatever you do, don’t miss your chance! You can’t conceive
+of the wicked plotting and intriguing there will be to get him--on all
+sides, and even where one least suspects it. You don’t know what horrors
+women will do--and even girls!” A shudder ran through her at the thought,
+and she caught Susy’s wrists in vehement fingers. “But I can’t think,
+my dear, why you don’t announce your engagement at once. People are
+beginning to do it, I assure you--it’s so much safer!”
+
+Susy looked at her, wondering. Not a word of sympathy for the ruin of
+her brief bliss, not even a gleam of curiosity as to its cause! No
+doubt Ellie Vanderlyn, like all Susy’s other friends, had long since
+“discounted” the brevity of her dream, and perhaps planned a sequel to
+it before she herself had seen the glory fading. She and Nick had spent
+the greater part of their few weeks together under Ellie Vanderlyn’s
+roof; but to Ellie, obviously, the fact meant no more than her own
+escapade, at the same moment, with young Davenant’s supplanter--the
+“bounder” whom Strefford had never named. Her one thought for her friend
+was that Susy should at last secure her prize--her incredible prize. And
+therein at any rate Ellie showed the kind of cold disinterestedness that
+raised her above the smiling perfidy of the majority of her kind. At
+least her advice was sincere; and perhaps it was wise. Why should Susy
+not let every one know that she meant to marry Strefford as soon as the
+“formalities” were fulfilled?
+
+She did not immediately answer Mrs. Vanderlyn’s question; and the
+latter, repeating it, added impatiently: “I don’t understand you; if
+Nick agrees--”
+
+“Oh, he agrees,” said Susy.
+
+“Then what more do you want! Oh, Susy, if you’d only follow my example!”
+
+“Your example?” Susy paused, weighed the word, was struck by something
+embarrassed, arch yet half-apologetic in her friend’s expression. “Your
+example?” she repeated. “Why, Ellie, what on earth do you mean? Not that
+you’re going to part from poor Nelson?”
+
+Mrs. Vanderlyn met her reproachful gaze with a crystalline glance. “I
+don’t want to, heaven knows--poor dear Nelson! I assure you I simply
+hate it. He’s always such an angel to Clarissa... and then we’re used
+to each other. But what in the world am I to do? Algie’s so rich, so
+appallingly rich, that I have to be perpetually on the watch to keep
+other women away from him--and it’s too exhausting....”
+
+“Algie?”
+
+Mrs. Vanderlyn’s lovely eyebrows rose. “Algie: Algie Bockheimer. Didn’t
+you know, I think he said you’ve dined with his parents. Nobody else in
+the world is as rich as the Bockheimers; and Algie’s their only
+child. Yes, it was with him... with him I was so dreadfully happy last
+spring... and now I’m in mortal terror of losing him. And I do assure
+you there’s no other way of keeping them, when they’re as hideously rich
+as that!”
+
+Susy rose to her feet. A little shudder ran over her. She remembered,
+now, having seen Algie Bockheimer at one of his parents’ first
+entertainments, in their newly-inaugurated marble halls in Fifth Avenue.
+She recalled his too faultless clothes and his small glossy furtive
+countenance. She looked at Ellie Vanderlyn with sudden scorn.
+
+“I think you’re abominable,” she exclaimed.
+
+The other’s perfect little face collapsed. “A-bo-minable? A-bo-mi-nable?
+Susy!”
+
+“Yes... with Nelson... and Clarissa... and your past together... and all
+the money you can possibly want... and that man! Abominable.”
+
+Ellie stood up trembling: she was not used to scenes, and they
+disarranged her thoughts as much as her complexion.
+
+“You’re very cruel, Susy--so cruel and dreadful that I hardly know how
+to answer you,” she stammered. “But you simply don’t know what you’re
+talking about. As if anybody ever had all the money they wanted!” She
+wiped her dark-rimmed eyes with a cautious handkerchief, glanced at
+herself in the mirror, and added magnanimously: “But I shall try to
+forget what you’ve said.”
+
+
+
+
+
+XIX.
+
+
+
+JUST such a revolt as she had felt as a girl, such a disgusted recoil
+from the standards and ideals of everybody about her as had flung her
+into her mad marriage with Nick, now flamed in Susy Lansing’s bosom.
+
+How could she ever go back into that world again? How echo its
+appraisals of life and bow down to its judgments? Alas, it was only
+by marrying according to its standards that she could escape such
+subjection. Perhaps the same thought had actuated Nick: perhaps he had
+understood sooner than she that to attain moral freedom they must both
+be above material cares. Perhaps...
+
+Her talk with Ellie Vanderlyn had left Susy so oppressed and humiliated
+that she almost shrank from her meeting with Altringham the next day.
+She knew that he was coming to Paris for his final answer; he would wait
+as long as was necessary if only she would consent to take immediate
+steps for a divorce. She was staying at a modest hotel in the Faubourg
+St. Germain, and had once more refused his suggestion that they should
+lunch at the Nouveau Luxe, or at some fashionable restaurant of the
+Boulevards. As before, she insisted on going to an out-of-the-way place
+near the Luxembourg, where the prices were moderate enough for her own
+purse.
+
+“I can’t understand,” Strefford objected, as they turned from her hotel
+door toward this obscure retreat, “why you insist on giving me bad food,
+and depriving me of the satisfaction of being seen with you. Why must we
+be so dreadfully clandestine? Don’t people know by this time that we’re
+to be married?”
+
+Susy winced a little: she wondered if the word would always sound so
+unnatural on his lips.
+
+“No,” she said, with a laugh, “they simply think, for the present, that
+you’re giving me pearls and chinchilla cloaks.”
+
+He wrinkled his brows good-humouredly. “Well, so I would, with joy--at
+this particular minute. Don’t you think perhaps you’d better take
+advantage of it? I don’t wish to insist--but I foresee that I’m much too
+rich not to become stingy.”
+
+She gave a slight shrug. “At present there’s nothing I loathe more than
+pearls and chinchilla, or anything else in the world that’s expensive
+and enviable....”
+
+Suddenly she broke off, colouring with the consciousness that she had
+said exactly the kind of thing that all the women who were trying for
+him (except the very cleverest) would be sure to say; and that he
+would certainly suspect her of attempting the conventional comedy of
+disinterestedness, than which nothing was less likely to deceive or to
+flatter him.
+
+His twinkling eyes played curiously over her face, and she went on,
+meeting them with a smile: “But don’t imagine, all the same, that if I
+should... decide... it would be altogether for your beaux yeux....”
+
+He laughed, she thought, rather drily. “No,” he said, “I don’t suppose
+that’s ever likely to happen to me again.”
+
+“Oh, Streff--” she faltered with compunction. It was odd--once upon a
+time she had known exactly what to say to the man of the moment, whoever
+he was, and whatever kind of talk he required; she had even, in the
+difficult days before her marriage, reeled off glibly enough the sort
+of lime-light sentimentality that plunged poor Fred Gillow into such
+speechless beatitude. But since then she had spoken the language of real
+love, looked with its eyes, embraced with its hands; and now the other
+trumpery art had failed her, and she was conscious of bungling and
+groping like a beginner under Strefford’s ironic scrutiny.
+
+They had reached their obscure destination and he opened the door and
+glanced in.
+
+“It’s jammed--not a table. And stifling! Where shall we go? Perhaps they
+could give us a room to ourselves--” he suggested.
+
+She assented, and they were led up a cork-screw staircase to a
+squat-ceilinged closet lit by the arched top of a high window, the lower
+panes of which served for the floor below. Strefford opened the window,
+and Susy, throwing her cloak on the divan, leaned on the balcony while
+he ordered luncheon.
+
+On the whole she was glad they were to be alone. Just because she
+felt so sure of Strefford it seemed ungenerous to keep him longer in
+suspense. The moment had come when they must have a decisive talk, and
+in the crowded rooms below it would have been impossible.
+
+Strefford, when the waiter had brought the first course and left them
+to themselves, made no effort to revert to personal matters. He turned
+instead to the topic always most congenial to him: the humours and
+ironies of the human comedy, as presented by his own particular group.
+His malicious commentary on life had always amused Susy because of the
+shrewd flashes of philosophy he shed on the social antics they had
+so often watched together. He was in fact the one person she knew
+(excepting Nick) who was in the show and yet outside of it; and she was
+surprised, as the talk proceeded, to find herself so little interested
+in his scraps of gossip, and so little amused by his comments on them.
+
+With an inward shrug of discouragement she said to herself that probably
+nothing would ever really amuse her again; then, as she listened, she
+began to understand that her disappointment arose from the fact that
+Strefford, in reality, could not live without these people whom he
+saw through and satirized, and that the rather commonplace scandals he
+narrated interested him as much as his own racy considerations on them;
+and she was filled with terror at the thought that the inmost core of
+the richly-decorated life of the Countess of Altringham would be just
+as poor and low-ceilinged a place as the little room in which he and she
+now sat, elbow to elbow yet so unapproachably apart.
+
+If Strefford could not live without these people, neither could she and
+Nick; but for reasons how different! And if his opportunities had
+been theirs, what a world they would have created for themselves! Such
+imaginings were vain, and she shrank back from them into the present.
+After all, as Lady Altringham she would have the power to create that
+world which she and Nick had dreamed... only she must create it alone.
+Well, that was probably the law of things. All human happiness was thus
+conditioned and circumscribed, and hers, no doubt, must always be of the
+lonely kind, since material things did not suffice for it, even though
+it depended on them as Grace Fulmer’s, for instance, never had. Yet even
+Grace Fulmer had succumbed to Ursula’s offer, and had arrived at Ruan
+the day before Susy left, instead of going to Spain with her husband
+and Violet Melrose. But then Grace was making the sacrifice for her
+children, and somehow one had the feeling that in giving up her liberty
+she was not surrendering a tittle of herself. All the difference was
+there....
+
+“How I do bore you!” Susy heard Strefford exclaim. She became aware
+that she had not been listening: stray echoes of names of places and
+people--Violet Melrose, Ursula, Prince Altineri, others of their group
+and persuasion--had vainly knocked at her barricaded brain; what had he
+been telling her about them? She turned to him and their eyes met; his
+were full of a melancholy irony.
+
+“Susy, old girl, what’s wrong?”
+
+She pulled herself together. “I was thinking, Streff, just now--when I
+said I hated the very sound of pearls and chinchilla--how impossible
+it was that you should believe me; in fact, what a blunder I’d made in
+saying it.”
+
+He smiled. “Because it was what so many other women might be likely to
+say so awfully unoriginal, in fact?”
+
+She laughed for sheer joy at his insight. “It’s going to be easier than
+I imagined,” she thought. Aloud she rejoined: “Oh, Streff--how you’re
+always going to find me out! Where on earth shall I ever hide from you?”
+
+“Where?” He echoed her laugh, laying his hand lightly on hers. “In my
+heart, I’m afraid.”
+
+In spite of the laugh his accent shook her: something about it took
+all the mockery from his retort, checked on her lips the: “What? A
+valentine!” and made her suddenly feel that, if he were afraid, so was
+she. Yet she was touched also, and wondered half exultingly if any
+other woman had ever caught that particular deep inflexion of his shrill
+voice. She had never liked him as much as at that moment; and she said
+to herself, with an odd sense of detachment, as if she had been rather
+breathlessly observing the vacillations of someone whom she longed to
+persuade but dared not: “Now--NOW, if he speaks, I shall say yes!”
+
+He did not speak; but abruptly, and as startlingly to her as if she
+had just dropped from a sphere whose inhabitants had other methods of
+expressing their sympathy, he slipped his arm around her and bent his
+keen ugly melting face to hers....
+
+It was the lightest touch--in an instant she was free again. But
+something within her gasped and resisted long after his arm and his lips
+were gone, and he was proceeding, with a too-studied ease, to light a
+cigarette and sweeten his coffee.
+
+He had kissed her.... Well, naturally: why not? It was not the first
+time she had been kissed. It was true that one didn’t habitually
+associate Streff with such demonstrations; but she had not that excuse
+for surprise, for even in Venice she had begun to notice that he looked
+at her differently, and avoided her hand when he used to seek it.
+
+No--she ought not to have been surprised; nor ought a kiss to have been
+so disturbing. Such incidents had punctuated the career of Susy Branch:
+there had been, in particular, in far-off discarded times, Fred Gillow’s
+large but artless embraces. Well--nothing of that kind had seemed of
+any more account than the click of a leaf in a woodland walk. It had
+all been merely epidermal, ephemeral, part of the trivial accepted
+“business” of the social comedy. But this kiss of Strefford’s was what
+Nick’s had been, under the New Hampshire pines, on the day that had
+decided their fate. It was a kiss with a future in it: like a
+ring slipped upon her soul. And now, in the dreadful pause that
+followed--while Strefford fidgeted with his cigarette-case and rattled
+the spoon in his cup, Susy remembered what she had seen through the
+circle of Nick’s kiss: that blue illimitable distance which was at once
+the landscape at their feet and the future in their souls....
+
+Perhaps that was what Strefford’s sharply narrowed eyes were seeing now,
+that same illimitable distance that she had lost forever--perhaps he was
+saying to himself, as she had said to herself when her lips left Nick’s:
+“Each time we kiss we shall see it all again....” Whereas all she
+herself had felt was the gasping recoil from Strefford’s touch, and an
+intenser vision of the sordid room in which he and she sat, and of their
+two selves, more distant from each other than if their embrace had been
+a sudden thrusting apart....
+
+The moment prolonged itself, and they sat numb. How long had it lasted?
+How long ago was it that she had thought: “It’s going to be easier than
+I imagined”? Suddenly she felt Strefford’s queer smile upon her, and saw
+in his eyes a look, not of reproach or disappointment, but of deep and
+anxious comprehension. Instead of being angry or hurt, he had seen, he
+had understood, he was sorry for her!
+
+Impulsively she slipped her hand into his, and they sat silent for
+another moment. Then he stood up and took her cloak from the divan.
+“Shall we go now! I’ve got cards for the private view of the Reynolds
+exhibition at the Petit Palais. There are some portraits from
+Altringham. It might amuse you.”
+
+In the taxi she had time, through their light rattle of talk, to
+readjust herself and drop back into her usual feeling of friendly ease
+with him. He had been extraordinarily considerate, for anyone who always
+so undisguisedly sought his own satisfaction above all things; and
+if his considerateness were just an indirect way of seeking that
+satisfaction now, well, that proved how much he cared for her, how
+necessary to his happiness she had become. The sense of power was
+undeniably pleasant; pleasanter still was the feeling that someone
+really needed her, that the happiness of the man at her side depended
+on her yes or no. She abandoned herself to the feeling, forgetting the
+abysmal interval of his caress, or at least saying to herself that in
+time she would forget it, that really there was nothing to make a fuss
+about in being kissed by anyone she liked as much as Streff....
+
+She had guessed at once why he was taking her to see the Reynoldses.
+Fashionable and artistic Paris had recently discovered English
+eighteenth century art. The principal collections of England had yielded
+up their best examples of the great portrait painter’s work, and the
+private view at the Petit Palais was to be the social event of the
+afternoon. Everybody--Strefford’s everybody and Susy’s--was sure to
+be there; and these, as she knew, were the occasions that revived
+Strefford’s intermittent interest in art. He really liked picture shows
+as much as the races, if one could be sure of seeing as many people
+there. With Nick how different it would have been! Nick hated openings
+and varnishing days, and worldly aesthetics in general; he would have
+waited till the tide of fashion had ebbed, and slipped off with Susy to
+see the pictures some morning when they were sure to have the place to
+themselves.
+
+But Susy divined that there was another reason for Strefford’s
+suggestion. She had never yet shown herself with him publicly, among
+their own group of people: now he had determined that she should do
+so, and she knew why. She had humbled his pride; he had understood, and
+forgiven her. But she still continued to treat him as she had always
+treated the Strefford of old, Charlie Strefford, dear old negligible
+impecunious Streff; and he wanted to show her, ever so casually and
+adroitly, that the man who had asked her to marry him was no longer
+Strefford, but Lord Altringham.
+
+At the very threshold, his Ambassador’s greeting marked the difference:
+it was followed, wherever they turned, by ejaculations of welcome from
+the rulers of the world they moved in. Everybody rich enough or titled
+enough, or clever enough or stupid enough, to have forced a way into the
+social citadel, was there, waving and flag-flying from the battlements;
+and to all of them Lord Altringham had become a marked figure. During
+their slow progress through the dense mass of important people who made
+the approach to the pictures so well worth fighting for, he never left
+Susy’s side, or failed to make her feel herself a part of his triumphal
+advance. She heard her name mentioned: “Lansing--a Mrs. Lansing--an
+American... Susy Lansing? Yes, of course.... You remember her? At
+Newport, At St. Moritz? Exactly.... Divorced already? They say so...
+Susy darling! I’d no idea you were here... and Lord Altringham! You’ve
+forgotten me, I know, Lord Altringham.... Yes, last year, in Cairo... or
+at Newport... or in Scotland ... Susy, dearest, when will you bring Lord
+Altringham to dine? Any night that you and he are free I’ll arrange to
+be....”
+
+“You and he”: they were “you and he” already!
+
+“Ah, there’s one of them--of my great-grandmothers,” Strefford
+explained, giving a last push that drew him and Susy to the front rank,
+before a tall isolated portrait which, by sheer majesty of presentment,
+sat in its great carved golden frame as on a throne above the other
+pictures.
+
+Susy read on the scroll beneath it: “The Hon’ble Diana Lefanu, fifteenth
+Countess of Altringham”--and heard Strefford say: “Do you remember? It
+hangs where you noticed the empty space above the mantel-piece, in the
+Vandyke room. They say Reynolds stipulated that it should be put with
+the Vandykes.”
+
+She had never before heard him speak of his possessions, whether
+ancestral or merely material, in just that full and satisfied tone of
+voice: the rich man’s voice. She saw that he was already feeling the
+influence of his surroundings, that he was glad the portrait of a
+Countess of Altringham should occupy the central place in the principal
+room of the exhibition, that the crowd about it should be denser there
+than before any of the other pictures, and that he should be standing
+there with Susy, letting her feel, and letting all the people about
+them guess, that the day she chose she could wear the same name as his
+pictured ancestress.
+
+On the way back to her hotel, Strefford made no farther allusion to
+their future; they chatted like old comrades in their respective corners
+of the taxi. But as the carriage stopped at her door he said: “I must go
+back to England the day after to-morrow, worse luck! Why not dine with
+me to-night at the Nouveau Luxe? I’ve got to have the Ambassador and
+Lady Ascot, with their youngest girl and my old Dunes aunt, the Dowager
+Duchess, who’s over here hiding from her creditors; but I’ll try to get
+two or three amusing men to leaven the lump. We might go on to a boite
+afterward, if you’re bored. Unless the dancing amuses you more....”
+
+She understood that he had decided to hasten his departure rather than
+linger on in uncertainty; she also remembered having heard the Ascots’
+youngest daughter, Lady Joan Senechal, spoken of as one of the prettiest
+girls of the season; and she recalled the almost exaggerated warmth of
+the Ambassador’s greeting at the private view.
+
+“Of course I’ll come, Streff dear!” she cried, with an effort at gaiety
+that sounded successful to her own strained ears, and reflected itself
+in the sudden lighting up of his face.
+
+She waved a good-bye from the step, saying to herself, as she looked
+after him: “He’ll drive me home to-night, and I shall say ‘yes’; and
+then he’ll kiss me again. But the next time it won’t be nearly as
+disagreeable.”
+
+She turned into the hotel, glanced automatically at the empty
+pigeon-hole for letters under her key-hook, and mounted the stairs
+following the same train of images. “Yes, I shall say ‘yes’ to-night,”
+ she repeated firmly, her hand on the door of her room. “That is, unless,
+they’ve brought up a letter....” She never re-entered the hotel without
+imagining that the letter she had not found below had already been
+brought up.
+
+Opening the door, she turned on the light and sprang to the table on
+which her correspondence sometimes awaited her.
+
+There was no letter; but the morning papers, still unread, lay at hand,
+and glancing listlessly down the column which chronicles the doings of
+society, she read:
+
+“After an extended cruise in the AEgean and the Black Sea on their
+steam-yacht Ibis, Mr. and Mrs. Mortimer Hicks and their daughter are
+established at the Nouveau Luxe in Rome. They have lately had the honour
+of entertaining at dinner the Reigning Prince of Teutoburger-Waldhain
+and his mother the Princess Dowager, with their suite. Among those
+invited to meet their Serene Highnesses were the French and Spanish
+Ambassadors, the Duchesse de Vichy, Prince and Princess Bagnidilucca,
+Lady Penelope Pantiles--” Susy’s eye flew impatiently on over the long
+list of titles--“and Mr. Nicholas Lansing of New York, who has been
+cruising with Mr. and Mrs. Hicks on the Ibis for the last few months.”
+
+
+
+
+
+XX.
+
+
+
+THE Mortimer Hickses were in Rome; not, as they would in former times
+have been, in one of the antiquated hostelries of the Piazza di Spagna
+or the Porta del Popolo, where of old they had so gaily defied fever
+and nourished themselves on local colour; but spread out, with all the
+ostentation of philistine millionaires, under the piano nobile ceilings
+of one of the high-perched “Palaces,” where, as Mrs. Hicks shamelessly
+declared, they could “rely on the plumbing,” and “have the privilege of
+over-looking the Queen Mother’s Gardens.”
+
+It was that speech, uttered with beaming aplomb at a dinner-table
+surrounded by the cosmopolitan nobility of the Eternal City, that had
+suddenly revealed to Lansing the profound change in the Hicks point of
+view.
+
+As he looked back over the four months since he had so unexpectedly
+joined the Ibis at Genoa, he saw that the change, at first insidious
+and unperceived, dated from the ill-fated day when the Hickses had run
+across a Reigning Prince on his travels.
+
+Hitherto they had been proof against such perils: both Mr. and Mrs.
+Hicks had often declared that the aristocracy of the intellect was the
+only one which attracted them. But in this case the Prince possessed an
+intellect, in addition to his few square miles of territory, and to one
+of the most beautiful Field Marshal’s uniforms that had ever encased a
+royal warrior. The Prince was not a warrior, however; he was stooping,
+pacific and spectacled, and his possession of the uniform had been
+revealed to Mrs. Hicks only by the gift of a full-length photograph in
+a Bond Street frame, with Anastasius written slantingly across its
+legs. The Prince--and herein lay the Hickses’ undoing--the Prince was
+an archaeologist: an earnest anxious enquiring and scrupulous
+archaeologist. Delicate health (so his suite hinted) banished him for
+a part of each year from his cold and foggy principality; and in the
+company of his mother, the active and enthusiastic Dowager Princess, he
+wandered from one Mediterranean shore to another, now assisting at
+the exhumation of Ptolemaic mummies, now at the excavation of Delphic
+temples or of North African basilicas. The beginning of winter usually
+brought the Prince and his mother to Rome or Nice, unless indeed they
+were summoned by family duties to Berlin, Vienna or Madrid; for an
+extended connection with the principal royal houses of Europe compelled
+them, as the Princess Mother said, to be always burying or marrying a
+cousin. At other moments they were seldom seen in the glacial atmosphere
+of courts, preferring to royal palaces those of the other, and more
+modern type, in one of which the Hickses were now lodged.
+
+Yes: the Prince and his mother (they gaily avowed it) revelled in Palace
+Hotels; and, being unable to afford the luxury of inhabiting them,
+they liked, as often as possible, to be invited to dine there by their
+friends--“or even to tea, my dear,” the Princess laughingly avowed,
+“for I’m so awfully fond of buttered scones; and Anastasius gives me so
+little to eat in the desert.”
+
+The encounter with these ambulant Highnesses had been fatal--Lansing
+now perceived it--to Mrs. Hicks’s principles. She had known a great many
+archaeologists, but never one as agreeable as the Prince, and above
+all never one who had left a throne to camp in the desert and delve in
+Libyan tombs. And it seemed to her infinitely pathetic that these two
+gifted beings, who grumbled when they had to go to “marry a cousin” at
+the Palace of St. James or of Madrid, and hastened back breathlessly to
+the far-off point where, metaphorically speaking, pick-axe and spade had
+dropped from their royal hands--that these heirs of the ages should be
+unable to offer themselves the comforts of up-to-date hotel life, and
+should enjoy themselves “like babies” when they were invited to the
+other kind of “Palace,” to feast on buttered scones and watch the tango.
+
+She simply could not bear the thought of their privations; and neither,
+after a time, could Mr. Hicks, who found the Prince more democratic than
+anyone he had ever known at Apex City, and was immensely interested by
+the fact that their spectacles came from the same optician.
+
+But it was, above all, the artistic tendencies of the Prince and his
+mother which had conquered the Hickses. There was fascination in the
+thought that, among the rabble of vulgar uneducated royalties who
+overran Europe from Biarritz to the Engadine, gambling, tangoing,
+and sponging on no less vulgar plebeians, they, the unobtrusive
+and self-respecting Hickses, should have had the luck to meet this
+cultivated pair, who joined them in gentle ridicule of their own
+frivolous kinsfolk, and whose tastes were exactly those of the
+eccentric, unreliable and sometimes money-borrowing persons who had
+hitherto represented the higher life to the Hickses.
+
+Now at last Mrs. Hicks saw the possibility of being at once artistic and
+luxurious, of surrendering herself to the joys of modern plumbing and
+yet keeping the talk on the highest level. “If the poor dear Princess
+wants to dine at the Nouveau Luxe why shouldn’t we give her that
+pleasure?” Mrs. Hicks smilingly enquired; “and as for enjoying her
+buttered scones like a baby, as she says, I think it’s the sweetest
+thing about her.”
+
+Coral Hicks did not join in this chorus; but she accepted, with her
+curious air of impartiality, the change in her parents’ manner of life,
+and for the first time (as Nick observed) occupied herself with her
+mother’s toilet, with the result that Mrs. Hicks’s outline became
+firmer, her garments soberer in hue and finer in material; so that,
+should anyone chance to detect the daughter’s likeness to her mother,
+the result was less likely to be disturbing.
+
+Such precautions were the more needful--Lansing could not but note
+because of the different standards of the society in which the Hickses
+now moved. For it was a curious fact that admission to the intimacy of
+the Prince and his mother--who continually declared themselves to be
+the pariahs, the outlaws, the Bohemians among crowned heads nevertheless
+involved not only living in Palace Hotels but mixing with those who
+frequented them. The Prince’s aide-de-camp--an agreeable young man of
+easy manners--had smilingly hinted that their Serene Highnesses, though
+so thoroughly democratic and unceremonious, were yet accustomed to
+inspecting in advance the names of the persons whom their hosts wished
+to invite with them; and Lansing noticed that Mrs. Hicks’s lists,
+having been “submitted,” usually came back lengthened by the addition of
+numerous wealthy and titled guests. Their Highnesses never struck out
+a name; they welcomed with enthusiasm and curiosity the Hickses’ oddest
+and most inexplicable friends, at most putting off some of them to a
+later day on the plea that it would be “cosier” to meet them on a more
+private occasion; but they invariably added to the list any friends of
+their own, with the gracious hint that they wished these latter (though
+socially so well-provided for) to have the “immense privilege” of
+knowing the Hickses. And thus it happened that when October gales
+necessitated laying up the Ibis, the Hickses, finding again in Rome
+the august travellers from whom they had parted the previous month in
+Athens, also found their visiting-list enlarged by all that the capital
+contained of fashion.
+
+It was true enough, as Lansing had not failed to note, that the Princess
+Mother adored prehistoric art, and Russian music, and the paintings of
+Gauguin and Matisse; but she also, and with a beaming unconsciousness
+of perspective, adored large pearls and powerful motors, caravan tea and
+modern plumbing, perfumed cigarettes and society scandals; and her son,
+while apparently less sensible to these forms of luxury, adored his
+mother, and was charmed to gratify her inclinations without cost to
+himself--“Since poor Mamma,” as he observed, “is so courageous when we
+are roughing it in the desert.”
+
+The smiling aide-de-camp, who explained these things to Lansing,
+added with an intenser smile that the Prince and his mother were under
+obligations, either social or cousinly, to most of the titled persons
+whom they begged Mrs. Hicks to invite; “and it seems to their Serene
+Highnesses,” he added, “the most flattering return they can make for
+the hospitality of their friends to give them such an intellectual
+opportunity.”
+
+The dinner-table at which their Highnesses’ friends were seated on
+the evening in question represented, numerically, one of the greatest
+intellectual opportunities yet afforded them. Thirty guests were grouped
+about the flower-wreathed board, from which Eldorada and Mr. Beck had
+been excluded on the plea that the Princess Mother liked cosy parties
+and begged her hosts that there should never be more than thirty
+at table. Such, at least, was the reason given by Mrs. Hicks to her
+faithful followers; but Lansing had observed that, of late, the same
+skilled hand which had refashioned the Hickses’ social circle usually
+managed to exclude from it the timid presences of the two secretaries.
+Their banishment was the more displeasing to Lansing from the fact that,
+for the last three months, he had filled Mr. Buttles’s place, and was
+himself their salaried companion. But since he had accepted the post,
+his obvious duty was to fill it in accordance with his employers’
+requirements; and it was clear even to Eldorada and Mr. Beck that
+he had, as Eldorada ungrudgingly said, “Something of Mr. Buttles’s
+marvellous social gifts.”
+
+During the cruise his task had not been distasteful to him. He was glad
+of any definite duties, however trivial, he felt more independent as the
+Hickses’ secretary than as their pampered guest, and the large cheque
+which Mr. Hicks handed over to him on the first of each month refreshed
+his languishing sense of self-respect.
+
+He considered himself absurdly over-paid, but that was the Hickses’
+affair; and he saw nothing humiliating in being in the employ of people
+he liked and respected. But from the moment of the ill-fated encounter
+with the wandering Princes, his position had changed as much as that
+of his employers. He was no longer, to Mr. and Mrs. Hicks, a useful and
+estimable assistant, on the same level as Eldorada and Mr. Beck; he had
+become a social asset of unsuspected value, equalling Mr. Buttles in
+his capacity for dealing with the mysteries of foreign etiquette, and
+surpassing him in the art of personal attraction. Nick Lansing, the
+Hickses found, already knew most of the Princess Mother’s rich and
+aristocratic friends. Many of them hailed him with enthusiastic “Old
+Nicks”, and he was almost as familiar as His Highness’s own aide-de-camp
+with all those secret ramifications of love and hate that made
+dinner-giving so much more of a science in Rome than at Apex City.
+
+Mrs. Hicks, at first, had hopelessly lost her way in this labyrinth of
+subterranean scandals, rivalries and jealousies; and finding Lansing’s
+hand within reach she clung to it with pathetic tenacity. But if
+the young man’s value had risen in the eyes of his employers it had
+deteriorated in his own. He was condemned to play a part he had
+not bargained for, and it seemed to him more degrading when paid in
+bank-notes than if his retribution had consisted merely in good dinners
+and luxurious lodgings. The first time the smiling aide-de-camp had
+caught his eye over a verbal slip of Mrs. Hicks’s, Nick had flushed to
+the forehead and gone to bed swearing that he would chuck his job the
+next day.
+
+Two months had passed since then, and he was still the paid secretary.
+He had contrived to let the aide-de-camp feel that he was too deficient
+in humour to be worth exchanging glances with; but even this had not
+restored his self-respect, and on the evening in question, as he looked
+about the long table, he said to himself for the hundredth time that he
+would give up his position on the morrow.
+
+Only--what was the alternative? The alternative, apparently, was Coral
+Hicks. He glanced down the line of diners, beginning with the tall lean
+countenance of the Princess Mother, with its small inquisitive eyes
+perched as high as attic windows under a frizzled thatch of hair and a
+pediment of uncleaned diamonds; passed on to the vacuous and overfed
+or fashionably haggard masks of the ladies next in rank; and finally
+caught, between branching orchids, a distant glimpse of Miss Hicks.
+
+In contrast with the others, he thought, she looked surprisingly noble.
+Her large grave features made her appear like an old monument in a
+street of Palace Hotels; and he marvelled at the mysterious law which
+had brought this archaic face out of Apex City, and given to the oldest
+society of Europe a look of such mixed modernity.
+
+Lansing perceived that the aide-de-camp, who was his neighbour, was also
+looking at Miss Hicks. His expression was serious, and even thoughtful;
+but as his eyes met Lansing’s he readjusted his official smile.
+
+“I was admiring our hostess’s daughter. Her absence of jewels is--er--an
+inspiration,” he remarked in the confidential tone which Lansing had
+come to dread.
+
+“Oh, Miss Hicks is full of inspirations,” he returned curtly, and the
+aide-de-camp bowed with an admiring air, as if inspirations were rarer
+than pearls, as in his milieu they undoubtedly were. “She is the equal
+of any situation, I am sure,” he replied; and then abandoned the subject
+with one of his automatic transitions.
+
+After dinner, in the embrasure of a drawing-room window, he surprised
+Nick by returning to the same topic, and this time without thinking it
+needful to readjust his smile. His face remained serious, though his
+manner was studiously informal.
+
+“I was admiring, at dinner, Miss Hicks’s invariable sense of
+appropriateness. It must permit her friends to foresee for her almost
+any future, however exalted.”
+
+Lansing hesitated, and controlled his annoyance. Decidedly he wanted to
+know what was in his companion’s mind.
+
+“What do you mean by exalted?” he asked, with a smile of faint
+amusement.
+
+“Well--equal to her marvellous capacity for shining in the public eye.”
+
+Lansing still smiled. “The question is, I suppose, whether her desire to
+shine equals her capacity.”
+
+The aide-de-camp stared. “You mean, she’s not ambitious?”
+
+“On the contrary; I believe her to be immeasurably ambitious.”
+
+“Immeasurably?” The aide-de-camp seemed to try to measure it. “But not,
+surely, beyond--beyond what we can offer,” his eyes completed the
+sentence; and it was Lansing’s turn to stare. The aide-de-camp faced the
+stare. “Yes,” his eyes concluded in a flash, while his lips let fall:
+“The Princess Mother admires her immensely.” But at that moment a wave
+of Mrs. Hicks’s fan drew them hurriedly from their embrasure.
+
+“Professor Darchivio had promised to explain to us the difference
+between the Sassanian and Byzantine motives in Carolingian art; but the
+Manager has sent up word that the two new Creole dancers from Paris have
+arrived, and her Serene Highness wants to pop down to the ball-room and
+take a peep at them.... She’s sure the Professor will understand....”
+
+“And accompany us, of course,” the Princess irresistibly added.
+
+Lansing’s brief colloquy in the Nouveau Luxe window had lifted the
+scales from his eyes. Innumerable dim corners of memory had been flooded
+with light by that one quick glance of the aide-de-camp’s: things he
+had heard, hints he had let pass, smiles, insinuations, cordialities,
+rumours of the improbability of the Prince’s founding a family,
+suggestions as to the urgent need of replenishing the Teutoburger
+treasury....
+
+Miss Hicks, perforce, had accompanied her parents and their princely
+guests to the ballroom; but as she did not dance, and took little
+interest in the sight of others so engaged, she remained aloof from the
+party, absorbed in an archaeological discussion with the baffled but
+smiling savant who was to have enlightened the party on the difference
+between Sassanian and Byzantine ornament.
+
+Lansing, also aloof, had picked out a post from which he could observe
+the girl: she wore a new look to him since he had seen her as the centre
+of all these scattered threads of intrigue. Yes; decidedly she was
+growing handsomer; or else she had learned how to set off her massive
+lines instead of trying to disguise them. As she held up her long
+eye-glass to glance absently at the dancers he was struck by the large
+beauty of her arm and the careless assurance of the gesture. There was
+nothing nervous or fussy about Coral Hicks; and he was not surprised
+that, plastically at least, the Princess Mother had discerned her
+possibilities.
+
+Nick Lansing, all that night, sat up and stared at his future. He knew
+enough of the society into which the Hickses had drifted to guess that,
+within a very short time, the hint of the Prince’s aide-de-camp would
+reappear in the form of a direct proposal. Lansing himself would
+probably--as the one person in the Hicks entourage with whom one
+could intelligibly commune--be entrusted with the next step in the
+negotiations: he would be asked, as the aide-de-camp would have said,
+“to feel the ground.” It was clearly part of the state policy of
+Teutoburg to offer Miss Hicks, with the hand of its sovereign, an
+opportunity to replenish its treasury.
+
+What would the girl do? Lansing could not guess; yet he dimly felt that
+her attitude would depend in a great degree upon his own. And he knew
+no more what his own was going to be than on the night, four months
+earlier, when he had flung out of his wife’s room in Venice to take the
+midnight express for Genoa.
+
+The whole of his past, and above all the tendency, on which he had once
+prided himself, to live in the present and take whatever chances it
+offered, now made it harder for him to act. He began to see that he
+had never, even in the closest relations of life, looked ahead of his
+immediate satisfaction. He had thought it rather fine to be able to give
+himself so intensely to the fullness of each moment instead of hurrying
+past it in pursuit of something more, or something else, in the manner
+of the over-scrupulous or the under-imaginative, whom he had always
+grouped together and equally pitied. It was not till he had linked his
+life with Susy’s that he had begun to feel it reaching forward into a
+future he longed to make sure of, to fasten upon and shape to his own
+wants and purposes, till, by an imperceptible substitution, that future
+had become his real present, his all-absorbing moment of time.
+
+Now the moment was shattered, and the power to rebuild it failed him.
+He had never before thought about putting together broken bits: he felt
+like a man whose house has been wrecked by an earthquake, and who, for
+lack of skilled labour, is called upon for the first time to wield a
+trowel and carry bricks. He simply did not know how.
+
+Will-power, he saw, was not a thing one could suddenly decree oneself
+to possess. It must be built up imperceptibly and laboriously out of a
+succession of small efforts to meet definite objects, out of the facing
+of daily difficulties instead of cleverly eluding them, or shifting
+their burden on others. The making of the substance called character was
+a process about as slow and arduous as the building of the Pyramids; and
+the thing itself, like those awful edifices, was mainly useful to lodge
+one’s descendants in, after they too were dust. Yet the Pyramid-instinct
+was the one which had made the world, made man, and caused his fugitive
+joys to linger like fading frescoes on imperishable walls....
+
+
+
+
+
+XXI.
+
+
+
+ON the drive back from her dinner at the Nouveau Luxe, events had
+followed the course foreseen by Susy.
+
+She had promised Strefford to seek legal advice about her divorce, and
+he had kissed her; and the promise had been easier to make than she had
+expected, the kiss less difficult to receive.
+
+She had gone to the dinner a-quiver with the mortification of learning
+that her husband was still with the Hickses. Morally sure of it though
+she had been, the discovery was a shock, and she measured for the
+first time the abyss between fearing and knowing. No wonder he had not
+written--the modern husband did not have to: he had only to leave it to
+time and the newspapers to make known his intentions. Susy could imagine
+Nick’s saying to himself, as he sometimes used to say when she reminded
+him of an unanswered letter: “But there are lots of ways of answering a
+letter--and writing doesn’t happen to be mine.”
+
+Well--he had done it in his way, and she was answered. For a minute, as
+she laid aside the paper, darkness submerged her, and she felt herself
+dropping down into the bottomless anguish of her dreadful vigil in the
+Palazzo Vanderlyn. But she was weary of anguish: her healthy body and
+nerves instinctively rejected it. The wave was spent, and she felt
+herself irresistibly struggling back to light and life and youth. He
+didn’t want her! Well, she would try not to want him! There lay all the
+old expedients at her hand--the rouge for her white lips, the atropine
+for her blurred eyes, the new dress on her bed, the thought of Strefford
+and his guests awaiting her, and of the conclusions that the diners of
+the Nouveau Luxe would draw from seeing them together. Thank heaven no
+one would say: “Poor old Susy--did you know Nick had chucked her?” They
+would all say: “Poor old Nick! Yes, I daresay she was sorry to chuck
+him; but Altringham’s mad to marry her, and what could she do?”
+
+And once again events had followed the course she had foreseen. Seeing
+her at Lord Altringham’s table, with the Ascots and the old Duchess
+of Dunes, the interested spectators could not but regard the dinner as
+confirming the rumour of her marriage. As Ellie said, people didn’t
+wait nowadays to announce their “engagements” till the tiresome divorce
+proceedings were over. Ellie herself, prodigally pearled and ermined,
+had floated in late with Algie Bockheimer in her wake, and sat, in
+conspicuous tête-à-tête, nodding and signalling her sympathy to Susy.
+Approval beamed from every eye: it was awfully exciting, they all seemed
+to say, seeing Susy Lansing pull it off! As the party, after dinner,
+drifted from the restaurant back into the hall, she caught, in the
+smiles and hand-pressures crowding about her, the scarcely-repressed
+hint of official congratulations; and Violet Melrose, seated in a corner
+with Fulmer, drew her down with a wan jade-circled arm, to whisper
+tenderly: “It’s most awfully clever of you, darling, not to be wearing
+any jewels.”
+
+In all the women’s eyes she read the reflected lustre of the jewels she
+could wear when she chose: it was as though their glitter reached
+her from the far-off bank where they lay sealed up in the Altringham
+strong-box. What a fool she had been to think that Strefford would ever
+believe she didn’t care for them!
+
+The Ambassadress, a blank perpendicular person, had been a shade less
+affable than Susy could have wished; but then there was Lady Joan--and
+the girl was handsome, alarmingly handsome to account for that: probably
+every one in the room had guessed it. And the old Duchess of Dunes was
+delightful. She looked rather like Strefford in a wig and false pearls
+(Susy was sure they were as false as her teeth); and her cordiality
+was so demonstrative that the future bride found it more difficult to
+account for than Lady Ascot’s coldness, till she heard the old lady, as
+they passed into the hall, breathe in a hissing whisper to her nephew:
+“Streff, dearest, when you have a minute’s time, and can drop in at
+my wretched little pension, I know you can explain in two words what
+I ought to do to pacify those awful money-lenders.... And you’ll bring
+your exquisite American to see me, won’t you!... No, Joan Senechal’s too
+fair for my taste.... Insipid....”
+
+Yes: the taste of it all was again sweet on her lips. A few days later
+she began to wonder how the thought of Strefford’s endearments could
+have been so alarming. To be sure he was not lavish of them; but when he
+did touch her, even when he kissed her, it no longer seemed to matter.
+An almost complete absence of sensation had mercifully succeeded to the
+first wild flurry of her nerves.
+
+And so it would be, no doubt, with everything else in her new life. If
+it failed to provoke any acute reactions, whether of pain or pleasure,
+the very absence of sensation would make for peace. And in the meanwhile
+she was tasting what, she had begun to suspect, was the maximum of
+bliss to most of the women she knew: days packed with engagements, the
+exhilaration of fashionable crowds, the thrill of snapping up a jewel
+or a bibelot or a new “model” that one’s best friend wanted, or of being
+invited to some private show, or some exclusive entertainment, that
+one’s best friend couldn’t get to. There was nothing, now, that she
+couldn’t buy, nowhere that she couldn’t go: she had only to choose and
+to triumph. And for a while the surface-excitement of her life gave her
+the illusion of enjoyment.
+
+Strefford, as she had expected, had postponed his return to England,
+and they had now been for nearly three weeks together in their new, and
+virtually avowed, relation. She had fancied that, after all, the easiest
+part of it would be just the being with Strefford--the falling back
+on their old tried friendship to efface the sense of strangeness. But,
+though she had so soon grown used to his caresses, he himself remained
+curiously unfamiliar: she was hardly sure, at times, that it was the
+old Strefford she was talking to. It was not that his point of view had
+changed, but that new things occupied and absorbed him. In all the small
+sides of his great situation he took an almost childish satisfaction;
+and though he still laughed at both its privileges and its obligations,
+it was now with a jealous laughter.
+
+It amused him inexhaustibly, for instance, to be made up to by all the
+people who had always disapproved of him, and to unite at the same table
+persons who had to dissemble their annoyance at being invited together
+lest they should not be invited at all. Equally exhilarating was
+the capricious favouring of the dull and dowdy on occasions when the
+brilliant and disreputable expected his notice. It enchanted him, for
+example, to ask the old Duchess of Dunes and Violet Melrose to dine
+with the Vicar of Altringham, on his way to Switzerland for a month’s
+holiday, and to watch the face of the Vicar’s wife while the Duchess
+narrated her last difficulties with book-makers and money-lenders, and
+Violet proclaimed the rights of Love and Genius to all that had once
+been supposed to belong exclusively to Respectability and Dulness.
+
+Susy had to confess that her own amusements were hardly of a higher
+order; but then she put up with them for lack of better, whereas
+Strefford, who might have had what he pleased, was completely satisfied
+with such triumphs.
+
+Somehow, in spite of his honours and his opportunities, he seemed to
+have shrunk. The old Strefford had certainly been a larger person,
+and she wondered if material prosperity were always a beginning of
+ossification. Strefford had been much more fun when he lived by his
+wits. Sometimes, now, when he tried to talk of politics, or assert
+himself on some question of public interest, she was startled by his
+limitations. Formerly, when he was not sure of his ground, it had been
+his way to turn the difficulty by glib nonsense or easy irony; now he
+was actually dull, at times almost pompous. She noticed too, for the
+first time, that he did not always hear clearly when several people were
+talking at once, or when he was at the theatre; and he developed a habit
+of saying over and over again: “Does so-and-so speak indistinctly? Or am
+I getting deaf, I wonder?” which wore on her nerves by its suggestion of
+a corresponding mental infirmity.
+
+These thoughts did not always trouble her. The current of idle activity
+on which they were both gliding was her native element as well as his;
+and never had its tide been as swift, its waves as buoyant. In his
+relation to her, too, he was full of tact and consideration. She saw
+that he still remembered their frightened exchange of glances after
+their first kiss; and the sense of this little hidden spring of
+imagination in him was sometimes enough for her thirst.
+
+She had always had a rather masculine punctuality in keeping her word,
+and after she had promised Strefford to take steps toward a divorce
+she had promptly set about doing it. A sudden reluctance prevented her
+asking the advice of friends like Ellie Vanderlyn, whom she knew to be
+in the thick of the same negotiations, and all she could think of was to
+consult a young American lawyer practicing in Paris, with whom she felt
+she could talk the more easily because he was not from New York, and
+probably unacquainted with her history.
+
+She was so ignorant of the procedure in such matters that she was
+surprised and relieved at his asking few personal questions; but it was
+a shock to learn that a divorce could not be obtained, either in New
+York or Paris, merely on the ground of desertion or incompatibility.
+
+“I thought nowadays... if people preferred to live apart... it could
+always be managed,” she stammered, wondering at her own ignorance, after
+the many conjugal ruptures she had assisted at.
+
+The young lawyer smiled, and coloured slightly. His lovely client
+evidently intimidated him by her grace, and still more by her
+inexperience.
+
+“It can be--generally,” he admitted; “and especially so if... as I
+gather is the case... your husband is equally anxious....”
+
+“Oh, quite!” she exclaimed, suddenly humiliated by having to admit it.
+
+“Well, then--may I suggest that, to bring matters to a point, the best
+way would be for you to write to him?”
+
+She recoiled slightly. It had never occurred to her that the lawyers
+would not “manage it” without her intervention.
+
+“Write to him... but what about?”
+
+“Well, expressing your wish... to recover your freedom.... The rest, I
+assume,” said the young lawyer, “may be left to Mr. Lansing.”
+
+She did not know exactly what he meant, and was too much perturbed by
+the idea of having to communicate with Nick to follow any other train
+of thought. How could she write such a letter? And yet how could she
+confess to the lawyer that she had not the courage to do so? He
+would, of course, tell her to go home and be reconciled. She hesitated
+perplexedly.
+
+“Wouldn’t it be better,” she suggested, “if the letter were to come
+from--from your office?”
+
+He considered this politely. “On the whole: no. If, as I take it, an
+amicable arrangement is necessary--to secure the requisite evidence then
+a line from you, suggesting an interview, seems to me more advisable.”
+
+“An interview? Is an interview necessary?” She was ashamed to show her
+agitation to this cautiously smiling young man, who must wonder at
+her childish lack of understanding; but the break in her voice was
+uncontrollable.
+
+“Oh, please write to him--I can’t! And I can’t see him! Oh, can’t you
+arrange it for me?” she pleaded.
+
+She saw now that her idea of a divorce had been that it was something
+one went out--or sent out--to buy in a shop: something concrete and
+portable, that Strefford’s money could pay for, and that it required no
+personal participation to obtain. What a fool the lawyer must think her!
+Stiffening herself, she rose from her seat.
+
+“My husband and I don’t wish to see each other again.... I’m sure it
+would be useless... and very painful.”
+
+“You are the best judge, of course. But in any case, a letter from
+you, a friendly letter, seems wiser... considering the apparent lack of
+evidence....”
+
+“Very well, then; I’ll write,” she agreed, and hurried away, scarcely
+hearing his parting injunction that she should take a copy of her
+letter.
+
+That night she wrote. At the last moment it might have been impossible,
+if at the theatre little Breckenridge had not bobbed into her box. He
+was just back from Rome, where he had dined with the Hickses (“a bang-up
+show--they’re really lances--you wouldn’t know them!”), and had met there
+Lansing, whom he reported as intending to marry Coral “as soon as things
+were settled”. “You were dead right, weren’t you, Susy,” he snickered,
+“that night in Venice last summer, when we all thought you were joking
+about their engagement? Pity now you chucked our surprise visit to the
+Hickses, and sent Streff up to drag us back just as we were breaking in!
+You remember?”
+
+He flung off the “Streff” airily, in the old way, but with a tentative
+side-glance at his host; and Lord Altringham, leaning toward Susy, said
+coldly: “Was Breckenridge speaking about me? I didn’t catch what he
+said. Does he speak indistinctly--or am I getting deaf, I wonder?”
+
+After that it seemed comparatively easy, when Strefford had dropped her
+at her hotel, to go upstairs and write. She dashed off the date and her
+address, and then stopped; but suddenly she remembered Breckenridge’s
+snicker, and the words rushed from her. “Nick dear, it was July when you
+left Venice, and I have had no word from you since the note in which you
+said you had gone for a few days, and that I should hear soon again.
+
+“You haven’t written yet, and it is five months since you left me. That
+means, I suppose, that you want to take back your freedom and give me
+mine. Wouldn’t it be kinder, in that case, to tell me so? It is worse
+than anything to go on as we are now. I don’t know how to put these
+things but since you seem unwilling to write to me perhaps you would
+prefer to send your answer to Mr. Frederic Spearman, the American lawyer
+here. His address is 100, Boulevard Haussmann. I hope--”
+
+She broke off on the last word. Hope? What did she hope, either for him
+or for herself? Wishes for his welfare would sound like a mockery--and
+she would rather her letter should seem bitter than unfeeling. Above
+all, she wanted to get it done. To have to re-write even those few
+lines would be torture. So she left “I hope,” and simply added: “to hear
+before long what you have decided.”
+
+She read it over, and shivered. Not one word of the past--not one
+allusion to that mysterious interweaving of their lives which had
+enclosed them one in the other like the flower in its sheath! What place
+had such memories in such a letter? She had the feeling that she wanted
+to hide that other Nick away in her own bosom, and with him the other
+Susy, the Susy he had once imagined her to be.... Neither of them seemed
+concerned with the present business.
+
+The letter done, she stared at the sealed envelope till its presence
+in the room became intolerable, and she understood that she must either
+tear it up or post it immediately. She went down to the hall of the
+sleeping hotel, and bribed the night-porter to carry the letter to the
+nearest post office, though he objected that, at that hour, no time
+would be gained. “I want it out of the house,” she insisted: and waited
+sternly by the desk, in her dressing-gown, till he had performed the
+errand.
+
+As she re-entered her room, the disordered writing-table struck her; and
+she remembered the lawyer’s injunction to take a copy of her letter. A
+copy to be filed away with the documents in “Lansing versus Lansing!”
+ She burst out laughing at the idea. What were lawyers made of, she
+wondered? Didn’t the man guess, by the mere look in her eyes and the
+sound of her voice, that she would never, as long as she lived, forget
+a word of that letter--that night after night she would lie down, as she
+was lying down to-night, to stare wide-eyed for hours into the darkness,
+while a voice in her brain monotonously hammered out: “Nick dear, it was
+July when you left me...” and so on, word after word, down to the last
+fatal syllable?
+
+
+
+
+
+XXII.
+
+
+
+STREFFORD was leaving for England.
+
+Once assured that Susy had taken the first step toward freeing herself,
+he frankly regarded her as his affianced wife, and could see no reason
+for further mystery. She understood his impatience to have their
+plans settled; it would protect him from the formidable menace of the
+marriageable, and cause people, as he said, to stop meddling. Now that
+the novelty of his situation was wearing off, his natural indolence
+reasserted itself, and there was nothing he dreaded more than having to
+be on his guard against the innumerable plans that his well-wishers were
+perpetually making for him. Sometimes Susy fancied he was marrying her
+because to do so was to follow the line of least resistance.
+
+“To marry me is the easiest way of not marrying all the others,” she
+laughed, as he stood before her one day in a quiet alley of the Bois
+de Boulogne, insisting on the settlement of various preliminaries. “I
+believe I’m only a protection to you.”
+
+An odd gleam passed behind his eyes, and she instantly guessed that he
+was thinking: “And what else am I to you?”
+
+She changed colour, and he rejoined, laughing also: “Well, you’re that
+at any rate, thank the Lord!”
+
+She pondered, and then questioned: “But in the interval--how are you
+going to defend yourself for another year?”
+
+“Ah, you’ve got to see to that; you’ve got to take a little house in
+London. You’ve got to look after me, you know.”
+
+It was on the tip of her tongue to flash back: “Oh, if that’s all
+you care--!” But caring was exactly the factor she wanted, as much as
+possible, to keep out of their talk and their thoughts. She could
+not ask him how much he cared without laying herself open to the same
+question; and that way terror lay. As a matter of fact, though Strefford
+was not an ardent wooer--perhaps from tact, perhaps from temperament,
+perhaps merely from the long habit of belittling and disintegrating
+every sentiment and every conviction--yet she knew he did care for her
+as much as he was capable of caring for anyone. If the element of habit
+entered largely into the feeling--if he liked her, above all, because he
+was used to her, knew her views, her indulgences, her allowances, knew
+he was never likely to be bored, and almost certain to be amused, by
+her; why, such ingredients though not of the fieriest, were perhaps
+those most likely to keep his feeling for her at a pleasant temperature.
+She had had a taste of the tropics, and wanted more equable weather; but
+the idea of having to fan his flame gently for a year was unspeakably
+depressing to her. Yet all this was precisely what she could not say.
+The long period of probation, during which, as she knew, she would
+have to amuse him, to guard him, to hold him, and to keep off the other
+women, was a necessary part of their situation. She was sure that, as
+little Breckenridge would have said, she could “pull it off”; but she
+did not want to think about it. What she would have preferred would have
+been to go away--no matter where and not see Strefford again till they
+were married. But she dared not tell him that either.
+
+“A little house in London--?” She wondered.
+
+“Well, I suppose you’ve got to have some sort of a roof over your head.”
+
+“I suppose so.”
+
+He sat down beside her. “If you like me well enough to live at
+Altringham some day, won’t you, in the meantime, let me provide you with
+a smaller and more convenient establishment?”
+
+Still she hesitated. The alternative, she knew, would be to live on
+Ursula Gillow, Violet Melrose, or some other of her rich friends, any
+one of whom would be ready to lavish the largest hospitality on the
+prospective Lady Altringham. Such an arrangement, in the long run,
+would be no less humiliating to her pride, no less destructive to
+her independence, than Altringham’s little establishment. But she
+temporized. “I shall go over to London in December, and stay for a while
+with various people--then we can look about.”
+
+“All right; as you like.” He obviously considered her hesitation
+ridiculous, but was too full of satisfaction at her having started
+divorce proceedings to be chilled by her reply.
+
+“And now, look here, my dear; couldn’t I give you some sort of a ring?”
+
+“A ring?” She flushed at the suggestion. “What’s the use, Streff, dear?
+With all those jewels locked away in London--”
+
+“Oh, I daresay you’ll think them old-fashioned. And, hang it, why
+shouldn’t I give you something new, I ran across Ellie and Bockheimer
+yesterday, in the rue de la Paix, picking out sapphires. Do you like
+sapphires, or emeralds? Or just a diamond? I’ve seen a thumping one....
+I’d like you to have it.”
+
+Ellie and Bockheimer! How she hated the conjunction of the names! Their
+case always seemed to her like a caricature of her own, and she felt an
+unreasoning resentment against Ellie for having selected the same season
+for her unmating and re-mating.
+
+“I wish you wouldn’t speak of them, Streff... as if they were like us! I
+can hardly bear to sit in the same room with Ellie Vanderlyn.”
+
+“Hullo? What’s wrong? You mean because of her giving up Clarissa?”
+
+“Not that only.... You don’t know.... I can’t tell you....” She shivered
+at the memory, and rose restlessly from the bench where they had been
+sitting.
+
+Strefford gave his careless shrug. “Well, my dear, you can hardly expect
+me to agree, for after all it was to Ellie I owed the luck of being so
+long alone with you in Venice. If she and Algie hadn’t prolonged their
+honeymoon at the villa--”
+
+He stopped abruptly, and looked at Susy. She was conscious that every
+drop of blood had left her face. She felt it ebbing away from her heart,
+flowing out of her as if from all her severed arteries, till it seemed
+as though nothing were left of life in her but one point of irreducible
+pain.
+
+“Ellie--at your villa? What do you mean? Was it Ellie and Bockheimer
+who--?”
+
+Strefford still stared. “You mean to say you didn’t know?”
+
+“Who came after Nick and me...?” she insisted.
+
+“Why, do you suppose I’d have turned you out otherwise? That beastly
+Bockheimer simply smothered me with gold. Ah, well, there’s one good
+thing: I shall never have to let the villa again! I rather like the
+little place myself, and I daresay once in a while we might go there for
+a day or two.... Susy, what’s the matter?” he exclaimed.
+
+She returned his stare, but without seeing him. Everything swam and
+danced before her eyes.
+
+“Then she was there while I was posting all those letters for her--?”
+
+“Letters--what letters? What makes you look so frightfully upset?”
+
+She pursued her thought as if he had not spoken. “She and Algie
+Bockheimer arrived there the very day that Nick and I left?”
+
+“I suppose so. I thought she’d told you. Ellie always tells everybody
+everything.”
+
+“She would have told me, I daresay--but I wouldn’t let her.”
+
+“Well, my dear, that was hardly my fault, was it? Though I really don’t
+see--”
+
+But Susy, still blind to everything but the dance of dizzy sparks before
+her eyes, pressed on as if she had not heard him. “It was their motor,
+then, that took us to Milan! It was Algie Bockheimer’s motor!” She did
+not know why, but this seemed to her the most humiliating incident in
+the whole hateful business. She remembered Nick’s reluctance to use the
+motor--she remembered his look when she had boasted of her “managing.”
+ The nausea mounted to her throat.
+
+Strefford burst out laughing. “I say--you borrowed their motor? And you
+didn’t know whose it was?”
+
+“How could I know? I persuaded the chauffeur... for a little tip....
+It was to save our railway fares to Milan... extra luggage costs so
+frightfully in Italy....”
+
+“Good old Susy! Well done! I can see you doing it--”
+
+“Oh, how horrible--how horrible!” she groaned.
+
+“Horrible? What’s horrible?”
+
+“Why, your not seeing... not feeling...” she began impetuously; and then
+stopped. How could she explain to him that what revolted her was not so
+much the fact of his having given the little house, as soon as she and
+Nick had left it, to those two people of all others--though the vision
+of them in the sweet secret house, and under the plane-trees of the
+terrace, drew such a trail of slime across her golden hours? No, it was
+not that from which she most recoiled, but from the fact that Strefford,
+living in luxury in Nelson Vanderlyn’s house, should at the same time
+have secretly abetted Ellie Vanderlyn’s love-affairs, and allowed
+her--for a handsome price--to shelter them under his own roof. The
+reproach trembled on her lip--but she remembered her own part in the
+wretched business, and the impossibility of avowing it to Strefford, and
+of revealing to him that Nick had left her for that very reason. She was
+not afraid that the discovery would diminish her in Strefford’s eyes: he
+was untroubled by moral problems, and would laugh away her avowal, with
+a sneer at Nick in his new part of moralist. But that was just what she
+could not bear: that anyone should cast a doubt on the genuineness of
+Nick’s standards, or should know how far below them she had fallen.
+
+She remained silent, and Strefford, after a moment, drew her gently down
+to the seat beside him. “Susy, upon my soul I don’t know what you’re
+driving at. Is it me you’re angry with--or yourself? And what’s it all
+about! Are you disgusted because I let the villa to a couple who weren’t
+married! But, hang it, they’re the kind that pay the highest price and
+I had to earn my living somehow! One doesn’t run across a bridal pair
+every day....”
+
+She lifted her eyes to his puzzled incredulous face. Poor Streff! No,
+it was not with him that she was angry. Why should she be? Even that
+ill-advised disclosure had told her nothing she had not already known
+about him. It had simply revealed to her once more the real point of
+view of the people he and she lived among had shown her that, in spite
+of the superficial difference, he felt as they felt, judged as they
+judged, was blind as they were--and as she would be expected to be,
+should she once again become one of them. What was the use of being
+placed by fortune above such shifts and compromises, if in one’s heart
+one still condoned them? And she would have to--she would catch the
+general note, grow blunted as those other people were blunted, and
+gradually come to wonder at her own revolt, as Strefford now honestly
+wondered at it. She felt as though she were on the point of losing some
+new-found treasure, a treasure precious only to herself, but beside
+which all he offered her was nothing, the triumph of her wounded pride
+nothing, the security of her future nothing.
+
+“What is it, Susy?” he asked, with the same puzzled gentleness.
+
+Ah, the loneliness of never being able to make him understand! She had
+felt lonely enough when the flaming sword of Nick’s indignation had shut
+her out from their Paradise; but there had been a cruel bliss in the
+pain. Nick had not opened her eyes to new truths, but had waked in her
+again something which had lain unconscious under years of accumulated
+indifference. And that re-awakened sense had never left her since,
+and had somehow kept her from utter loneliness because it was a secret
+shared with Nick, a gift she owed to Nick, and which, in leaving her, he
+could not take from her. It was almost, she suddenly felt, as if he had
+left her with a child.
+
+“My dear girl,” Strefford said, with a resigned glance at his watch,
+“you know we’re dining at the Embassy....”
+
+At the Embassy? She looked at him vaguely: then she remembered. Yes,
+they were dining that night at the Ascots’, with Strefford’s cousin, the
+Duke of Dunes, and his wife, the handsome irreproachable young Duchess;
+with the old gambling Dowager Duchess, whom her son and daughter-in-law
+had come over from England to see; and with other English and French
+guests of a rank and standing worthy of the Duneses. Susy knew that her
+inclusion in such a dinner could mean but one thing: it was her definite
+recognition as Altringham’s future wife. She was “the little American”
+ whom one had to ask when one invited him, even on ceremonial occasions.
+The family had accepted her; the Embassy could but follow suit.
+
+“It’s late, dear; and I’ve got to see someone on business first,”
+ Strefford reminded her patiently.
+
+“Oh, Streff--I can’t, I can’t!” The words broke from her without her
+knowing what she was saying. “I can’t go with you--I can’t go to the
+Embassy. I can’t go on any longer like this....” She lifted her eyes
+to his in desperate appeal. “Oh, understand--do please understand!” she
+wailed, knowing, while she spoke, the utter impossibility of what she
+asked.
+
+Strefford’s face had gradually paled and hardened. From sallow it turned
+to a dusky white, and lines of obstinacy deepened between the ironic
+eyebrows and about the weak amused mouth.
+
+“Understand? What do you want me to understand,” He laughed. “That
+you’re trying to chuck me already?”
+
+She shrank at the sneer of the “already,” but instantly remembered that
+it was the only thing he could be expected to say, since it was just
+because he couldn’t understand that she was flying from him.
+
+“Oh, Streff--if I knew how to tell you!”
+
+“It doesn’t so much matter about the how. Is that what you’re trying to
+say?”
+
+Her head drooped, and she saw the dead leaves whirling across the path
+at her feet, lifted on a sudden wintry gust.
+
+“The reason,” he continued, clearing his throat with a stiff smile, “is
+not quite as important to me as the fact.”
+
+She stood speechless, agonized by his pain. But still, she thought, he
+had remembered the dinner at the Embassy. The thought gave her courage
+to go on.
+
+“It wouldn’t do, Streff. I’m not a bit the kind of person to make you
+happy.”
+
+“Oh, leave that to me, please, won’t you?”
+
+“No, I can’t. Because I should be unhappy too.”
+
+He clicked at the leaves as they whirled past. “You’ve taken a rather
+long time to find it out.” She saw that his new-born sense of his own
+consequence was making him suffer even more than his wounded affection;
+and that again gave her courage.
+
+“If I’ve taken long it’s all the more reason why I shouldn’t take
+longer. If I’ve made a mistake it’s you who would have suffered from
+it....”
+
+“Thanks,” he said, “for your extreme solicitude.”
+
+She looked at him helplessly, penetrated by the despairing sense of
+their inaccessibility to each other. Then she remembered that Nick,
+during their last talk together, had seemed as inaccessible, and
+wondered if, when human souls try to get too near each other, they do
+not inevitably become mere blurs to each other’s vision. She would have
+liked to say this to Streff--but he would not have understood it either.
+The sense of loneliness once more enveloped her, and she groped in vain
+for a word that should reach him.
+
+“Let me go home alone, won’t you?” she appealed to him.
+
+“Alone?”
+
+She nodded. “To-morrow--to-morrow....”
+
+He tried, rather valiantly, to smile. “Hang to-morrow! Whatever is wrong,
+it needn’t prevent my seeing you home.” He glanced toward the taxi that
+awaited them at the end of the deserted drive.
+
+“No, please. You’re in a hurry; take the taxi. I want immensely a long
+long walk by myself... through the streets, with the lights coming
+out....”
+
+He laid his hand on her arm. “I say, my dear, you’re not ill?”
+
+“No; I’m not ill. But you may say I am, to-night at the Embassy.”
+
+He released her and drew back. “Oh, very well,” he answered coldly;
+and she understood by his tone that the knot was cut, and that at that
+moment he almost hated her. She turned away, hastening down the deserted
+alley, flying from him, and knowing, as she fled, that he was still
+standing there motionless, staring after her, wounded, humiliated,
+uncomprehending. It was neither her fault nor his....
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIII.
+
+
+
+AS she fled on toward the lights of the streets a breath of freedom
+seemed to blow into her face.
+
+Like a weary load the accumulated hypocrisies of the last months had
+dropped from her: she was herself again, Nick’s Susy, and no one else’s.
+She sped on, staring with bright bewildered eyes at the stately facades
+of the La Muette quarter, the perspectives of bare trees, the awakening
+glitter of shop-windows holding out to her all the things she would
+never again be able to buy....
+
+In an avenue of shops she paused before a milliner’s window, and said
+to herself: “Why shouldn’t I earn my living by trimming hats?” She met
+work-girls streaming out under a doorway, and scattering to catch trams
+and omnibuses; and she looked with newly-wakened interest at their tired
+independent faces. “Why shouldn’t I earn my living as well as they do?”
+ she thought. A little farther on she passed a Sister of Charity with
+softly trotting feet, a calm anonymous glance, and hands hidden in her
+capacious sleeves. Susy looked at her and thought: “Why shouldn’t I be
+a Sister, and have no money to worry about, and trot about under a white
+coif helping poor people?”
+
+All these strangers on whom she smiled in passing, and glanced back at
+enviously, were free from the necessities that enslaved her, and would
+not have known what she meant if she had told them that she must have
+so much money for her dresses, so much for her cigarettes, so much for
+bridge and cabs and tips, and all kinds of extras, and that at that
+moment she ought to be hurrying back to a dinner at the British Embassy,
+where her permanent right to such luxuries was to be solemnly recognized
+and ratified.
+
+The artificiality and unreality of her life overcame her as with
+stifling fumes. She stopped at a street-corner, drawing long panting
+breaths as if she had been running a race. Then, slowly and aimlessly,
+she began to saunter along a street of small private houses in damp
+gardens that led to the Avenue du Bois. She sat down on a bench. Not far
+off, the Arc de Triomphe raised its august bulk, and beyond it a
+river of lights streamed down toward Paris, and the stir of the city’s
+heart-beats troubled the quiet in her bosom. But not for long. She
+seemed to be looking at it all from the other side of the grave; and
+as she got up and wandered down the Champs Elysees, half empty in the
+evening lull between dusk and dinner, she felt as if the glittering
+avenue were really changed into the Field of Shadows from which it takes
+its name, and as if she were a ghost among ghosts.
+
+Halfway home, a weakness of loneliness overcame her, and she seated
+herself under the trees near the Rond Point. Lines of motors and
+carriages were beginning to animate the converging thoroughfares,
+streaming abreast, crossing, winding in and out of each other in a
+tangle of hurried pleasure-seeking. She caught the light on jewels and
+shirt-fronts and hard bored eyes emerging from dim billows of fur and
+velvet. She seemed to hear what the couples were saying to each other,
+she pictured the drawing-rooms, restaurants, dance-halls they were
+hastening to, the breathless routine that was hurrying them along, as
+Time, the old vacuum-cleaner, swept them away with the dust of their
+carriage-wheels. And again the loneliness vanished in a sense of
+release....
+
+At the corner of the Place de la Concorde she stopped, recognizing a
+man in evening dress who was hailing a taxi. Their eyes met, and Nelson
+Vanderlyn came forward. He was the last person she cared to run across,
+and she shrank back involuntarily. What did he know, what had he
+guessed, of her complicity in his wife’s affairs? No doubt Ellie had
+blabbed it all out by this time; she was just as likely to confide her
+love-affairs to Nelson as to anyone else, now that the Bockheimer prize
+was landed.
+
+“Well--well--well--so I’ve caught you at it! Glad to see you, Susy,
+my dear.” She found her hand cordially clasped in Vanderlyn’s, and
+his round pink face bent on her with all its old urbanity. Did nothing
+matter, then, in this world she was fleeing from, did no one love or
+hate or remember?
+
+“No idea you were in Paris--just got here myself,” Vanderlyn continued,
+visibly delighted at the meeting. “Look here, don’t suppose you’re out
+of a job this evening by any chance, and would come and cheer up a lone
+bachelor, eh? No? You are? Well, that’s luck for once! I say, where
+shall we go? One of the places where they dance, I suppose? Yes, I twirl
+the light fantastic once in a while myself. Got to keep up with the
+times! Hold on, taxi! Here--I’ll drive you home first, and wait while
+you jump into your toggery. Lots of time.” As he steered her toward the
+carriage she noticed that he had a gouty limp, and pulled himself in
+after her with difficulty.
+
+“Mayn’t I come as I am, Nelson, I don’t feel like dancing. Let’s go and
+dine in one of those nice smoky little restaurants by the Place de la
+Bourse.”
+
+He seemed surprised but relieved at the suggestion, and they rolled off
+together. In a corner at Bauge’s they found a quiet table, screened from
+the other diners, and while Vanderlyn adjusted his eyeglasses to study
+the carte Susy stole a long look at him. He was dressed with even more
+than his usual formal trimness, and she detected, in an ultra-flat
+wrist-watch and discreetly expensive waistcoat buttons, an attempt at
+smartness altogether new. His face had undergone the same change: its
+familiar look of worn optimism had been, as it were, done up to match
+his clothes, as though a sort of moral cosmetic had made him pinker,
+shinier and sprightlier without really rejuvenating him. A thin veil of
+high spirits had merely been drawn over his face, as the shining strands
+of hair were skilfully brushed over his baldness.
+
+“Here! Carte des vins, waiter! What champagne, Susy?” He chose,
+fastidiously, the best the cellar could produce, grumbling a little at
+the bourgeois character of the dishes. “Capital food of its kind, no
+doubt, but coarsish, don’t you think? Well, I don’t mind... it’s rather
+a jolly change from the Luxe cooking. A new sensation--I’m all for new
+sensations, ain’t you, my dear?” He re-filled their champagne glasses,
+flung an arm sideways over his chair, and smiled at her with a foggy
+benevolence.
+
+As the champagne flowed his confidences flowed with it.
+
+“Suppose you know what I’m here for--this divorce business? We wanted to
+settle it quietly without a fuss, and of course Paris is the best place
+for that sort of job. Live and let live; no questions asked. None
+of your dirty newspapers. Great country, this. No hypocrisy... they
+understand Life over here!”
+
+Susy gazed and listened. She remembered that people had thought Nelson
+would make a row when he found out. He had always been addicted to
+truculent anecdotes about unfaithful wives, and the very formula of
+his perpetual ejaculation--“Caught you at it, eh?”--seemed to hint at a
+constant preoccupation with such ideas. But now it was evident that,
+as the saying was, he had “swallowed his dose” like all the others. No
+strong blast of indignation had momentarily lifted him above his normal
+stature: he remained a little man among little men, and his eagerness to
+rebuild his life with all the old smiling optimism reminded Susy of the
+patient industry of an ant remaking its ruined ant-heap.
+
+“Tell you what, great thing, this liberty! Everything’s changed
+nowadays; why shouldn’t marriage be too? A man can get out of a business
+partnership when he wants to; but the parsons want to keep us noosed up
+to each other for life because we’ve blundered into a church one day and
+said ‘Yes’ before one of ’em. No, no--that’s too easy. We’ve got
+beyond that. Science, and all these new discoveries.... I say the Ten
+Commandments were made for man, and not man for the Commandments; and
+there ain’t a word against divorce in ’em, anyhow! That’s what I tell my
+poor old mother, who builds everything on her Bible. Find me the place
+where it says: ‘Thou shalt not sue for divorce.’ It makes her wild, poor
+old lady, because she can’t; and she doesn’t know how they happen to
+have left it out.... I rather think Moses left it out because he knew
+more about human nature than these snivelling modern parsons do. Not
+that they’ll always bear investigating either; but I don’t care about
+that. Live and let live, eh, Susy? Haven’t we all got a right to our
+Affinities? I hear you’re following our example yourself. First-rate
+idea: I don’t mind telling you I saw it coming on last summer at Venice.
+Caught you at it, so to speak! Old Nelson ain’t as blind as people
+think. Here, let’s open another bottle to the health of Streff and Mrs.
+Streff!”
+
+She caught the hand with which he was signalling to the sommelier.
+This flushed and garrulous Nelson moved her more poignantly than a
+more heroic figure. “No more champagne, please, Nelson. Besides,” she
+suddenly added, “it’s not true.”
+
+He stared. “Not true that you’re going to marry Altringham?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“By George then what on earth did you chuck Nick for? Ain’t you got an
+Affinity, my dear?”
+
+She laughed and shook her head.
+
+“Do you mean to tell me it’s all Nick’s doing, then?”
+
+“I don’t know. Let’s talk of you instead, Nelson. I’m glad you’re in
+such good spirits. I rather thought--”
+
+He interrupted her quickly. “Thought I’d cut up a rumpus--do some
+shooting? I know--people did.” He twisted his moustache, evidently proud
+of his reputation. “Well, maybe I did see red for a day or two--but I’m
+a philosopher, first and last. Before I went into banking I’d made and
+lost two fortunes out West. Well, how did I build ’em up again? Not by
+shooting anybody even myself. By just buckling to, and beginning all
+over again. That’s how... and that’s what I am doing now. Beginning all
+over again.” His voice dropped from boastfulness to a note of wistful
+melancholy, the look of strained jauntiness fell from his face like a
+mask, and for an instant she saw the real man, old, ruined, lonely. Yes,
+that was it: he was lonely, desperately lonely, foundering in such deep
+seas of solitude that any presence out of the past was like a spar to
+which he clung. Whatever he knew or guessed of the part she had played
+in his disaster, it was not callousness that had made him greet her with
+such forgiving warmth, but the same sense of smallness, insignificance
+and isolation which perpetually hung like a cold fog on her own horizon.
+Suddenly she too felt old--old and unspeakably tired.
+
+“It’s been nice seeing you, Nelson. But now I must be getting home.”
+
+He offered no objection, but asked for the bill, resumed his jaunty air
+while he scattered largesse among the waiters, and sauntered out behind
+her after calling for a taxi.
+
+They drove off in silence. Susy was thinking: “And Clarissa?” but dared
+not ask. Vanderlyn lit a cigarette, hummed a dance-tune, and stared out
+of the window. Suddenly she felt his hand on hers.
+
+“Susy--do you ever see her?”
+
+“See--Ellie?”
+
+He nodded, without turning toward her.
+
+“Not often... sometimes....”
+
+“If you do, for God’s sake tell her I’m happy... happy as a king...
+tell her you could see for yourself that I was....” His voice broke in
+a little gasp. “I... I’ll be damned if... if she shall ever be unhappy
+about me... if I can help it....” The cigarette dropped from his
+fingers, and with a sob he covered his face.
+
+“Oh, poor Nelson--poor Nelson,” Susy breathed. While their cab rattled
+across the Place du Carrousel, and over the bridge, he continued to
+sit beside her with hidden face. At last he pulled out a scented
+handkerchief, rubbed his eyes with it, and groped for another cigarette.
+
+“I’m all right! Tell her that, will you, Susy? There are some of our old
+times I don’t suppose I shall ever forget; but they make me feel kindly
+to her, and not angry. I didn’t know it would be so, beforehand--but it
+is.... And now the thing’s settled I’m as right as a trivet, and you can
+tell her so.... Look here, Susy...” he caught her by the arm as the taxi
+drew up at her hotel.... “Tell her I understand, will you? I’d rather
+like her to know that....”
+
+“I’ll tell her, Nelson,” she promised; and climbed the stairs alone to
+her dreary room.
+
+Susy’s one fear was that Strefford, when he returned the next day,
+should treat their talk of the previous evening as a fit of “nerves”
+ to be jested away. He might, indeed, resent her behaviour too deeply
+to seek to see her at once; but his easygoing modern attitude toward
+conduct and convictions made that improbable. She had an idea that
+what he had most minded was her dropping so unceremoniously out of the
+Embassy Dinner.
+
+But, after all, why should she see him again? She had had enough of
+explanations during the last months to have learned how seldom they
+explain anything. If the other person did not understand at the first
+word, at the first glance even, subsequent elucidations served only to
+deepen the obscurity. And she wanted above all--and especially since her
+hour with Nelson Vanderlyn--to keep herself free, aloof, to retain
+her hold on her precariously recovered self. She sat down and wrote to
+Strefford--and the letter was only a little less painful to write than
+the one she had despatched to Nick. It was not that her own feelings
+were in any like measure engaged; but because, as the decision to give
+up Strefford affirmed itself, she remembered only his kindness, his
+forbearance, his good humour, and all the other qualities she had always
+liked in him; and because she felt ashamed of the hesitations which must
+cause him so much pain and humiliation. Yes: humiliation chiefly. She
+knew that what she had to say would hurt his pride, in whatever way she
+framed her renunciation; and her pen wavered, hating its task. Then she
+remembered Vanderlyn’s words about his wife: “There are some of our
+old times I don’t suppose I shall ever forget--” and a phrase of Grace
+Fulmer’s that she had but half grasped at the time: “You haven’t been
+married long enough to understand how trifling such things seem in the
+balance of one’s memories.”
+
+Here were two people who had penetrated farther than she into the
+labyrinth of the wedded state, and struggled through some of
+its thorniest passages; and yet both, one consciously, the other
+half-unaware, testified to the mysterious fact which was already dawning
+on her: that the influence of a marriage begun in mutual understanding
+is too deep not to reassert itself even in the moment of flight and
+denial.
+
+“The real reason is that you’re not Nick” was what she would have said
+to Strefford if she had dared to set down the bare truth; and she knew
+that, whatever she wrote, he was too acute not to read that into it.
+
+“He’ll think it’s because I’m still in love with Nick... and perhaps I
+am. But even if I were, the difference doesn’t seem to lie there, after
+all, but deeper, in things we’ve shared that seem to be meant to outlast
+love, or to change it into something different.” If she could have
+hoped to make Strefford understand that, the letter would have been easy
+enough to write--but she knew just at what point his imagination would
+fail, in what obvious and superficial inferences it would rest.
+
+
+“Poor Streff--poor me!” she thought as she sealed the letter.
+
+After she had despatched it a sense of blankness descended on her. She
+had succeeded in driving from her mind all vain hesitations, doubts,
+returns upon herself: her healthy system naturally rejected them. But
+they left a queer emptiness in which her thoughts rattled about as
+thoughts might, she supposed, in the first moments after death--before
+one got used to it. To get used to being dead: that seemed to be her
+immediate business. And she felt such a novice at it--felt so horribly
+alive! How had those others learned to do without living? Nelson--well,
+he was still in the throes; and probably never would understand, or
+be able to communicate, the lesson when he had mastered it. But Grace
+Fulmer--she suddenly remembered that Grace was in Paris, and set forth
+to find her.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIV.
+
+
+
+NICK LANSING had walked out a long way into the Campagna. His hours were
+seldom his own, for both Mr. and Mrs. Hicks were becoming more and more
+addicted to sudden and somewhat imperious demands upon his time; but on
+this occasion he had simply slipped away after luncheon, and taking the
+tram to the Porta Salaria, had wandered on thence in the direction of
+the Ponte Nomentano.
+
+He wanted to get away and think; but now that he had done it the
+business proved as unfruitful as everything he had put his hand to since
+he had left Venice. Think--think about what? His future seemed to him
+a negligible matter since he had received, two months earlier, the few
+lines in which Susy had asked him for her freedom.
+
+The letter had been a shock--though he had fancied himself so prepared
+for it--yet it had also, in another sense, been a relief, since, now
+that at last circumstances compelled him to write to her, they also told
+him what to say. And he had said it as briefly and simply as possible,
+telling her that he would put no obstacle in the way of her release,
+that he held himself at her lawyer’s disposal to answer any further
+communication--and that he would never forget their days together, or
+cease to bless her for them.
+
+That was all. He gave his Roman banker’s address, and waited for another
+letter; but none came. Probably the “formalities,” whatever they were,
+took longer than he had supposed; and being in no haste to recover his
+own liberty, he did not try to learn the cause of the delay. From that
+moment, however, he considered himself virtually free, and ceased, by
+the same token, to take any interest in his own future. His life seemed
+as flat as a convalescent’s first days after the fever has dropped.
+
+The only thing he was sure of was that he was not going to remain in
+the Hickses’ employ: when they left Rome for Central Asia he had no
+intention of accompanying them. The part of Mr. Buttles’ successor was
+becoming daily more intolerable to him, for the very reasons that had
+probably made it most gratifying to Mr. Buttles. To be treated by Mr.
+and Mrs. Hicks as a paid oracle, a paraded and petted piece of property,
+was a good deal more distasteful than he could have imagined any
+relation with these kindly people could be. And since their aspirations
+had become frankly social he found his task, if easier, yet far less
+congenial than during his first months with them. He preferred patiently
+explaining to Mrs. Hicks, for the hundredth time, that Sassanian and
+Saracenic were not interchangeable terms, to unravelling for her the
+genealogies of her titled guests, and reminding her, when she “seated”
+ her dinner-parties, that Dukes ranked higher than Princes. No--the job
+was decidedly intolerable; and he would have to look out for another
+means of earning his living. But that was not what he had really got
+away to think about. He knew he should never starve; he had even begun
+to believe again in his book. What he wanted to think of was Susy--or
+rather, it was Susy that he could not help thinking of, on whatever
+train of thought he set out.
+
+Again and again he fancied he had established a truce with the past: had
+come to terms--the terms of defeat and failure with that bright enemy
+called happiness. And, in truth, he had reached the point of definitely
+knowing that he could never return to the kind of life that he and Susy
+had embarked on. It had been the tragedy, of their relation that loving
+her roused in him ideals she could never satisfy. He had fallen in
+love with her because she was, like himself, amused, unprejudiced and
+disenchanted; and he could not go on loving her unless she ceased to
+be all these things. From that circle there was no issue, and in it he
+desperately revolved.
+
+If he had not heard such persistent rumours of her re-marriage to Lord
+Altringham he might have tried to see her again; but, aware of the
+danger and the hopelessness of a meeting, he was, on the whole, glad to
+have a reason for avoiding it. Such, at least, he honestly supposed to
+be his state of mind until he found himself, as on this occasion, free
+to follow out his thought to its end. That end, invariably, was Susy;
+not the bundle of qualities and defects into which his critical
+spirit had tried to sort her out, but the soft blur of identity, of
+personality, of eyes, hair, mouth, laugh, tricks of speech and gesture,
+that were all so solely and profoundly her own, and yet so mysteriously
+independent of what she might do, say, think, in crucial circumstances.
+He remembered her once saying to him: “After all, you were right
+when you wanted me to be your mistress,” and the indignant stare of
+incredulity with which he had answered her. Yet in these hours it
+was the palpable image of her that clung closest, till, as invariably
+happened, his vision came full circle, and feeling her on his breast he
+wanted her also in his soul.
+
+Well--such all-encompassing loves were the rarest of human experiences;
+he smiled at his presumption in wanting no other. Wearily he turned, and
+tramped homeward through the winter twilight....
+
+At the door of the hotel he ran across the Prince of Teutoburg’s
+aide-de-camp. They had not met for some days, and Nick had a vague
+feeling that if the Prince’s matrimonial designs took definite shape he
+himself was not likely, after all, to be their chosen exponent. He
+had surprised, now and then, a certain distrustful coldness under the
+Princess Mother’s cordial glance, and had concluded that she perhaps
+suspected him of being an obstacle to her son’s aspirations. He had no
+idea of playing that part, but was not sorry to appear to; for he was
+sincerely attached to Coral Hicks, and hoped for her a more human fate
+than that of becoming Prince Anastasius’s consort.
+
+This evening, however, he was struck by the beaming alacrity of the
+aide-de-camp’s greeting. Whatever cloud had hung between them had
+lifted: the Teutoburg clan, for one reason or another, no longer feared
+or distrusted him. The change was conveyed in a mere hand-pressure,
+a brief exchange of words, for the aide-de-camp was hastening after a
+well-known dowager of the old Roman world, whom he helped into a large
+coronetted brougham which looked as if it had been extracted, for
+some ceremonial purpose, from a museum of historic vehicles. And in an
+instant it flashed on Lansing that this lady had been the person chosen
+to lay the Prince’s offer at Miss Hicks’s feet.
+
+The discovery piqued him; and instead of making straight for his own
+room he went up to Mrs. Hicks’s drawing-room.
+
+The room was empty, but traces of elaborate tea pervaded it, and an
+immense bouquet of stiff roses lay on the centre table. As he turned
+away, Eldorada Tooker, flushed and tear-stained, abruptly entered.
+
+“Oh, Mr. Lansing--we were looking everywhere for you.”
+
+“Looking for me?”
+
+“Yes. Coral especially... she wants to see you. She wants you to come to
+her own sitting-room.”
+
+She led him across the ante-chamber and down the passage to the separate
+suite which Miss Hicks inhabited. On the threshold Eldorada gasped out
+emotionally: “You’ll find her looking lovely--” and jerked away with a
+sob as he entered.
+
+Coral Hicks was never lovely: but she certainly looked unusually
+handsome. Perhaps it was the long dress of black velvet which, outlined
+against a shaded lamp, made her strong build seem slenderer, or perhaps
+the slight flush on her dusky cheek: a bloom of womanhood hung upon
+her which she made no effort to dissemble. Indeed, it was one of her
+originalities that she always gravely and courageously revealed the
+utmost of whatever mood possessed her.
+
+“How splendid you look!” he said, smiling at her.
+
+She threw her head back and gazed him straight in the eyes. “That’s
+going to be my future job.”
+
+“To look splendid?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“And wear a crown?”
+
+“And wear a crown....”
+
+They continued to consider each other without speaking. Nick’s heart
+contracted with pity and perplexity.
+
+“Oh, Coral--it’s not decided?”
+
+She scrutinized him for a last penetrating moment; then she looked away.
+“I’m never long deciding.”
+
+He hesitated, choking with contradictory impulses, and afraid to
+formulate any, lest they should either mislead or pain her.
+
+“Why didn’t you tell me?” he questioned lamely; and instantly perceived
+his blunder.
+
+She sat down, and looked up at him under brooding lashes--had he ever
+noticed the thickness of her lashes before?
+
+“Would it have made any difference if I had told you?”
+
+“Any difference--?”
+
+“Sit down by me,” she commanded. “I want to talk to you. You can say
+now whatever you might have said sooner. I’m not married yet: I’m still
+free.”
+
+“You haven’t given your answer?”
+
+“It doesn’t matter if I have.”
+
+The retort frightened him with the glimpse of what she still expected of
+him, and what he was still so unable to give.
+
+“That means you’ve said yes?” he pursued, to gain time.
+
+“Yes or no--it doesn’t matter. I had to say something. What I want is
+your advice.”
+
+“At the eleventh hour?”
+
+“Or the twelfth.” She paused. “What shall I do?” she questioned, with a
+sudden accent of helplessness.
+
+He looked at her as helplessly. He could not say: “Ask yourself--ask
+your parents.” Her next word would sweep away such frail hypocrisies.
+Her “What shall I do?” meant “What are you going to do?” and he knew it,
+and knew that she knew it.
+
+“I’m a bad person to give any one matrimonial advice,” he began, with a
+strained smile; “but I had such a different vision for you.”
+
+“What kind of a vision?” She was merciless.
+
+“Merely what people call happiness, dear.”
+
+“‘People call’--you see you don’t believe in it yourself! Well, neither
+do I--in that form, at any rate.”
+
+He considered. “I believe in trying for it--even if the trying’s the
+best of it.”
+
+“Well, I’ve tried, and failed. And I’m twenty-two, and I never was
+young. I suppose I haven’t enough imagination.” She drew a deep breath.
+“Now I want something different.” She appeared to search for the word.
+“I want to be--prominent,” she declared.
+
+“Prominent?”
+
+She reddened swarthily. “Oh, you smile--you think it’s ridiculous: it
+doesn’t seem worth while to you. That’s because you’ve always had all
+those things. But I haven’t. I know what father pushed up from, and
+I want to push up as high again--higher. No, I haven’t got much
+imagination. I’ve always liked Facts. And I find I shall like the fact
+of being a Princess--choosing the people I associate with, and being up
+above all these European grandees that father and mother bow down to,
+though they think they despise them. You can be up above these people by
+just being yourself; you know how. But I need a platform--a sky-scraper.
+Father and mother slaved to give me my education. They thought education
+was the important thing; but, since we’ve all three of us got mediocre
+minds, it has just landed us among mediocre people. Don’t you suppose I
+see through all the sham science and sham art and sham everything we’re
+surrounded with? That’s why I want to buy a place at the very top, where
+I shall be powerful enough to get about me the people I want, the big
+people, the right people, and to help them I want to promote culture,
+like those Renaissance women you’re always talking about. I want to do
+it for Apex City; do you understand? And for father and mother too. I
+want all those titles carved on my tombstone. They’re facts, anyhow!
+Don’t laugh at me....” She broke off with one of her clumsy smiles, and
+moved away from him to the other end of the room.
+
+He sat looking at her with a curious feeling of admiration. Her harsh
+positivism was like a tonic to his disenchanted mood, and he thought:
+“What a pity!”
+
+Aloud he said: “I don’t feel like laughing at you. You’re a great
+woman.”
+
+“Then I shall be a great Princess.”
+
+“Oh--but you might have been something so much greater!”
+
+Her face flamed again. “Don’t say that!”
+
+He stood up involuntarily, and drew near her.
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“Because you’re the only man with whom I can imagine the other kind of
+greatness.”
+
+It moved him--moved him unexpectedly. He got as far as saying to
+himself: “Good God, if she were not so hideously rich--” and then of
+yielding for a moment to the persuasive vision of all that he and she
+might do with those very riches which he dreaded. After all, there was
+nothing mean in her ideals they were hard and material, in keeping with
+her primitive and massive person; but they had a certain grim nobility.
+And when she spoke of “the other kind of greatness” he knew that she
+understood what she was talking of, and was not merely saying something
+to draw him on, to get him to commit himself. There was not a drop of
+guile in her, except that which her very honesty distilled.
+
+“The other kind of greatness?” he repeated.
+
+“Well, isn’t that what you said happiness was? I wanted to be happy...
+but one can’t choose.”
+
+He went up to her. “No, one can’t choose. And how can anyone give you
+happiness who hasn’t got it himself?” He took her hands, feeling how
+large, muscular and voluntary they were, even as they melted in his
+palms.
+
+“My poor Coral, of what use can I ever be to you? What you need is to be
+loved.”
+
+She drew back and gave him one of her straight strong glances: “No,” she
+said gallantly, “but just to love.”
+
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+XXV
+
+IN the persistent drizzle of a Paris winter morning Susy Lansing walked
+back alone from the school at which she had just deposited the four
+eldest Fulmers to the little house in Passy where, for the last two
+months, she had been living with them.
+
+She had on ready-made boots, an old waterproof and a last year’s hat;
+but none of these facts disturbed her, though she took no particular
+pride in them. The truth was that she was too busy to think much about
+them. Since she had assumed the charge of the Fulmer children, in the
+absence of both their parents in Italy, she had had to pass through such
+an arduous apprenticeship of motherhood that every moment of her waking
+hours was packed with things to do at once, and other things to remember
+to do later. There were only five Fulmers; but at times they were
+like an army with banners, and their power of self-multiplication was
+equalled only by the manner in which they could dwindle, vanish, grow
+mute, and become as it were a single tumbled brown head bent over a book
+in some corner of the house in which nobody would ever have thought of
+hunting for them--and which, of course, were it the bonne’s room in the
+attic, or the subterranean closet where the trunks were kept, had been
+singled out by them for that very reason.
+
+These changes from ubiquity to invisibility would have seemed to Susy,
+a few months earlier, one of the most maddening of many characteristics
+not calculated to promote repose. But now she felt differently. She
+had grown interested in her charges, and the search for a clue to their
+methods, whether tribal or individual, was as exciting to her as the
+development of a detective story.
+
+What interested her most in the whole stirring business was the
+discovery that they had a method. These little creatures, pitched upward
+into experience on the tossing waves of their parents’ agitated lives,
+had managed to establish a rough-and-ready system of self-government.
+Junie, the eldest (the one who already chose her mother’s hats, and
+tried to put order in her wardrobe) was the recognized head of the
+state. At twelve she knew lots of things which her mother had never
+thoroughly learned, and Susy, her temporary mother, had never even
+guessed at: she spoke with authority on all vital subjects, from
+castor-oil to flannel under-clothes, from the fair sharing of stamps
+or marbles to the number of helpings of rice-pudding or jam which each
+child was entitled to.
+
+There was hardly any appeal from her verdict; yet each of her subjects
+revolved in his or her own orbit of independence, according to laws
+which Junie acknowledged and respected; and the interpreting of this
+mysterious charter of rights and privileges had not been without
+difficulty for Susy.
+
+Besides this, there were material difficulties to deal with. The six of
+them, and the breathless bonne who cooked and slaved for them all, had
+but a slim budget to live on; and, as Junie remarked, you’d have thought
+the boys ate their shoes, the way they vanished. They ate, certainly, a
+great deal else, and mostly of a nourishing and expensive kind. They
+had definite views about the amount and quality of their food, and were
+capable of concerted rebellion when Susy’s catering fell beneath their
+standard. All this made her life a hurried and harassing business, but
+never--what she had most feared it would be a dull or depressing one.
+
+It was not, she owned to herself, that the society of the Fulmer
+children had roused in her any abstract passion for the human young. She
+knew--had known since Nick’s first kiss--how she would love any child of
+his and hers; and she had cherished poor little Clarissa Vanderlyn with
+a shrinking and wistful solicitude. But in these rough young Fulmers she
+took a positive delight, and for reasons that were increasingly clear to
+her. It was because, in the first place, they were all intelligent; and
+because their intelligence had been fed only on things worth caring for.
+However inadequate Grace Fulmer’s bringing-up of her increasing tribe
+had been, they had heard in her company nothing trivial or dull: good
+music, good books and good talk had been their daily food, and if at
+times they stamped and roared and crashed about like children unblessed
+by such privileges, at others they shone with the light of poetry and
+spoke with the voice of wisdom.
+
+That had been Susy’s discovery: for the first time she was among
+awakening minds which had been wakened only to beauty. From their
+cramped and uncomfortable household Grace and Nat Fulmer had managed to
+keep out mean envies, vulgar admirations, shabby discontents; above all
+the din and confusion the great images of beauty had brooded, like those
+ancestral figures that stood apart on their shelf in the poorest Roman
+households.
+
+No, the task she had undertaken for want of a better gave Susy no sense
+of a missed vocation: “mothering” on a large scale would never, she
+perceived, be her job. Rather it gave her, in odd ways, the sense
+of being herself mothered, of taking her first steps in the life of
+immaterial values which had begun to seem so much more substantial than
+any she had known.
+
+On the day when she had gone to Grace Fulmer for counsel and comfort
+she had little guessed that they would come to her in this form. She had
+found her friend, more than ever distracted and yet buoyant, riding the
+large untidy waves of her life with the splashed ease of an amphibian.
+Grace was probably the only person among Susy’s friends who could have
+understood why she could not make up her mind to marry Altringham; but
+at the moment Grace was too much absorbed in her own problems to
+pay much attention to her friend’s, and, according to her wont, she
+immediately “unpacked” her difficulties.
+
+Nat was not getting what she had hoped out of his European opportunity.
+Oh, she was enough of an artist herself to know that there must be
+fallow periods--that the impact of new impressions seldom produced
+immediate results. She had allowed for all that. But her past experience
+of Nat’s moods had taught her to know just when he was assimilating,
+when impressions were fructifying in him. And now they were not, and he
+knew it as well as she did. There had been too much rushing about, too
+much excitement and sterile flattery... Mrs. Melrose? Well, yes, for
+a while... the trip to Spain had been a love-journey, no doubt. Grace
+spoke calmly, but the lines of her face sharpened: she had suffered, oh
+horribly, at his going to Spain without her. Yet she couldn’t, for the
+children’s sake, afford to miss the big sum that Ursula Gillow had given
+her for her fortnight at Ruan. And her playing had struck people, and
+led, on the way back, to two or three profitable engagements in private
+houses in London. Fashionable society had made “a little fuss”
+ about her, and it had surprised and pleased Nat, and given her a new
+importance in his eyes. “He was beginning to forget that I wasn’t only
+a nursery-maid, and it’s been a good thing for him to be reminded...
+but the great thing is that with what I’ve earned he and I can go off
+to southern Italy and Sicily for three months. You know I know how
+to manage... and, alone with me, Nat will settle down to work: to
+observing, feeling, soaking things in. It’s the only way. Mrs. Melrose
+wants to take him, to pay all the expenses again--well she shan’t. I’ll
+pay them.” Her worn cheek flushed with triumph. “And you’ll see what
+wonders will come of it.... Only there’s the problem of the children.
+Junie quite agrees that we can’t take them....”
+
+Thereupon she had unfolded her idea. If Susy was at a loose end, and
+hard up, why shouldn’t she take charge of the children while their
+parents were in Italy? For three months at most--Grace could promise it
+shouldn’t be longer. They couldn’t pay her much, of course, but at least
+she would be lodged and fed. “And, you know, it will end by interesting
+you--I’m sure it will,” the mother concluded, her irrepressible
+hopefulness rising even to this height, while Susy stood before her with
+a hesitating smile.
+
+Take care of five Fulmers for three months! The prospect cowed her. If
+there had been only Junie and Geordie, the oldest and youngest of the
+band, she might have felt less hesitation. But there was Nat, the second
+in age, whose motor-horn had driven her and Nick out to the hill-side
+on their fatal day at the Fulmers’ and there were the twins, Jack and
+Peggy, of whom she had kept memories almost equally disquieting. To rule
+this uproarious tribe would be a sterner business than trying to beguile
+Clarissa Vanderlyn’s ladylike leisure; and she would have refused on the
+spot, as she had refused once before, if the only possible alternatives
+had not come to seem so much less bearable, and if Junie, called in for
+advice, and standing there, small, plain and competent, had not said
+in her quiet grown-up voice: “Oh, yes, I’m sure Mrs. Lansing and I can
+manage while you’re away--especially if she reads aloud well.”
+
+Reads aloud well! The stipulation had enchanted Susy. She had never
+before known children who cared to be read aloud to; she remembered with
+a shiver her attempts to interest Clarissa in anything but gossip
+and the fashions, and the tone in which the child had said, showing
+Strefford’s trinket to her father: “Because I said I’d rather have it
+than a book.”
+
+And here were children who consented to be left for three months by
+their parents, but on condition that a good reader was provided for
+them!
+
+“Very well--I will! But what shall I be expected to read to you?” she
+had gaily questioned; and Junie had answered, after one of her sober
+pauses of reflection: “The little ones like nearly everything; but Nat
+and I want poetry particularly, because if we read it to ourselves we so
+often pronounce the puzzling words wrong, and then it sounds so horrid.”
+
+“Oh, I hope I shall pronounce them right,” Susy murmured, stricken with
+self-distrust and humility.
+
+Apparently she did; for her reading was a success, and even the twins
+and Geordie, once they had grown used to her, seemed to prefer a ringing
+page of Henry V, or the fairy scenes from the Midsummer Night’s Dream,
+to their own more specialized literature, though that had also at times
+to be provided.
+
+There were, in fact, no lulls in her life with the Fulmers; but
+its commotions seemed to Susy less meaningless, and therefore less
+fatiguing, than those that punctuated the existence of people like
+Altringham, Ursula Gillow, Ellie Vanderlyn and their train; and the
+noisy uncomfortable little house at Passy was beginning to greet her
+with the eyes of home when she returned there after her tramps to and
+from the children’s classes. At any rate she had the sense of doing
+something useful and even necessary, and of earning her own keep, though
+on so modest a scale; and when the children were in their quiet
+mood, and demanded books or music (or, even, on one occasion, at the
+surprising Junie’s instigation, a collective visit to the Louvre, where
+they recognized the most unlikely pictures, and the two elders emitted
+startling technical judgments, and called their companion’s attention to
+details she had not observed); on these occasions, Susy had a surprised
+sense of being drawn back into her brief life with Nick, or even still
+farther and deeper, into those visions of Nick’s own childhood on which
+the trivial later years had heaped their dust.
+
+It was curious to think that if he and she had remained together, and
+she had had a child--the vision used to come to her, in her sleepless
+hours, when she looked at little Geordie, in his cot by her bed--their
+life together might have been very much like the life she was now
+leading, a small obscure business to the outer world, but to themselves
+how wide and deep and crowded!
+
+She could not bear, at that moment, the thought of giving up this mystic
+relation to the life she had missed. In spite of the hurry and fatigue
+of her days, the shabbiness and discomfort of everything, and the hours
+when the children were as “horrid” as any other children, and turned a
+conspiracy of hostile faces to all her appeals; in spite of all this
+she did not want to give them up, and had decided, when their parents
+returned, to ask to go back to America with them. Perhaps, if Nat’s
+success continued, and Grace was able to work at her music, they would
+need a kind of governess-companion. At any rate, she could picture no
+future less distasteful.
+
+She had not sent to Mr. Spearman Nick’s answer to her letter. In the
+interval between writing to him and receiving his reply she had broken
+with Strefford; she had therefore no object in seeking her freedom. If
+Nick wanted his, he knew he had only to ask for it; and his silence, as
+the weeks passed, woke a faint hope in her. The hope flamed high when
+she read one day in the newspapers a vague but evidently “inspired”
+ allusion to the possibility of an alliance between his Serene Highness
+the reigning Prince of Teutoburg-Waldhain and Miss Coral Hicks of
+Apex City; it sank to ashes when, a few days later, her eye lit on a
+paragraph wherein Mr. and Mrs. Mortimer Hicks “requested to state” that
+there was no truth in the report.
+
+On the foundation of these two statements Susy raised one watch-tower
+of hope after another, feverish edifices demolished or rebuilt by every
+chance hint from the outer world wherein Nick’s name figured with the
+Hickses’. And still, as the days passed and she heard nothing, either
+from him or from her lawyer, her flag continued to fly from the quaking
+structures.
+
+Apart from the custody of the children there was indeed little to
+distract her mind from these persistent broodings. She winced sometimes
+at the thought of the ease with which her fashionable friends had let
+her drop out of sight. In the perpetual purposeless rush of their days,
+the feverish making of winter plans, hurrying off to the Riviera or St.
+Moritz, Egypt or New York, there was no time to hunt up the vanished
+or to wait for the laggard. Had they learned that she had broken her
+“engagement” (how she hated the word!) to Strefford, and had the fact
+gone about that she was once more only a poor hanger-on, to be taken up
+when it was convenient, and ignored in the intervals? She did not know;
+though she fancied Strefford’s newly-developed pride would prevent his
+revealing to any one what had passed between them. For several days
+after her abrupt flight he had made no sign; and though she longed to
+write and ask his forgiveness she could not find the words. Finally it
+was he who wrote: a short note, from Altringham, typical of all that was
+best in the old Strefford. He had gone down to Altringham, he told her,
+to think quietly over their last talk, and try to understand what
+she had been driving at. He had to own that he couldn’t; but that, he
+supposed, was the very head and front of his offending. Whatever he had
+done to displease her, he was sorry for; but he asked, in view of his
+invincible ignorance, to be allowed not to regard his offence as a cause
+for a final break. The possibility of that, he found, would make him
+even more unhappy than he had foreseen; as she knew, his own happiness
+had always been his first object in life, and he therefore begged her to
+suspend her decision a little longer. He expected to be in Paris within
+another two months, and before arriving he would write again, and ask
+her to see him.
+
+The letter moved her but did not make her waver. She simply wrote that
+she was touched by his kindness, and would willingly see him if he came
+to Paris later; though she was bound to tell him that she had not yet
+changed her mind, and did not believe it would promote his happiness to
+have her try to do so.
+
+He did not reply to this, and there was nothing further to keep her
+thoughts from revolving endlessly about her inmost hopes and fears.
+
+On the rainy afternoon in question, tramping home from the “cours” (to
+which she was to return at six), she had said to herself that it was
+two months that very day since Nick had known she was ready to release
+him--and that after such a delay he was not likely to take any further
+steps. The thought filled her with a vague ecstasy. She had had to fix
+an arbitrary date as the term of her anguish, and she had fixed that
+one; and behold she was justified. For what could his silence mean but
+that he too....
+
+On the hall-table lay a typed envelope with the Paris postage-mark. She
+opened it carelessly, and saw that the letter-head bore Mr. Spearman’s
+office address. The words beneath spun round before her eyes.... “Has
+notified us that he is at your disposal... carry out your wishes...
+arriving in Paris... fix an appointment with his lawyers....”
+
+Nick--it was Nick the words were talking of! It was the fact of Nick’s
+return to Paris that was being described in those preposterous terms!
+She sank down on the bench beside the dripping umbrella-stand and stared
+vacantly before her. It had fallen at last--this blow in which she now
+saw that she had never really believed! And yet she had imagined she was
+prepared for it, had expected it, was already planning her future life
+in view of it--an effaced impersonal life in the service of somebody
+else’s children--when, in reality, under that thin surface of abnegation
+and acceptance, all the old hopes had been smouldering red-hot in their
+ashes! What was the use of any self-discipline, any philosophy, any
+experience, if the lawless self underneath could in an instant consume
+them like tinder?
+
+She tried to collect herself--to understand what had happened. Nick was
+coming to Paris--coming not to see her but to consult his lawyer! It
+meant, of course, that he had definitely resolved to claim his freedom;
+and that, if he had made up his mind to this final step, after more
+than six months of inaction and seeming indifference, it could be
+only because something unforeseen and decisive had happened to him.
+Feverishly, she put together again the stray scraps of gossip and the
+newspaper paragraphs that had reached her in the last months. It
+was evident that Miss Hicks’s projected marriage with the Prince of
+Teutoburg-Waldhain had been broken off at the last moment; and broken
+off because she intended to marry Nick. The announcement of his arrival
+in Paris and the publication of Mr. and Mrs. Hicks’s formal denial of
+their daughter’s betrothal coincided too closely to admit of any other
+inference. Susy tried to grasp the reality of these assembled facts, to
+picture to herself their actual tangible results. She thought of Coral
+Hicks bearing the name of Mrs. Nick Lansing--her name, Susy’s own!--and
+entering drawing-rooms with Nick in her wake, gaily welcomed by the very
+people who, a few months before, had welcomed Susy with the same warmth.
+In spite of Nick’s growing dislike of society, and Coral’s attitude of
+intellectual superiority, their wealth would fatally draw them back into
+the world to which Nick was attached by all his habits and associations.
+And no doubt it would amuse him to re-enter that world as a dispenser of
+hospitality, to play the part of host where he had so long been a guest;
+just as Susy had once fancied it would amuse her to re-enter it as Lady
+Altringham.... But, try as she would, now that the reality was so close
+on her, she could not visualize it or relate it to herself. The mere
+juxtaposition of the two names--Coral, Nick--which in old times she had
+so often laughingly coupled, now produced a blur in her brain.
+
+She continued to sit helplessly beside the hall-table, the tears running
+down her cheeks. The appearance of the bonne aroused her. Her youngest
+charge, Geordie, had been feverish for a day or two; he was better,
+but still confined to the nursery, and he had heard Susy unlock the
+house-door, and could not imagine why she had not come straight up to
+him. He now began to manifest his indignation in a series of racking
+howls, and Susy, shaken out of her trance, dropped her cloak and
+umbrella and hurried up.
+
+“Oh, that child!” she groaned.
+
+Under the Fulmer roof there was little time or space for the indulgence
+of private sorrows. From morning till night there was always some
+immediate practical demand on one’s attention; and Susy was beginning
+to see how, in contracted households, children may play a part less
+romantic but not less useful than that assigned to them in fiction,
+through the mere fact of giving their parents no leisure to dwell on
+irremediable grievances. Though her own apprenticeship to family life
+had been so short, she had already acquired the knack of rapid mental
+readjustment, and as she hurried up to the nursery her private cares
+were dispelled by a dozen problems of temperature, diet and medicine.
+
+Such readjustment was of course only momentary; yet each time it
+happened it seemed to give her more firmness and flexibility of temper.
+“What a child I was myself six months ago!” she thought, wondering that
+Nick’s influence, and the tragedy of their parting, should have done
+less to mature and steady her than these few weeks in a house full of
+children.
+
+Pacifying Geordie was not easy, for he had long since learned to use
+his grievances as a pretext for keeping the offender at his beck with a
+continuous supply of stories, songs and games. “You’d better be careful
+never to put yourself in the wrong with Geordie,” the astute Junie had
+warned Susy at the outset, “because he’s got such a memory, and he won’t
+make it up with you till you’ve told him every fairy-tale he’s ever
+heard before.”
+
+But on this occasion, as soon as he saw her, Geordie’s indignation
+melted. She was still in the doorway, compunctious, abject and racking
+her dazed brain for his favourite stories, when she saw, by the
+smoothing out of his mouth and the sudden serenity of his eyes, that he
+was going to give her the delicious but not wholly reassuring shock of
+being a good boy.
+
+Thoughtfully he examined her face as she knelt down beside the cot; then
+he poked out a finger and pressed it on her tearful cheek.
+
+“Poor Susy got a pain too,” he said, putting his arms about her; and
+as she hugged him close, he added philosophically: “Tell Geordie a new
+story, darling, and you’ll forget all about it.”
+
+
+
+
+
+XXVI.
+
+
+
+NICK Lansing arrived in Paris two days after his lawyer had announced
+his coming to Mr. Spearman.
+
+He had left Rome with the definite purpose of freeing himself and Susy;
+and though he was not pledged to Coral Hicks he had not concealed from
+her the object of his journey. In vain had he tried to rouse in himself
+any sense of interest in his own future. Beyond the need of reaching a
+definite point in his relation to Susy his imagination could not travel.
+But he had been moved by Coral’s confession, and his reason told him
+that he and she would probably be happy together, with the temperate
+happiness based on a community of tastes and an enlargement of
+opportunities. He meant, on his return to Rome, to ask her to marry
+him; and he knew that she knew it. Indeed, if he had not spoken before
+leaving it was with no idea of evading his fate, or keeping her longer
+in suspense, but simply because of the strange apathy that had fallen
+on him since he had received Susy’s letter. In his incessant
+self-communings he dressed up this apathy as a discretion which forbade
+his engaging Coral’s future till his own was assured. But in truth he
+knew that Coral’s future was already engaged, and his with it: in Rome
+the fact had seemed natural and even inevitable.
+
+In Paris, it instantly became the thinnest of unrealities. Not because
+Paris was not Rome, nor because it was Paris; but because hidden away
+somewhere in that vast unheeding labyrinth was the half-forgotten part
+of himself that was Susy.... For weeks, for months past, his mind had
+been saturated with Susy: she had never seemed more insistently near him
+than as their separation lengthened, and the chance of reunion became
+less probable. It was as if a sickness long smouldering in him had
+broken out and become acute, enveloping him in the Nessus-shirt of his
+memories. There were moments when, to his memory, their actual embraces
+seemed perfunctory, accidental, compared with this deep deliberate
+imprint of her soul on his.
+
+Yet now it had become suddenly different. Now that he was in the same
+place with her, and might at any moment run across her, meet her eyes,
+hear her voice, avoid her hand--now that penetrating ghost of her
+with which he had been living was sucked back into the shadows, and
+he seemed, for the first time since their parting, to be again in her
+actual presence. He woke to the fact on the morning of his arrival,
+staring down from his hotel window on a street she would perhaps walk
+through that very day, and over a limitless huddle of roofs, one
+of which covered her at that hour. The abruptness of the transition
+startled him; he had not known that her mere geographical nearness would
+take him by the throat in that way. What would it be, then, if she were
+to walk into the room?
+
+Thank heaven that need never happen! He was sufficiently informed as
+to French divorce proceedings to know that they would not necessitate
+a confrontation with his wife; and with ordinary luck, and some
+precautions, he might escape even a distant glimpse of her. He did not
+mean to remain in Paris more than a few days; and during that time it
+would be easy--knowing, as he did, her tastes and Altringham’s--to avoid
+the places where she was likely to be met. He did not know where she was
+living, but imagined her to be staying with Mrs. Melrose, or some other
+rich friend, or else lodged, in prospective affluence, at the Nouveau
+Luxe, or in a pretty flat of her own. Trust Susy--ah, the pang of it--to
+“manage”!
+
+His first visit was to his lawyer’s; and as he walked through the
+familiar streets each approaching face, each distant figure seemed
+hers. The obsession was intolerable. It would not last, of course; but
+meanwhile he had the exposed sense of a fugitive in a nightmare, who
+feels himself the only creature visible in a ghostly and besetting
+multitude. The eye of the metropolis seemed fixed on him in an immense
+unblinking stare.
+
+At the lawyer’s he was told that, as a first step to freedom, he must
+secure a domicile in Paris. He had of course known of this necessity: he
+had seen too many friends through the Divorce Court, in one country
+or another, not to be fairly familiar with the procedure. But the fact
+presented a different aspect as soon as he tried to relate it to himself
+and Susy: it was as though Susy’s personality were a medium through
+which events still took on a transfiguring colour. He found the
+“domicile” that very day: a tawdrily furnished rez-de-chaussee,
+obviously destined to far different uses. And as he sat there, after the
+concierge had discreetly withdrawn with the first quarter’s payment in
+her pocket, and stared about him at the vulgar plushy place, he burst
+out laughing at what it was about to figure in the eyes of the law: a
+Home, and a Home desecrated by his own act! The Home in which he and
+Susy had reared their precarious bliss, and seen it crumble at the
+brutal touch of his unfaithfulness and his cruelty--for he had been told
+that he must be cruel to her as well as unfaithful! He looked at the
+walls hung with sentimental photogravures, at the shiny bronze “nudes,”
+ the moth-eaten animal-skins and the bedizened bed--and once more the
+unreality, the impossibility, of all that was happening to him entered
+like a drug into his veins.
+
+To rouse himself he stood up, turned the key on the hideous place, and
+returned to his lawyer’s. He knew that in the hard dry atmosphere of the
+office the act of giving the address of the flat would restore some kind
+of reality to the phantasmal transaction. And with wonder he watched the
+lawyer, as a matter of course, pencil the street and the number on one
+of the papers enclosed in a folder on which his own name was elaborately
+engrossed.
+
+As he took leave it occurred to him to ask where Susy was living. At
+least he imagined that it had just occurred to him, and that he was
+making the enquiry merely as a measure of precaution, in order to know
+what quarter of Paris to avoid; but in reality the question had been on
+his lips since he had first entered the office, and lurking in his mind
+since he had emerged from the railway station that morning. The fact
+of not knowing where she lived made the whole of Paris a meaningless
+unintelligible place, as useless to him as the face of a huge clock that
+has lost its hour hand.
+
+The address in Passy surprised him: he had imagined that she would be
+somewhere in the neighborhood of the Champs Elysees or the Place de
+l’Etoile. But probably either Mrs. Melrose or Ellie Vanderlyn had taken
+a house at Passy. Well--it was something of a relief to know that she
+was so far off. No business called him to that almost suburban region
+beyond the Trocadero, and there was much less chance of meeting her than
+if she had been in the centre of Paris.
+
+All day he wandered, avoiding the fashionable quarters, the streets
+in which private motors glittered five deep, and furred and feathered
+silhouettes glided from them into tea-rooms, picture-galleries and
+jewellers’ shops. In some such scenes Susy was no doubt figuring:
+slenderer, finer, vivider, than the other images of clay, but imitating
+their gestures, chattering their jargon, winding her hand among the same
+pearls and sables. He struck away across the Seine, along the quays
+to the Cite, the net-work of old Paris, the great grey vaults of St.
+Eustache, the swarming streets of the Marais. He gazed at monuments
+dawdled before shop-windows, sat in squares and on quays, watching
+people bargain, argue, philander, quarrel, work-girls stroll past in
+linked bands, beggars whine on the bridges, derelicts doze in the pale
+winter sun, mothers in mourning hasten by taking children to school, and
+street-walkers beat their weary rounds before the cafes.
+
+The day drifted on. Toward evening he began to grow afraid of his
+solitude, and to think of dining at the Nouveau Luxe, or some
+other fashionable restaurant where he would be fairly sure to
+meet acquaintances, and be carried off to a theatre, a boite or a
+dancing-hall. Anything, anything now, to get away from the maddening
+round of his thoughts. He felt the same blank fear of solitude as months
+ago in Genoa.... Even if he were to run across Susy and Altringham, what
+of it? Better get the job over. People had long since ceased to take on
+tragedy airs about divorce: dividing couples dined together to the last,
+and met afterward in each other’s houses, happy in the consciousness
+that their respective remarriages had provided two new centres of
+entertainment. Yet most of the couples who took their re-matings so
+philosophically had doubtless had their hour of enchantment, of belief
+in the immortality of loving; whereas he and Susy had simply and frankly
+entered into a business contract for their mutual advantage. The fact
+gave the last touch of incongruity to his agonies and exaltations, and
+made him appear to himself as grotesque and superannuated as the hero of
+a romantic novel.
+
+He stood up from a bench on which he had been lounging in the Luxembourg
+gardens, and hailed a taxi. Dusk had fallen, and he meant to go back to
+his hotel, take a rest, and then go out to dine. But instead, he threw
+Susy’s address to the driver, and settled down in the cab, resting both
+hands on the knob of his umbrella and staring straight ahead of him as
+if he were accomplishing some tiresome duty that had to be got through
+with before he could turn his mind to more important things.
+
+“It’s the easiest way,” he heard himself say.
+
+At the street-corner--her street-corner--he stopped the cab, and stood
+motionless while it rattled away. It was a short vague street, much
+farther off than he had expected, and fading away at the farther end in
+a dusky blur of hoardings overhung by trees. A thin rain was beginning
+to fall, and it was already night in this inadequately lit suburban
+quarter. Lansing walked down the empty street. The houses stood a few
+yards apart, with bare-twigged shrubs between, and gates and railings
+dividing them from the pavement. He could not, at first, distinguish
+their numbers; but presently, coming abreast of a street-lamp, he
+discovered that the small shabby facade it illuminated was precisely
+the one he sought. The discovery surprised him. He had imagined that, as
+frequently happened in the outlying quarters of Passy and La Muette,
+the mean street would lead to a stately private hotel, built upon some
+bowery fragment of an old country-place. It was the latest whim of the
+wealthy to establish themselves on these outskirts of Paris, where
+there was still space for verdure; and he had pictured Susy behind
+some pillared house-front, with lights pouring across glossy turf to
+sculptured gateposts. Instead, he saw a six-windowed house, huddled
+among neighbours of its kind, with the family wash fluttering between
+meagre bushes. The arc-light beat ironically on its front, which had
+the worn look of a tired work-woman’s face; and Lansing, as he leaned
+against the opposite railing, vainly tried to fit his vision of Susy
+into so humble a setting.
+
+The probable explanation was that his lawyer had given him the wrong
+address; not only the wrong number but the wrong street. He pulled out
+the slip of paper, and was crossing over to decipher it under the lamp,
+when an errand-boy appeared out of the obscurity, and approached the
+house. Nick drew back, and the boy, unlatching the gate, ran up the
+steps and gave the bell a pull.
+
+Almost immediately the door opened; and there stood Susy, the light full
+upon her, and upon a red-checked child against her shoulder. The space
+behind them was dark, or so dimly lit that it formed a black background
+to her vivid figure. She looked at the errand-boy without surprise, took
+his parcel, and after he had turned away, lingered a moment in the door,
+glancing down the empty street.
+
+That moment, to her watcher, seemed quicker than a flash yet as long
+as a life-time. There she was, a stone’s throw away, but utterly
+unconscious of his presence: his Susy, the old Susy, and yet a new Susy,
+curiously transformed, transfigured almost, by the new attitude in which
+he beheld her.
+
+In the first shock of the vision he forgot his surprise at her being in
+such a place, forgot to wonder whose house she was in, or whose was
+the sleepy child in her arms. For an instant she stood out from the
+blackness behind her, and through the veil of the winter night, a thing
+apart, an unconditioned vision, the eternal image of the woman and
+the child; and in that instant everything within him was changed and
+renewed. His eyes were still absorbing her, finding again the familiar
+curves of her light body, noting the thinness of the lifted arm that
+upheld the little boy, the droop of the shoulder he weighed on, the
+brooding way in which her cheek leaned to his even while she looked
+away; then she drew back, the door closed, and the street-lamp again
+shone on blankness.
+
+“But she’s mine!” Nick cried, in a fierce triumph of recovery...
+
+His eyes were so full of her that he shut them to hold in the crowding
+vision.
+
+It remained with him, at first, as a complete picture; then gradually it
+broke up into its component parts, the child vanished, the strange house
+vanished, and Susy alone stood before him, his own Susy, only his Susy,
+yet changed, worn, tempered--older, even--with sharper shadows under
+the cheek-bones, the brows drawn, the joint of the slim wrist more
+prominent. It was not thus that his memory had evoked her, and he
+recalled, with a remorseful pang, the fact that something in her
+look, her dress, her tired and drooping attitude, suggested poverty,
+dependence, seemed to make her after all a part of the shabby house in
+which, at first sight, her presence had seemed so incongruous.
+
+“But she looks poor!” he thought, his heart tightening. And instantly
+it occurred to him that these must be the Fulmer children whom she
+was living with while their parents travelled in Italy. Rumours of Nat
+Fulmer’s sudden ascension had reached him, and he had heard that the
+couple had lately been seen in Naples and Palermo. No one had mentioned
+Susy’s name in connection with them, and he could hardly tell why he
+had arrived at this conclusion, except perhaps because it seemed natural
+that, if Susy were in trouble, she should turn to her old friend Grace.
+
+But why in trouble? What trouble? What could have happened to check her
+triumphant career?
+
+“That’s what I mean to find out!” he exclaimed.
+
+His heart was beating with a tumult of new hopes and old memories. The
+sight of his wife, so remote in mien and manner from the world in
+which he had imagined her to be re-absorbed, changed in a flash his own
+relation to life, and flung a mist of unreality over all that he
+had been trying to think most solid and tangible. Nothing now was
+substantial to him but the stones of the street in which he stood, the
+front of the house which hid her, the bell-handle he already felt in
+his grasp. He started forward, and was halfway to the threshold when a
+private motor turned the corner, the twin glitter of its lamps carpeting
+the wet street with gold to Susy’s door.
+
+Lansing drew back into the shadow as the motor swept up to the house. A
+man jumped out, and the light fell on Strefford’s shambling figure, its
+lazy disjointed movements so unmistakably the same under his fur coat,
+and in the new setting of prosperity.
+
+Lansing stood motionless, staring at the door. Strefford rang, and
+waited. Would Susy appear again? Perhaps she had done so before only
+because she had been on the watch....
+
+But no: after a slight delay a bonne appeared--the breathless
+maid-of-all-work of a busy household--and at once effaced herself,
+letting the visitor in. Lansing was sure that not a word passed between
+the two, of enquiry on Lord Altringham’s part, or of acquiescence on the
+servant’s. There could be no doubt that he was expected.
+
+The door closed on him, and a light appeared behind the blind of the
+adjoining window. The maid had shown the visitor into the sitting-room
+and lit the lamp. Upstairs, meanwhile, Susy was no doubt running skilful
+fingers through her tumbled hair and daubing her pale lips with red.
+Ah, how Lansing knew every movement of that familiar rite, even to the
+pucker of the brow and the pouting thrust-out of the lower lip! He was
+seized with a sense of physical sickness as the succession of remembered
+gestures pressed upon his eyes.... And the other man? The other man,
+inside the house, was perhaps at that very instant smiling over the
+remembrance of the same scene!
+
+At the thought, Lansing plunged away into the night.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXVII.
+
+
+
+SUSY and Lord Altringham sat in the little drawing-room, divided from
+each other by a table carrying a smoky lamp and heaped with tattered
+school-books.
+
+In another half hour the bonne, despatched to fetch the children from
+their classes, would be back with her flock; and at any moment Geordie’s
+imperious cries might summon his slave up to the nursery. In the scant
+time allotted them, the two sat, and visibly wondered what to say.
+
+Strefford, on entering, had glanced about the dreary room, with its
+piano laden with tattered music, the children’s toys littering the lame
+sofa, the bunches of dyed grass and impaled butterflies flanking the
+cast-bronze clock. Then he had turned to Susy and asked simply: “Why on
+earth are you here?”
+
+She had not tried to explain; from the first, she had understood the
+impossibility of doing so. And she would not betray her secret longing
+to return to Nick, now that she knew that Nick had taken definite steps
+for his release. In dread lest Strefford should have heard of this, and
+should announce it to her, coupling it with the news of Nick’s projected
+marriage, and lest, hearing her fears thus substantiated, she should
+lose her self-control, she had preferred to say, in a voice that she
+tried to make indifferent: “The ‘proceedings,’ or whatever the lawyers
+call them, have begun. While they’re going on I like to stay quite by
+myself.... I don’t know why....”
+
+Strefford, at that, had looked at her keenly. “Ah,” he murmured; and
+his lips were twisted into their old mocking smile. “Speaking of
+proceedings,” he went on carelessly, “what stage have Ellie’s reached,
+I wonder? I saw her and Vanderlyn and Bockheimer all lunching cheerfully
+together to-day at Larue’s.”
+
+The blood rushed to Susy’s forehead. She remembered her tragic evening
+with Nelson Vanderlyn, only two months earlier, and thought to herself.
+“In time, then, I suppose, Nick and I....”
+
+Aloud she said: “I can’t imagine how Nelson and Ellie can ever want to
+see each other again. And in a restaurant, of all places!”
+
+Strefford continued to smile. “My dear, you’re incorrigibly
+old-fashioned. Why should two people who’ve done each other the best
+turn they could by getting out of each other’s way at the right moment
+behave like sworn enemies ever afterward? It’s too absurd; the humbug’s
+too flagrant. Whatever our generation has failed to do, it’s got rid of
+humbug; and that’s enough to immortalize it. I daresay Nelson and Ellie
+never liked each other better than they do to-day. Twenty years ago,
+they’d have been afraid to confess it; but why shouldn’t they now?”
+
+Susy looked at Strefford, conscious that under his words was the ache of
+the disappointment she had caused him; and yet conscious also that that
+very ache was not the overwhelming penetrating emotion he perhaps wished
+it to be, but a pang on a par with a dozen others; and that even while
+he felt it he foresaw the day when he should cease to feel it. And she
+thought to herself that this certainty of oblivion must be bitterer than
+any certainty of pain.
+
+A silence had fallen between them. He broke it by rising from his
+seat, and saying with a shrug: “You’ll end by driving me to marry Joan
+Senechal.”
+
+Susy smiled. “Well, why not? She’s lovely.”
+
+“Yes; but she’ll bore me.”
+
+“Poor Streff! So should I--”
+
+“Perhaps. But nothing like as soon--” He grinned sardonically. “There’d
+be more margin.” He appeared to wait for her to speak. “And what else on
+earth are you going to do?” he concluded, as she still remained silent.
+
+“Oh, Streff, I couldn’t marry you for a reason like that!” she murmured
+at length.
+
+“Then marry me, and find your reason afterward.”
+
+Her lips made a movement of denial, and still in silence she held out
+her hand for good-bye. He clasped it, and then turned away; but on the
+threshold he paused, his screwed-up eyes fixed on her wistfully.
+
+The look moved her, and she added hurriedly: “The only reason I can find
+is one for not marrying you. It’s because I can’t yet feel unmarried
+enough.”
+
+“Unmarried enough? But I thought Nick was doing his best to make you
+feel that.”
+
+“Yes. But even when he has--sometimes I think even that won’t make any
+difference.”
+
+He still scrutinized her hesitatingly, with the gravest eyes she had
+ever seen in his careless face.
+
+“My dear, that’s rather the way I feel about you,” he said simply as he
+turned to go.
+
+That evening after the children had gone to bed Susy sat up late in the
+cheerless sitting-room. She was not thinking of Strefford but of Nick.
+He was coming to Paris--perhaps he had already arrived. The idea that he
+might be in the same place with her at that very moment, and without her
+knowing it, was so strange and painful that she felt a violent revolt of
+all her strong and joy-loving youth. Why should she go on suffering so
+unbearably, so abjectly, so miserably? If only she could see him, hear
+his voice, even hear him say again such cruel and humiliating words as
+he had spoken on that dreadful day in Venice when that would be better
+than this blankness, this utter and final exclusion from his life! He
+had been cruel to her, unimaginably cruel: hard, arrogant, unjust; and
+had been so, perhaps, deliberately, because he already wanted to be
+free. But she was ready to face even that possibility, to humble herself
+still farther than he had humbled her--she was ready to do anything, if
+only she might see him once again.
+
+She leaned her aching head on her hands and pondered. Do anything? But
+what could she do? Nothing that should hurt him, interfere with his
+liberty, be false to the spirit of their pact: on that she was more than
+ever resolved. She had made a bargain, and she meant to stick to it, not
+for any abstract reason, but simply because she happened to love him in
+that way. Yes--but to see him again, only once!
+
+Suddenly she remembered what Strefford had said about Nelson Vanderlyn
+and his wife. “Why should two people who’ve just done each other the
+best turn they could behave like sworn enemies ever after?” If in
+offering Nick his freedom she had indeed done him such a service as
+that, perhaps he no longer hated her, would no longer be unwilling
+to see her.... At any rate, why should she not write to him on that
+assumption, write in a spirit of simple friendliness, suggesting that
+they should meet and “settle things”? The business-like word “settle”
+ (how she hated it) would prove to him that she had no secret designs
+upon his liberty; and besides he was too unprejudiced, too modern, too
+free from what Strefford called humbug, not to understand and accept
+such a suggestion. After all, perhaps Strefford was right; it was
+something to have rid human relations of hypocrisy, even if, in the
+process, so many exquisite things seemed somehow to have been torn away
+with it....
+
+She ran up to her room, scribbled a note, and hurried with it through
+the rain and darkness to the post-box at the corner. As she returned
+through the empty street she had an odd feeling that it was not
+empty--that perhaps Nick was already there, somewhere near her in the
+night, about to follow her to the door, enter the house, go up with
+her to her bedroom in the old way. It was strange how close he had been
+brought by the mere fact of her having written that little note to him!
+
+In the bedroom, Geordie lay in his crib in ruddy slumber, and she blew
+out the candle and undressed softly for fear of waking him.
+
+Nick Lansing, the next day, received Susy’s letter, transmitted to his
+hotel from the lawyer’s office.
+
+He read it carefully, two or three times over, weighing and scrutinizing
+the guarded words. She proposed that they should meet to “settle
+things.” What things? And why should he accede to such a request? What
+secret purpose had prompted her? It was horrible that nowadays, in
+thinking of Susy, he should always suspect ulterior motives, be meanly
+on the watch for some hidden tortuousness. What on earth was she trying
+to “manage” now, he wondered.
+
+A few hours ago, at the sight of her, all his hardness had melted, and
+he had charged himself with cruelty, with injustice, with every sin of
+pride against himself and her; but the appearance of Strefford, arriving
+at that late hour, and so evidently expected and welcomed, had driven
+back the rising tide of tenderness.
+
+Yet, after all, what was there to wonder at? Nothing was changed in
+their respective situations. He had left his wife, deliberately, and for
+reasons which no subsequent experience had caused him to modify. She had
+apparently acquiesced in his decision, and had utilized it, as she was
+justified in doing, to assure her own future.
+
+In all this, what was there to wail or knock the breast between two
+people who prided themselves on looking facts in the face, and making
+their grim best of them, without vain repinings? He had been right in
+thinking their marriage an act of madness. Her charms had overruled his
+judgment, and they had had their year... their mad year... or at least
+all but two or three months of it. But his first intuition had been
+right; and now they must both pay for their madness. The Fates seldom
+forget the bargains made with them, or fail to ask for compound
+interest. Why not, then, now that the time had come, pay up gallantly,
+and remember of the episode only what had made it seem so supremely
+worth the cost?
+
+He sent a pneumatic telegram to Mrs. Nicholas Lansing to say that he
+would call on her that afternoon at four. “That ought to give us time,”
+ he reflected drily, “to ‘settle things,’ as she calls it, without
+interfering with Strefford’s afternoon visit.”
+
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII.
+
+
+
+HER husband’s note had briefly said:
+
+“To-day at four o’clock. N.L.”
+
+All day she pored over the words in an agony of longing, trying to read
+into them regret, emotion, memories, some echo of the tumult in her own
+bosom. But she had signed “Susy,” and he signed “N.L.” That seemed
+to put an abyss between them. After all, she was free and he was not.
+Perhaps, in view of his situation, she had only increased the distance
+between them by her unconventional request for a meeting.
+
+She sat in the little drawing-room, and the cast-bronze clock ticked out
+the minutes. She would not look out of the window: it might bring bad
+luck to watch for him. And it seemed to her that a thousand invisible
+spirits, hidden demons of good and evil, pressed about her, spying out
+her thoughts, counting her heart-beats, ready to pounce upon the least
+symptom of over-confidence and turn it deftly to derision. Oh, for an
+altar on which to pour out propitiatory offerings! But what sweeter
+could they have than her smothered heart-beats, her choked-back tears?
+
+The bell rang, and she stood up as if a spring had jerked her to her
+feet. In the mirror between the dried grasses her face looked long pale
+inanimate. Ah, if he should find her too changed--! If there were but
+time to dash upstairs and put on a touch of red....
+
+The door opened; it shut on him; he was there.
+
+He said: “You wanted to see me?”
+
+She answered: “Yes.” And her heart seemed to stop beating.
+
+At first she could not make out what mysterious change had come over
+him, and why it was that in looking at him she seemed to be looking at a
+stranger; then she perceived that his voice sounded as it used to sound
+when he was talking to other people; and she said to herself, with a
+sick shiver of understanding, that she had become an “other person” to
+him.
+
+There was a deathly pause; then she faltered out, not knowing what she
+said: “Nick--you’ll sit down?”
+
+He said: “Thanks,” but did not seem to have heard her, for he continued
+to stand motionless, half the room between them. And slowly the
+uselessness, the hopelessness of his being there overcame her. A wall of
+granite seemed to have built itself up between them. She felt as if
+it hid her from him, as if with those remote new eyes of his he were
+staring into the wall and not at her. Suddenly she said to herself:
+“He’s suffering more than I am, because he pities me, and is afraid to
+tell me that he is going to be married.”
+
+The thought stung her pride, and she lifted her head and met his eyes
+with a smile.
+
+“Don’t you think,” she said, “it’s more sensible--with everything so
+changed in our lives--that we should meet as friends, in this way? I
+wanted to tell you that you needn’t feel--feel in the least unhappy
+about me.”
+
+A deep flush rose to his forehead. “Oh, I know--I know that--” he
+declared hastily; and added, with a factitious animation: “But thank you
+for telling me.”
+
+“There’s nothing, is there,” she continued, “to make our meeting in this
+way in the least embarrassing or painful to either of us, when both
+have found....” She broke off, and held her hand out to him. “I’ve heard
+about you and Coral,” she ended.
+
+He just touched her hand with cold fingers, and let it drop. “Thank
+you,” he said for the third time.
+
+“You won’t sit down?”
+
+He sat down.
+
+“Don’t you think,” she continued, “that the new way of... of meeting
+as friends... and talking things over without ill-will... is much
+pleasanter and more sensible, after all?”
+
+He smiled. “It’s immensely kind of you to feel that.”
+
+“Oh, I do feel it!” She stopped short, and wondered what on earth she
+had meant to say next, and why she had so abruptly lost the thread of
+her discourse.
+
+In the pause she heard him cough slightly and clear his throat. “Let me
+say, then,” he began, “that I’m glad too--immensely glad that your own
+future is so satisfactorily settled.”
+
+She lifted her glance again to his walled face, in which not a muscle
+stirred.
+
+“Yes: it--it makes everything easier for you, doesn’t it?”
+
+“For you too, I hope.” He paused, and then went on: “I want also to tell
+you that I perfectly understand--”
+
+“Oh,” she interrupted, “so do I; your point of view, I mean.”
+
+They were again silent.
+
+“Nick, why can’t we be friends real friends? Won’t it be easier?” she
+broke out at last with twitching lips.
+
+“Easier--?”
+
+“I mean, about talking things over--arrangements. There are arrangements
+to be made, I suppose?”
+
+“I suppose so.” He hesitated. “I’m doing what I’m told--simply following
+out instructions. The business is easy enough, apparently. I’m taking
+the necessary steps--”
+
+She reddened a little, and drew a gasping breath. “The necessary steps:
+what are they? Everything the lawyers tell one is so confusing.... I
+don’t yet understand--how it’s done.”
+
+“My share, you mean? Oh, it’s very simple.” He paused, and added in a
+tone of laboured ease: “I’m going down to Fontainebleau to-morrow--”
+
+She stared, not understanding. “To Fontainebleau--?”
+
+Her bewilderment drew from him his first frank smile. “Well--I chose
+Fontainebleau--I don’t know why... except that we’ve never been there
+together.”
+
+At that she suddenly understood, and the blood rushed to her forehead.
+She stood up without knowing what she was doing, her heart in her
+throat. “How grotesque--how utterly disgusting!”
+
+He gave a slight shrug. “I didn’t make the laws....”
+
+“But isn’t it too stupid and degrading that such things should be
+necessary when two people want to part--?” She broke off again, silenced
+by the echo of that fatal “want to part.”...
+
+He seemed to prefer not to dwell farther on the legal obligations
+involved.
+
+“You haven’t yet told me,” he suggested, “how you happen to be living
+here.”
+
+“Here--with the Fulmer children?” She roused herself, trying to catch
+his easier note. “Oh, I’ve simply been governessing them for a few
+weeks, while Nat and Grace are in Sicily.” She did not say: “It’s
+because I’ve parted with Strefford.” Somehow it helped her wounded pride
+a little to keep from him the secret of her precarious independence.
+
+He looked his wonder. “All alone with that bewildered bonne? But how
+many of them are there? Five? Good Lord!” He contemplated the clock with
+unseeing eyes, and then turned them again on her face.
+
+“I should have thought a lot of children would rather get on your
+nerves.”
+
+“Oh, not these children. They’re so good to me.”
+
+“Ah, well, I suppose it won’t be for long.”
+
+He sent his eyes again about the room, which his absent-minded gaze
+seemed to reduce to its dismal constituent elements, and added, with an
+obvious effort at small talk: “I hear the Fulmers are not hitting it off
+very well since his success. Is it true that he’s going to marry Violet
+Melrose?”
+
+The blood rose to Susy’s face. “Oh, never, never! He and Grace are
+travelling together now.”
+
+“Oh, I didn’t know. People say things....” He was visibly embarrassed
+with the subject, and sorry that he had broached it.
+
+“Some of the things that people say are true. But Grace doesn’t mind.
+She says she and Nat belong to each other. They can’t help it, she
+thinks, after having been through such a lot together.”
+
+“Dear old Grace!”
+
+He had risen from his chair, and this time she made no effort to detain
+him. He seemed to have recovered his self-composure, and it struck her
+painfully, humiliatingly almost, that he should have spoken in that
+light way of the expedition to Fontainebleau on the morrow.... Well,
+men were different, she supposed; she remembered having felt that once
+before about Nick.
+
+It was on the tip of her tongue to cry out: “But wait--wait! I’m not
+going to marry Strefford after all!”--but to do so would seem like an
+appeal to his compassion, to his indulgence; and that was not what she
+wanted. She could never forget that he had left her because he had not
+been able to forgive her for “managing”--and not for the world would she
+have him think that this meeting had been planned for such a purpose.
+
+“If he doesn’t see that I am different, in spite of appearances... and
+that I never was what he said I was that day--if in all these months it
+hasn’t come over him, what’s the use of trying to make him see it now?”
+ she mused. And then, her thoughts hurrying on: “Perhaps he’s suffering
+too--I believe he is suffering--at any rate, he’s suffering for me, if
+not for himself. But if he’s pledged to Coral, what can he do? What
+would he think of me if I tried to make him break his word to her?”
+
+There he stood--the man who was “going to Fontainebleau to-morrow”; who
+called it “taking the necessary steps!” Who could smile as he made the
+careless statement! A world seemed to divide them already: it was as if
+their parting were already over. All the words, cries, arguments beating
+loud wings in her dropped back into silence. The only thought left was:
+“How much longer does he mean to go on standing there?”
+
+He may have read the question in her face, for turning back from an
+absorbed contemplation of the window curtains he said: “There’s nothing
+else?”
+
+“Nothing else?”
+
+“I mean: you spoke of things to be settled--”
+
+She flushed, suddenly remembering the pretext she had used to summon
+him.
+
+“Oh,” she faltered, “I didn’t know... I thought there might be.... But
+the lawyers, I suppose....”
+
+She saw the relief on his contracted face. “Exactly. I’ve always thought
+it was best to leave it to them. I assure you”--again for a moment the
+smile strained his lips--“I shall do nothing to interfere with a quick
+settlement.”
+
+She stood motionless, feeling herself turn to stone. He appeared already
+a long way off, like a figure vanishing down a remote perspective.
+
+“Then--good-bye,” she heard him say from its farther end.
+
+“Oh,--good-bye,” she faltered, as if she had not had the word ready, and
+was relieved to have him supply it.
+
+He stopped again on the threshold, looked back at her, began to speak.
+“I’ve--” he said; then he repeated “Good-bye,” as though to make sure he
+had not forgotten to say it; and the door closed on him.
+
+It was over; she had had her last chance and missed it. Now, whatever
+happened, the one thing she had lived and longed for would never be. He
+had come, and she had let him go again....
+
+How had it come about? Would she ever be able to explain it to herself?
+How was it that she, so fertile in strategy, so practiced in feminine
+arts, had stood there before him, helpless, inarticulate, like a
+school-girl a-choke with her first love-longing? If he was gone, and
+gone never to return, it was her own fault, and none but hers. What had
+she done to move him, detain him, make his heart beat and his head
+swim as hers were beating and swimming? She stood aghast at her own
+inadequacy, her stony inexpressiveness....
+
+And suddenly she lifted her hands to her throbbing forehead and cried
+out: “But this is love! This must be love!”
+
+She had loved him before, she supposed; for what else was she to call
+the impulse that had drawn her to him, taught her how to overcome his
+scruples, and whirled him away with her on their mad adventure? Well,
+if that was love, this was something so much larger and deeper that the
+other feeling seemed the mere dancing of her blood in tune with his....
+
+But, no! Real love, great love, the love that poets sang, and privileged
+and tortured beings lived and died of, that love had its own superior
+expressiveness, and the sure command of its means. The petty arts of
+coquetry were no farther from it than the numbness of the untaught
+girl. Great love was wise, strong, powerful, like genius, like any other
+dominant form of human power. It knew itself, and what it wanted, and
+how to attain its ends.
+
+Not great love, then... but just the common humble average of human love
+was hers. And it had come to her so newly, so overwhelmingly, with a
+face so grave, a touch so startling, that she had stood there petrified,
+humbled at the first look of its eyes, recognizing that what she had
+once taken for love was merely pleasure and spring-time, and the flavour
+of youth.
+
+“But how was I to know? And now it’s too late!” she wailed.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIX.
+
+
+
+THE inhabitants of the little house in Passy were of necessity early
+risers; but when Susy jumped out of bed the next morning no one else
+was astir, and it lacked nearly an hour of the call of the bonne’s
+alarm-clock.
+
+For a moment Susy leaned out of her dark room into the darker night.
+A cold drizzle fell on her face, and she shivered and drew back. Then,
+lighting a candle, and shading it, as her habit was, from the sleeping
+child, she slipped on her dressing-gown and opened the door. On the
+threshold she paused to look at her watch. Only half-past five! She
+thought with compunction of the unkindness of breaking in on Junie
+Fulmer’s slumbers; but such scruples did not weigh an ounce in the
+balance of her purpose. Poor Junie would have to oversleep herself on
+Sunday, that was all.
+
+Susy stole into the passage, opened a door, and cast her light on the
+girl’s face.
+
+“Junie! Dearest Junie, you must wake up!”
+
+Junie lay in the abandonment of youthful sleep; but at the sound of her
+name she sat up with the promptness of a grown person on whom domestic
+burdens have long weighed.
+
+“Which one of them is it?” she asked, one foot already out of bed.
+
+“Oh, Junie dear, no... it’s nothing wrong with the children... or with
+anybody,” Susy stammered, on her knees by the bed.
+
+In the candlelight, she saw Junie’s anxious brow darken reproachfully.
+
+“Oh, Susy, then why--? I was just dreaming we were all driving about
+Rome in a great big motor-car with father and mother!”
+
+“I’m so sorry, dear. What a lovely dream! I’m a brute to have
+interrupted it--”
+
+She felt the little girl’s awakening scrutiny. “If there’s nothing wrong
+with anybody, why are you crying, Susy? Is it you there’s something
+wrong with? What has happened?”
+
+“Am I crying?” Susy rose from her knees and sat down on the counterpane.
+“Yes, it is me. And I had to disturb you.”
+
+“Oh, Susy, darling, what is it?” Junie’s arms were about her in a flash,
+and Susy grasped them in burning fingers.
+
+“Junie, listen! I’ve got to go away at once--to leave you all for the
+whole day. I may not be back till late this evening; late to-night; I
+can’t tell. I promised your mother I’d never leave you; but I’ve got
+to--I’ve got to.”
+
+Junie considered her agitated face with fully awakened eyes. “Oh, I
+won’t tell, you know, you old brick,” she said with simplicity.
+
+Susy hugged her. “Junie, Junie, you darling! But that wasn’t what I
+meant. Of course you may tell--you must tell. I shall write to
+your mother myself. But what worries me is the idea of having to go
+away--away from Paris--for the whole day, with Geordie still coughing a
+little, and no one but that silly Angele to stay with him while you’re
+out--and no one but you to take yourself and the others to school. But
+Junie, Junie, I’ve got to do it!” she sobbed out, clutching the child
+tighter.
+
+Junie Fulmer, with her strangely mature perception of the case, and
+seemingly of every case that fate might call on her to deal with, sat
+for a moment motionless in Susy’s hold. Then she freed her wrists with
+an adroit twist, and leaning back against the pillows said judiciously:
+“You’ll never in the world bring up a family of your own if you take on
+like this over other people’s children.”
+
+Through all her turmoil of spirit the observation drew a laugh from
+Susy. “Oh, a family of my own--I don’t deserve one, the way I’m behaving
+to your--”
+
+Junie still considered her. “My dear, a change will do you good: you
+need it,” she pronounced.
+
+Susy rose with a laughing sigh. “I’m not at all sure it will! But I’ve
+got to have it, all the same. Only I do feel anxious--and I can’t even
+leave you my address!”
+
+Junie still seemed to examine the case.
+
+“Can’t you even tell me where you’re going?” she ventured, as if not
+quite sure of the delicacy of asking.
+
+“Well--no, I don’t think I can; not till I get back. Besides, even if
+I could it wouldn’t be much use, because I couldn’t give you my address
+there. I don’t know what it will be.”
+
+“But what does it matter, if you’re coming back to-night?”
+
+“Of course I’m coming back! How could you possibly imagine I should
+think of leaving you for more than a day?”
+
+“Oh, I shouldn’t be afraid--not much, that is, with the poker, and Nat’s
+water-pistol,” emended Junie, still judicious.
+
+Susy again enfolded her vehemently, and then turned to more practical
+matters. She explained that she wished if possible to catch an
+eight-thirty train from the Gare de Lyon, and that there was not a
+moment to lose if the children were to be dressed and fed, and full
+instructions written out for Junie and Angele, before she rushed for the
+underground.
+
+While she bathed Geordie, and then hurried into her own clothes, she
+could not help wondering at her own extreme solicitude for her charges.
+She remembered, with a pang, how often she had deserted Clarissa
+Vanderlyn for the whole day, and even for two or three in
+succession--poor little Clarissa, whom she knew to be so unprotected,
+so exposed to evil influences. She had been too much absorbed in her own
+greedy bliss to be more than intermittently aware of the child; but now,
+she felt, no sorrow however ravaging, no happiness however absorbing,
+would ever again isolate her from her kind.
+
+And then these children were so different! The exquisite Clarissa was
+already the predestined victim of her surroundings: her budding soul
+was divided from Susy’s by the same barrier of incomprehension that
+separated the latter from Mrs. Vanderlyn. Clarissa had nothing to
+teach Susy but the horror of her own hard little appetites; whereas the
+company of the noisy argumentative Fulmers had been a school of wisdom
+and abnegation.
+
+As she applied the brush to Geordie’s shining head and the handkerchief
+to his snuffling nose, the sense of what she owed him was so borne in on
+Susy that she interrupted the process to catch him to her bosom.
+
+“I’ll have such a story to tell you when I get back to-night, if you’ll
+promise me to be good all day,” she bargained with him; and Geordie,
+always astute, bargained back: “Before I promise, I’d like to know what
+story.”
+
+At length all was in order. Junie had been enlightened, and Angele
+stunned, by the minuteness of Susy’s instructions; and the latter,
+waterproofed and stoutly shod, descended the doorstep, and paused to
+wave at the pyramid of heads yearning to her from an upper window.
+
+It was hardly light, and still raining, when she turned into the dismal
+street. As usual, it was empty; but at the corner she perceived a
+hesitating taxi, with luggage piled beside the driver. Perhaps it was
+some early traveller, just arriving, who would release the carriage in
+time for her to catch it, and thus avoid the walk to the metro, and the
+subsequent strap-hanging; for it was the work-people’s hour. Susy raced
+toward the vehicle, which, overcoming its hesitation, was beginning to
+move in her direction. Observing this, she stopped to see where it
+would discharge its load. Thereupon the taxi stopped also, and the load
+discharged itself in front of her in the shape of Nick Lansing.
+
+The two stood staring at each other through the rain till Nick broke
+out: “Where are you going? I came to get you.”
+
+“To get me? To get me?” she repeated. Beside the driver she had suddenly
+remarked the old suit-case from which her husband had obliged her to
+extract Strefford’s cigars as they were leaving Como; and everything
+that had happened since seemed to fall away and vanish in the pang and
+rapture of that memory.
+
+“To get you; yes. Of course.” He spoke the words peremptorily, almost as
+if they were an order. “Where were you going?” he repeated.
+
+Without answering, she turned toward the house. He followed her, and the
+laden taxi closed the procession.
+
+“Why are you out in such weather without an umbrella?” he continued, in
+the same severe tone, drawing her under the shelter of his.
+
+“Oh, because Junie’s umbrella is in tatters, and I had to leave her
+mine, as I was going away for the whole day.” She spoke the words like a
+person in a trance.
+
+“For the whole day? At this hour? Where?”
+
+They were on the doorstep, and she fumbled automatically for her key,
+let herself in, and led the way to the sitting-room. It had not been
+tidied up since the night before. The children’s school books lay
+scattered on the table and sofa, and the empty fireplace was grey with
+ashes. She turned to Nick in the pallid light.
+
+“I was going to see you,” she stammered, “I was going to follow you to
+Fontainebleau, if necessary, to tell you... to prevent you....”
+
+He repeated in the same aggressive tone: “Tell me what? Prevent what?”
+
+“Tell you that there must be some other way... some decent way... of our
+separating... without that horror, that horror of your going off with a
+woman....”
+
+He stared, and then burst into a laugh. The blood rushed to her face.
+She had caught a familiar ring in his laugh, and it wounded her. What
+business had he, at such a time, to laugh in the old way?
+
+“I’m sorry; but there is no other way, I’m afraid. No other way but
+one,” he corrected himself.
+
+She raised her head sharply. “Well?”
+
+“That you should be the woman.--Oh, my dear!” He had dropped his mocking
+smile, and was at her side, her hands in his. “Oh, my dear, don’t you
+see that we’ve both been feeling the same thing, and at the same hour?
+You lay awake thinking of it all night, didn’t you? So did I. Whenever
+the clock struck, I said to myself: ‘She’s hearing it too.’ And I was up
+before daylight, and packed my traps--for I never want to set foot again
+in that awful hotel where I’ve lived in hell for the last three days.
+And I swore to myself that I’d go off with a woman by the first train I
+could catch--and so I mean to, my dear.”
+
+She stood before him numb. Yes, numb: that was the worst of it! The
+violence of the reaction had been too great, and she could hardly
+understand what he was saying. Instead, she noticed that the tassel of
+the window-blind was torn off again (oh, those children!), and vaguely
+wondered if his luggage were safe on the waiting taxi. One heard such
+stories....
+
+His voice came back to her. “Susy! Listen!” he was entreating. “You
+must see yourself that it can’t be. We’re married--isn’t that all that
+matters? Oh, I know--I’ve behaved like a brute: a cursed arrogant ass!
+You couldn’t wish that ass a worse kicking than I’ve given him! But
+that’s not the point, you see. The point is that we’re married....
+Married.... Doesn’t it mean something to you, something--inexorable? It
+does to me. I didn’t dream it would--in just that way. But all I can say
+is that I suppose the people who don’t feel it aren’t really married--and
+they’d better separate; much better. As for us--”
+
+Through her tears she gasped out: “That’s what I felt... that’s what I
+said to Streff....”
+
+He was upon her with a great embrace. “My darling! My darling! You have
+told him?”
+
+“Yes,” she panted. “That’s why I’m living here.” She paused. “And you’ve
+told Coral?”
+
+She felt his embrace relax. He drew away a little, still holding her,
+but with lowered head.
+
+
+“No... I... haven’t.”
+
+“Oh, Nick! But then--?”
+
+He caught her to him again, resentfully. “Well--then what? What do you
+mean? What earthly difference does it make?”
+
+“But if you’ve told her you were going to marry her--” (Try as she
+would, her voice was full of silver chimes.)
+
+“Marry her? Marry her?” he echoed. “But how could I? What does marriage
+mean anyhow? If it means anything at all it means--you! And I can’t ask
+Coral Hicks just to come and live with me, can I?”
+
+Between crying and laughing she lay on his breast, and his hand passed
+over her hair.
+
+They were silent for a while; then he began again: “You said it yourself
+yesterday, you know.”
+
+She strayed back from sunlit distances. “Yesterday?”
+
+“Yes: that Grace Fulmer says you can’t separate two people who’ve been
+through a lot of things--”
+
+“Ah, been through them together--it’s not the things, you see, it’s the
+togetherness,” she interrupted.
+
+“The togetherness--that’s it!” He seized on the word as if it had just
+been coined to express their case, and his mind could rest in it without
+farther labour.
+
+The door-bell rang, and they started. Through the window they saw the
+taxi-driver gesticulating enquiries as to the fate of the luggage.
+
+“He wants to know if he’s to leave it here,” Susy laughed.
+
+“No--no! You’re to come with me,” her husband declared.
+
+“Come with you?” She laughed again at the absurdity of the suggestion.
+
+“Of course: this very instant. What did you suppose? That I was going
+away without you? Run up and pack your things,” he commanded.
+
+“My things? My things? But I can’t leave the children!”
+
+He stared, between indignation and amusement. “Can’t leave the children?
+Nonsense! Why, you said yourself you were going to follow me to
+Fontainebleau--”
+
+She reddened again, this time a little painfully “I didn’t know what
+I was doing.... I had to find you... but I should have come back this
+evening, no matter what happened.”
+
+“No matter what?”
+
+She nodded, and met his gaze resolutely.
+
+“No; but really--”
+
+“Really, I can’t leave the children till Nat and Grace come back. I
+promised I wouldn’t.”
+
+“Yes; but you didn’t know then.... Why on earth can’t their nurse look
+after them?”
+
+“There isn’t any nurse but me.”
+
+“Good Lord!”
+
+“But it’s only for two weeks more,” she pleaded. “Two weeks! Do you know
+how long I’ve been without you!” He seized her by both wrists, and drew
+them against his breast. “Come with me at least for two days--Susy!” he
+entreated her.
+
+“Oh,” she cried, “that’s the very first time you’ve said my name!”
+
+“Susy, Susy, then--my Susy--Susy! And you’ve only said mine once, you
+know.”
+
+“Nick!” she sighed, at peace, as if the one syllable were a magic seed
+that hung out great branches to envelop them.
+
+“Well, then, Susy, be reasonable. Come!”
+
+“Reasonable--oh, reasonable!” she sobbed through laughter.
+
+“Unreasonable, then! That’s even better.”
+
+She freed herself, and drew back gently. “Nick, I swore I wouldn’t leave
+them; and I can’t. It’s not only my promise to their mother--it’s what
+they’ve been to me themselves. You don’t, know... You can’t imagine
+the things they’ve taught me. They’re awfully naughty at times, because
+they’re so clever; but when they’re good they’re the wisest people I
+know.” She paused, and a sudden inspiration illuminated her. “But why
+shouldn’t we take them with us?” she exclaimed.
+
+Her husband’s arms fell away from her, and he stood dumfounded.
+
+“Take them with us?”
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“All five of them?”
+
+“Of course--I couldn’t possibly separate them. And Junie and Nat will
+help us to look after the young ones.”
+
+“Help us!” he groaned.
+
+“Oh, you’ll see; they won’t bother you. Just leave it to me; I’ll
+manage--” The word stopped her short, and an agony of crimson suffused
+her from brow to throat. Their eyes met; and without a word he stooped
+and laid his lips gently on the stain of red on her neck.
+
+“Nick,” she breathed, her hands in his.
+
+“But those children--”
+
+Instead of answering, she questioned: “Where are we going?”
+
+His face lit up.
+
+“Anywhere, dearest, that you choose.”
+
+“Well--I choose Fontainebleau!” she exulted.
+
+“So do I! But we can’t take all those children to an hotel at
+Fontainebleau, can we?” he questioned weakly. “You see, dear, there’s
+the mere expense of it--”
+
+Her eyes were already travelling far ahead of him. “The expense won’t
+amount to much. I’ve just remembered that Angele, the bonne, has a
+sister who is cook there in a nice old-fashioned pension which must be
+almost empty at this time of year. I’m sure I can ma--arrange easily,”
+ she hurried on, nearly tripping again over the fatal word. “And just
+think of the treat it will be to them! This is Friday, and I can get
+them let off from their afternoon classes, and keep them in the country
+till Monday. Poor darlings, they haven’t been out of Paris for months!
+And I daresay the change will cure Geordie’s cough--Geordie’s the
+youngest,” she explained, surprised to find herself, even in the rapture
+of reunion, so absorbed in the welfare of the Fulmers.
+
+She was conscious that her husband was surprised also; but instead of
+prolonging the argument he simply questioned: “Was Geordie the chap you
+had in your arms when you opened the front door the night before last?”
+
+She echoed: “I opened the front door the night before last?”
+
+“To a boy with a parcel.”
+
+“Oh,” she sobbed, “you were there? You were watching?”
+
+He held her to him, and the currents flowed between them warm and full
+as on the night of their moon over Como.
+
+In a trice, after that, she had the matter in hand and her forces
+marshalled. The taxi was paid, Nick’s luggage deposited in the
+vestibule, and the children, just piling down to breakfast, were
+summoned in to hear the news.
+
+It was apparent that, seasoned to surprises as they were, Nick’s
+presence took them aback. But when, between laughter and embraces, his
+identity, and his right to be where he was, had been made clear to them,
+Junie dismissed the matter by asking him in her practical way: “Then
+I suppose we may talk about you to Susy now?”--and thereafter all five
+addressed themselves to the vision of their imminent holiday.
+
+From that moment the little house became the centre of a whirlwind.
+Treats so unforeseen, and of such magnitude, were rare in the young
+Fulmers’ experience, and had it not been for Junie’s steadying influence
+Susy’s charges would have got out of hand. But young Nat, appealed to
+by Nick on the ground of their common manhood, was induced to forego
+celebrating the event on his motor horn (the very same which had
+tortured the New Hampshire echoes), and to assert his authority over
+his juniors; and finally a plan began to emerge from the chaos, and each
+child to fit into it like a bit of a picture puzzle.
+
+Susy, riding the whirlwind with her usual firmness, nevertheless felt an
+undercurrent of anxiety. There had been no time as yet, between her and
+Nick, to revert to money matters; and where there was so little money
+it could not, obviously, much matter. But that was the more reason for
+being secretly aghast at her intrepid resolve not to separate herself
+from her charges. A three days’ honey-moon with five children in the
+party--and children with the Fulmer appetite--could not but be a costly
+business; and while she settled details, packed them off to school, and
+routed out such nondescript receptacles as the house contained in the
+way of luggage, her thoughts remained fixed on the familiar financial
+problem.
+
+Yes--it was cruel to have it rear its hated head, even through the
+bursting boughs of her new spring; but there it was, the perpetual
+serpent in her Eden, to be bribed, fed, sent to sleep with such scraps
+as she could beg, borrow or steal for it. And she supposed it was the
+price that fate meant her to pay for her blessedness, and was surer than
+ever that the blessedness was worth it. Only, how was she to compound
+the business with her new principles?
+
+With the children’s things to pack, luncheon to be got ready, and the
+Fontainebleau pension to be telephoned to, there was little time to
+waste on moral casuistry; and Susy asked herself with a certain irony
+if the chronic lack of time to deal with money difficulties had not been
+the chief cause of her previous lapses. There was no time to deal with
+this question either; no time, in short, to do anything but rush forward
+on a great gale of plans and preparations, in the course of which she
+whirled Nick forth to buy some charcuterie for luncheon, and telephone
+to Fontainebleau.
+
+Once he was gone--and after watching him safely round the corner--she
+too got into her wraps, and transferring a small packet from her
+dressing-case to her pocket, hastened out in a different direction.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXX.
+
+
+
+IT took two brimming taxi-cabs to carry the Nicholas Lansings to the
+station on their second honey-moon. In the first were Nick, Susy and the
+luggage of the whole party (little Nat’s motor horn included, as a last
+concession, and because he had hitherto forborne to play on it); and in
+the second, the five Fulmers, the bonne, who at the eleventh hour had
+refused to be left, a cage-full of canaries, and a foundling kitten who
+had murderous designs on them; all of which had to be taken because, if
+the bonne came, there would be nobody left to look after them.
+
+At the corner Susy tore herself from Nick’s arms and held up the
+procession while she ran back to the second taxi to make sure that the
+bonne had brought the house-key. It was found of course that she hadn’t
+but that Junie had; whereupon the caravan got under way again, and
+reached the station just as the train was starting; and there, by some
+miracle of good nature on the part of the guard, they were all packed
+together into an empty compartment--no doubt, as Susy remarked, because
+train officials never failed to spot a newly-married couple, and treat
+them kindly.
+
+The children, sentinelled by Junie, at first gave promise of superhuman
+goodness; but presently their feelings overflowed, and they were not to
+be quieted till it had been agreed that Nat should blow his motor-horn
+at each halt, while the twins called out the names of the stations, and
+Geordie, with the canaries and kitten, affected to change trains.
+
+Luckily the halts were few; but the excitement of travel, combined
+with over-indulgence in the chocolates imprudently provided by Nick,
+overwhelmed Geordie with a sudden melancholy that could be appeased only
+by Susy’s telling him stories till they arrived at Fontainebleau.
+
+The day was soft, with mild gleams of sunlight on decaying foliage;
+and after luggage and livestock had been dropped at the pension Susy
+confessed that she had promised the children a scamper in the forest,
+and buns in a tea-shop afterward. Nick placidly agreed, and darkness
+had long fallen, and a great many buns been consumed, when at length
+the procession turned down the street toward the pension, headed by Nick
+with the sleeping Geordie on his shoulder, while the others, speechless
+with fatigue and food, hung heavily on Susy.
+
+It had been decided that, as the bonne was of the party, the children
+might be entrusted to her for the night, and Nick and Susy establish
+themselves in an adjacent hotel. Nick had flattered himself that
+they might remove their possessions there when they returned from the
+tea-room; but Susy, manifestly surprised at the idea, reminded him
+that her charges must first be given their supper and put to bed. She
+suggested that he should meanwhile take the bags to the hotel, and
+promised to join him as soon as Geordie was asleep.
+
+She was a long time coming, but waiting for her was sweet, even in a
+deserted hotel reading-room insufficiently heated by a sulky stove; and
+after he had glanced through his morning’s mail, hurriedly thrust into
+his pocket as he left Paris, he sank into a state of drowsy beatitude.
+It was all the maddest business in the world, yet it did not give him
+the sense of unreality that had made their first adventure a mere golden
+dream; and he sat and waited with the security of one in whom dear
+habits have struck deep roots. In this mood of acquiescence even the
+presence of the five Fulmers seemed a natural and necessary consequence
+of all the rest; and when Susy at length appeared, a little pale and
+tired, with the brooding inward look that busy mothers bring from the
+nursery, that too seemed natural and necessary, and part of the new
+order of things.
+
+They had wandered out to a cheap restaurant for dinner; now, in the damp
+December night, they were walking back to the hotel under a sky full of
+rain-clouds. They seemed to have said everything to each other, and yet
+barely to have begun what they had to tell; and at each step they took,
+their heavy feet dragged a great load of bliss.
+
+In the hotel almost all the lights were already out; and they groped
+their way to the third floor room which was the only one that Susy
+had found cheap enough. A ray from a street-lamp struck up through the
+unshuttered windows; and after Nick had revived the fire they drew their
+chairs close to it, and sat quietly for a while in the dark.
+
+Their silence was so sweet that Nick could not make up his mind to break
+it; not to do so gave his tossing spirit such a sense of permanence, of
+having at last unlimited time before him in which to taste his joy and
+let its sweetness stream through him. But at length he roused himself to
+say: “It’s queer how things coincide. I’ve had a little bit of good news
+in one of the letters I got this morning.”
+
+Susy took the announcement serenely. “Well, you would, you know,” she
+commented, as if the day had been too obviously designed for bliss to
+escape the notice of its dispensers.
+
+“Yes,” he continued with a thrill of pardonable pride. “During the
+cruise I did a couple of articles on Crete--oh, just travel-impressions,
+of course; they couldn’t be more. But the editor of the New Review
+has accepted them, and asks for others. And here’s his cheque, if you
+please! So you see you might have let me take the jolly room downstairs
+with the pink curtains. And it makes me awfully hopeful about my book.”
+
+He had expected a rapturous outburst, and perhaps some reassertion
+of wifely faith in the glorious future that awaited The Pageant of
+Alexander; and deep down under the lover’s well-being the author felt a
+faint twinge of mortified vanity when Susy, leaping to her feet, cried
+out, ravenously and without preamble: “Oh, Nick, Nick--let me see how
+much they’ve given you!”
+
+He flourished the cheque before her in the firelight. “A couple of
+hundred, you mercenary wretch!”
+
+“Oh, oh--” she gasped, as if the good news had been almost too much for
+her tense nerves; and then surprised him by dropping to the ground, and
+burying her face against his knees.
+
+“Susy, my Susy,” he whispered, his hand on her shaking shoulder. “Why,
+dear, what is it? You’re not crying?”
+
+“Oh, Nick, Nick--two hundred? Two hundred dollars? Then I’ve got to tell
+you--oh now, at once!”
+
+A faint chill ran over him, and involuntarily his hand drew back from
+her bowed figure.
+
+“Now? Oh, why now?” he protested. “What on earth does it matter
+now--whatever it is?”
+
+“But it does matter--it matters more than you can think!”
+
+She straightened herself, still kneeling before him, and lifted her head
+so that the firelight behind her turned her hair into a ruddy halo. “Oh,
+Nick, the bracelet--Ellie’s bracelet.... I’ve never returned it to her,”
+ she faltered out.
+
+He felt himself recoiling under the hands with which she clutched his
+knees. For an instant he did not remember what she alluded to; it was
+the mere mention of Ellie Vanderlyn’s name that had fallen between them
+like an icy shadow. What an incorrigible fool he had been to think they
+could ever shake off such memories, or cease to be the slaves of such a
+past!
+
+“The bracelet?--Oh, yes,” he said, suddenly understanding, and feeling
+the chill mount slowly to his lips.
+
+“Yes, the bracelet... Oh, Nick, I meant to give it back at once; I
+did--I did; but the day you went away I forgot everything else. And when
+I found the thing, in the bottom of my bag, weeks afterward, I thought
+everything was over between you and me, and I had begun to see Ellie
+again, and she was kind to me and how could I?” To save his life he
+could have found no answer, and she pressed on: “And so this morning,
+when I saw you were frightened by the expense of bringing all the
+children with us, and when I felt I couldn’t leave them, and couldn’t
+leave you either, I remembered the bracelet; and I sent you off to
+telephone while I rushed round the corner to a little jeweller’s where
+I’d been before, and pawned it so that you shouldn’t have to pay for the
+children.... But now, darling, you see, if you’ve got all that money, I
+can get it out of pawn at once, can’t I, and send it back to her?”
+
+She flung her arms about him, and he held her fast, wondering if the
+tears he felt were hers or his. Still he did not speak; but as he
+clasped her close she added, with an irrepressible flash of her old
+irony: “Not that Ellie will understand why I’ve done it. She’s never yet
+been able to make out why you returned her scarf-pin.”
+
+For a long time she continued to lean against him, her head on his
+knees, as she had done on the terrace of Como on the last night of their
+honeymoon. She had ceased to talk, and he sat silent also, passing
+his hand quietly to and fro over her hair. The first rapture had been
+succeeded by soberer feelings. Her confession had broken up the frozen
+pride about his heart, and humbled him to the earth; but it had also
+roused forgotten things, memories and scruples swept aside in the first
+rush of their reunion. He and she belonged to each other for always:
+he understood that now. The impulse which had first drawn them
+together again, in spite of reason, in spite of themselves almost, that
+deep-seated instinctive need that each had of the other, would never
+again wholly let them go. Yet as he sat there he thought of Strefford,
+he thought of Coral Hicks. He had been a coward in regard to Coral, and
+Susy had been sincere and courageous in regard to Strefford. Yet his
+mind dwelt on Coral with tenderness, with compunction, with remorse; and
+he was almost sure that Susy had already put Strefford utterly out of
+her mind.
+
+It was the old contrast between the two ways of loving, the man’s way
+and the woman’s; and after a moment it seemed to Nick natural enough
+that Susy, from the very moment of finding him again, should feel
+neither pity nor regret, and that Strefford should already be to her
+as if he had never been. After all, there was something Providential in
+such arrangements.
+
+He stooped closer, pressed her dreaming head between his hands, and
+whispered: “Wake up; it’s bedtime.”
+
+She rose; but as she moved away to turn on the light he caught her hand
+and drew her to the window. They leaned on the sill in the darkness,
+and through the clouds, from which a few drops were already falling,
+the moon, labouring upward, swam into a space of sky, cast her troubled
+glory on them, and was again hidden.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg’s The Glimpses of the Moon, by Edith Wharton
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+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" />
+    <title>
+      The Glimpses of the Moon, by Edith Wharton
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+.smcap {font-variant:small-caps;}
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+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Glimpses of the Moon, by Edith Wharton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Glimpses of the Moon
+
+Author: Edith Wharton
+
+Release Date: September 15, 2008 [EBook #1263]
+[Last Updated: August 7, 2017]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GLIMPSES OF THE MOON ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Dean Gilley, and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      THE GLIMPSES OF THE MOON
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      By Edith Wharton
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      Contents
+    </h2>
+    <table summary="" style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto">
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_PART1"> PART I </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_PART2"> PART II </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_PART3"> PART III </a>
+          </p>
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+    </table>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_PART1" id="link2H_PART1">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      PART I
+    </h2>
+
+<h3>I.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">It</span> rose for them&mdash;their honey-moon&mdash;over the waters of a lake so
+      famed as the scene of romantic raptures that they were rather proud of not
+      having been afraid to choose it as the setting of their own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It required a total lack of humour, or as great a gift for it as ours, to
+      risk the experiment,&rdquo; Susy Lansing opined, as they hung over the
+      inevitable marble balustrade and watched their tutelary orb roll its magic
+      carpet across the waters to their feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;or the loan of Strefford&rsquo;s villa,&rdquo; her husband emended,
+      glancing upward through the branches at a long low patch of paleness to
+      which the moonlight was beginning to give the form of a white house-front.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, come when we&rsquo;d five to choose from. At least if you count the Chicago
+      flat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So we had&mdash;you wonder!&rdquo; He laid his hand on hers, and his touch
+      renewed the sense of marvelling exultation which the deliberate survey of
+      their adventure always roused in her.... It was characteristic that she
+      merely added, in her steady laughing tone: &ldquo;Or, not counting the flat&mdash;for
+      I hate to brag&mdash;just consider the others: Violet Melrose&rsquo;s place at
+      Versailles, your aunt&rsquo;s villa at Monte Carlo&mdash;and a moor!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was conscious of throwing in the moor tentatively, and yet with a
+      somewhat exaggerated emphasis, as if to make sure that he shouldn&rsquo;t accuse
+      her of slurring it over. But he seemed to have no desire to do so. &ldquo;Poor
+      old Fred!&rdquo; he merely remarked; and she breathed out carelessly: &ldquo;Oh, well&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His hand still lay on hers, and for a long interval, while they stood
+      silent in the enveloping loveliness of the night, she was aware only of
+      the warm current running from palm to palm, as the moonlight below them
+      drew its line of magic from shore to shore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nick Lansing spoke at last. &ldquo;Versailles in May would have been impossible:
+      all our Paris crowd would have run us down within twenty-four hours. And
+      Monte Carlo is ruled out because it&rsquo;s exactly the kind of place everybody
+      expected us to go. So&mdash;with all respect to you&mdash;it wasn&rsquo;t much
+      of a mental strain to decide on Como.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His wife instantly challenged this belittling of her capacity. &ldquo;It took a
+      good deal of argument to convince you that we could face the ridicule of
+      Como!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I should have preferred something in a lower key; at least I
+      thought I should till we got here. Now I see that this place is idiotic
+      unless one is perfectly happy; and that then it&rsquo;s&mdash;as good as any other.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She sighed out a blissful assent. &ldquo;And I must say that Streffy has done
+      things to a turn. Even the cigars&mdash;who do you suppose gave him those
+      cigars?&rdquo; She added thoughtfully: &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll miss them when we have to go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I say, don&rsquo;t let&rsquo;s talk to-night about going. Aren&rsquo;t we outside of
+      time and space...? Smell that guinea-a-bottle stuff over there: what is
+      it? Stephanotis?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Y&mdash;yes.... I suppose so. Or gardenias.... Oh, the fire-flies! Look...
+      there, against that splash of moonlight on the water. Apples of silver in
+      a net-work of gold....&rdquo; They leaned together, one flesh from shoulder to
+      finger-tips, their eyes held by the snared glitter of the ripples.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I could bear,&rdquo; Lansing remarked, &ldquo;even a nightingale at this moment....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A faint gurgle shook the magnolias behind them, and a long liquid whisper
+      answered it from the thicket of laurel above their heads.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a little late in the year for them: they&rsquo;re ending just as we
+      begin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy laughed. &ldquo;I hope when our turn comes we shall say good-bye to each
+      other as sweetly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was in her husband&rsquo;s mind to answer: &ldquo;They&rsquo;re not saying good-bye, but
+      only settling down to family cares.&rdquo; But as this did not happen to be in
+      his plan, or in Susy&rsquo;s, he merely echoed her laugh and pressed her closer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The spring night drew them into its deepening embrace. The ripples of the
+      lake had gradually widened and faded into a silken smoothness, and high
+      above the mountains the moon was turning from gold to white in a sky
+      powdered with vanishing stars. Across the lake the lights of a little town
+      went out, one after another, and the distant shore became a floating
+      blackness. A breeze that rose and sank brushed their faces with the scents
+      of the garden; once it blew out over the water a great white moth like a
+      drifting magnolia petal. The nightingales had paused and the trickle of
+      the fountain behind the house grew suddenly insistent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Susy spoke it was in a voice languid with visions. &ldquo;I have been
+      thinking,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;that we ought to be able to make it last at least a
+      year longer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her husband received the remark without any sign of surprise or
+      disapprobation; his answer showed that he not only understood her, but had
+      been inwardly following the same train of thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean,&rdquo; he enquired after a pause, &ldquo;without counting your
+      grandmother&rsquo;s pearls?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;without the pearls.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He pondered a while, and then rejoined in a tender whisper: &ldquo;Tell me again
+      just how.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let&rsquo;s sit down, then. No, I like the cushions best.&rdquo; He stretched himself
+      in a long willow chair, and she curled up on a heap of boat-cushions and
+      leaned her head against his knee. Just above her, when she lifted her
+      lids, she saw bits of moon-flooded sky incrusted like silver in a sharp
+      black patterning of plane-boughs. All about them breathed of peace and
+      beauty and stability, and her happiness was so acute that it was almost a
+      relief to remember the stormy background of bills and borrowing against
+      which its frail structure had been reared. &ldquo;People with a balance can&rsquo;t be
+      as happy as all this,&rdquo; Susy mused, letting the moonlight filter through
+      her lazy lashes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      People with a balance had always been Susy Branch&rsquo;s bugbear; they were
+      still, and more dangerously, to be Susy Lansing&rsquo;s. She detested them,
+      detested them doubly, as the natural enemies of mankind and as the people
+      one always had to put one&rsquo;s self out for. The greater part of her life
+      having been passed among them, she knew nearly all that there was to know
+      about them, and judged them with the contemptuous lucidity of nearly
+      twenty years of dependence. But at the present moment her animosity was
+      diminished not only by the softening effect of love but by the fact that
+      she had got out of those very people more&mdash;yes, ever so much more&mdash;than
+      she and Nick, in their hours of most reckless planning, had ever dared to
+      hope for.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After all, we owe them this!&rdquo; she mused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her husband, lost in the drowsy beatitude of the hour, had not repeated
+      his question; but she was still on the trail of the thought he had
+      started. A year&mdash;yes, she was sure now that with a little management
+      they could have a whole year of it! &ldquo;It&rdquo; was their marriage, their being
+      together, and away from bores and bothers, in a comradeship of which both
+      of them had long ago guessed the immediate pleasure, but she at least had
+      never imagined the deeper harmony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was at one of their earliest meetings&mdash;at one of the heterogeneous
+      dinners that the Fred Gillows tried to think &ldquo;literary&rdquo;&mdash;that the
+      young man who chanced to sit next to her, and of whom it was vaguely
+      rumoured that he had &ldquo;written,&rdquo; had presented himself to her imagination
+      as the sort of luxury to which Susy Branch, heiress, might conceivably
+      have treated herself as a crowning folly. Susy Branch, pauper, was fond of
+      picturing how this fancied double would employ her millions: it was one of
+      her chief grievances against her rich friends that they disposed of theirs
+      so unimaginatively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;d rather have a husband like that than a steam-yacht!&rdquo; she had thought
+      at the end of her talk with the young man who had written, and as to whom
+      it had at once been clear to her that nothing his pen had produced, or
+      might hereafter set down, would put him in a position to offer his wife
+      anything more costly than a row-boat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His wife! As if he could ever have one! For he&rsquo;s not the kind to marry
+      for a yacht either.&rdquo; In spite of her past, Susy had preserved enough inner
+      independence to detect the latent signs of it in others, and also to
+      ascribe it impulsively to those of the opposite sex who happened to
+      interest her. She had a natural contempt for people who gloried in what
+      they need only have endured. She herself meant eventually to marry,
+      because one couldn&rsquo;t forever hang on to rich people; but she was going to
+      wait till she found some one who combined the maximum of wealth with at
+      least a minimum of companionableness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had at once perceived young Lansing&rsquo;s case to be exactly the opposite:
+      he was as poor as he could be, and as companionable as it was possible to
+      imagine. She therefore decided to see as much of him as her hurried and
+      entangled life permitted; and this, thanks to a series of adroit
+      adjustments, turned out to be a good deal. They met frequently all the
+      rest of that winter; so frequently that Mrs. Fred Gillow one day abruptly
+      and sharply gave Susy to understand that she was &ldquo;making herself
+      ridiculous.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah&mdash;&rdquo; said Susy with a long breath, looking her friend and patroness
+      straight in the painted eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; cried Ursula Gillow in a sob, &ldquo;before you interfered Nick liked me
+      awfully... and, of course, I don&rsquo;t want to reproach you... but when I
+      think....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy made no answer. How could she, when she thought? The dress she had on
+      had been given her by Ursula; Ursula&rsquo;s motor had carried her to the feast
+      from which they were both returning. She counted on spending the following
+      August with the Gillows at Newport... and the only alternative was to go
+      to California with the Bockheimers, whom she had hitherto refused even to
+      dine with.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course, what you fancy is perfect nonsense, Ursula; and as to my
+      interfering&mdash;&rdquo; Susy hesitated, and then murmured: &ldquo;But if it will
+      make you any happier I&rsquo;ll arrange to see him less often....&rdquo; She sounded
+      the lowest depths of subservience in returning Ursula&rsquo;s tearful kiss....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy Branch had a masculine respect for her word; and the next day she put
+      on her most becoming hat and sought out young Mr. Lansing in his lodgings.
+      She was determined to keep her promise to Ursula; but she meant to look
+      her best when she did it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She knew at what time the young man was likely to be found, for he was
+      doing a dreary job on a popular encyclopaedia (V to X), and had told her
+      what hours were dedicated to the hateful task. &ldquo;Oh, if only it were a
+      novel!&rdquo; she thought as she mounted his dingy stairs; but immediately
+      reflected that, if it were the kind that she could bear to read, it
+      probably wouldn&rsquo;t bring him in much more than his encyclopaedia. Miss
+      Branch had her standards in literature....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The apartment to which Mr. Lansing admitted her was a good deal cleaner,
+      but hardly less dingy, than his staircase. Susy, knowing him to be
+      addicted to Oriental archaeology, had pictured him in a bare room adorned
+      by a single Chinese bronze of flawless shape, or by some precious fragment
+      of Asiatic pottery. But such redeeming features were conspicuously absent,
+      and no attempt had been made to disguise the decent indigence of the
+      bed-sitting-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing welcomed his visitor with every sign of pleasure, and with
+      apparent indifference as to what she thought of his furniture. He seemed
+      to be conscious only of his luck in seeing her on a day when they had not
+      expected to meet. This made Susy all the sorrier to execute her promise,
+      and the gladder that she had put on her prettiest hat; and for a moment or
+      two she looked at him in silence from under its conniving brim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Warm as their mutual liking was, Lansing had never said a word of love to
+      her; but this was no deterrent to his visitor, whose habit it was to speak
+      her meaning clearly when there were no reasons, worldly or pecuniary, for
+      its concealment. After a moment, therefore, she told him why she had come;
+      it was a nuisance, of course, but he would understand. Ursula Gillow was
+      jealous, and they would have to give up seeing each other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young man&rsquo;s burst of laughter was music to her; for, after all, she
+      had been rather afraid that being devoted to Ursula might be as much in
+      his day&rsquo;s work as doing the encyclopaedia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I give you my word it&rsquo;s a raving-mad mistake! And I don&rsquo;t believe she
+      ever meant me, to begin with&mdash;&rdquo; he protested; but Susy, her
+      common-sense returning with her reassurance, promptly cut short his
+      denial.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can trust Ursula to make herself clear on such occasions. And it
+      doesn&rsquo;t make any difference what you think. All that matters is what she
+      believes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, come! I&rsquo;ve got a word to say about that too, haven&rsquo;t I?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy looked slowly and consideringly about the room. There was nothing in
+      it, absolutely nothing, to show that he had ever possessed a spare dollar&mdash;or
+      accepted a present.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not as far as I&rsquo;m concerned,&rdquo; she finally pronounced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you mean? If I&rsquo;m as free as air&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He grew thoughtful. &ldquo;Oh, then, of course&mdash;. It only seems a little
+      odd,&rdquo; he added drily, &ldquo;that in that case, the protest should have come
+      from Mrs. Gillow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Instead of coming from my millionaire bridegroom, Oh, I haven&rsquo;t any; in
+      that respect I&rsquo;m as free as you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then&mdash;? Haven&rsquo;t we only got to stay free?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy drew her brows together anxiously. It was going to be rather more
+      difficult than she had supposed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I said I was as free in that respect. I&rsquo;m not going to marry&mdash;and I
+      don&rsquo;t suppose you are?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God, no!&rdquo; he ejaculated fervently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But that doesn&rsquo;t always imply complete freedom....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood just above her, leaning his elbow against the hideous black
+      marble arch that framed his fireless grate. As she glanced up she saw his
+      face harden, and the colour flew to hers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was that what you came to tell me?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you don&rsquo;t understand&mdash;and I don&rsquo;t see why you don&rsquo;t, since we&rsquo;ve
+      knocked about so long among exactly the same kind of people.&rdquo; She stood up
+      impulsively and laid her hand on his arm. &ldquo;I do wish you&rsquo;d help me&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He remained motionless, letting the hand lie untouched.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Help you to tell me that poor Ursula was a pretext, but that there IS
+      someone who&mdash;for one reason or another&mdash;really has a right to
+      object to your seeing me too often?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy laughed impatiently. &ldquo;You talk like the hero of a novel&mdash;the
+      kind my governess used to read. In the first place I should never
+      recognize that kind of right, as you call it&mdash;never!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then what kind do you?&rdquo; he asked with a clearing brow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why&mdash;the kind I suppose you recognize on the part of your
+      publisher.&rdquo; This evoked a hollow laugh from him. &ldquo;A business claim, call
+      it,&rdquo; she pursued. &ldquo;Ursula does a lot for me: I live on her for half the
+      year. This dress I&rsquo;ve got on now is one she gave me. Her motor is going to
+      take me to a dinner to-night. I&rsquo;m going to spend next summer with her at
+      Newport.... If I don&rsquo;t, I&rsquo;ve got to go to California with the
+      Bockheimers&mdash;so good-bye.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly in tears, she was out of the door and down his steep three
+      flights before he could stop her&mdash;though, in thinking it over, she
+      didn&rsquo;t even remember if he had tried to. She only recalled having stood a
+      long time on the corner of Fifth Avenue, in the harsh winter radiance,
+      waiting till a break in the torrent of motors laden with fashionable women
+      should let her cross, and saying to herself: &ldquo;After all, I might have
+      promised Ursula... and kept on seeing him....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Instead of which, when Lansing wrote the next day entreating a word with
+      her, she had sent back a friendly but firm refusal; and had managed soon
+      afterward to get taken to Canada for a fortnight&rsquo;s ski-ing, and then to
+      Florida for six weeks in a house-boat....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As she reached this point in her retrospect the remembrance of Florida
+      called up a vision of moonlit waters, magnolia fragrance and balmy airs;
+      merging with the circumambient sweetness, it laid a drowsy spell upon her
+      lids. Yes, there had been a bad moment: but it was over; and she was here,
+      safe and blissful, and with Nick; and this was his knee her head rested
+      on, and they had a year ahead of them... a whole year.... &ldquo;Not counting
+      the pearls,&rdquo; she murmured, shutting her eyes....
+    </p>
+
+
+    <h3>II.</h3>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Lansing</span> threw the end of Strefford&rsquo;s expensive cigar into the lake, and
+      bent over his wife. Poor child! She had fallen asleep.... He leaned back
+      and stared up again at the silver-flooded sky. How queer&mdash;how
+      inexpressibly queer&mdash;it was to think that that light was shed by his
+      honey-moon! A year ago, if anyone had predicted his risking such an
+      adventure, he would have replied by asking to be locked up at the first
+      symptoms....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was still no doubt in his mind that the adventure was a mad one. It
+      was all very well for Susy to remind him twenty times a day that they had
+      pulled it off&mdash;and so why should he worry? Even in the light of her
+      far-seeing cleverness, and of his own present bliss, he knew the future
+      would not bear the examination of sober thought. And as he sat there in
+      the summer moonlight, with her head on his knee, he tried to recapitulate
+      the successive steps that had landed them on Streffy&rsquo;s lake-front.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On Lansing&rsquo;s side, no doubt, it dated back to his leaving Harvard with the
+      large resolve not to miss anything. There stood the evergreen Tree of
+      Life, the Four Rivers flowing from its foot; and on every one of the four
+      currents he meant to launch his little skiff. On two of them he had not
+      gone very far, on the third he had nearly stuck in the mud; but the fourth
+      had carried him to the very heart of wonder. It was the stream of his
+      lively imagination, of his inexhaustible interest in every form of beauty
+      and strangeness and folly. On this stream, sitting in the stout little
+      craft of his poverty, his insignificance and his independence, he had made
+      some notable voyages.... And so, when Susy Branch, whom he had sought out
+      through a New York season as the prettiest and most amusing girl in sight,
+      had surprised him with the contradictory revelation of her modern sense of
+      expediency and her old-fashioned standard of good faith, he had felt an
+      irresistible desire to put off on one more cruise into the unknown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was of the essence of the adventure that, after her one brief visit to
+      his lodgings, he should have kept his promise and not tried to see her
+      again. Even if her straightforwardness had not roused his emulation, his
+      understanding of her difficulties would have moved his pity. He knew on
+      how frail a thread the popularity of the penniless hangs, and how
+      miserably a girl like Susy was the sport of other people&rsquo;s moods and
+      whims. It was a part of his difficulty and of hers that to get what they
+      liked they so often had to do what they disliked. But the keeping of his
+      promise was a greater bore than he had expected. Susy Branch had become a
+      delightful habit in a life where most of the fixed things were dull, and
+      her disappearance had made it suddenly clear to him that his resources
+      were growing more and more limited. Much that had once amused him hugely
+      now amused him less, or not at all: a good part of his world of wonder had
+      shrunk to a village peep-show. And the things which had kept their
+      stimulating power&mdash;distant journeys, the enjoyment of art, the
+      contact with new scenes and strange societies&mdash;were becoming less and
+      less attainable. Lansing had never had more than a pittance; he had spent
+      rather too much of it in his first plunge into life, and the best he could
+      look forward to was a middle-age of poorly-paid hack-work, mitigated by
+      brief and frugal holidays. He knew that he was more intelligent than the
+      average, but he had long since concluded that his talents were not
+      marketable. Of the thin volume of sonnets which a friendly publisher had
+      launched for him, just seventy copies had been sold; and though his essay
+      on &ldquo;Chinese Influences in Greek Art&rdquo; had created a passing stir, it had
+      resulted in controversial correspondence and dinner invitations rather
+      than in more substantial benefits. There seemed, in short, no prospect of
+      his ever earning money, and his restricted future made him attach an
+      increasing value to the kind of friendship that Susy Branch had given him.
+      Apart from the pleasure of looking at her and listening to her&mdash;of
+      enjoying in her what others less discriminatingly but as liberally
+      appreciated&mdash;he had the sense, between himself and her, of a kind of
+      free-masonry of precocious tolerance and irony. They had both, in early
+      youth, taken the measure of the world they happened to live in: they knew
+      just what it was worth to them and for what reasons, and the community of
+      these reasons lent to their intimacy its last exquisite touch. And now,
+      because of some jealous whim of a dissatisfied fool of a woman, as to whom
+      he felt himself no more to blame than any young man who has paid for good
+      dinners by good manners, he was to be deprived of the one complete
+      companionship he had ever known....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His thoughts travelled on. He recalled the long dull spring in New York
+      after his break with Susy, the weary grind on his last articles, his
+      listless speculations as to the cheapest and least boring way of disposing
+      of the summer; and then the amazing luck of going, reluctantly and at the
+      last minute, to spend a Sunday with the poor Nat Fulmers, in the wilds of
+      New Hampshire, and of finding Susy there&mdash;Susy, whom he had never
+      even suspected of knowing anybody in the Fulmers&rsquo; set!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had behaved perfectly&mdash;and so had he&mdash;but they were
+      obviously much too glad to see each other. And then it was unsettling to
+      be with her in such a house as the Fulmers&rsquo;, away from the large setting
+      of luxury they were both used to, in the cramped cottage where their host
+      had his studio in the verandah, their hostess practiced her violin in the
+      dining-room, and five ubiquitous children sprawled and shouted and blew
+      trumpets and put tadpoles in the water-jugs, and the mid-day dinner was
+      two hours late&mdash;and proportionately bad&mdash;because the Italian cook was
+      posing for Fulmer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing&rsquo;s first thought had been that meeting Susy in such circumstances
+      would be the quickest way to cure them both of their regrets. The case of
+      the Fulmers was an awful object-lesson in what happened to young people
+      who lost their heads; poor Nat, whose pictures nobody bought, had gone to
+      seed so terribly&mdash;and Grace, at twenty-nine, would never again be anything
+      but the woman of whom people say, &ldquo;I can remember her when she was
+      lovely.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the devil of it was that Nat had never been such good company, or
+      Grace so free from care and so full of music; and that, in spite of their
+      disorder and dishevelment, and the bad food and general crazy discomfort,
+      there was more amusement to be got out of their society than out of the
+      most opulently staged house-party through which Susy and Lansing had ever
+      yawned their way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was almost a relief to the young man when, on the second afternoon,
+      Miss Branch drew him into the narrow hall to say: &ldquo;I really can&rsquo;t stand
+      the combination of Grace&rsquo;s violin and little Nat&rsquo;s motor-horn any longer.
+      Do let us slip out till the duet is over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do they stand it, I wonder?&rdquo; he basely echoed, as he followed her up
+      the wooded path behind the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It might be worth finding out,&rdquo; she rejoined with a musing smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he remained resolutely skeptical. &ldquo;Oh, give them a year or two more
+      and they&rsquo;ll collapse&mdash;! His pictures will never sell, you know. He&rsquo;ll
+      never even get them into a show.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose not. And she&rsquo;ll never have time to do anything worth while with
+      her music.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They had reached a piny knoll high above the ledge on which the house was
+      perched. All about them stretched an empty landscape of endless
+      featureless wooded hills. &ldquo;Think of sticking here all the year round!&rdquo;
+       Lansing groaned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know. But then think of wandering over the world with some people!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Lord, yes. For instance, my trip to India with the Mortimer Hickses.
+      But it was my only chance and what the deuce is one to do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish I knew!&rdquo; she sighed, thinking of the Bockheimers; and he turned
+      and looked at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Knew what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The answer to your question. What is one to do&mdash;when one sees both
+      sides of the problem? Or every possible side of it, indeed?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They had seated themselves on a commanding rock under the pines, but
+      Lansing could not see the view at their feet for the stir of the brown
+      lashes on her cheek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean: Nat and Grace may after all be having the best of it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can I say, when I&rsquo;ve told you I see all the sides? Of course,&rdquo; Susy
+      added hastily, &ldquo;I couldn&rsquo;t live as they do for a week. But it&rsquo;s wonderful
+      how little it&rsquo;s dimmed them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly Nat was never more coruscating. And she keeps it up even
+      better.&rdquo; He reflected. &ldquo;We do them good, I daresay.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;or they us. I wonder which?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After that, he seemed to remember that they sat a long time silent, and
+      that his next utterance was a boyish outburst against the tyranny of the
+      existing order of things, abruptly followed by the passionate query why,
+      since he and she couldn&rsquo;t alter it, and since they both had the habit of
+      looking at facts as they were, they wouldn&rsquo;t be utter fools not to take
+      their chance of being happy in the only way that was open to them, To this
+      challenge he did not recall Susy&rsquo;s making any definite answer; but after
+      another interval, in which all the world seemed framed in a sudden kiss,
+      he heard her murmur to herself in a brooding tone: &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t suppose it&rsquo;s
+      ever been tried before; but we might&mdash;.&rdquo; And then and there she had
+      laid before him the very experiment they had since hazarded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She would have none of surreptitious bliss, she began by declaring; and
+      she set forth her reasons with her usual lucid impartiality. In the first
+      place, she should have to marry some day, and when she made the bargain
+      she meant it to be an honest one; and secondly, in the matter of love, she
+      would never give herself to anyone she did not really care for, and if
+      such happiness ever came to her she did not want it shorn of half its
+      brightness by the need of fibbing and plotting and dodging.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve seen too much of that kind of thing. Half the women I know who&rsquo;ve
+      had lovers have had them for the fun of sneaking and lying about it; but
+      the other half have been miserable. And I should be miserable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was at this point that she unfolded her plan. Why shouldn&rsquo;t they marry;
+      belong to each other openly and honourably, if for ever so short a time,
+      and with the definite understanding that whenever either of them got the
+      chance to do better he or she should be immediately released? The law of
+      their country facilitated such exchanges, and society was beginning to
+      view them as indulgently as the law. As Susy talked, she warmed to her
+      theme and began to develop its endless possibilities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We should really, in a way, help more than we should hamper each other,&rdquo;
+       she ardently explained. &ldquo;We both know the ropes so well; what one of us
+      didn&rsquo;t see the other might&mdash;in the way of opportunities, I mean. And
+      then we should be a novelty as married people. We&rsquo;re both rather unusually
+      popular&mdash;why not be frank!&mdash;and it&rsquo;s such a blessing for
+      dinner-givers to be able to count on a couple of whom neither one is a
+      blank. Yes, I really believe we should be more than twice the success we
+      are now; at least,&rdquo; she added with a smile, &ldquo;if there&rsquo;s that amount of
+      room for improvement. I don&rsquo;t know how you feel; a man&rsquo;s popularity is so
+      much less precarious than a girl&rsquo;s&mdash;but I know it would furbish me up
+      tremendously to reappear as a married woman.&rdquo; She glanced away from him
+      down the long valley at their feet, and added in a lower tone: &ldquo;And I
+      should like, just for a little while, to feel I had something in life of
+      my very own&mdash;something that nobody had lent me, like a fancy-dress or
+      a motor or an opera cloak.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The suggestion, at first, had seemed to Lansing as mad as it was
+      enchanting: it had thoroughly frightened him. But Susy&rsquo;s arguments were
+      irrefutable, her ingenuities inexhaustible. Had he ever thought it all
+      out? She asked. No. Well, she had; and would he kindly not interrupt? In
+      the first place, there would be all the wedding-presents. Jewels, and a
+      motor, and a silver dinner service, did she mean? Not a bit of it! She
+      could see he&rsquo;d never given the question proper thought. Cheques, my dear,
+      nothing but cheques&mdash;she undertook to manage that on her side: she
+      really thought she could count on about fifty, and she supposed he could
+      rake up a few more? Well, all that would simply represent pocket-money!
+      For they would have plenty of houses to live in: he&rsquo;d see. People were
+      always glad to lend their house to a newly-married couple. It was such fun
+      to pop down and see them: it made one feel romantic and jolly. All they
+      need do was to accept the houses in turn: go on honey-mooning for a year!
+      What was he afraid of? Didn&rsquo;t he think they&rsquo;d be happy enough to want to
+      keep it up? And why not at least try&mdash;get engaged, and then see what
+      would happen? Even if she was all wrong, and her plan failed, wouldn&rsquo;t it
+      have been rather nice, just for a month or two, to fancy they were going
+      to be happy? &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve often fancied it all by myself,&rdquo; she concluded; &ldquo;but
+      fancying it with you would somehow be so awfully different....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That was how it began: and this lakeside dream was what it had led up to.
+      Fantastically improbable as they had seemed, all her previsions had come
+      true. If there were certain links in the chain that Lansing had never been
+      able to put his hand on, certain arrangements and contrivances that still
+      needed further elucidation, why, he was lazily resolved to clear them up
+      with her some day; and meanwhile it was worth all the past might have
+      cost, and every penalty the future might exact of him, just to be sitting
+      here in the silence and sweetness, her sleeping head on his knee, clasped
+      in his joy as the hushed world was clasped in moonlight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stooped down and kissed her. &ldquo;Wake up,&rdquo; he whispered, &ldquo;it&rsquo;s bed-time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+
+
+<h3>III.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">Their</span> month of Como was within a few hours of ending. Till the last moment
+      they had hoped for a reprieve; but the accommodating Streffy had been
+      unable to put the villa at their disposal for a longer time, since he had
+      had the luck to let it for a thumping price to some beastly bouncers who
+      insisted on taking possession at the date agreed on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing, leaving Susy&rsquo;s side at dawn, had gone down to the lake for a last
+      plunge; and swimming homeward through the crystal light he looked up at
+      the garden brimming with flowers, the long low house with the cypress wood
+      above it, and the window behind which his wife still slept. The month had
+      been exquisite, and their happiness as rare, as fantastically complete, as
+      the scene before him. He sank his chin into the sunlit ripples and sighed
+      for sheer content....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a bore to be leaving the scene of such complete well-being, but the
+      next stage in their progress promised to be hardly less delightful. Susy
+      was a magician: everything she predicted came true. Houses were being
+      showered on them; on all sides he seemed to see beneficent spirits winging
+      toward them, laden with everything from a piano nobile in Venice to a camp
+      in the Adirondacks. For the present, they had decided on the former. Other
+      considerations apart, they dared not risk the expense of a journey across
+      the Atlantic; so they were heading instead for the Nelson Vanderlyns&rsquo;
+      palace on the Giudecca. They were agreed that, for reasons of expediency,
+      it might be wise to return to New York for the coming winter. It would
+      keep them in view, and probably lead to fresh opportunities; indeed, Susy
+      already had in mind the convenient flat that she was sure a migratory
+      cousin (if tactfully handled, and assured that they would not overwork her
+      cook) could certainly be induced to lend them. Meanwhile the need of
+      making plans was still remote; and if there was one art in which young
+      Lansing&rsquo;s twenty-eight years of existence had perfected him it was that of
+      living completely and unconcernedly in the present....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If of late he had tried to look into the future more insistently than was
+      his habit, it was only because of Susy. He had meant, when they married,
+      to be as philosophic for her as for himself; and he knew she would have
+      resented above everything his regarding their partnership as a reason for
+      anxious thought. But since they had been together she had given him
+      glimpses of her past that made him angrily long to shelter and defend her
+      future. It was intolerable that a spirit as fine as hers should be ever so
+      little dulled or diminished by the kind of compromises out of which their
+      wretched lives were made. For himself, he didn&rsquo;t care a hang: he had
+      composed for his own guidance a rough-and-ready code, a short set of
+      &ldquo;mays&rdquo; and &ldquo;mustn&rsquo;ts&rdquo; which immensely simplified his course. There were
+      things a fellow put up with for the sake of certain definite and otherwise
+      unattainable advantages; there were other things he wouldn&rsquo;t traffic with
+      at any price. But for a woman, he began to see, it might be different. The
+      temptations might be greater, the cost considerably higher, the dividing
+      line between the &ldquo;mays&rdquo; and &ldquo;mustn&rsquo;ts&rdquo; more fluctuating and less sharply
+      drawn. Susy, thrown on the world at seventeen, with only a weak wastrel of
+      a father to define that treacherous line for her, and with every
+      circumstance soliciting her to overstep it, seemed to have been preserved
+      chiefly by an innate scorn of most of the objects of human folly. &ldquo;Such
+      trash as he went to pieces for,&rdquo; was her curt comment on her parent&rsquo;s
+      premature demise: as though she accepted in advance the necessity of
+      ruining one&rsquo;s self for something, but was resolved to discriminate firmly
+      between what was worth it and what wasn&rsquo;t.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This philosophy had at first enchanted Lansing; but now it began to rouse
+      vague fears. The fine armour of her fastidiousness had preserved her from
+      the kind of risks she had hitherto been exposed to; but what if others,
+      more subtle, found a joint in it? Was there, among her delicate
+      discriminations, any equivalent to his own rules? Might not her taste for
+      the best and rarest be the very instrument of her undoing; and if
+      something that wasn&rsquo;t &ldquo;trash&rdquo; came her way, would she hesitate a second to
+      go to pieces for it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was determined to stick to the compact that they should do nothing to
+      interfere with what each referred to as the other&rsquo;s &ldquo;chance&rdquo;; but what if,
+      when hers came, he couldn&rsquo;t agree with her in recognizing it? He wanted
+      for her, oh, so passionately, the best; but his conception of that best
+      had so insensibly, so subtly been transformed in the light of their first
+      month together!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His lazy strokes were carrying him slowly shoreward; but the hour was so
+      exquisite that a few yards from the landing he laid hold of the mooring
+      rope of Streffy&rsquo;s boat and floated there, following his dream.... It was a
+      bore to be leaving; no doubt that was what made him turn things inside-out
+      so uselessly. Venice would be delicious, of course; but nothing would ever
+      again be as sweet as this. And then they had only a year of security
+      before them; and of that year a month was gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Reluctantly he swam ashore, walked up to the house, and pushed open a
+      window of the cool painted drawing-room. Signs of departure were already
+      visible. There were trunks in the hall, tennis rackets on the stairs; on
+      the landing, the cook Giulietta had both arms around a slippery hold-all
+      that refused to let itself be strapped. It all gave him a chill sense of
+      unreality, as if the past month had been an act on the stage, and its
+      setting were being folded away and rolled into the wings to make room for
+      another play in which he and Susy had no part.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By the time he came down again, dressed and hungry, to the terrace where
+      coffee awaited him, he had recovered his usual pleasant sense of security.
+      Susy was there, fresh and gay, a rose in her breast and the sun in her
+      hair: her head was bowed over Bradshaw, but she waved a fond hand across
+      the breakfast things, and presently looked up to say: &ldquo;Yes, I believe we
+      can just manage it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Manage what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To catch the train at Milan&mdash;if we start in the motor at ten sharp.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stared. &ldquo;The motor? What motor?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, the new people&rsquo;s&mdash;Streffy&rsquo;s tenants. He&rsquo;s never told me their
+      name, and the chauffeur says he can&rsquo;t pronounce it. The chauffeur&rsquo;s is
+      Ottaviano, anyhow; I&rsquo;ve been making friends with him. He arrived last
+      night, and he says they&rsquo;re not due at Como till this evening. He simply
+      jumped at the idea of running us over to Milan.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good Lord&mdash;&rdquo; said Lansing, when she stopped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She sprang up from the table with a laugh. &ldquo;It will be a scramble; but
+      I&rsquo;ll manage it, if you&rsquo;ll go up at once and pitch the last things into
+      your trunk.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; but look here&mdash;have you any idea what it&rsquo;s going to cost?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She raised her eyebrows gaily. &ldquo;Why, a good deal less than our railway
+      tickets. Ottaviano&rsquo;s got a sweetheart in Milan, and hasn&rsquo;t seen her for
+      six months. When I found that out I knew he&rsquo;d be going there anyhow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was clever of her, and he laughed. But why was it that he had grown to
+      shrink from even such harmless evidence of her always knowing how to
+      &ldquo;manage&rdquo;? &ldquo;Oh, well,&rdquo; he said to himself, &ldquo;she&rsquo;s right: the fellow would
+      be sure to be going to Milan.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Upstairs, on the way to his dressing room, he found her in a cloud of
+      finery which her skilful hands were forcibly compressing into a last
+      portmanteau. He had never seen anyone pack as cleverly as Susy: the way
+      she coaxed reluctant things into a trunk was a symbol of the way she
+      fitted discordant facts into her life. &ldquo;When I&rsquo;m rich,&rdquo; she often said,
+      &ldquo;the thing I shall hate most will be to see an idiot maid at my trunks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As he passed, she glanced over her shoulder, her face pink with the
+      struggle, and drew a cigar-box from the depths. &ldquo;Dearest, do put a couple
+      of cigars into your pocket as a tip for Ottaviano.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing stared. &ldquo;Why, what on earth are you doing with Streffy&rsquo;s cigars?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Packing them, of course.... You don&rsquo;t suppose he meant them for those
+      other people?&rdquo; She gave him a look of honest wonder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know whom he meant them for&mdash;but they&rsquo;re not ours....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She continued to look at him wonderingly. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see what there is to be
+      solemn about. The cigars are not Streffy&rsquo;s either... you may be sure he
+      got them out of some bounder. And there&rsquo;s nothing he&rsquo;d hate more than to
+      have them passed on to another.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nonsense. If they&rsquo;re not Streffy&rsquo;s they&rsquo;re much less mine. Hand them
+      over, please, dear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just as you like. But it does seem a waste; and, of course, the other
+      people will never have one of them.... The gardener and Giulietta&rsquo;s lover
+      will see to that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing looked away from her at the waves of lace and muslin from which
+      she emerged like a rosy Nereid. &ldquo;How many boxes of them are left?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only four.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Unpack them, please.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Before she moved there was a pause so full of challenge that Lansing had
+      time for an exasperated sense of the disproportion between his anger and
+      its cause. And this made him still angrier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She held out a box. &ldquo;The others are in your suitcase downstairs. It&rsquo;s
+      locked and strapped.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give me the key, then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We might send them back from Venice, mightn&rsquo;t we? That lock is so nasty:
+      it will take you half an hour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give me the key, please.&rdquo; She gave it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He went downstairs and battled with the lock, for the allotted half-hour,
+      under the puzzled eyes of Giulietta and the sardonic grin of the
+      chauffeur, who now and then, from the threshold, politely reminded him how
+      long it would take to get to Milan. Finally the key turned, and Lansing,
+      broken-nailed and perspiring, extracted the cigars and stalked with them
+      into the deserted drawing room. The great bunches of golden roses that he
+      and Susy had gathered the day before were dropping their petals on the
+      marble embroidery of the floor, pale camellias floated in the alabaster
+      tazzas between the windows, haunting scents of the garden blew in on him
+      with the breeze from the lake. Never had Streffy&rsquo;s little house seemed so
+      like a nest of pleasures. Lansing laid the cigar boxes on a console and
+      ran upstairs to collect his last possessions. When he came down again, his
+      wife, her eyes brilliant with achievement, was seated in their borrowed
+      chariot, the luggage cleverly stowed away, and Giulietta and the gardener
+      kissing her hand and weeping out inconsolable farewells.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder what she&rsquo;s given them?&rdquo; he thought, as he jumped in beside her
+      and the motor whirled them through the nightingale-thickets to the gate.
+    </p>
+
+
+<h3>IV.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">Charlie Strefford&rsquo;s</span> villa was like a nest in a rose-bush; the Nelson
+      Vanderlyns&rsquo; palace called for loftier analogies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Its vastness and splendour seemed, in comparison, oppressive to Susy.
+      Their landing, after dark, at the foot of the great shadowy staircase,
+      their dinner at a dimly-lit table under a ceiling weighed down with
+      Olympians, their chilly evening in a corner of a drawing room where
+      minuets should have been danced before a throne, contrasted with the happy
+      intimacies of Como as their sudden sense of disaccord contrasted with the
+      mutual confidence of the day before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The journey had been particularly jolly: both Susy and Lansing had had too
+      long a discipline in the art of smoothing things over not to make a
+      special effort to hide from each other the ravages of their first
+      disagreement. But, deep down and invisible, the disagreement remained; and
+      compunction for having been its cause gnawed at Susy&rsquo;s bosom as she sat in
+      her tapestried and vaulted bedroom, brushing her hair before a tarnished
+      mirror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought I liked grandeur; but this place is really out of scale,&rdquo; she
+      mused, watching the reflection of a pale hand move back and forward in the
+      dim recesses of the mirror. &ldquo;And yet,&rdquo; she continued, &ldquo;Ellie Vanderlyn&rsquo;s
+      hardly half an inch taller than I am; and she certainly isn&rsquo;t a bit more
+      dignified.... I wonder if it&rsquo;s because I feel so horribly small to-night
+      that the place seems so horribly big.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She loved luxury: splendid things always made her feel handsome and high
+      ceilings arrogant; she did not remember having ever before been oppressed
+      by the evidences of wealth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She laid down the brush and leaned her chin on her clasped hands.... Even
+      now she could not understand what had made her take the cigars. She had
+      always been alive to the value of her inherited scruples: her reasoned
+      opinions were unusually free, but with regard to the things one couldn&rsquo;t
+      reason about she was oddly tenacious. And yet she had taken Streffy&rsquo;s
+      cigars! She had taken them&mdash;yes, that was the point&mdash;she had
+      taken them for Nick, because the desire to please him, to make the
+      smallest details of his life easy and agreeable and luxurious, had become
+      her absorbing preoccupation. She had committed, for him, precisely the
+      kind of little baseness she would most have scorned to commit for herself;
+      and, since he hadn&rsquo;t instantly felt the difference, she would never be
+      able to explain it to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She stood up with a sigh, shook out her loosened hair, and glanced around
+      the great frescoed room. The maid-servant had said something about the
+      Signora&rsquo;s having left a letter for her; and there it lay on the
+      writing-table, with her mail and Nick&rsquo;s; a thick envelope addressed in
+      Ellie&rsquo;s childish scrawl, with a glaring &ldquo;Private&rdquo; dashed across the
+      corner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What on earth can she have to say, when she hates writing so,&rdquo; Susy
+      mused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She broke open the envelope, and four or five stamped and sealed letters
+      fell from it. All were addressed, in Ellie&rsquo;s hand, to Nelson Vanderlyn
+      Esqre; and in the corner of each was faintly pencilled a number and a
+      date: one, two, three, four&mdash;with a week&rsquo;s interval between the
+      dates.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Goodness&mdash;&rdquo; gasped Susy, understanding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had dropped into an armchair near the table, and for a long time she
+      sat staring at the numbered letters. A sheet of paper covered with Ellie&rsquo;s
+      writing had fluttered out among them, but she let it lie; she knew so well
+      what it would say! She knew all about her friend, of course; except poor
+      old Nelson, who didn&rsquo;t, But she had never imagined that Ellie would dare
+      to use her in this way. It was unbelievable... she had never pictured
+      anything so vile.... The blood rushed to her face, and she sprang up
+      angrily, half minded to tear the letters in bits and throw them all into
+      the fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She heard her husband&rsquo;s knock on the door between their rooms, and swept
+      the dangerous packet under the blotting-book.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, go away, please, there&rsquo;s a dear,&rdquo; she called out; &ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t finished
+      unpacking, and everything&rsquo;s in such a mess.&rdquo; Gathering up Nick&rsquo;s papers
+      and letters, she ran across the room and thrust them through the door.
+      &ldquo;Here&rsquo;s something to keep you quiet,&rdquo; she laughed, shining in on him an
+      instant from the threshold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned back feeling weak with shame. Ellie&rsquo;s letter lay on the floor:
+      reluctantly she stooped to pick it up, and one by one the expected phrases
+      sprang out at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One good turn deserves another.... Of course you and Nick are welcome to
+      stay all summer.... There won&rsquo;t be a particle of expense for you&mdash;the
+      servants have orders.... If you&rsquo;ll just be an angel and post these letters
+      yourself.... It&rsquo;s been my only chance for such an age; when we meet I&rsquo;ll
+      explain everything. And in a month at latest I&rsquo;ll be back to fetch
+      Clarissa....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy lifted the letter to the lamp to be sure she had read aright. To
+      fetch Clarissa! Then Ellie&rsquo;s child was here? Here, under the roof with
+      them, left to their care? She read on, raging. &ldquo;She&rsquo;s so delighted, poor
+      darling, to know you&rsquo;re coming. I&rsquo;ve had to sack her beastly governess for
+      impertinence, and if it weren&rsquo;t for you she&rsquo;d be all alone with a lot of
+      servants I don&rsquo;t much trust. So for pity&rsquo;s sake be good to my child, and
+      forgive me for leaving her. She thinks I&rsquo;ve gone to take a cure; and she
+      knows she&rsquo;s not to tell her Daddy that I&rsquo;m away, because it would only
+      worry him if he thought I was ill. She&rsquo;s perfectly to be trusted; you&rsquo;ll
+      see what a clever angel she is....&rdquo; And then, at the bottom of the page,
+      in a last slanting postscript: &ldquo;Susy darling, if you&rsquo;ve ever owed me
+      anything in the way of kindness, you won&rsquo;t, on your sacred honour, say a
+      word of this to any one, even to Nick. And I know I can count on you to
+      rub out the numbers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy sprang up and tossed Mrs. Vanderlyn&rsquo;s letter into the fire: then she
+      came slowly back to the chair. There, at her elbow, lay the four fatal
+      envelopes; and her next affair was to make up her mind what to do with
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To destroy them on the spot had seemed, at first thought, inevitable: it
+      might be saving Ellie as well as herself. But such a step seemed to Susy
+      to involve departure on the morrow, and this in turn involved notifying
+      Ellie, whose letter she had vainly scanned for an address. Well&mdash;perhaps
+      Clarissa&rsquo;s nurse would know where one could write to her mother; it was
+      unlikely that even Ellie would go off without assuring some means of
+      communication with her child. At any rate, there was nothing to be done
+      that night: nothing but to work out the details of their flight on the
+      morrow, and rack her brains to find a substitute for the hospitality they
+      were rejecting. Susy did not disguise from herself how much she had
+      counted on the Vanderlyn apartment for the summer: to be able to do so had
+      singularly simplified the future. She knew Ellie&rsquo;s largeness of hand, and
+      had been sure in advance that as long as they were her guests their only
+      expense would be an occasional present to the servants. And what would the
+      alternative be? She and Lansing, in their endless talks, had so lived
+      themselves into the vision of indolent summer days on the lagoon, of
+      flaming hours on the beach of the Lido, and evenings of music and dreams
+      on their broad balcony above the Giudecca, that the idea of having to
+      renounce these joys, and deprive her Nick of them, filled Susy with a
+      wrath intensified by his having confided in her that when they were
+      quietly settled in Venice he &ldquo;meant to write.&rdquo; Already nascent in her
+      breast was the fierce resolve of the author&rsquo;s wife to defend her husband&rsquo;s
+      privacy and facilitate his encounters with the Muse. It was abominable,
+      simply abominable, that Ellie Vanderlyn should have drawn her into such a
+      trap!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well&mdash;there was nothing for it but to make a clean breast of the
+      whole thing to Nick. The trivial incident of the cigars&mdash;how trivial it now
+      seemed!&mdash;showed her the kind of stand he would take, and communicated
+      to her something of his own uncompromising energy. She would tell him the
+      whole story in the morning, and try to find a way out with him: Susy&rsquo;s
+      faith in her power of finding a way out was inexhaustible. But suddenly
+      she remembered the adjuration at the end of Mrs. Vanderlyn&rsquo;s letter: &ldquo;If
+      you&rsquo;re ever owed me anything in the way of kindness, you won&rsquo;t, on your
+      sacred honour, say a word to Nick....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was, of course, exactly what no one had the right to ask of her: if
+      indeed the word &ldquo;right&rdquo;, could be used in any conceivable relation to this
+      coil of wrongs. But the fact remained that, in the way of kindness, she
+      did owe much to Ellie; and that this was the first payment her friend had
+      ever exacted. She found herself, in fact, in exactly the same position as
+      when Ursula Gillow, using the same argument, had appealed to her to give
+      up Nick Lansing. Yes, Susy reflected; but then Nelson Vanderlyn had been
+      kind to her too; and the money Ellie had been so kind with was
+      Nelson&rsquo;s.... The queer edifice of Susy&rsquo;s standards tottered on its base
+      she honestly didn&rsquo;t know where fairness lay, as between so much that was
+      foul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The very depth of her perplexity puzzled her. She had been in &ldquo;tight
+      places&rdquo; before; had indeed been in so few that were not, in one way or
+      another, constricting! As she looked back on her past it lay before her as
+      a very network of perpetual concessions and contrivings. But never before
+      had she had such a sense of being tripped up, gagged and pinioned. The
+      little misery of the cigars still galled her, and now this big humiliation
+      superposed itself on the raw wound. Decidedly, the second month of their
+      honey-moon was beginning cloudily....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She glanced at the enamel led travelling-clock on her dressing table&mdash;one
+      of the few wedding-presents she had consented to accept in kind&mdash;and
+      was startled at the lateness of the hour. In a moment Nick would be
+      coming; and an uncomfortable sensation in her throat warned her that
+      through sheer nervousness and exasperation she might blurt out something
+      ill-advised. The old habit of being always on her guard made her turn once
+      more to the looking-glass. Her face was pale and haggard; and having, by a
+      swift and skilful application of cosmetics, increased its appearance of
+      fatigue, she crossed the room and softly opened her husband&rsquo;s door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He too sat by a lamp, reading a letter which he put aside as she entered.
+      His face was grave, and she said to herself that he was certainly still
+      thinking about the cigars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m very tired, dearest, and my head aches so horribly that I&rsquo;ve come to
+      bid you good-night.&rdquo; Bending over the back of his chair, she laid her arms
+      on his shoulders. He lifted his hands to clasp hers, but, as he threw his
+      head back to smile up at her she noticed that his look was still serious,
+      almost remote. It was as if, for the first time, a faint veil hung between
+      his eyes and hers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m so sorry: it&rsquo;s been a long day for you,&rdquo; he said absently, pressing
+      his lips to her hands
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She felt the dreaded twitch in her throat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nick!&rdquo; she burst out, tightening her embrace, &ldquo;before I go, you&rsquo;ve got to
+      swear to me on your honour that you know I should never have taken those
+      cigars for myself!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment he stared at her, and she stared back at him with equal
+      gravity; then the same irresistible mirth welled up in both, and Susy&rsquo;s
+      compunctions were swept away on a gale of laughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When she woke the next morning the sun was pouring in between her curtains
+      of old brocade, and its refraction from the ripples of the Canal was
+      drawing a network of golden scales across the vaulted ceiling. The maid
+      had just placed a tray on a slim marquetry table near the bed, and over
+      the edge of the tray Susy discovered the small serious face of Clarissa
+      Vanderlyn. At the sight of the little girl all her dormant qualms awoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Clarissa was just eight, and small for her age: her little round chin was
+      barely on a level with the tea-service, and her clear brown eyes gazed at
+      Susy between the ribs of the toast-rack and the single tea-rose in an old
+      Murano glass. Susy had not seen her for two years, and she seemed, in the
+      interval, to have passed from a thoughtful infancy to complete ripeness of
+      feminine experience. She was looking with approval at her mother&rsquo;s guest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m so glad you&rsquo;ve come,&rdquo; she said in a small sweet voice. &ldquo;I like you so
+      very much. I know I&rsquo;m not to be often with you; but at least you&rsquo;ll have
+      an eye on me, won&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An eye on you! I shall never want to have it off you, if you say such
+      nice things to me!&rdquo; Susy laughed, leaning from her pillows to draw the
+      little girl up to her side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Clarissa smiled and settled herself down comfortably on the silken
+      bedspread. &ldquo;Oh, I know I&rsquo;m not to be always about, because you&rsquo;re just
+      married; but could you see to it that I have my meals regularly?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, you poor darling! Don&rsquo;t you always?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not when mother&rsquo;s away on these cures. The servants don&rsquo;t always obey me:
+      you see I&rsquo;m so little for my age. In a few years, of course, they&rsquo;ll have
+      to&mdash;even if I don&rsquo;t grow much,&rdquo; she added judiciously. She put out
+      her hand and touched the string of pearls about Susy&rsquo;s throat. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re
+      small, but they&rsquo;re very good. I suppose you don&rsquo;t take the others when you
+      travel?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The others? Bless you! I haven&rsquo;t any others&mdash;and never shall have,
+      probably.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No other pearls?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No other jewels at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Clarissa stared. &ldquo;Is that really true?&rdquo; she asked, as if in the presence
+      of the unprecedented.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Awfully true,&rdquo; Susy confessed. &ldquo;But I think I can make the servants obey
+      me all the same.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This point seemed to have lost its interest for Clarissa, who was still
+      gravely scrutinizing her companion. After a while she brought forth
+      another question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you have to give up all your jewels when you were divorced?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Divorced&mdash;?&rdquo; Susy threw her head back against the pillows and
+      laughed. &ldquo;Why, what are you thinking of? Don&rsquo;t you remember that I wasn&rsquo;t
+      even married the last time you saw me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; I do. But that was two years ago.&rdquo; The little girl wound her arms
+      about Susy&rsquo;s neck and leaned against her caressingly. &ldquo;Are you going to be
+      soon, then? I&rsquo;ll promise not to tell if you don&rsquo;t want me to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Going to be divorced? Of course not! What in the world made you think so?
+      &rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because you look so awfully happy,&rdquo; said Clarissa Vanderlyn simply.
+    </p>
+
+
+<h3>V.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">It</span> was a trifling enough sign, but it had remained in Susy&rsquo;s mind: that
+      first morning in Venice Nick had gone out without first coming in to see
+      her. She had stayed in bed late, chatting with Clarissa, and expecting to
+      see the door open and her husband appear; and when the child left, and she
+      had jumped up and looked into Nick&rsquo;s room, she found it empty, and a line
+      on his dressing table informed her that he had gone out to send a
+      telegram.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was lover-like, and even boyish, of him to think it necessary to
+      explain his absence; but why had he not simply come in and told her! She
+      instinctively connected the little fact with the shade of preoccupation
+      she had noticed on his face the night before, when she had gone to his
+      room and found him absorbed in letter; and while she dressed she had
+      continued to wonder what was in the letter, and whether the telegram he
+      had hurried out to send was an answer to it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had never found out. When he reappeared, handsome and happy as the
+      morning, he proffered no explanation; and it was part of her life-long
+      policy not to put uncalled-for questions. It was not only that her jealous
+      regard for her own freedom was matched by an equal respect for that of
+      others; she had steered too long among the social reefs and shoals not to
+      know how narrow is the passage that leads to peace of mind, and she was
+      determined to keep her little craft in mid-channel. But the incident had
+      lodged itself in her memory, acquiring a sort of symbolic significance, as
+      of a turning-point in her relations with her husband. Not that these were
+      less happy, but that she now beheld them, as she had always formerly
+      beheld such joys, as an unstable islet in a sea of storms. Her present
+      bliss was as complete as ever, but it was ringed by the perpetual menace
+      of all she knew she was hiding from Nick, and of all she suspected him of
+      hiding from her....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was thinking of these things one afternoon about three weeks after
+      their arrival in Venice. It was near sunset, and she sat alone on the
+      balcony, watching the cross-lights on the water weave their pattern above
+      the flushed reflection of old palace-basements. She was almost always
+      alone at that hour. Nick had taken to writing in the afternoons&mdash;he
+      had been as good as his word, and so, apparently, had the Muse and it was
+      his habit to join his wife only at sunset, for a late row on the lagoon.
+      She had taken Clarissa, as usual, to the Giardino Pubblico, where that
+      obliging child had politely but indifferently &ldquo;played&rdquo;&mdash;Clarissa
+      joined in the diversions of her age as if conforming to an obsolete
+      tradition&mdash;and had brought her back for a music lesson, echoes of
+      which now drifted down from a distant window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy had come to be extremely thankful for Clarissa. But for the little
+      girl, her pride in her husband&rsquo;s industry might have been tinged with a
+      faint sense of being at times left out and forgotten; and as Nick&rsquo;s
+      industry was the completest justification for their being where they were,
+      and for her having done what she had, she was grateful to Clarissa for
+      helping her to feel less alone. Clarissa, indeed, represented the other
+      half of her justification: it was as much on the child&rsquo;s account as on
+      Nick&rsquo;s that Susy had held her tongue, remained in Venice, and slipped out
+      once a week to post one of Ellie&rsquo;s numbered letters. A day&rsquo;s experience of
+      the Palazzo Vanderlyn had convinced Susy of the impossibility of deserting
+      Clarissa. Long experience had shown her that the most crowded households
+      often contain the loneliest nurseries, and that the rich child is exposed
+      to evils unknown to less pampered infancy; but hitherto such things had
+      merely been to her one of the uglier bits in the big muddled pattern of
+      life. Now she found herself feeling where before she had only judged: her
+      precarious bliss came to her charged with a new weight of pity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was thinking of these things, and of the approaching date of Ellie
+      Vanderlyn&rsquo;s return, and of the searching truths she was storing up for
+      that lady&rsquo;s private ear, when she noticed a gondola turning its prow
+      toward the steps below the balcony. She leaned over, and a tall gentleman
+      in shabby clothes, glancing up at her as he jumped out, waved a mouldy
+      Panama in joyful greeting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Streffy!&rdquo; she exclaimed as joyfully; and she was half-way down the stairs
+      when he ran up them followed by his luggage-laden boatman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s all right, I suppose?&mdash;Ellie said I might come,&rdquo; he explained
+      in a shrill cheerful voice; &ldquo;and I&rsquo;m to have my same green room with the
+      parrot-panels, because its furniture is already so frightfully stained
+      with my hair-wash.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy was beaming on him with the deep sense of satisfaction which his
+      presence always produced in his friends. There was no one in the world,
+      they all agreed, half as ugly and untidy and delightful as Streffy; no one
+      who combined such outspoken selfishness with such imperturbable good
+      humour; no one who knew so well how to make you believe he was being
+      charming to you when it was you who were being charming to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In addition to these seductions, of which none estimated the value more
+      accurately than their possessor, Strefford had for Susy another attraction
+      of which he was probably unconscious. It was that of being the one rooted
+      and stable being among the fluid and shifting figures that composed her
+      world. Susy had always lived among people so denationalized that those one
+      took for Russians generally turned out to be American, and those one was
+      inclined to ascribe to New York proved to have originated in Rome or
+      Bucharest. These cosmopolitan people, who, in countries not their own,
+      lived in houses as big as hotels, or in hotels where the guests were as
+      international as the waiters, had inter-married, inter-loved and
+      inter-divorced each other over the whole face of Europe, and according to
+      every code that attempts to regulate human ties. Strefford, too, had his
+      home in this world, but only one of his homes. The other, the one he spoke
+      of, and probably thought of, least often, was a great dull English
+      country-house in a northern county, where a life as monotonous and
+      self-contained as his own was chequered and dispersed had gone on for
+      generation after generation; and it was the sense of that house, and of
+      all it typified even to his vagrancy and irreverence, which, coming out
+      now and then in his talk, or in his attitude toward something or somebody,
+      gave him a firmer outline and a steadier footing than the other
+      marionettes in the dance. Superficially so like them all, and so eager to
+      outdo them in detachment and adaptability, ridiculing the prejudices he
+      had shaken off, and the people to whom he belonged, he still kept, under
+      his easy pliancy, the skeleton of old faiths and old fashions. &ldquo;He talks
+      every language as well as the rest of us,&rdquo; Susy had once said of him, &ldquo;but
+      at least he talks one language better than the others&rdquo;; and Strefford,
+      told of the remark, had laughed, called her an idiot, and been pleased.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he shambled up the stairs with her, arm in arm, she was thinking of
+      this quality with a new appreciation of its value. Even she and Lansing,
+      in spite of their unmixed Americanism, their substantial background of
+      old-fashioned cousinships in New York and Philadelphia, were as mentally
+      detached, as universally at home, as touts at an International Exhibition.
+      If they were usually recognized as Americans it was only because they
+      spoke French so well, and because Nick was too fair to be &ldquo;foreign,&rdquo; and
+      too sharp-featured to be English. But Charlie Strefford was English with
+      all the strength of an inveterate habit; and something in Susy was slowly
+      waking to a sense of the beauty of habit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lounging on the balcony, whither he had followed her without pausing to
+      remove the stains of travel, Strefford showed himself immensely interested
+      in the last chapter of her history, greatly pleased at its having been
+      enacted under his roof, and hugely and flippantly amused at the firmness
+      with which she refused to let him see Nick till the latter&rsquo;s daily task
+      was over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Writing? Rot! What&rsquo;s he writing? He&rsquo;s breaking you in, my dear; that&rsquo;s
+      what he&rsquo;s doing: establishing an alibi. What&rsquo;ll you bet he&rsquo;s just sitting
+      there smoking and reading Le Rire? Let&rsquo;s go and see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Susy was firm. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s read me his first chapter: it&rsquo;s wonderful. It&rsquo;s a
+      philosophic romance&mdash;rather like Marius, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes&mdash;I do!&rdquo; said Strefford, with a laugh that she thought
+      idiotic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She flushed up like a child. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re stupid, Streffy. You forget that Nick
+      and I don&rsquo;t need alibis. We&rsquo;ve got rid of all that hyprocrisy by agreeing
+      that each will give the other a hand up when either of us wants a change.
+      We&rsquo;ve not married to spy and lie, and nag each other; we&rsquo;ve formed a
+      partnership for our mutual advantage.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see; that&rsquo;s capital. But how can you be sure that, when Nick wants a
+      change, you&rsquo;ll consider it for his advantage to have one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the point that had always secretly tormented Susy; she often
+      wondered if it equally tormented Nick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope I shall have enough common sense&mdash;&rdquo; she began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, of course: common sense is what you&rsquo;re both bound to base your
+      argument on, whichever way you argue.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This flash of insight disconcerted her, and she said, a little irritably:
+      &ldquo;What should you do then, if you married?&mdash;Hush, Streffy! I forbid
+      you to shout like that&mdash;all the gondolas are stopping to look!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can I help it?&rdquo; He rocked backward and forward in his chair. &ldquo;&lsquo;If you
+      marry,&rsquo; she says: &lsquo;Streffy, what have you decided to do if you suddenly
+      become a raving maniac?&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I said no such thing. If your uncle and your cousin died, you&rsquo;d marry
+      to-morrow; you know you would.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, now you&rsquo;re talking business.&rdquo; He folded his long arms and leaned over
+      the balcony, looking down at the dusky ripples streaked with fire. &ldquo;In
+      that case I should say: &lsquo;Susan, my dear&mdash;Susan&mdash;now that by the
+      merciful intervention of Providence you have become Countess of Altringham
+      in the peerage of Great Britain, and Baroness Dunsterville and d&rsquo;Amblay in
+      the peerages of Ireland and Scotland, I&rsquo;ll thank you to remember that you
+      are a member of one of the most ancient houses in the United Kingdom&mdash;and
+      not to get found out.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy laughed. &ldquo;We know what those warnings mean! I pity my namesake.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He swung about and gave her a quick look out of his small ugly twinkling
+      eyes. &ldquo;Is there any other woman in the world named Susan?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope so, if the name&rsquo;s an essential. Even if Nick chucks me, don&rsquo;t
+      count on me to carry out that programme. I&rsquo;ve seen it in practice too
+      often.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, well: as far as I know, everybody&rsquo;s in perfect health at Altringham.&rdquo;
+       He fumbled in his pocket and drew out a fountain pen, a handkerchief over
+      which it had leaked, and a packet of dishevelled cigarettes. Lighting one,
+      and restoring the other objects to his pocket, he continued calmly: &ldquo;Tell
+      me how did you manage to smooth things over with the Gillows? Ursula was
+      running amuck when I was in Newport last Summer; it was just when people
+      were beginning to say that you were going to marry Nick. I was afraid
+      she&rsquo;d put a spoke in your wheel; and I hear she put a big cheque in your
+      hand instead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy was silent. From the first moment of Strefford&rsquo;s appearance she had
+      known that in the course of time he would put that question. He was as
+      inquisitive as a monkey, and when he had made up his mind to find out
+      anything it was useless to try to divert his attention. After a moment&rsquo;s
+      hesitation she said: &ldquo;I flirted with Fred. It was a bore but he was very
+      decent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He would be&mdash;poor Fred. And you got Ursula thoroughly frightened!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;enough. And then luckily that young Nerone Altineri turned up
+      from Rome: he went over to New York to look for a job as an engineer, and
+      Ursula made Fred put him in their iron works.&rdquo; She paused again, and then
+      added abruptly: &ldquo;Streffy! If you knew how I hate that kind of thing. I&rsquo;d
+      rather have Nick come in now and tell me frankly, as I know he would, that
+      he&rsquo;s going off with&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With Coral Hicks?&rdquo; Strefford suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She laughed. &ldquo;Poor Coral Hicks! What on earth made you think of the
+      Hickses?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because I caught a glimpse of them the other day at Capri. They&rsquo;re
+      cruising about: they said they were coming in here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a nuisance! I do hope they won&rsquo;t find us out. They were awfully kind
+      to Nick when he went to India with them, and they&rsquo;re so simple-minded that
+      they would expect him to be glad to see them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford aimed his cigarette-end at a tourist on a puggaree who was
+      gazing up from his guidebook at the palace. &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; he murmured with
+      satisfaction, seeing the shot take effect; then he added: &ldquo;Coral Hicks is
+      growing up rather pretty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Streff&mdash;you&rsquo;re dreaming! That lump of a girl with spectacles and
+      thick ankles! Poor Mrs. Hicks used to say to Nick: &lsquo;When Mr. Hicks and I
+      had Coral educated we presumed culture was in greater demand in Europe
+      than it appears to be.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you&rsquo;ll see: that girl&rsquo;s education won&rsquo;t interfere with her, once
+      she&rsquo;s started. So then: if Nick came in and told you he was going off&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should be so thankful if it was with a fright like Coral! But you
+      know,&rdquo; she added with a smile, &ldquo;we&rsquo;ve agreed that it&rsquo;s not to happen for a
+      year.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+
+
+<h3>VI.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">Susy</span> found Strefford, after his first burst of nonsense, unusually kind
+      and responsive. The interest he showed in her future and Nick&rsquo;s seemed to
+      proceed not so much from his habitual spirit of scientific curiosity as
+      from simple friendliness. He was privileged to see Nick&rsquo;s first chapter,
+      of which he formed so favourable an impression that he spoke sternly to
+      Susy on the importance of respecting her husband&rsquo;s working hours; and he
+      even carried his general benevolence to the length of showing a fatherly
+      interest in Clarissa Vanderlyn. He was always charming to children, but
+      fitfully and warily, with an eye on his independence, and on the
+      possibility of being suddenly bored by them; Susy had never seen him
+      abandon these precautions so completely as he did with Clarissa.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor little devil! Who looks after her when you and Nick are off
+      together? Do you mean to tell me Ellie sacked the governess and went away
+      without having anyone to take her place?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think she expected me to do it,&rdquo; said Susy with a touch of asperity.
+      There were moments when her duty to Clarissa weighed on her somewhat
+      heavily; whenever she went off alone with Nick she was pursued by the
+      vision of a little figure waving wistful farewells from the balcony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, that&rsquo;s like Ellie: you might have known she&rsquo;d get an equivalent when
+      she lent you all this. But I don&rsquo;t believe she thought you&rsquo;d be so
+      conscientious about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy considered. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t suppose she did; and perhaps I shouldn&rsquo;t have
+      been, a year ago. But you see&rdquo;&mdash;she hesitated&mdash;&ldquo;Nick&rsquo;s so
+      awfully good: it&rsquo;s made me look; at a lot of things differently....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, hang Nick&rsquo;s goodness! It&rsquo;s happiness that&rsquo;s done it, my dear. You&rsquo;re
+      just one of the people with whom it happens to agree.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy, leaning back, scrutinized between her lashes his crooked ironic
+      face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it that&rsquo;s agreeing with you, Streffy? I&rsquo;ve never seen you so
+      human. You must be getting an outrageous price for the villa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford laughed and clapped his hand on his breast-pocket. &ldquo;I should be
+      an ass not to: I&rsquo;ve got a wire here saying they must have it for another
+      month at any price.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What luck! I&rsquo;m so glad. Who are they, by the way?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He drew himself up out of the long chair in which he was disjointedly
+      lounging, and looked down at her with a smile. &ldquo;Another couple of
+      love-sick idiots like you and Nick.... I say, before I spend it all let&rsquo;s
+      go out and buy something ripping for Clarissa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The days passed so quickly and radiantly that, but for her concern for
+      Clarissa, Susy would hardly have been conscious of her hostess&rsquo;s
+      protracted absence. Mrs. Vanderlyn had said: &ldquo;Four weeks at the latest,&rdquo;
+       and the four weeks were over, and she had neither arrived nor written to
+      explain her non-appearance. She had, in fact, given no sign of life since
+      her departure, save in the shape of a post-card which had reached Clarissa
+      the day after the Lansings&rsquo; arrival, and in which Mrs. Vanderlyn
+      instructed her child to be awfully good, and not to forget to feed the
+      mongoose. Susy noticed that this missive had been posted in Milan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She communicated her apprehensions to Strefford. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t trust that
+      green-eyed nurse. She&rsquo;s forever with the younger gondolier; and Clarissa&rsquo;s
+      so awfully sharp. I don&rsquo;t see why Ellie hasn&rsquo;t come: she was due last
+      Monday.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her companion laughed, and something in the sound of his laugh suggested
+      that he probably knew as much of Ellie&rsquo;s movements as she did, if not
+      more. The sense of disgust which the subject always roused in her made her
+      look away quickly from his tolerant smile. She would have given the world,
+      at that moment, to have been free to tell Nick what she had learned on the
+      night of their arrival, and then to have gone away with him, no matter
+      where. But there was Clarissa&mdash;!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To fortify herself against the temptation, she resolutely fixed her
+      thoughts on her husband. Of Nick&rsquo;s beatitude there could be no doubt. He
+      adored her, he revelled in Venice, he rejoiced in his work; and concerning
+      the quality of that work her judgment was as confident as her heart. She
+      still doubted if he would ever earn a living by what he wrote, but she no
+      longer doubted that he would write something remarkable. The mere fact
+      that he was engaged on a philosophic romance, and not a mere novel, seemed
+      the proof of an intrinsic superiority. And if she had mistrusted her
+      impartiality Strefford&rsquo;s approval would have reassured her. Among their
+      friends Strefford passed as an authority on such matters: in summing him
+      up his eulogists always added: &ldquo;And you know he writes.&rdquo; As a matter of
+      fact, the paying public had remained cold to his few published pages; but
+      he lived among the kind of people who confuse taste with talent, and are
+      impressed by the most artless attempts at literary expression; and though
+      he affected to disdain their judgment, and his own efforts, Susy knew he
+      was not sorry to have it said of him: &ldquo;Oh, if only Streffy had chosen&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford&rsquo;s approval of the philosophic romance convinced her that it had
+      been worth while staying in Venice for Nick&rsquo;s sake; and if only Ellie
+      would come back, and carry off Clarissa to St. Moritz or Deauville, the
+      disagreeable episode on which their happiness was based would vanish like
+      a cloud, and leave them to complete enjoyment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ellie did not come; but the Mortimer Hickses did, and Nick Lansing was
+      assailed by the scruples his wife had foreseen. Strefford, coming back one
+      evening from the Lido, reported having recognized the huge outline of the
+      Ibis among the pleasure craft of the outer harbour; and the very next
+      evening, as the guests of Palazzo Vanderlyn were sipping their ices at
+      Florian&rsquo;s, the Hickses loomed up across the Piazza.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy pleaded in vain with her husband in defence of his privacy. &ldquo;Remember
+      you&rsquo;re here to write, dearest; it&rsquo;s your duty not to let any one interfere
+      with that. Why shouldn&rsquo;t we tell them we&rsquo;re just leaving!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because it&rsquo;s no use: we&rsquo;re sure to be always meeting them. And besides,
+      I&rsquo;ll be hanged if I&rsquo;m going to shirk the Hickses. I spent five whole
+      months on the Ibis, and if they bored me occasionally, India didn&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll make them take us to Aquileia anyhow,&rdquo; said Strefford
+      philosophically; and the next moment the Hickses were bearing down on the
+      defenceless trio.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They presented a formidable front, not only because of their mere physical
+      bulk&mdash;Mr. and Mrs. Hicks were equally and majestically
+      three-dimensional&mdash;but because they never moved abroad without the
+      escort of two private secretaries (one for the foreign languages), Mr.
+      Hicks&rsquo;s doctor, a maiden lady known as Eldoradder Tooker, who was Mrs.
+      Hicks&rsquo;s cousin and stenographer, and finally their daughter, Coral Hicks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Coral Hicks, when Susy had last encountered the party, had been a fat
+      spectacled school-girl, always lagging behind her parents, with a
+      reluctant poodle in her wake. Now the poodle had gone, and his mistress
+      led the procession. The fat school-girl had changed into a young lady of
+      compact if not graceful outline; a long-handled eyeglass had replaced the
+      spectacles, and through it, instead of a sullen glare, Miss Coral Hicks
+      projected on the world a glance at once confident and critical. She looked
+      so strong and so assured that Susy, taking her measure in a flash, saw
+      that her position at the head of the procession was not fortuitous, and
+      murmured inwardly: &ldquo;Thank goodness she&rsquo;s not pretty too!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      If she was not pretty, she was well-dressed; and if she was overeducated,
+      she seemed capable, as Strefford had suggested, of carrying off even this
+      crowning disadvantage. At any rate, she was above disguising it; and
+      before the whole party had been seated five minutes in front of a fresh
+      supply of ices (with Eldorada and the secretaries at a table slightly in
+      the background) she had taken up with Nick the question of exploration in
+      Mesopotamia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Queer child, Coral,&rdquo; he said to Susy that night as they smoked a last
+      cigarette on their balcony. &ldquo;She told me this afternoon that she&rsquo;d
+      remembered lots of things she heard me say in India. I thought at the time
+      that she cared only for caramels and picture-puzzles, but it seems she was
+      listening to everything, and reading all the books she could lay her hands
+      on; and she got so bitten with Oriental archaeology that she took a course
+      last year at Bryn Mawr. She means to go to Bagdad next spring, and back by
+      the Persian plateau and Turkestan.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy laughed luxuriously: she was sitting with her hand in Nick&rsquo;s, while
+      the late moon&mdash;theirs again&mdash;rounded its orange-coloured glory
+      above the belfry of San Giorgio.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor Coral! How dreary&mdash;&rdquo; Susy murmured
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dreary? Why? A trip like that is about as well worth doing as anything I
+      know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I meant: dreary to do it without you or me,&rdquo; she laughed, getting up
+      lazily to go indoors. A broad band of moonlight, dividing her room onto
+      two shadowy halves, lay on the painted Venetian bed with its folded-back
+      sheet, its old damask coverlet and lace-edged pillows. She felt the warmth
+      of Nick&rsquo;s enfolding arm and lifted her face to his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Hickses retained the most tender memory of Nick&rsquo;s sojourn on the Ibis,
+      and Susy, moved by their artless pleasure in meeting him again, was glad
+      he had not followed her advice and tried to elude them. She had always
+      admired Strefford&rsquo;s ruthless talent for using and discarding the human
+      material in his path, but now she began to hope that Nick would not
+      remember her suggestion that he should mete out that measure to the
+      Hickses. Even if it had been less pleasant to have a big yacht at their
+      door during the long golden days and the nights of silver fire, the
+      Hickses&rsquo; admiration for Nick would have made Susy suffer them gladly. She
+      even began to be aware of a growing liking for them, a liking inspired by
+      the very characteristics that would once have provoked her disapproval.
+      Susy had had plenty of training in liking common people with big purses;
+      in such cases her stock of allowances and extenuations was inexhaustible.
+      But they had to be successful common people; and the trouble was that the
+      Hickses, judged by her standards, were failures. It was not only that they
+      were ridiculous; so, heaven knew, were many of their rivals. But the
+      Hickses were both ridiculous and unsuccessful. They had consistently
+      resisted the efforts of the experienced advisers who had first descried
+      them on the horizon and tried to help them upward. They were always taking
+      up the wrong people, giving the wrong kind of party, and spending millions
+      on things that nobody who mattered cared about. They all believed
+      passionately in &ldquo;movements&rdquo; and &ldquo;causes&rdquo; and &ldquo;ideals,&rdquo; and were always
+      attended by the exponents of their latest beliefs, always asking you to
+      hear lectures by haggard women in peplums, and having their portraits
+      painted by wild people who never turned out to be the fashion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All this would formerly have increased Susy&rsquo;s contempt; now she found
+      herself liking the Hickses most for their failings. She was touched by
+      their simple good faith, their isolation in the midst of all their queer
+      apostles and parasites, their way of drifting about an alien and
+      indifferent world in a compactly clinging group of which Eldorada Tooker,
+      the doctor and the two secretaries formed the outer fringe, and by their
+      view of themselves as a kind of collective re-incarnation of some past
+      state of princely culture, symbolised for Mrs. Hicks in what she called
+      &ldquo;the court of the Renaissance.&rdquo; Eldorada, of course, was their chief
+      prophetess; but even the intensely &ldquo;bright&rdquo; and modern young secretaries,
+      Mr. Beck and Mr. Buttles, showed a touching tendency to share her view,
+      and spoke of Mr. Hicks as &ldquo;promoting art,&rdquo; in the spirit of Pandolfino
+      celebrating the munificence of the Medicis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m getting really fond of the Hickses; I believe I should be nice to
+      them even if they were staying at Danieli&rsquo;s,&rdquo; Susy said to Strefford.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And even if you owned the yacht?&rdquo; he answered; and for once his banter
+      struck her as beside the point.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Ibis carried them, during the endless June days, far and wide along
+      the enchanted shores; they roamed among the Euganeans, they saw Aquileia
+      and Pomposa and Ravenna. Their hosts would gladly have taken them farther,
+      across the Adriatic and on into the golden network of the Aegean; but Susy
+      resisted this infraction of Nick&rsquo;s rules, and he himself preferred to
+      stick to his task. Only now he wrote in the early mornings, so that on
+      most days they could set out before noon and steam back late to the low
+      fringe of lights on the lagoon. His work continued to progress, and as
+      page was added to page Susy obscurely but surely perceived that each one
+      corresponded with a hidden secretion of energy, the gradual forming within
+      him of something that might eventually alter both their lives. In what
+      sense she could not conjecture: she merely felt that the fact of his
+      having chosen a job and stuck to it, if only through a few rosy summer
+      weeks, had already given him a new way of saying &ldquo;Yes&rdquo; and &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+
+
+<h3>VII.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">Of</span> some new ferment at work in him Nick Lansing himself was equally aware.
+      He was a better judge of the book he was trying to write than either Susy
+      or Strefford; he knew its weaknesses, its treacheries, its tendency to
+      slip through his fingers just as he thought his grasp tightest; but he
+      knew also that at the very moment when it seemed to have failed him it
+      would suddenly be back, beating its loud wings in his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had no delusions as to its commercial value, and had winced more than
+      he triumphed when Susy produced her allusion to Marius. His book was to be
+      called The Pageant of Alexander. His imagination had been enchanted by the
+      idea of picturing the young conqueror&rsquo;s advance through the fabulous
+      landscapes of Asia: he liked writing descriptions, and vaguely felt that
+      under the guise of fiction he could develop his theory of Oriental
+      influences in Western art at the expense of less learning than if he had
+      tried to put his ideas into an essay. He knew enough of his subject to
+      know that he did not know enough to write about it; but he consoled
+      himself by remembering that Wilhelm Meister has survived many weighty
+      volumes on aesthetics; and between his moments of self-disgust he took
+      himself at Susy&rsquo;s valuation, and found an unmixed joy in his task.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Never&mdash;no, never!&mdash;had he been so boundlessly, so confidently
+      happy. His hack-work had given him the habit of application, and now habit
+      wore the glow of inspiration. His previous literary ventures had been
+      timid and tentative: if this one was growing and strengthening on his
+      hands, it must be because the conditions were so different. He was at
+      ease, he was secure, he was satisfied; and he had also, for the first time
+      since his early youth, before his mother&rsquo;s death, the sense of having some
+      one to look after, some one who was his own particular care, and to whom
+      he was answerable for himself and his actions, as he had never felt
+      himself answerable to the hurried and indifferent people among whom he had
+      chosen to live.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy had the same standards as these people: she spoke their language,
+      though she understood others, she required their pleasures if she did not
+      revere their gods. But from the moment that she had become his property he
+      had built up in himself a conception of her answering to some deep-seated
+      need of veneration. She was his, he had chosen her, she had taken her
+      place in the long line of Lansing women who had been loved, honoured, and
+      probably deceived, by bygone Lansing men. He didn&rsquo;t pretend to understand
+      the logic of it; but the fact that she was his wife gave purpose and
+      continuity to his scattered impulses, and a mysterious glow of
+      consecration to his task.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once or twice, in the first days of his marriage, he had asked himself
+      with a slight shiver what would happen if Susy should begin to bore him.
+      The thing had happened to him with other women as to whom his first
+      emotions had not differed in intensity from those she inspired. The part
+      he had played in his previous love-affairs might indeed have been summed
+      up in the memorable line: &ldquo;I am the hunter and the prey,&rdquo; for he had
+      invariably ceased to be the first only to regard himself as the second.
+      This experience had never ceased to cause him the liveliest pain, since
+      his sympathy for his pursuer was only less keen than his commiseration for
+      himself; but as he was always a little sorrier for himself, he had always
+      ended by distancing the pursuer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All these pre-natal experiences now seemed utterly inapplicable to the new
+      man he had become. He could not imagine being bored by Susy&mdash;or
+      trying to escape from her if he were. He could not think of her as an
+      enemy, or even as an accomplice, since accomplices are potential enemies:
+      she was some one with whom, by some unheard-of miracle, joys above the
+      joys of friendship were to be tasted, but who, even through these fleeting
+      ecstasies, remained simply and securely his friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These new feelings did not affect his general attitude toward life: they
+      merely confirmed his faith in its ultimate &ldquo;jolliness.&rdquo; Never had he more
+      thoroughly enjoyed the things he had always enjoyed. A good dinner had
+      never been as good to him, a beautiful sunset as beautiful; he still
+      rejoiced in the fact that he appreciated both with an equal acuity. He was
+      as proud as ever of Susy&rsquo;s cleverness and freedom from prejudice: she
+      couldn&rsquo;t be too &ldquo;modern&rdquo; for him now that she was his. He shared to the
+      full her passionate enjoyment of the present, and all her feverish
+      eagerness to make it last. He knew when she was thinking of ways of
+      extending their golden opportunity, and he secretly thought with her,
+      wondering what new means they could devise. He was thankful that Ellie
+      Vanderlyn was still absent, and began to hope they might have the palace
+      to themselves for the remainder of the summer. If they did, he would have
+      time to finish his book, and Susy to lay up a little interest on their
+      wedding cheques; and thus their enchanted year might conceivably be
+      prolonged to two.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Late as the season was, their presence and Strefford&rsquo;s in Venice had
+      already drawn thither several wandering members of their set. It was
+      characteristic of these indifferent but agglutinative people that they
+      could never remain long parted from each other without a dim sense of
+      uneasiness. Lansing was familiar with the feeling. He had known slight
+      twinges of it himself, and had often ministered to its qualms in others.
+      It was hardly stronger than the faint gnawing which recalls the tea-hour
+      to one who has lunched well and is sure of dining as abundantly; but it
+      gave a purpose to the purposeless, and helped many hesitating spirits over
+      the annual difficulty of deciding between Deauville and St. Moritz,
+      Biarritz and Capri.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nick was not surprised to learn that it was becoming the fashion, that
+      summer, to pop down to Venice and take a look at the Lansings. Streffy had
+      set the example, and Streffy&rsquo;s example was always followed. And then
+      Susy&rsquo;s marriage was still a subject of sympathetic speculation. People
+      knew the story of the wedding cheques, and were interested in seeing how
+      long they could be made to last. It was going to be the thing, that year,
+      to help prolong the honey-moon by pressing houses on the adventurous
+      couple. Before June was over a band of friends were basking with the
+      Lansings on the Lido.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nick found himself unexpectedly disturbed by their arrival. To avoid
+      comment and banter he put his book aside and forbade Susy to speak of it,
+      explaining to her that he needed an interval of rest. His wife instantly
+      and exaggeratedly adopted this view, guarding him from the temptation to
+      work as jealously as she had discouraged him from idling; and he was
+      careful not to let her find out that the change in his habits coincided
+      with his having reached a difficult point in his book. But though he was
+      not sorry to stop writing he found himself unexpectedly oppressed by the
+      weight of his leisure. For the first time communal dawdling had lost its
+      charm for him; not because his fellow dawdlers were less congenial than of
+      old, but because in the interval he had known something so immeasurably
+      better. He had always felt himself to be the superior of his habitual
+      associates, but now the advantage was too great: really, in a sense, it
+      was hardly fair to them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had flattered himself that Susy would share this feeling; but he
+      perceived with annoyance that the arrival of their friends heightened her
+      animation. It was as if the inward glow which had given her a new beauty
+      were now refracted upon her by the presence of the very people they had
+      come to Venice to avoid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing was vaguely irritated; and when he asked her how she liked being
+      with their old crowd again his irritation was increased by her answering
+      with a laugh that she only hoped the poor dears didn&rsquo;t see too plainly how
+      they bored her. The patent insincerity of the reply was a shock to
+      Lansing. He knew that Susy was not really bored, and he understood that
+      she had simply guessed his feelings and instinctively adopted them: that
+      henceforth she was always going to think as he thought. To confirm this
+      fear he said carelessly: &ldquo;Oh, all the same, it&rsquo;s rather jolly knocking
+      about with them again for a bit;&rdquo; and she answered at once, and with equal
+      conviction: &ldquo;Yes, isn&rsquo;t it? The old darlings&mdash;all the same!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A fear of the future again laid its cold touch on Lansing. Susy&rsquo;s
+      independence and self-sufficiency had been among her chief attractions; if
+      she were to turn into an echo their delicious duet ran the risk of
+      becoming the dullest of monologues. He forgot that five minutes earlier he
+      had resented her being glad to see their friends, and for a moment he
+      found himself leaning dizzily over that insoluble riddle of the
+      sentimental life: that to be differed with is exasperating, and to be
+      agreed with monotonous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once more he began to wonder if he were not fundamentally unfitted for the
+      married state; and was saved from despair only by remembering that Susy&rsquo;s
+      subjection to his moods was not likely to last. But even then it never
+      occurred to him to reflect that his apprehensions were superfluous, since
+      their tie was avowedly a temporary one. Of the special understanding on
+      which their marriage had been based not a trace remained in his thoughts
+      of her; the idea that he or she might ever renounce each other for their
+      mutual good had long since dwindled to the ghost of an old joke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was borne in on him, after a week or two of unbroken sociability, that
+      of all his old friends it was the Mortimer Hickses who bored him the
+      least. The Hickses had left the Ibis for an apartment in a vast
+      dilapidated palace near the Canareggio. They had hired the apartment from
+      a painter (one of their newest discoveries), and they put up
+      philosophically with the absence of modern conveniences in order to secure
+      the inestimable advantage of &ldquo;atmosphere.&rdquo; In this privileged air they
+      gathered about them their usual mixed company of quiet studious people and
+      noisy exponents of new theories, themselves totally unconscious of the
+      disparity between their different guests, and beamingly convinced that at
+      last they were seated at the source of wisdom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In old days Lansing would have got half an hour&rsquo;s amusement, followed by a
+      long evening of boredom, from the sight of Mrs. Hicks, vast and jewelled,
+      seated between a quiet-looking professor of archaeology and a large-browed
+      composer, or the high priest of a new dance-step, while Mr. Hicks, beaming
+      above his vast white waistcoat, saw to it that the champagne flowed more
+      abundantly than the talk, and the bright young secretaries industriously
+      &ldquo;kept up&rdquo; with the dizzy cross-current of prophecy and erudition. But a
+      change had come over Lansing. Hitherto it was in contrast to his own
+      friends that the Hickses had seemed most insufferable; now it was as an
+      escape from these same friends that they had become not only sympathetic
+      but even interesting. It was something, after all, to be with people who
+      did not regard Venice simply as affording exceptional opportunities for
+      bathing and adultery, but who were reverently if confusedly aware that
+      they were in the presence of something unique and ineffable, and
+      determined to make the utmost of their privilege.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After all,&rdquo; he said to himself one evening, as his eyes wandered, with
+      somewhat of a convalescent&rsquo;s simple joy, from one to another of their
+      large confiding faces, &ldquo;after all, they&rsquo;ve got a religion....&rdquo; The phrase
+      struck him, in the moment of using it, as indicating a new element in his
+      own state of mind, and as being, in fact, the key to his new feeling about
+      the Hickses. Their muddled ardour for great things was related to his own
+      new view of the universe: the people who felt, however dimly, the wonder
+      and weight of life must ever after be nearer to him than those to whom it
+      was estimated solely by one&rsquo;s balance at the bank. He supposed, on
+      reflexion, that that was what he meant when he thought of the Hickses as
+      having &ldquo;a religion&rdquo;....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A few days later, his well-being was unexpectedly disturbed by the arrival
+      of Fred Gillow. Lansing had always felt a tolerant liking for Gillow, a
+      large smiling silent young man with an intense and serious desire to miss
+      nothing attainable by one of his fortune and standing. What use he made of
+      his experiences, Lansing, who had always gone into his own modest
+      adventures rather thoroughly, had never been able to guess; but he had
+      always suspected the prodigal Fred of being no more than a well-disguised
+      looker-on. Now for the first time he began to view him with another eye.
+      The Gillows were, in fact, the one uneasy point in Nick&rsquo;s conscience. He
+      and Susy from the first, had talked of them less than of any other members
+      of their group: they had tacitly avoided the name from the day on which
+      Susy had come to Lansing&rsquo;s lodgings to say that Ursula Gillow had asked
+      her to renounce him, till that other day, just before their marriage, when
+      she had met him with the rapturous cry: &ldquo;Here&rsquo;s our first wedding present!
+      Such a thumping big cheque from Fred and Ursula!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Plenty of sympathizing people were ready, Lansing knew, to tell him just
+      what had happened in the interval between those two dates; but he had
+      taken care not to ask. He had even affected an initiation so complete that
+      the friends who burned to enlighten him were discouraged by his so
+      obviously knowing more than they; and gradually he had worked himself
+      around to their view, and had taken it for granted that he really did.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now he perceived that he knew nothing at all, and that the &ldquo;Hullo, old
+      Fred!&rdquo; with which Susy hailed Gillow&rsquo;s arrival might be either the usual
+      tribal welcome&mdash;since they were all &ldquo;old,&rdquo; and all nicknamed, in
+      their private jargon&mdash;or a greeting that concealed inscrutable depths
+      of complicity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy was visibly glad to see Gillow; but she was glad of everything just
+      then, and so glad to show her gladness! The fact disarmed her husband and
+      made him ashamed of his uneasiness. &ldquo;You ought to have thought this all
+      out sooner, or else you ought to chuck thinking of it at all,&rdquo; was the
+      sound but ineffectual advice he gave himself on the day after Gillow&rsquo;s
+      arrival; and immediately set to work to rethink the whole matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fred Gillow showed no consciousness of disturbing any one&rsquo;s peace of mind.
+      Day after day he sprawled for hours on the Lido sands, his arms folded
+      under his head, listening to Streffy&rsquo;s nonsense and watching Susy between
+      sleepy lids; but he betrayed no desire to see her alone, or to draw her
+      into talk apart from the others. More than ever he seemed content to be
+      the gratified spectator of a costly show got up for his private
+      entertainment. It was not until he heard her, one morning, grumble a
+      little at the increasing heat and the menace of mosquitoes, that he said,
+      quite as if they had talked the matter over long before, and finally
+      settled it: &ldquo;The moor will be ready any time after the first of August.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nick fancied that Susy coloured a little, and drew herself up more
+      defiantly than usual as she sent a pebble skimming across the dying
+      ripples at their feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll be a lot cooler in Scotland,&rdquo; Fred added, with what, for him, was
+      an unusual effort at explicitness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, shall we?&rdquo; she retorted gaily; and added with an air of mystery and
+      importance, pivoting about on her high heels: &ldquo;Nick&rsquo;s got work to do here.
+      It will probably keep us all summer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Work? Rot! You&rsquo;ll die of the smells.&rdquo; Gillow stared perplexedly skyward
+      from under his tilted hat-brim; and then brought out, as from the depth of
+      a rankling grievance: &ldquo;I thought it was all understood.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why,&rdquo; Nick asked his wife that night, as they re-entered Ellie&rsquo;s cool
+      drawing-room after a late dinner at the Lido, &ldquo;did Gillow think it was
+      understood that we were going to his moor in August?&rdquo; He was conscious of
+      the oddness of speaking of their friend by his surname, and reddened at
+      his blunder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy had let her lace cloak slide to her feet, and stood before him in the
+      faintly-lit room, slim and shimmering-white through black transparencies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She raised her eyebrows carelessly. &ldquo;I told you long ago he&rsquo;d asked us
+      there for August.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You didn&rsquo;t tell me you&rsquo;d accepted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She smiled as if he had said something as simple as Fred. &ldquo;I accepted
+      everything&mdash;from everybody!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      What could he answer? It was the very principle on which their bargain had
+      been struck. And if he were to say: &ldquo;Ah, but this is different, because
+      I&rsquo;m jealous of Gillow,&rdquo; what light would such an answer shed on his past?
+      The time for being jealous&mdash;if so antiquated an attitude were on any ground
+      defensible&mdash;would have been before his marriage, and before the acceptance
+      of the bounties which had helped to make it possible. He wondered a little
+      now that in those days such scruples had not troubled him. His
+      inconsistency irritated him, and increased his irritation against Gillow.
+      &ldquo;I suppose he thinks he owns us!&rdquo; he grumbled inwardly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had thrown himself into an armchair, and Susy, advancing across the
+      shining arabesques of the floor, slid down at his feet, pressed her
+      slender length against him, and whispered with lifted face and lips close
+      to his: &ldquo;We needn&rsquo;t ever go anywhere you don&rsquo;t want to.&rdquo; For once her
+      submission was sweet, and folding her close he whispered back through his
+      kiss: &ldquo;Not there, then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In her response to his embrace he felt the acquiescence of her whole happy
+      self in whatever future he decided on, if only it gave them enough of such
+      moments as this; and as they held each other fast in silence his doubts
+      and distrust began to seem like a silly injustice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us stay here as long as ever Ellie will let us,&rdquo; he said, as if the
+      shadowy walls and shining floors were a magic boundary drawn about his
+      happiness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She murmured her assent and stood up, stretching her sleepy arm above her
+      shoulders. &ldquo;How dreadfully late it is.... Will you unhook me?... Oh,
+      there&rsquo;s a telegram.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She picked it up from the table, and tearing it open stared a moment at
+      the message. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s from Ellie. She&rsquo;s coming to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned to the window and strayed out onto the balcony. Nick followed
+      her with enlacing arm. The canal below them lay in moonless shadow, barred
+      with a few lingering lights. A last snatch of gondola-music came from far
+      off, carried upward on a sultry gust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear old Ellie. All the same... I wish all this belonged to you and me.&rdquo;
+       Susy sighed.
+    </p>
+
+
+<h3>VIII.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">It</span> was not Mrs. Vanderlyn&rsquo;s fault if, after her arrival, her palace seemed
+      to belong any less to the Lansings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She arrived in a mood of such general benevolence that it was impossible
+      for Susy, when they finally found themselves alone, to make her view even
+      her own recent conduct in any but the most benevolent light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew you&rsquo;d be the veriest angel about it all, darling, because I knew
+      you&rsquo;d understand me&mdash;especially now,&rdquo; she declared, her slim hands in
+      Susy&rsquo;s, her big eyes (so like Clarissa&rsquo;s) resplendent with past pleasures
+      and future plans.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The expression of her confidence was unexpectedly distasteful to Susy
+      Lansing, who had never lent so cold an ear to such warm avowals. She had
+      always imagined that being happy one&rsquo;s self made one&mdash;as Mrs.
+      Vanderlyn appeared to assume&mdash;more tolerant of the happiness of
+      others, of however doubtful elements composed; and she was almost ashamed
+      of responding so languidly to her friend&rsquo;s outpourings. But she herself
+      had no desire to confide her bliss to Ellie; and why should not Ellie
+      observe a similar reticence?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was all so perfect&mdash;you see, dearest, I was meant to be happy,&rdquo;
+       that lady continued, as if the possession of so unusual a characteristic
+      singled her out for special privileges.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy, with a certain sharpness, responded that she had always supposed we
+      all were.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no, dearest: not governesses and mothers-in-law and companions, and
+      that sort of people. They wouldn&rsquo;t know how if they tried. But you and I,
+      darling&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I don&rsquo;t consider myself in any way exceptional,&rdquo; Susy intervened. She
+      longed to add: &ldquo;Not in your way, at any rate&mdash;&rdquo; but a few minutes
+      earlier Mrs. Vanderlyn had told her that the palace was at her disposal
+      for the rest of the summer, and that she herself was only going to perch
+      there&mdash;if they&rsquo;d let her!&mdash;long enough to gather up her things
+      and start for St. Moritz. The memory of this announcement had the effect
+      of curbing Susy&rsquo;s irony, and of making her shift the conversation to the
+      safer if scarcely less absorbing topic of the number of day and evening
+      dresses required for a season at St. Moritz.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As she listened to Mrs. Vanderlyn&mdash;no less eloquent on this theme
+      than on the other&mdash;Susy began to measure the gulf between her past
+      and present. &ldquo;This is the life I used to lead; these are the things I used
+      to live for,&rdquo; she thought, as she stood before the outspread glories of
+      Mrs. Vanderlyn&rsquo;s wardrobe. Not that she did not still care: she could not
+      look at Ellie&rsquo;s laces and silks and furs without picturing herself in
+      them, and wondering by what new miracle of management she could give
+      herself the air of being dressed by the same consummate artists. But these
+      had become minor interests: the past few months had given her a new
+      perspective, and the thing that most puzzled and disconcerted her about
+      Ellie was the fact that love and finery and bridge and dining-out were
+      seemingly all on the same plane to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The inspection of the dresses lasted a long time, and was marked by many
+      fluctuations of mood on the part of Mrs. Vanderlyn, who passed from
+      comparative hopefulness to despair at the total inadequacy of her
+      wardrobe. It wouldn&rsquo;t do to go to St. Moritz looking like a frump, and yet
+      there was no time to get anything sent from Paris, and, whatever she did,
+      she wasn&rsquo;t going to show herself in any dowdy re-arrangements done at
+      home. But suddenly light broke on her, and she clasped her hands for joy.
+      &ldquo;Why, Nelson&rsquo;ll bring them&mdash;I&rsquo;d forgotten all about Nelson! There&rsquo;ll
+      be just time if I wire to him at once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is Nelson going to join you at St. Moritz?&rdquo; Susy asked, surprised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Heavens, no! He&rsquo;s coming here to pick up Clarissa and take her to some
+      stuffy cure in Austria with his mother. It&rsquo;s too lucky: there&rsquo;s just time
+      to telegraph him to bring my things. I didn&rsquo;t mean to wait for him; but it
+      won&rsquo;t delay me more than day or two.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy&rsquo;s heart sank. She was not much afraid of Ellie alone, but Ellie and
+      Nelson together formed an incalculable menace. No one could tell what
+      spark of truth might dash from their collision. Susy felt that she could
+      deal with the two dangers separately and successively, but not together
+      and simultaneously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, Ellie, why should you wait for Nelson? I&rsquo;m certain to find someone
+      here who&rsquo;s going to St. Moritz and will take your things if he brings
+      them. It&rsquo;s a pity to risk losing your rooms.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This argument appealed for a moment to Mrs. Vanderlyn. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s true; they
+      say all the hotels are jammed. You dear, you&rsquo;re always so practical!&rdquo; She
+      clasped Susy to her scented bosom. &ldquo;And you know, darling, I&rsquo;m sure you&rsquo;ll
+      be glad to get rid of me&mdash;you and Nick! Oh, don&rsquo;t be hypocritical and
+      say &lsquo;Nonsense!&rsquo; You see, I understand... I used to think of you so often,
+      you two... during those blessed weeks when we two were alone....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The sudden tears, brimming over Ellie&rsquo;s lovely eyes, and threatening to
+      make the blue circles below them run into the adjoining carmine, filled
+      Susy with compunction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor thing&mdash;oh, poor thing!&rdquo; she thought; and hearing herself called
+      by Nick, who was waiting to take her out for their usual sunset on the
+      lagoon, she felt a wave of pity for the deluded creature who would never
+      taste that highest of imaginable joys. &ldquo;But all the same,&rdquo; Susy reflected,
+      as she hurried down to her husband, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad I persuaded her not to wait
+      for Nelson.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Some days had elapsed since Susy and Nick had had a sunset to themselves,
+      and in the interval Susy had once again learned the superior quality of
+      the sympathy that held them together. She now viewed all the rest of life
+      as no more than a show: a jolly show which it would have been a thousand
+      pities to miss, but which, if the need arose, they could get up and leave
+      at any moment&mdash;provided that they left it together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the dusk, while their prow slid over inverted palaces, and through the
+      scent of hidden gardens, she leaned against him and murmured, her mind
+      returning to the recent scene with Ellie: &ldquo;Nick, should you hate me
+      dreadfully if I had no clothes?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her husband was kindling a cigarette, and the match lit up the grin with
+      which he answered: &ldquo;But, my dear, have I ever shown the slightest symptom&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, rubbish! When a woman says: &lsquo;No clothes,&rsquo; she means: &lsquo;Not the right
+      clothes.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He took a meditative puff. &ldquo;Ah, you&rsquo;ve been going over Ellie&rsquo;s finery with
+      her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes: all those trunks and trunks full. And she finds she&rsquo;s got nothing
+      for St. Moritz!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; he murmured, drowsy with content, and manifesting but a
+      languid interest in the subject of Mrs. Vanderlyn&rsquo;s wardrobe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only fancy&mdash;she very nearly decided to stop over for Nelson&rsquo;s
+      arrival next week, so that he might bring her two or three more trunkfuls
+      from Paris. But mercifully I&rsquo;ve managed to persuade her that it would be
+      foolish to wait.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy felt a hardly perceptible shifting of her husband&rsquo;s lounging body,
+      and was aware, through all her watchful tentacles, of a widening of his
+      half-closed lids.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You &lsquo;managed&rsquo;&mdash;?&rdquo; She fancied he paused on the word ironically. &ldquo;But
+      why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why&mdash;what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why on earth should you try to prevent Ellie&rsquo;s waiting for Nelson, if for
+      once in her life she wants to?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy, conscious of reddening suddenly, drew back as though the leap of her
+      tell-tale heart might have penetrated the blue flannel shoulder against
+      which she leaned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Really, dearest&mdash;!&rdquo; she murmured; but with a sudden doggedness he
+      renewed his &ldquo;Why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because she&rsquo;s in such a fever to get to St. Moritz&mdash;and in such a
+      funk lest the hotel shouldn&rsquo;t keep her rooms,&rdquo; Susy somewhat breathlessly
+      produced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah&mdash;I see.&rdquo; Nick paused again. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re a devoted friend, aren&rsquo;t
+      you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What an odd question! There&rsquo;s hardly anyone I&rsquo;ve reason to be more
+      devoted to than Ellie,&rdquo; his wife answered; and she felt his contrite clasp
+      on her hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Darling! No; nor I&mdash;. Or more grateful to for leaving us alone in
+      this heaven.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dimness had fallen on the waters, and her lifted lips met his bending
+      ones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Trailing late into dinner that evening, Ellie announced that, after all,
+      she had decided it was safest to wait for Nelson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should simply worry myself ill if I weren&rsquo;t sure of getting my things,&rdquo;
+       she said, in the tone of tender solicitude with which she always discussed
+      her own difficulties. &ldquo;After all, people who deny themselves everything do
+      get warped and bitter, don&rsquo;t they?&rdquo; she argued plaintively, her lovely
+      eyes wandering from one to the other of her assembled friends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford remarked gravely that it was the complaint which had fatally
+      undermined his own health; and in the laugh that followed the party
+      drifted into the great vaulted dining-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I don&rsquo;t mind your laughing at me, Streffy darling,&rdquo; his hostess
+      retorted, pressing his arm against her own; and Susy, receiving the shock
+      of their rapidly exchanged glance, said to herself, with a sharp twinge of
+      apprehension: &ldquo;Of course Streffy knows everything; he showed no surprise
+      at finding Ellie away when he arrived. And if he knows, what&rsquo;s to prevent
+      Nelson&rsquo;s finding out?&rdquo; For Strefford, in a mood of mischief, was no more
+      to be trusted than a malicious child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy instantly resolved to risk speaking to him, if need be even betraying
+      to him the secret of the letters. Only by revealing the depth of her own
+      danger could she hope to secure his silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the balcony, late in the evening, while the others were listening
+      indoors to the low modulations of a young composer who had embroidered his
+      fancies on Browning&rsquo;s &ldquo;Toccata,&rdquo; Susy found her chance. Strefford,
+      unsummoned, had followed her out, and stood silently smoking at her side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see, Streff&mdash;oh, why should you and I make mysteries to each
+      other?&rdquo; she suddenly began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, indeed: but do we?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy glanced back at the group around the piano. &ldquo;About Ellie, I mean&mdash;and
+      Nelson.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lord! Ellie and Nelson? You call that a mystery? I should as soon apply
+      the term to one of the million candle-power advertisements that adorn your
+      native thoroughfares.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, yes. But&mdash;&rdquo; She stopped again. Had she not tacitly promised
+      Ellie not to speak?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My Susan, what&rsquo;s wrong?&rdquo; Strefford asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I do, then: you&rsquo;re afraid that, if Ellie and Nelson meet here,
+      she&rsquo;ll blurt out something&mdash;injudicious.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, she won&rsquo;t!&rdquo; Susy cried with conviction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then&mdash;who will! I trust that superhuman child not to. And you
+      and I and Nick&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; she gasped, interrupting him, &ldquo;that&rsquo;s just it. Nick doesn&rsquo;t know...
+      doesn&rsquo;t even suspect. And if he did....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford flung away his cigar and turned to scrutinize her. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see&mdash;hanged
+      if I do. What business is it of any of us, after all?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That, of course, was the old view that cloaked connivance in an air of
+      decency. But to Susy it no longer carried conviction, and she hesitated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If Nick should find out that I know....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good Lord&mdash;doesn&rsquo;t he know that you know? After all, I suppose it&rsquo;s
+      not the first time&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She remained silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The first time you&rsquo;ve received confidences&mdash;from married friends.
+      Does Nick suppose you&rsquo;ve lived even to your tender age without... Hang it,
+      what&rsquo;s come over you, child?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      What had, indeed, that she could make clear to him? And yet more than ever
+      she felt the need of having him securely on her side. Once his word was
+      pledged, he was safe: otherwise there was no limit to his capacity for
+      wilful harmfulness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look here, Streff, you and I know that Ellie hasn&rsquo;t been away for a cure;
+      and that if poor Clarissa was sworn to secrecy it was not because it
+      &lsquo;worries father&rsquo; to think that mother needs to take care of her health.&rdquo;
+       She paused, hating herself for the ironic note she had tried to sound.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;?&rdquo; he questioned, from the depths of the chair into which he
+      had sunk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Nick doesn&rsquo;t... doesn&rsquo;t dream of it. If he knew that we owed our
+      summer here to... to my knowing....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford sat silent: she felt his astonished stare through the darkness.
+      &ldquo;Jove!&rdquo; he said at last, with a low whistle Susy bent over the balustrade,
+      her heart thumping against the stone rail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What was left of soul, I wonder&mdash;?&rdquo; the young composer&rsquo;s voice
+      shrilled through the open windows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford sank into another silence, from which he roused himself only as
+      Susy turned back toward the lighted threshold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, my dear, we&rsquo;ll see it through between us; you and I&mdash;and Clarissa,&rdquo;
+       he said with his rasping laugh, rising to follow her. He caught her hand
+      and gave it a short pressure as they re-entered the drawing-room, where
+      Ellie was saying plaintively to Fred Gillow: &ldquo;I can never hear that thing
+      sung without wanting to cry like a baby.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+
+
+<h3>IX.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">Nelson Vanderlyn</span>, still in his travelling clothes, paused on the threshold
+      of his own dining-room and surveyed the scene with pardonable
+      satisfaction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was a short round man, with a grizzled head, small facetious eyes and a
+      large and credulous smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the luncheon table sat his wife, between Charlie Strefford and Nick
+      Lansing. Next to Strefford, perched on her high chair, Clarissa throned in
+      infant beauty, while Susy Lansing cut up a peach for her. Through wide
+      orange awnings the sun slanted in upon the white-clad group.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;well&mdash;well! So I&rsquo;ve caught you at it!&rdquo; cried the happy
+      father, whose inveterate habit it was to address his wife and friends as
+      if he had surprised them at an inopportune moment. Stealing up from
+      behind, he lifted his daughter into the air, while a chorus of &ldquo;Hello, old
+      Nelson,&rdquo; hailed his appearance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was two or three years since Nick Lansing had seen Mr. Vanderlyn, who
+      was now the London representative of the big New York bank of Vanderlyn
+      &amp; Co., and had exchanged his sumptuous house in Fifth Avenue for
+      another, more sumptuous still, in Mayfair; and the young man looked
+      curiously and attentively at his host.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Vanderlyn had grown older and stouter, but his face still kept its
+      look of somewhat worn optimism. He embraced his wife, greeted Susy
+      affectionately, and distributed cordial hand-grasps to the two men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hullo,&rdquo; he exclaimed, suddenly noticing a pearl and coral trinket hanging
+      from Clarissa&rsquo;s neck. &ldquo;Who&rsquo;s been giving my daughter jewellery, I&rsquo;d like
+      to know!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Streffy did&mdash;just think, father! Because I said I&rsquo;d rather have
+      it than a book, you know,&rdquo; Clarissa lucidly explained, her arms tight
+      about her father&rsquo;s neck, her beaming eyes on Strefford.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nelson Vanderlyn&rsquo;s own eyes took on the look of shrewdness which came into
+      them whenever there was a question of material values.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What, Streffy? Caught you at it, eh? Upon my soul-spoiling the brat like
+      that! You&rsquo;d no business to, my dear chap-a lovely baroque pearl&mdash;&rdquo; he
+      protested, with the half-apologetic tone of the rich man embarrassed by
+      too costly a gift from an impecunious friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, hadn&rsquo;t I? Why? Because it&rsquo;s too good for Clarissa, or too expensive
+      for me? Of course you daren&rsquo;t imply the first; and as for me&mdash;I&rsquo;ve
+      had a windfall, and am blowing it in on the ladies.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford, Lansing had noticed, always used American slang when he was
+      slightly at a loss, and wished to divert attention from the main point.
+      But why was he embarrassed, whose attention did he wish to divert, It was
+      plain that Vanderlyn&rsquo;s protest had been merely formal: like most of the
+      wealthy, he had only the dimmest notion of what money represented to the
+      poor. But it was unusual for Strefford to give any one a present, and
+      especially an expensive one: perhaps that was what had fixed Vanderlyn&rsquo;s
+      attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A windfall?&rdquo; he gaily repeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, a tiny one: I was offered a thumping rent for my little place at
+      Como, and dashed over here to squander my millions with the rest of you,&rdquo;
+       said Strefford imperturbably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Vanderlyn&rsquo;s look immediately became interested and sympathetic. &ldquo;What&mdash;the
+      scene of the honey-moon?&rdquo; He included Nick and Susy in his friendly smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just so: the reward of virtue. I say, give me a cigar, will you, old man,
+      I left some awfully good ones at Como, worse luck&mdash;and I don&rsquo;t mind
+      telling you that Ellie&rsquo;s no judge of tobacco, and that Nick&rsquo;s too far gone
+      in bliss to care what he smokes,&rdquo; Strefford grumbled, stretching a hand
+      toward his host&rsquo;s cigar-case.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do like jewellery best,&rdquo; Clarissa murmured, hugging her father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nelson Vanderlyn&rsquo;s first word to his wife had been that he had brought her
+      all her toggery; and she had welcomed him with appropriate enthusiasm. In
+      fact, to the lookers-on her joy at seeing him seemed rather too patently
+      in proportion to her satisfaction at getting her clothes. But no such
+      suspicion appeared to mar Mr. Vanderlyn&rsquo;s happiness in being, for once,
+      and for nearly twenty-four hours, under the same roof with his wife and
+      child. He did not conceal his regret at having promised his mother to join
+      her the next day; and added, with a wistful glance at Ellie: &ldquo;If only I&rsquo;d
+      known you meant to wait for me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But being a man of duty, in domestic as well as business affairs, he did
+      not even consider the possibility of disappointing the exacting old lady
+      to whom he owed his being. &ldquo;Mother cares for so few people,&rdquo; he used to
+      say, not without a touch of filial pride in the parental exclusiveness,
+      &ldquo;that I have to be with her rather more than if she were more sociable&rdquo;;
+      and with smiling resignation he gave orders that Clarissa should be ready
+      to start the next evening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And meanwhile,&rdquo; he concluded, &ldquo;we&rsquo;ll have all the good time that&rsquo;s
+      going.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The ladies of the party seemed united in the desire to further this
+      resolve; and it was settled that as soon as Mr. Vanderlyn had despatched a
+      hasty luncheon, his wife, Clarissa and Susy should carry him off for a
+      tea-picnic at Torcello. They did not even suggest that Strefford or Nick
+      should be of the party, or that any of the other young men of the group
+      should be summoned; as Susy said, Nelson wanted to go off alone with his
+      harem. And Lansing and Strefford were left to watch the departure of the
+      happy Pasha ensconced between attentive beauties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;that&rsquo;s what you call being married!&rdquo; Strefford commented,
+      waving his battered Panama at Clarissa.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no, I don&rsquo;t!&rdquo; Lansing laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He does. But do you know&mdash;&rdquo; Strefford paused and swung about on his
+      companion&mdash;&ldquo;do you know, when the Rude Awakening comes, I don&rsquo;t care
+      to be there. I believe there&rsquo;ll be some crockery broken.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shouldn&rsquo;t wonder,&rdquo; Lansing answered indifferently. He wandered away to
+      his own room, leaving Strefford to philosophize to his pipe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing had always known about poor old Nelson: who hadn&rsquo;t, except poor
+      old Nelson? The case had once seemed amusing because so typical; now, it
+      rather irritated Nick that Vanderlyn should be so complete an ass. But he
+      would be off the next day, and so would Ellie, and then, for many
+      enchanted weeks, the palace would once more be the property of Nick and
+      Susy. Of all the people who came and went in it, they were the only ones
+      who appreciated it, or knew how it was meant to be lived in; and that made
+      it theirs in the only valid sense. In this light it became easy to regard
+      the Vanderlyns as mere transient intruders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having relegated them to this convenient distance, Lansing shut himself up
+      with his book. He had returned to it with fresh energy after his few weeks
+      of holiday-making, and was determined to finish it quickly. He did not
+      expect that it would bring in much money; but if it were moderately
+      successful it might give him an opening in the reviews and magazines, and
+      in that case he meant to abandon archaeology for novels, since it was only
+      as a purveyor of fiction that he could count on earning a living for
+      himself and Susy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Late in the afternoon he laid down his pen and wandered out of doors. He
+      loved the increasing heat of the Venetian summer, the bruised peach-tints
+      of worn house-fronts, the enamelling of sunlight on dark green canals, the
+      smell of half-decayed fruits and flowers thickening the languid air. What
+      visions he could build, if he dared, of being tucked away with Susy in the
+      attic of some tumble-down palace, above a jade-green waterway, with a
+      terrace overhanging a scrap of neglected garden&mdash;and cheques from the
+      publishers dropping in at convenient intervals! Why should they not settle
+      in Venice if he pulled it off!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He found himself before the church of the Scalzi, and pushing open the
+      leathern door wandered up the nave under the whirl of rose-and-lemon
+      angels in Tiepolo&rsquo;s great vault. It was not a church in which one was
+      likely to run across sight-seers; but he presently remarked a young lady
+      standing alone near the choir, and assiduously applying her field-glass to
+      the celestial vortex, from which she occasionally glanced down at an open
+      manual.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Lansing&rsquo;s step sounded on the pavement, the young lady, turning,
+      revealed herself as Miss Hicks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah&mdash;you like this too? It&rsquo;s several centuries out of your line,
+      though, isn&rsquo;t it!&rdquo; Nick asked as they shook hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She gazed at him gravely. &ldquo;Why shouldn&rsquo;t one like things that are out of
+      one&rsquo;s line?&rdquo; she answered; and he agreed, with a laugh, that it was often
+      an incentive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She continued to fix her grave eyes on him, and after one or two remarks
+      about the Tiepolos he perceived that she was feeling her way toward a
+      subject of more personal interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad to see you alone,&rdquo; she said at length, with an abruptness that
+      might have seemed awkward had it not been so completely unconscious. She
+      turned toward a cluster of straw chairs, and signed to Nick to seat
+      himself beside her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I seldom do,&rdquo; she added, with the serious smile that made her heavy face
+      almost handsome; and she went on, giving him no time to protest: &ldquo;I wanted
+      to speak to you&mdash;to explain about father&rsquo;s invitation to go with us
+      to Persia and Turkestan.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To explain?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. You found the letter when you arrived here just after your marriage,
+      didn&rsquo;t you? You must have thought it odd, our asking you just then; but we
+      hadn&rsquo;t heard that you were married.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I guessed as much: it happened very quietly, and I was remiss about
+      announcing it, even to old friends.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing frowned. His thoughts had wandered away to the evening when he had
+      found Mrs. Hicks&rsquo;s letter in the mail awaiting him at Venice. The day was
+      associated in his mind with the ridiculous and mortifying episode of the
+      cigars&mdash;the expensive cigars that Susy had wanted to carry away from
+      Strefford&rsquo;s villa. Their brief exchange of views on the subject had left
+      the first blur on the perfect surface of his happiness, and he still felt
+      an uncomfortable heat at the remembrance. For a few hours the prospect of
+      life with Susy had seemed unendurable; and it was just at that moment that
+      he had found the letter from Mrs. Hicks, with its almost irresistible
+      invitation. If only her daughter had known how nearly he had accepted it!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was a dreadful temptation,&rdquo; he said, smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To go with us? Then why&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, everything&rsquo;s different now: I&rsquo;ve got to stick to my writing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Hicks still bent on him the same unblinking scrutiny. &ldquo;Does that mean
+      that you&rsquo;re going to give up your real work?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My real work&mdash;archaeology?&rdquo; He smiled again to hide a twitch of
+      regret. &ldquo;Why, I&rsquo;m afraid it hardly produces a living wage; and I&rsquo;ve got to
+      think of that.&rdquo; He coloured suddenly, as if suspecting that Miss Hicks
+      might consider the avowal an opening for he hardly knew what ponderous
+      offer of aid. The Hicks munificence was too uncalculating not to be
+      occasionally oppressive. But looking at her again he saw that her eyes
+      were full of tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought it was your vocation,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So did I. But life comes along, and upsets things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I understand. There may be things&mdash;worth giving up all other
+      things for.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are!&rdquo; cried Nick with beaming emphasis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was conscious that Miss Hicks&rsquo;s eyes demanded of him even more than
+      this sweeping affirmation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But your novel may fail,&rdquo; she said with her odd harshness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It may&mdash;it probably will,&rdquo; he agreed. &ldquo;But if one stopped to
+      consider such possibilities&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you have to, with a wife?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, my dear Coral&mdash;how old are you? Not twenty?&rdquo; he questioned,
+      laying a brotherly hand on hers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She stared at him a moment, and sprang up clumsily from her chair. &ldquo;I was
+      never young... if that&rsquo;s what you mean. It&rsquo;s lucky, isn&rsquo;t it, that my
+      parents gave me such a grand education? Because, you see, art&rsquo;s a
+      wonderful resource.&rdquo; (She pronounced it RE-source.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He continued to look at her kindly. &ldquo;You won&rsquo;t need it&mdash;or any other&mdash;when
+      you grow young, as you will some day,&rdquo; he assured her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean, when I fall in love? But I am in love&mdash;Oh, there&rsquo;s
+      Eldorada and Mr. Beck!&rdquo; She broke off with a jerk, signalling with her
+      field-glass to the pair who had just appeared at the farther end of the
+      nave. &ldquo;I told them that if they&rsquo;d meet me here to-day I&rsquo;d try to make them
+      understand Tiepolo. Because, you see, at home we never really have
+      understood Tiepolo; and Mr. Beck and Eldorada are the only ones to realize
+      it. Mr. Buttles simply won&rsquo;t.&rdquo; She turned to Lansing and held out her
+      hand. &ldquo;I am in love,&rdquo; she repeated earnestly, &ldquo;and that&rsquo;s the reason why I
+      find art such a RE source.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She restored her eye-glasses, opened her manual, and strode across the
+      church to the expectant neophytes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing, looking after her, wondered for half a moment whether Mr. Beck
+      were the object of this apparently unrequited sentiment; then, with a
+      queer start of introspection, abruptly decided that, no, he certainly was
+      not. But then&mdash;but then&mdash;. Well, there was no use in following
+      up such conjectures.... He turned home-ward, wondering if the picnickers
+      had already reached Palazzo Vanderlyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They got back only in time for a late dinner, full of chaff and laughter,
+      and apparently still enchanted with each other&rsquo;s society. Nelson Vanderlyn
+      beamed on his wife, sent his daughter off to bed with a kiss, and leaning
+      back in his armchair before the fruit-and-flower-laden table, declared
+      that he&rsquo;d never spent a jollier day in his life. Susy seemed to come in
+      for a full share of his approbation, and Lansing thought that Ellie was
+      unusually demonstrative to her friend. Strefford, from his hostess&rsquo;s side,
+      glanced across now and then at young Mrs. Lansing, and his glance seemed
+      to Lansing a confidential comment on the Vanderlyn raptures. But then
+      Strefford was always having private jokes with people or about them; and
+      Lansing was irritated with himself for perpetually suspecting his best
+      friends of vague complicities at his expense. &ldquo;If I&rsquo;m going to be jealous
+      of Streffy now&mdash;!&rdquo; he concluded with a grimace of self-derision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Certainly Susy looked lovely enough to justify the most irrational pangs.
+      As a girl she had been, for some people&rsquo;s taste, a trifle fine-drawn and
+      sharp-edged; now, to her old lightness of line was added a shadowy bloom,
+      a sort of star-reflecting depth. Her movements were slower, less angular;
+      her mouth had a needing droop, her lids seemed weighed down by their
+      lashes; and then suddenly the old spirit would reveal itself through the
+      new languor, like the tartness at the core of a sweet fruit. As her
+      husband looked at her across the flowers and lights he laughed inwardly at
+      the nothingness of all things else.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Vanderlyn and Clarissa left betimes the next morning; and Mrs. Vanderlyn,
+      who was to start for St. Moritz in the afternoon, devoted her last hours
+      to anxious conferences with her maid and Susy. Strefford, with Fred Gillow
+      and the others, had gone for a swim at the Lido, and Lansing seized the
+      opportunity to get back to his book.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The quietness of the great echoing place gave him a foretaste of the
+      solitude to come. By mid-August all their party would be scattered: the
+      Hickses off on a cruise to Crete and the Ægean, Fred Gillow on the way to
+      his moor, Strefford to stay with friends in Capri till his annual visit to
+      Northumberland in September. One by one the others would follow, and
+      Lansing and Susy be left alone in the great sun-proof palace, alone under
+      the star-laden skies, alone with the great orange moons&mdash;still theirs!&mdash;above
+      the bell-tower of San Giorgio. The novel, in that blessed quiet, would
+      unfold itself as harmoniously as his dreams.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He wrote on, forgetful of the passing hours, till the door opened and he
+      heard a step behind him. The next moment two hands were clasped over his
+      eyes, and the air was full of Mrs. Vanderlyn&rsquo;s last new scent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You dear thing&mdash;I&rsquo;m just off, you know,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Susy told me you
+      were working, and I forbade her to call you down. She and Streffy are
+      waiting to take me to the station, and I&rsquo;ve run up to say good-bye.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ellie, dear!&rdquo; Full of compunction, Lansing pushed aside his writing and
+      started up; but she pressed him back into his seat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no! I should never forgive myself if I&rsquo;d interrupted you. I oughtn&rsquo;t
+      to have come up; Susy didn&rsquo;t want me to. But I had to tell you, you
+      dear.... I had to thank you...&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In her dark travelling dress and hat, so discreetly conspicuous, so
+      negligent and so studied, with a veil masking her paint, and gloves hiding
+      her rings, she looked younger, simpler, more natural than he had ever seen
+      her. Poor Ellie such a good fellow, after all!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To thank me? For what? For being so happy here?&rdquo; he laughed, taking her
+      hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at him, laughed back, and flung her arms about his neck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For helping me to be so happy elsewhere&mdash;you and Susy, you two
+      blessed darlings!&rdquo; she cried, with a kiss on his cheek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Their eyes met for a second; then her arms slipped slowly downward,
+      dropping to her sides. Lansing sat before her like a stone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; she gasped, &ldquo;why do you stare so? Didn&rsquo;t you know...?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They heard Strefford&rsquo;s shrill voice on the stairs. &ldquo;Ellie, where the deuce
+      are you? Susy&rsquo;s in the gondola. You&rsquo;ll miss the train!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing stood up and caught Mrs. Vanderlyn by the wrist. &ldquo;What do you
+      mean? What are you talking about?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, nothing... But you were both such bricks about the letters.... And
+      when Nelson was here, too.... Nick, don&rsquo;t hurt my wrist so! I must run!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He dropped her hand and stood motionless, staring after her and listening
+      to the click of her high heels as she fled across the room and along the
+      echoing corridor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he turned back to the table he noticed that a small morocco case had
+      fallen among his papers. In falling it had opened, and before him, on the
+      pale velvet lining, lay a scarf-pin set with a perfect pearl. He picked
+      the box up, and was about to hasten after Mrs. Vanderlyn&mdash;it was so
+      like her to shed jewels on her path!&mdash;when he noticed his own
+      initials on the cover.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He dropped the box as if it had been a hot coal, and sat for a long while
+      gazing at the gold N. L., which seemed to have burnt itself into his
+      flesh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last he roused himself and stood up.
+    </p>
+
+
+<h3>X.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">With</span> a sigh of relief Susy drew the pins from her hat and threw herself
+      down on the lounge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ordeal she had dreaded was over, and Mr. and Mrs. Vanderlyn had safely
+      gone their several ways. Poor Ellie was not noted for prudence, and when
+      life smiled on her she was given to betraying her gratitude too openly;
+      but thanks to Susy&rsquo;s vigilance (and, no doubt, to Strefford&rsquo;s tacit
+      co-operation), the dreaded twenty-four hours were happily over. Nelson
+      Vanderlyn had departed without a shadow on his brow, and though Ellie&rsquo;s,
+      when she came down from bidding Nick good-bye, had seemed to Susy less
+      serene than usual, she became her normal self as soon as it was discovered
+      that the red morocco bag with her jewel-box was missing. Before it had
+      been discovered in the depths of the gondola they had reached the station,
+      and there was just time to thrust her into her &ldquo;sleeper,&rdquo; from which she
+      was seen to wave an unperturbed farewell to her friends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, my dear, we&rsquo;ve been it through,&rdquo; Strefford remarked with a deep
+      breath as the St. Moritz express rolled away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; Susy sighed in mute complicity; then, as if to cover her
+      self-betrayal: &ldquo;Poor darling, she does so like what she likes!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;even if it&rsquo;s a rotten bounder,&rdquo; Strefford agreed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A rotten bounder? Why, I thought&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That it was still young Davenant? Lord, no&mdash;not for the last six
+      months. Didn&rsquo;t she tell you&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy felt herself redden. &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t ask her&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ask her? You mean you didn&rsquo;t let her!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t let her. And I don&rsquo;t let you,&rdquo; Susy added sharply, as he helped
+      her into the gondola.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, all right: I daresay you&rsquo;re right. It simplifies things,&rdquo; Strefford
+      placidly acquiesced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She made no answer, and in silence they glided homeward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, in the quiet of her own room, Susy lay and pondered on the distance
+      she had travelled during the last year. Strefford had read her mind with
+      his usual penetration. It was true that there had been a time when she
+      would have thought it perfectly natural that Ellie should tell her
+      everything; that the name of young Davenant&rsquo;s successor should be confided
+      to her as a matter of course. Apparently even Ellie had been obscurely
+      aware of the change, for after a first attempt to force her confidences on
+      Susy she had contented herself with vague expressions of gratitude,
+      allusive smiles and sighs, and the pretty &ldquo;surprise&rdquo; of the sapphire
+      bangle slipped onto her friend&rsquo;s wrist in the act of their farewell
+      embrace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bangle was extremely handsome. Susy, who had an auctioneer&rsquo;s eye for
+      values, knew to a fraction the worth of those deep convex stones
+      alternating with small emeralds and brilliants. She was glad to own the
+      bracelet, and enchanted with the effect it produced on her slim wrist;
+      yet, even while admiring it, and rejoicing that it was hers, she had
+      already transmuted it into specie, and reckoned just how far it would go
+      toward the paying of domestic necessities. For whatever came to her now
+      interested her only as something more to be offered up to Nick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The door opened and Nick came in. Dusk had fallen, and she could not see
+      his face; but something in the jerk of the door-handle roused her
+      ever-wakeful apprehension. She hurried toward him with outstretched wrist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look, dearest&mdash;wasn&rsquo;t it too darling of Ellie?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She pressed the button of the lamp that lit her dressing-table, and her
+      husband&rsquo;s face started unfamiliarly out of the twilight. She slipped off
+      the bracelet and held it up to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I can go you one better,&rdquo; he said with a laugh; and pulling a morocco
+      case from his pocket he flung it down among the scent-bottles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy opened the case automatically, staring at the pearl because she was
+      afraid to look again at Nick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ellie&mdash;gave you this?&rdquo; she asked at length.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. She gave me this.&rdquo; There was a pause. &ldquo;Would you mind telling me,&rdquo;
+       Lansing continued in the same dead-level tone, &ldquo;exactly for what services
+      we&rsquo;ve both been so handsomely paid?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The pearl is beautiful,&rdquo; Susy murmured, to gain time, while her head spun
+      round with unimaginable terrors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So are your sapphires; though, on closer examination, my services would
+      appear to have been valued rather higher than yours. Would you be kind
+      enough to tell me just what they were?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy threw her head back and looked at him. &ldquo;What on earth are you talking
+      about, Nick! Why shouldn&rsquo;t Ellie have given us these things? Do you forget
+      that it&rsquo;s like our giving her a pen-wiper or a button-hook? What is it you
+      are trying to suggest?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It had cost her a considerable effort to hold his eyes while she put the
+      questions. Something had happened between him and Ellie, that was
+      evident&mdash;one of those hideous unforeseeable blunders that may cause one&rsquo;s
+      cleverest plans to crumble at a stroke; and again Susy shuddered at the
+      frailty of her bliss. But her old training stood her in good stead. There
+      had been more than one moment in her past when everything&mdash;somebody else&rsquo;s
+      everything&mdash;had depended on her keeping a cool head and a clear glance. It
+      would have been a wonder if now, when she felt her own everything at
+      stake, she had not been able to put up as good a defence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; she repeated impatiently, as Lansing continued to remain
+      silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s what I&rsquo;m here to ask,&rdquo; he returned, keeping his eyes as steady as
+      she kept hers. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s no reason on earth, as you say, why Ellie
+      shouldn&rsquo;t give us presents&mdash;as expensive presents as she likes; and
+      the pearl is a beauty. All I ask is: for what specific services were they
+      given? For, allowing for all the absence of scruple that marks the
+      intercourse of truly civilized people, you&rsquo;ll probably agree that there
+      are limits; at least up to now there have been limits....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I really don&rsquo;t know what you mean. I suppose Ellie wanted to show that
+      she was grateful to us for looking after Clarissa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But she gave us all this in exchange for that, didn&rsquo;t she?&rdquo; he suggested,
+      with a sweep of the hand around the beautiful shadowy room. &ldquo;A whole
+      summer of it if we choose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy smiled. &ldquo;Apparently she didn&rsquo;t think that enough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a doting mother! It shows the store she sets upon her child.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, don&rsquo;t you set store upon Clarissa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Clarissa is exquisite; but her mother didn&rsquo;t mention her in offering me
+      this recompense.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy lifted her head again. &ldquo;Whom did she mention?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Vanderlyn,&rdquo; said Lansing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Vanderlyn? Nelson?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;and some letters... something about letters.... What is it, my
+      dear, that you and I have been hired to hide from Vanderlyn? Because I
+      should like to know,&rdquo; Nick broke out savagely, &ldquo;if we&rsquo;ve been adequately
+      paid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy was silent: she needed time to reckon up her forces, and study her
+      next move; and her brain was in such a whirl of fear that she could at
+      last only retort: &ldquo;What is it that Ellie said to you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing laughed again. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s just what you&rsquo;d like to find out&mdash;isn&rsquo;t
+      it?&mdash;in order to know the line to take in making your explanation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The sneer had an effect that he could not have foreseen, and that Susy
+      herself had not expected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, don&rsquo;t&mdash;don&rsquo;t let us speak to each other like that!&rdquo; she cried;
+      and sinking down by the dressing-table she hid her face in her hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed to her, now, that nothing mattered except that their love for
+      each other, their faith in each other, should be saved from some
+      unhealable hurt. She was willing to tell Nick everything&mdash;she wanted
+      to tell him everything&mdash;if only she could be sure of reaching a
+      responsive chord in him. But the scene of the cigars came back to her, and
+      benumbed her. If only she could make him see that nothing was of any
+      account as long as they continued to love each other!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His touch fell compassionately on her shoulder. &ldquo;Poor child&mdash;don&rsquo;t,&rdquo;
+       he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Their eyes met, but his expression checked the smile breaking through her
+      tears. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you see,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;that we&rsquo;ve got to have this thing
+      out?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She continued to stare at him through a prism of tears. &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t&mdash;while
+      you stand up like that,&rdquo; she stammered, childishly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had cowered down again into a corner of the lounge; but Lansing did
+      not seat himself at her side. He took a chair facing her, like a caller on
+      the farther side of a stately tea-tray. &ldquo;Will that do?&rdquo; he asked with a
+      stiff smile, as if to humour her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing will do&mdash;as long as you&rsquo;re not you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She shook her head wearily. &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the use? You accept things
+      theoretically&mdash;and then when they happen....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What things? What has happened!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A sudden impatience mastered her. What did he suppose, after all&mdash;?
+      &ldquo;But you know all about Ellie. We used to talk about her often enough in
+      old times,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ellie and young Davenant?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Young Davenant; or the others....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Or the others. But what business was it of ours?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, that&rsquo;s just what I think!&rdquo; she cried, springing up with an explosion
+      of relief. Lansing stood up also, but there was no answering light in his
+      face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We&rsquo;re outside of all that; we&rsquo;ve nothing to do with it, have we?&rdquo; he
+      pursued.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing whatever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then what on earth is the meaning of Ellie&rsquo;s gratitude? Gratitude for
+      what we&rsquo;ve done about some letters&mdash;and about Vanderlyn?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, not you,&rdquo; Susy cried, involuntarily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not I? Then you?&rdquo; He came close and took her by the wrist. &ldquo;Answer me.
+      Have you been mixed up in some dirty business of Ellie&rsquo;s?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a pause. She found it impossible to speak, with that burning
+      grasp on the wrist where the bangle had been. At length he let her go and
+      moved away. &ldquo;Answer,&rdquo; he repeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve told you it was my business and not yours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He received this in silence; then he questioned: &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve been sending
+      letters for her, I suppose? To whom?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, why do you torment me? Nelson was not supposed to know that she&rsquo;d
+      been away. She left me the letters to post to him once a week. I found
+      them here the night we arrived.... It was the price&mdash;for this. Oh,
+      Nick, say it&rsquo;s been worth it&mdash;say at least that it&rsquo;s been worth it!&rdquo; she
+      implored him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood motionless, unresponding. One hand drummed on the corner of her
+      dressing-table, making the jewelled bangle dance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How many letters?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know... four... five... What does it matter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And once a week, for six weeks&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you took it all as a matter of course?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No: I hated it. But what could I do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What could you do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When our being together depended on it? Oh, Nick, how could you think I&rsquo;d
+      give you up?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give me up?&rdquo; he echoed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;doesn&rsquo;t our being together depend on&mdash;on what we can get
+      out of people? And hasn&rsquo;t there always got to be some give-and-take? Did
+      you ever in your life get anything for nothing?&rdquo; she cried with sudden
+      exasperation. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve lived among these people as long as I have; I
+      suppose it&rsquo;s not the first time&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By God, but it is,&rdquo; he exclaimed, flushing. &ldquo;And that&rsquo;s the difference&mdash;the
+      fundamental difference.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The difference!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Between you and me. I&rsquo;ve never in my life done people&rsquo;s dirty work for
+      them&mdash;least of all for favours in return. I suppose you guessed it,
+      or you wouldn&rsquo;t have hidden this beastly business from me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The blood rose to Susy&rsquo;s temples also. Yes, she had guessed it;
+      instinctively, from the day she had first visited him in his bare
+      lodgings, she had been aware of his stricter standard. But how could she
+      tell him that under his influence her standard had become stricter too,
+      and that it was as much to hide her humiliation from herself as to escape
+      his anger that she had held her tongue?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You knew I wouldn&rsquo;t have stayed here another day if I&rsquo;d known,&rdquo; he
+      continued.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes: and then where in the world should we have gone?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean that&mdash;in one way or another&mdash;what you call
+      give-and-take is the price of our remaining together?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;isn&rsquo;t it,&rdquo; she faltered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then we&rsquo;d better part, hadn&rsquo;t we?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke in a low tone, thoughtfully and deliberately, as if this had been
+      the inevitable conclusion to which their passionate argument had led.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy made no answer. For a moment she ceased to be conscious of the causes
+      of what had happened; the thing itself seemed to have smothered her under
+      its ruins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nick wandered away from the dressing-table and stood gazing out of the
+      window at the darkening canal flecked with lights. She looked at his back,
+      and wondered what would happen if she were to go up to him and fling her
+      arms about him. But even if her touch could have broken the spell, she was
+      not sure she would have chosen that way of breaking it. Beneath her
+      speechless anguish there burned the half-conscious sense of having been
+      unfairly treated. When they had entered into their queer compact, Nick had
+      known as well as she on what compromises and concessions the life they
+      were to live together must be based. That he should have forgotten it
+      seemed so unbelievable that she wondered, with a new leap of fear, if he
+      were using the wretched Ellie&rsquo;s indiscretion as a means of escape from a
+      tie already wearied of. Suddenly she raised her head with a laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After all&mdash;you were right when you wanted me to be your mistress.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned on her with an astonished stare. &ldquo;You&mdash;my mistress?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Through all her pain she thrilled with pride at the discovery that such a
+      possibility had long since become unthinkable to him. But she insisted.
+      &ldquo;That day at the Fulmers&rsquo;&mdash;have you forgotten? When you said it would
+      be sheer madness for us to marry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing stood leaning in the embrasure of the window, his eyes fixed on
+      the mosaic volutes of the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was right enough when I said it would be sheer madness for us to
+      marry,&rdquo; he rejoined at length.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She sprang up trembling. &ldquo;Well, that&rsquo;s easily settled. Our compact&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, that compact&mdash;&rdquo; he interrupted her with an impatient laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aren&rsquo;t you asking me to carry it out now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because I said we&rsquo;d better part?&rdquo; He paused. &ldquo;But the compact&mdash;I&rsquo;d
+      almost forgotten it&mdash;was to the effect, wasn&rsquo;t it, that we were to
+      give each other a helping hand if either of us had a better chance? The
+      thing was absurd, of course; a mere joke; from my point of view, at least.
+      I shall never want any better chance... any other chance....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Nick, oh, Nick... but then....&rdquo; She was close to him, his face
+      looming down through her tears; but he put her back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would have been easy enough, wouldn&rsquo;t it,&rdquo; he rejoined, &ldquo;if we&rsquo;d been
+      as detachable as all that? As it is, it&rsquo;s going to hurt horribly. But
+      talking it over won&rsquo;t help. You were right just now when you asked how
+      else we were going to live. We&rsquo;re born parasites, both, I suppose, or we&rsquo;d
+      have found out some way long ago. But I find there are things I might put
+      up with for myself, at a pinch&mdash;and should, probably, in time that I
+      can&rsquo;t let you put up with for me... ever.... Those cigars at Como: do you
+      suppose I didn&rsquo;t know it was for me? And this too? Well, it won&rsquo;t do... it
+      won&rsquo;t do....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stopped, as if his courage failed him; and she moaned out: &ldquo;But your
+      writing&mdash;if your book&rsquo;s a success....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My poor Susy&mdash;that&rsquo;s all part of the humbug. We both know that my
+      sort of writing will never pay. And what&rsquo;s the alternative except more of
+      the same kind of baseness? And getting more and more blunted to it? At
+      least, till now, I&rsquo;ve minded certain things; I don&rsquo;t want to go on till I
+      find myself taking them for granted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She reached out a timid hand. &ldquo;But you needn&rsquo;t ever, dear... if you&rsquo;d only
+      leave it to me....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He drew back sharply. &ldquo;That seems simple to you, I suppose? Well, men are
+      different.&rdquo; He walked toward the dressing-table and glanced at the little
+      enamelled clock which had been one of her wedding-presents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Time to dress, isn&rsquo;t it? Shall you mind if I leave you to dine with
+      Streffy, and whoever else is coming? I&rsquo;d rather like a long tramp, and no
+      more talking just at present except with myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He passed her by and walked rapidly out of the room. Susy stood
+      motionless, unable to lift a detaining hand or to find a final word of
+      appeal. On her disordered dressing-table Mrs. Vanderlyn&rsquo;s gifts glittered
+      in the rosy lamp-light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes: men were different, as he said.
+    </p>
+
+
+<h3>XI.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">But</span> there were necessary accommodations, there always had been; Nick in
+      old times, had been the first to own it.... How they had laughed at the
+      Perpendicular People, the people who went by on the other side (since you
+      couldn&rsquo;t be a good Samaritan without stooping over and poking into heaps
+      of you didn&rsquo;t know what)! And now Nick had suddenly become
+      perpendicular....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy, that evening, at the head of the dinner table, saw&mdash;in the
+      breaks between her scudding thoughts&mdash;the nauseatingly familiar faces
+      of the people she called her friends: Strefford, Fred Gillow, a giggling
+      fool of a young Breckenridge, of their New York group, who had arrived
+      that day, and Prince Nerone Altineri, Ursula&rsquo;s Prince, who, in Ursula&rsquo;s
+      absence at a tiresome cure, had, quite simply and naturally, preferred to
+      join her husband at Venice. Susy looked from one to the other of them, as
+      if with newly-opened eyes, and wondered what life would be like with no
+      faces but such as theirs to furnish it....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ah, Nick had become perpendicular!... After all, most people went through
+      life making a given set of gestures, like dance-steps learned in advance.
+      If your dancing manual told you at a given time to be perpendicular, you
+      had to be, automatically&mdash;and that was Nick!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what on earth, Susy,&rdquo; Gillow&rsquo;s puzzled voice suddenly came to her as
+      from immeasurable distances, &ldquo;Are you going to do in this beastly stifling
+      hole for the rest of the summer?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ask Nick, my dear fellow,&rdquo; Strefford answered for her; and: &ldquo;By the way,
+      where is Nick&mdash;if one may ask?&rdquo; young Breckenridge interposed,
+      glancing up to take belated note of his host&rsquo;s absence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dining out,&rdquo; said Susy glibly. &ldquo;People turned up: blighting bores that I
+      wouldn&rsquo;t have dared to inflict on you.&rdquo; How easily the old familiar
+      fibbing came to her!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The kind to whom you say, &lsquo;Now mind you look me up&rsquo;; and then spend the
+      rest of your life dodging-like our good Hickses,&rdquo; Strefford amplified.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Hickses&mdash;but, of course, Nick was with the Hickses! It went
+      through Susy like a knife, and the dinner she had so lightly fibbed became
+      a hateful truth. She said to herself feverishly: &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll call him up there
+      after dinner&mdash;and then he will feel silly&rdquo;&mdash;but only to remember
+      that the Hickses, in their mediaeval setting, had of course sternly denied
+      themselves a telephone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fact of Nick&rsquo;s temporary inaccessibility&mdash;since she was now
+      convinced that he was really at the Hickses&rsquo;&mdash;turned her distress to
+      a mocking irritation. Ah, that was where he carried his principles, his
+      standards, or whatever he called the new set of rules he had suddenly
+      begun to apply to the old game! It was stupid of her not to have guessed
+      it at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, the Hickses&mdash;Nick adores them, you know. He&rsquo;s going to marry
+      Coral next,&rdquo; she laughed out, flashing the joke around the table with all
+      her practiced flippancy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lord!&rdquo; grasped Gillow, inarticulate: while the Prince displayed the
+      unsurprised smile which Susy accused him of practicing every morning with
+      his Mueller exercises.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly Susy felt Strefford&rsquo;s eyes upon her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the matter with me? Too much rouge?&rdquo; she asked, passing her arm in
+      his as they left the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No: too little. Look at yourself,&rdquo; he answered in a low tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, in these cadaverous old looking-glasses-everybody looks fished up
+      from the canal!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She jerked away from him to spin down the long floor of the sala, hands on
+      hips, whistling a rag-time tune. The Prince and young Breckenridge caught
+      her up, and she spun back with the latter, while Gillow&mdash;it was believed to
+      be his sole accomplishment&mdash;snapped his fingers in simulation of bones, and
+      shuffled after the couple on stamping feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy sank down on a sofa near the window, fanning herself with a floating
+      scarf, and the men foraged for cigarettes, and rang for the gondoliers,
+      who came in with trays of cooling drinks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, what next&mdash;this ain&rsquo;t all, is it?&rdquo; Gillow presently queried,
+      from the divan where he lolled half-asleep with dripping brow. Fred
+      Gillow, like Nature, abhorred a void, and it was inconceivable to him that
+      every hour of man&rsquo;s rational existence should not furnish a motive for
+      getting up and going somewhere else. Young Breckenridge, who took the same
+      view, and the Prince, who earnestly desired to, reminded the company that
+      somebody they knew was giving a dance that night at the Lido.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford vetoed the Lido, on the ground that he&rsquo;d just come back from
+      there, and proposed that they should go out on foot for a change.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not? What fun!&rdquo; Susy was up in an instant. &ldquo;Let&rsquo;s pay somebody a
+      surprise visit&mdash;I don&rsquo;t know who! Streffy, Prince, can&rsquo;t you think of
+      somebody who&rsquo;d be particularly annoyed by our arrival?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, the list&rsquo;s too long. Let&rsquo;s start, and choose our victim on the way,&rdquo;
+       Strefford suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy ran to her room for a light cloak, and without changing her
+      high-heeled satin slippers went out with the four men. There was no moon&mdash;thank
+      heaven there was no moon!&mdash;but the stars hung over them as close as
+      fruit, and secret fragrances dropped on them from garden-walls. Susy&rsquo;s
+      heart tightened with memories of Como.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They wandered on, laughing and dawdling, and yielding to the drifting
+      whims of aimless people. Presently someone proposed taking a nearer look
+      at the facade of San Giorgio Maggiore, and they hailed a gondola and were
+      rowed out through the bobbing lanterns and twanging guitar-strings. When
+      they landed again, Gillow, always acutely bored by scenery, and
+      particularly resentful of midnight aesthetics, suggested a night club near
+      at hand, which was said to be jolly. The Prince warmly supported this
+      proposal; but on Susy&rsquo;s curt refusal they started their rambling again,
+      circuitously threading the vague dark lanes and making for the Piazza and
+      Florian&rsquo;s ices. Suddenly, at a calle-corner, unfamiliar and yet somehow
+      known to her, Susy paused to stare about her with a laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But the Hickses&mdash;surely that&rsquo;s their palace? And the windows all lit
+      up! They must be giving a party! Oh, do let&rsquo;s go up and surprise them!&rdquo;
+       The idea struck her as one of the drollest that she had ever originated,
+      and she wondered that her companions should respond so languidly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t see anything very thrilling in surprising the Hickses,&rdquo; Gillow
+      protested, defrauded of possible excitements; and Strefford added: &ldquo;It
+      would surprise me more than them if I went.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Susy insisted feverishly: &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t know. It may be awfully exciting!
+      I have an idea that Coral&rsquo;s announcing her engagement&mdash;her engagement
+      to Nick! Come, give me a hand, Streff&mdash;and you the other, Fred-&rdquo; she
+      began to hum the first bars of Donna Anna&rsquo;s entrance in Don Giovanni.
+      &ldquo;Pity I haven&rsquo;t got a black cloak and a mask....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, your face will do,&rdquo; said Strefford, laying his hand on her arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She drew back, flushing crimson. Breckenridge and the Prince had sprung on
+      ahead, and Gillow, lumbering after them, was already halfway up the
+      stairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My face? My face? What&rsquo;s the matter with my face? Do you know any reason
+      why I shouldn&rsquo;t go to the Hickses to-night?&rdquo; Susy broke out in sudden
+      wrath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;None whatever; except that if you do it will bore me to death,&rdquo; Strefford
+      returned, with serenity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, in that case&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; come on. I hear those fools banging on the door already.&rdquo; He caught
+      her by the hand, and they started up the stairway. But on the first
+      landing she paused, twisted her hand out of his, and without a word,
+      without a conscious thought, dashed down the long flight, across the great
+      resounding vestibule and out into the darkness of the calle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford caught up with her, and they stood a moment silent in the night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Susy&mdash;what the devil&rsquo;s the matter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The matter? Can&rsquo;t you see? That I&rsquo;m tired, that I&rsquo;ve got a splitting
+      headache&mdash;that you bore me to death, one and all of you!&rdquo; She turned
+      and laid a deprecating hand on his arm. &ldquo;Streffy, old dear, don&rsquo;t mind me:
+      but for God&rsquo;s sake find a gondola and send me home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alone?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was never any concern of Streff&rsquo;s if people wanted to do things he did
+      not understand, and she knew that she could count on his obedience. They
+      walked on in silence to the next canal, and he picked up a passing gondola
+      and put her in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now go and amuse yourself,&rdquo; she called after him, as the boat shot under
+      the nearest bridge. Anything, anything, to be alone, away from the folly
+      and futility that would be all she had left if Nick were to drop out of
+      her life....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But perhaps he has dropped already&mdash;dropped for good,&rdquo; she thought
+      as she set her foot on the Vanderlyn threshold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The short summer night was already growing transparent: a new born breeze
+      stirred the soiled surface of the water and sent it lapping freshly
+      against the old palace doorways. Nearly two o&rsquo;clock! Nick had no doubt
+      come back long ago. Susy hurried up the stairs, reassured by the mere
+      thought of his nearness. She knew that when their eyes and their lips met
+      it would be impossible for anything to keep them apart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gondolier dozing on the landing roused himself to receive her, and to
+      proffer two envelopes. The upper one was a telegram for Strefford: she
+      threw it down again and paused under the lantern hanging from the painted
+      vault, the other envelope in her hand. The address it bore was in Nick&rsquo;s
+      writing. &ldquo;When did the signore leave this for me? Has he gone out again?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gone out again? But the signore had not come in since dinner: of that the
+      gondolier was positive, as he had been on duty all the evening. A boy had
+      brought the letter&mdash;an unknown boy: he had left it without waiting.
+      It must have been about half an hour after the signora had herself gone
+      out with her guests.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy, hardly hearing him, fled on to her own room, and there, beside the
+      very lamp which, two months before, had illuminated Ellie Vanderlyn&rsquo;s
+      fatal letter, she opened Nick&rsquo;s.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t think me hard on you, dear; but I&rsquo;ve got to work this thing out by
+      myself. The sooner the better&mdash;don&rsquo;t you agree? So I&rsquo;m taking the express
+      to Milan presently. You&rsquo;ll get a proper letter in a day or two. I wish I
+      could think, now, of something to say that would show you I&rsquo;m not a brute&mdash;but
+      I can&rsquo;t. N. L.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was not much of the night left in which to sleep, even had a
+      semblance of sleep been achievable. The letter fell from Susy&rsquo;s hands, and
+      she crept out onto the balcony and cowered there, her forehead pressed
+      against the balustrade, the dawn wind stirring in her thin laces. Through
+      her closed eyelids and the tightly-clenched fingers pressed against them,
+      she felt the penetration of the growing light, the relentless advance of
+      another day&mdash;a day without purpose and without meaning&mdash;a day
+      without Nick. At length she dropped her hands, and staring from dry lids
+      saw a rim of fire above the roofs across the Grand Canal. She sprang up,
+      ran back into her room, and dragging the heavy curtains shut across the
+      windows, stumbled over in the darkness to the lounge and fell among its
+      pillows-face downward&mdash;groping, delving for a deeper night....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She started up, stiff and aching, to see a golden wedge of sun on the
+      floor at her feet. She had slept, then&mdash;was it possible?&mdash;it
+      must be eight or nine o&rsquo;clock already! She had slept&mdash;slept like a
+      drunkard&mdash;with that letter on the table at her elbow! Ah, now she
+      remembered&mdash;she had dreamed that the letter was a dream! But there,
+      inexorably, it lay; and she picked it up, and slowly, painfully re-read
+      it. Then she tore it into shreds hunted for a match, and kneeling before
+      the empty hearth, as though she were accomplishing some funeral rite, she
+      burnt every shred of it to ashes. Nick would thank her for that some day!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After a bath and a hurried toilet she began to be aware of feeling younger
+      and more hopeful. After all, Nick had merely said that he was going away
+      for &ldquo;a day or two.&rdquo; And the letter was not cruel: there were tender things
+      in it, showing through the curt words. She smiled at herself a little
+      stiffly in the glass, put a dash of red on her colourless lips, and rang
+      for the maid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Coffee, Giovanna, please; and will you tell Mr. Strefford that I should
+      like to see him presently.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      If Nick really kept to his intention of staying away for a few days she
+      must trump up some explanation of his absence; but her mind refused to
+      work, and the only thing she could think of was to take Strefford into her
+      confidence. She knew that he could be trusted in a real difficulty; his
+      impish malice transformed itself into a resourceful ingenuity when his
+      friends required it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The maid stood looking at her with a puzzled gaze, and Susy somewhat
+      sharply repeated her order. &ldquo;But don&rsquo;t wake him on purpose,&rdquo; she added,
+      foreseeing the probable effect on Strefford&rsquo;s temper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, signora, the gentleman is already out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Already out?&rdquo; Strefford, who could hardly be routed from his bed before
+      luncheon-time! &ldquo;Is it so late?&rdquo; Susy cried, incredulous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After nine. And the gentleman took the eight o&rsquo;clock train for England.
+      Gervaso said he had received a telegram. He left word that he would write
+      to the signora.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The door closed upon the maid, and Susy continued to gaze at her painted
+      image in the glass, as if she had been trying to outstare an importunate
+      stranger. There was no one left for her to take counsel of, then&mdash;no
+      one but poor Fred Gillow! She made a grimace at the idea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But what on earth could have summoned Strefford back to England?
+    </p>
+
+
+<h3>XII.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">Nick Lansing</span>, in the Milan express, was roused by the same bar of sunshine
+      lying across his knees. He yawned, looked with disgust at his stolidly
+      sleeping neighbours, and wondered why he had decided to go to Milan, and
+      what on earth he should do when he got there. The difficulty about
+      trenchant decisions was that the next morning they generally left one
+      facing a void....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the train drew into the station at Milan, he scrambled out, got some
+      coffee, and having drunk it decided to continue his journey to Genoa. The
+      state of being carried passively onward postponed action and dulled
+      thought; and after twelve hours of furious mental activity that was
+      exactly what he wanted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He fell into a doze again, waking now and then to haggard intervals of
+      more thinking, and then dropping off to the clank and rattle of the train.
+      Inside his head, in his waking intervals, the same clanking and grinding
+      of wheels and chains went on unremittingly. He had done all his lucid
+      thinking within an hour of leaving the Palazzo Vanderlyn the night before;
+      since then, his brain had simply continued to revolve indefatigably about
+      the same old problem. His cup of coffee, instead of clearing his thoughts,
+      had merely accelerated their pace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At Genoa he wandered about in the hot streets, bought a cheap suit-case
+      and some underclothes, and then went down to the port in search of a
+      little hotel he remembered there. An hour later he was sitting in the
+      coffee-room, smoking and glancing vacantly over the papers while he waited
+      for dinner, when he became aware of being timidly but intently examined by
+      a small round-faced gentleman with eyeglasses who sat alone at the
+      adjoining table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hullo&mdash;Buttles!&rdquo; Lansing exclaimed, recognising with surprise the
+      recalcitrant secretary who had resisted Miss Hicks&rsquo;s endeavour to convert
+      him to Tiepolo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Buttles, blushing to the roots of his scant hair, half rose and bowed
+      ceremoniously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nick Lansing&rsquo;s first feeling was of annoyance at being disturbed in his
+      solitary broodings; his next, of relief at having to postpone them even to
+      converse with Mr. Buttles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No idea you were here: is the yacht in harbour?&rdquo; he asked, remembering
+      that the Ibis must be just about to spread her wings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Buttles, at salute behind his chair, signed a mute negation: for the
+      moment he seemed too embarrassed to speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah&mdash;you&rsquo;re here as an advance guard? I remember now&mdash;I saw Miss
+      Hicks in Venice the day before yesterday,&rdquo; Lansing continued, dazed at the
+      thought that hardly forty-eight hours had passed since his encounter with
+      Coral in the Scalzi.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Buttles, instead of speaking, had tentatively approached his table.
+      &ldquo;May I take this seat for a moment, Mr. Lansing? Thank you. No, I am not
+      here as an advance guard&mdash;though I believe the Ibis is due some time
+      to-morrow.&rdquo; He cleared his throat, wiped his eyeglasses on a silk
+      handkerchief, replaced them on his nose, and went on solemnly: &ldquo;Perhaps,
+      to clear up any possible misunderstanding, I ought to say that I am no
+      longer in the employ of Mr. Hicks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing glanced at him sympathetically. It was clear that he suffered
+      horribly in imparting this information, though his compact face did not
+      lend itself to any dramatic display of emotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Really,&rdquo; Nick smiled, and then ventured: &ldquo;I hope it&rsquo;s not owing to
+      conscientious objections to Tiepolo?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Buttles&rsquo;s blush became a smouldering agony. &ldquo;Ah, Miss Hicks mentioned
+      to you... told you...? No, Mr. Lansing. I am principled against the effete
+      art of Tiepolo, and of all his contemporaries, I confess; but if Miss
+      Hicks chooses to surrender herself momentarily to the unwholesome spell of
+      the Italian decadence it is not for me to protest or to criticize. Her
+      intellectual and aesthetic range so far exceeds my humble capacity that it
+      would be ridiculous, unbecoming....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He broke off, and once more wiped a faint moisture from his eyeglasses. It
+      was evident that he was suffering from a distress which he longed and yet
+      dreaded to communicate. But Nick made no farther effort to bridge the gulf
+      of his own preoccupations; and Mr. Buttles, after an expectant pause, went
+      on: &ldquo;If you see me here to-day it is only because, after a somewhat abrupt
+      departure, I find myself unable to take leave of our friends without a
+      last look at the Ibis&mdash;the scene of so many stimulating hours. But I
+      must beg you,&rdquo; he added earnestly, &ldquo;should you see Miss Hicks&mdash;or any
+      other member of the party&mdash;to make no allusion to my presence in
+      Genoa. I wish,&rdquo; said Mr. Buttles with simplicity, &ldquo;to preserve the
+      strictest incognito.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing glanced at him kindly. &ldquo;Oh, but&mdash;isn&rsquo;t that a little
+      unfriendly?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No other course is possible, Mr. Lansing,&rdquo; said the ex-secretary, &ldquo;and I
+      commit myself to your discretion. The truth is, if I am here it is not to
+      look once more at the Ibis, but at Miss Hicks: once only. You will
+      understand me, and appreciate what I am suffering.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He bowed again, and trotted away on his small, tightly-booted feet;
+      pausing on the threshold to say: &ldquo;From the first it was hopeless,&rdquo; before
+      he disappeared through the glass doors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A gleam of commiseration flashed through Nick&rsquo;s mind: there was something
+      quaintly poignant in the sight of the brisk and efficient Mr. Buttles
+      reduced to a limp image of unrequited passion. And what a painful surprise
+      to the Hickses to be thus suddenly deprived of the secretary who possessed
+      &ldquo;the foreign languages&rdquo;! Mr. Beck kept the accounts and settled with the
+      hotel-keepers; but it was Mr. Buttles&rsquo;s loftier task to entertain in their
+      own tongues the unknown geniuses who flocked about the Hickses, and Nick
+      could imagine how disconcerting his departure must be on the eve of their
+      Grecian cruise which Mrs. Hicks would certainly call an Odyssey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next moment the vision of Coral&rsquo;s hopeless suitor had faded, and Nick
+      was once more spinning around on the wheel of his own woes. The night
+      before, when he had sent his note to Susy, from a little restaurant close
+      to Palazzo Vanderlyn that they often patronized, he had done so with the
+      firm intention of going away for a day or two in order to collect his wits
+      and think over the situation. But after his letter had been entrusted to
+      the landlord&rsquo;s little son, who was a particular friend of Susy&rsquo;s, Nick had
+      decided to await the lad&rsquo;s return. The messenger had not been bidden to
+      ask for an answer; but Nick, knowing the friendly and inquisitive Italian
+      mind, was almost sure that the boy, in the hope of catching a glimpse of
+      Susy, would linger about while the letter was carried up. And he pictured
+      the maid knocking at his wife&rsquo;s darkened room, and Susy dashing some
+      powder on her tear-stained face before she turned on the light&mdash;poor
+      foolish child!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The boy had returned rather sooner than Nick expected, and he had brought
+      no answer, but merely the statement that the signora was out: that
+      everybody was out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Everybody?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The signora and the four gentlemen who were dining at the palace. They
+      all went out together on foot soon after dinner. There was no one to whom
+      I could give the note but the gondolier on the landing, for the signora
+      had said she would be very late, and had sent the maid to bed; and the
+      maid had, of course, gone out immediately with her innamorato.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah&mdash;&rdquo; said Nick, slipping his reward into the boy&rsquo;s hand, and
+      walking out of the restaurant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy had gone out&mdash;gone out with their usual band, as she did every
+      night in these sultry summer weeks, gone out after her talk with Nick, as
+      if nothing had happened, as if his whole world and hers had not crashed in
+      ruins at their feet. Ah, poor Susy! After all, she had merely obeyed the
+      instinct of self preservation, the old hard habit of keeping up, going
+      ahead and hiding her troubles; unless indeed the habit had already
+      engendered indifference, and it had become as easy for her as for most of
+      her friends to pass from drama to dancing, from sorrow to the cinema. What
+      of soul was left, he wondered&mdash;?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His train did not start till midnight, and after leaving the restaurant
+      Nick tramped the sultry by-ways till his tired legs brought him to a
+      standstill under the vine-covered pergola of a gondolier&rsquo;s wine-shop at a
+      landing close to the Piazzetta. There he could absorb cooling drinks until
+      it was time to go to the station.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was after eleven, and he was beginning to look about for a boat, when a
+      black prow pushed up to the steps, and with much chaff and laughter a
+      party of young people in evening dress jumped out. Nick, from under the
+      darkness of the vine, saw that there was only one lady among them, and it
+      did not need the lamp above the landing to reveal her identity. Susy,
+      bareheaded and laughing, a light scarf slipping from her bare shoulders, a
+      cigarette between her fingers, took Strefford&rsquo;s arm and turned in the
+      direction of Florian&rsquo;s, with Gillow, the Prince and young Breckenridge in
+      her wake....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nick had relived this rapid scene hundreds of times during his hours in
+      the train and his aimless trampings through the streets of Genoa. In that
+      squirrel-wheel of a world of his and Susy&rsquo;s you had to keep going or drop
+      out&mdash;and Susy, it was evident, had chosen to keep going. Under the
+      lamp-flare on the landing he had had a good look at her face, and had seen
+      that the mask of paint and powder was carefully enough adjusted to hide
+      any ravages the scene between them might have left. He even fancied that
+      she had dropped a little atropine into her eyes....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no time to spare if he meant to catch the midnight train, and no
+      gondola in sight but that which his wife had just left. He sprang into it,
+      and bade the gondolier carry him to the station. The cushions, as he
+      leaned back, gave out a breath of her scent; and in the glare of electric
+      light at the station he saw at his feet a rose which had fallen from her
+      dress. He ground his heel into it as he got out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There it was, then; that was the last picture he was to have of her. For
+      he knew now that he was not going back; at least not to take up their life
+      together. He supposed he should have to see her once, to talk things over,
+      settle something for their future. He had been sincere in saying that he
+      bore her no ill-will; only he could never go back into that slough again.
+      If he did, he knew he would inevitably be drawn under, slipping downward
+      from concession to concession....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The noises of a hot summer night in the port of Genoa would have kept the
+      most care-free from slumber; but though Nick lay awake he did not notice
+      them, for the tumult in his brain was more deafening. Dawn brought a
+      negative relief, and out of sheer weariness he dropped into a heavy sleep.
+      When he woke it was nearly noon, and from his window he saw the well-known
+      outline of the Ibis standing up dark against the glitter of the harbour.
+      He had no fear of meeting her owners, who had doubtless long since landed
+      and betaken themselves to cooler and more fashionable regions: oddly
+      enough, the fact seemed to accentuate his loneliness, his sense of having
+      no one on earth to turn to. He dressed, and wandered out disconsolately to
+      pick up a cup of coffee in some shady corner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he drank his coffee his thoughts gradually cleared. It became obvious
+      to him that he had behaved like a madman or a petulant child&mdash;he
+      preferred to think it was like a madman. If he and Susy were to separate
+      there was no reason why it should not be done decently and quietly, as
+      such transactions were habitually managed among people of their kind. It
+      seemed grotesque to introduce melodrama into their little world of
+      unruffled Sybarites, and he felt inclined, now, to smile at the
+      incongruity of his gesture.... But suddenly his eyes filled with tears.
+      The future without Susy was unbearable, inconceivable. Why, after all,
+      should they separate? At the question, her soft face seemed close to his,
+      and that slight lift of the upper lip that made her smile so exquisite.
+      Well&mdash;he would go back. But not with any presence of going to talk things
+      over, come to an agreement, wind up their joint life like a business
+      association. No&mdash;if he went back he would go without conditions, for
+      good, forever....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Only, what about the future? What about the not far-distant day when the
+      wedding cheques would have been spent, and Granny&rsquo;s pearls sold, and
+      nothing left except unconcealed and unconditional dependence on rich
+      friends, the role of the acknowledged hangers-on? Was there no other
+      possible solution, no new way of ordering their lives? No&mdash;there was
+      none: he could not picture Susy out of her setting of luxury and leisure,
+      could not picture either of them living such a life as the Nat Fulmers,
+      for instance! He remembered the shabby untidy bungalow in New Hampshire,
+      the slatternly servants, uneatable food and ubiquitous children. How could
+      he ask Susy to share such a life with him? If he did, she would probably
+      have the sense to refuse. Their alliance had been based on a moment&rsquo;s
+      midsummer madness; now the score must be paid....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He decided to write. If they were to part he could not trust himself to
+      see her. He called a waiter, asked for pen and paper, and pushed aside a
+      pile of unread newspapers on the corner of the table where his coffee had
+      been served. As he did so, his eye lit on a Daily Mail of two days before.
+      As a pretext for postponing his letter, he took up the paper and glanced
+      down the first page. He read:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tragic Yachting Accident in the Solent. The Earl of Altringham and his
+      son Viscount d&rsquo;Amblay drowned in midnight collision. Both bodies
+      recovered.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He read on. He grasped the fact that the disaster had happened the night
+      before he had left Venice and that, as the result of a fog in the Solent,
+      their old friend Strefford was now Earl of Altringham, and possessor of
+      one of the largest private fortunes in England. It was vertiginous to
+      think of their old impecunious Streff as the hero of such an adventure.
+      And what irony in that double turn of the wheel which, in one day, had
+      plunged him, Nick Lansing, into nethermost misery, while it tossed the
+      other to the stars!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With an intenser precision he saw again Susy&rsquo;s descent from the gondola at
+      the calle steps, the sound of her laughter and of Strefford&rsquo;s chaff, the
+      way she had caught his arm and clung to it, sweeping the other men on in
+      her train. Strefford&mdash;Susy and Strefford!... More than once, Nick had
+      noticed the softer inflections of his friend&rsquo;s voice when he spoke to
+      Susy, the brooding look in his lazy eyes when they rested on her. In the
+      security of his wedded bliss Nick had made light of those signs. The only
+      real jealousy he had felt had been of Fred Gillow, because of his
+      unlimited power to satisfy a woman&rsquo;s whims. Yet Nick knew that such
+      material advantages would never again suffice for Susy. With Strefford it
+      was different. She had delighted in his society while he was notoriously
+      ineligible; might not she find him irresistible now?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The forgotten terms of their bridal compact came back to Nick: the absurd
+      agreement on which he and Susy had solemnly pledged their faith. But was
+      it so absurd, after all? It had been Susy&rsquo;s suggestion (not his, thank
+      God!); and perhaps in making it she had been more serious than he
+      imagined. Perhaps, even if their rupture had not occurred, Strefford&rsquo;s
+      sudden honours might have caused her to ask for her freedom....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Money, luxury, fashion, pleasure: those were the four cornerstones of her
+      existence. He had always known it&mdash;she herself had always
+      acknowledged it, even in their last dreadful talk together; and once he
+      had gloried in her frankness. How could he ever have imagined that, to
+      have her fill of these things, she would not in time stoop lower than she
+      had yet stooped? Perhaps in giving her up to Strefford he might be saving
+      her. At any rate, the taste of the past was now so bitter to him that he
+      was moved to thank whatever gods there were for pushing that mortuary
+      paragraph under his eye....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Susy, dear [he wrote], the fates seem to have taken our future in hand,
+      and spared us the trouble of unravelling it. If I have sometimes been
+      selfish enough to forget the conditions on which you agreed to marry me,
+      they have come back to me during these two days of solitude. You&rsquo;ve given
+      me the best a man can have, and nothing else will ever be worth much to
+      me. But since I haven&rsquo;t the ability to provide you with what you want, I
+      recognize that I&rsquo;ve no right to stand in your way. We must owe no more
+      Venetian palaces to underhand services. I see by the newspapers that
+      Streff can now give you as many palaces as you want. Let him have the
+      chance&mdash;I fancy he&rsquo;ll jump at it, and he&rsquo;s the best man in sight. I
+      wish I were in his shoes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll write again in a day or two, when I&rsquo;ve collected my wits, and can
+      give you an address. NICK.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He added a line on the subject of their modest funds, put the letter into
+      an envelope, and addressed it to Mrs. Nicholas Lansing. As he did so, he
+      reflected that it was the first time he had ever written his wife&rsquo;s
+      married name.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;by God, no other woman shall have it after her,&rdquo; he vowed, as
+      he groped in his pocketbook for a stamp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood up with a stretch of weariness&mdash;the heat was stifling!&mdash;and
+      put the letter in his pocket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll post it myself, it&rsquo;s safer,&rdquo; he thought; &ldquo;and then what in the name
+      of goodness shall I do next, I wonder?&rdquo; He jammed his hat down on his head
+      and walked out into the sun-blaze.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he was turning away from the square by the general Post Office, a white
+      parasol waved from a passing cab, and Coral Hicks leaned forward with
+      outstretched hand. &ldquo;I knew I&rsquo;d find you,&rdquo; she triumphed. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been
+      driving up and down in this broiling sun for hours, shopping and watching
+      for you at the same time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stared at her blankly, too bewildered even to wonder how she knew he
+      was in Genoa; and she continued, with the kind of shy imperiousness that
+      always made him feel, in her presence, like a member of an orchestra under
+      a masterful baton; &ldquo;Now please get right into this carriage, and don&rsquo;t
+      keep me roasting here another minute.&rdquo; To the cabdriver she called out:
+      &ldquo;Al porto.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nick Lansing sank down beside her. As he did so he noticed a heap of
+      bundles at her feet, and felt that he had simply added one more to the
+      number. He supposed that she was taking her spoils to the Ibis, and that
+      he would be carried up to the deck-house to be displayed with the others.
+      Well, it would all help to pass the day&mdash;and by night he would have
+      reached some kind of a decision about his future.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the third day after Nick&rsquo;s departure the post brought to the Palazzo
+      Vanderlyn three letters for Mrs. Lansing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first to arrive was a word from Strefford, scribbled in the train and
+      posted at Turin. In it he briefly said that he had been called home by the
+      dreadful accident of which Susy had probably read in the daily papers. He
+      added that he would write again from England, and then&mdash;in a blotted
+      postscript&mdash;: &ldquo;I wanted uncommonly badly to see you for good-bye, but
+      the hour was impossible. Regards to Nick. Do write me just a word to
+      Altringham.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The other two letters, which came together in the afternoon, were both
+      from Genoa. Susy scanned the addresses and fell upon the one in her
+      husband&rsquo;s writing. Her hand trembled so much that for a moment she could
+      not open the envelope. When she had done so, she devoured the letter in a
+      flash, and then sat and brooded over the outspread page as it lay on her
+      knee. It might mean so many things&mdash;she could read into it so many
+      harrowing alternatives of indifference and despair, of irony and
+      tenderness! Was he suffering tortures when he wrote it, or seeking only to
+      inflict them upon her? Or did the words represent his actual feelings, no
+      more and no less, and did he really intend her to understand that he
+      considered it his duty to abide by the letter of their preposterous
+      compact? He had left her in wrath and indignation, yet, as a closer
+      scrutiny revealed, there was not a word of reproach in his brief lines.
+      Perhaps that was why, in the last issue, they seemed so cold to her....
+      She shivered and turned to the other envelope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The large stilted characters, though half-familiar, called up no definite
+      image. She opened the envelope and discovered a post-card of the Ibis,
+      canvas spread, bounding over a rippled sea. On the back was written:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So awfully dear of you to lend us Mr. Lansing for a little cruise. You
+      may count on our taking the best of care of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;CORAL&rdquo; <a name="link2H_PART2" id="link2H_PART2">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PART II
+    </h2>
+
+    <h3>
+      XIII.
+    </h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">When</span> Violet Melrose had said to Susy Branch, the winter before in New
+      York: &ldquo;But why on earth don&rsquo;t you and Nick go to my little place at
+      Versailles for the honeymoon? I&rsquo;m off to China, and you could have it to
+      yourselves all summer,&rdquo; the offer had been tempting enough to make the
+      lovers waver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was such an artless ingenuous little house, so full of the demoralizing
+      simplicity of great wealth, that it seemed to Susy just the kind of place
+      in which to take the first steps in renunciation. But Nick had objected
+      that Paris, at that time of year, would be swarming with acquaintances who
+      would hunt them down at all hours; and Susy&rsquo;s own experience had led her
+      to remark that there was nothing the very rich enjoyed more than taking
+      pot-luck with the very poor. They therefore gave Strefford&rsquo;s villa the
+      preference, with an inward proviso (on Susy&rsquo;s part) that Violet&rsquo;s house
+      might very conveniently serve their purpose at another season.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These thoughts were in her mind as she drove up to Mrs. Melrose&rsquo;s door on
+      a rainy afternoon late in August, her boxes piled high on the roof of the
+      cab she had taken at the station. She had travelled straight through from
+      Venice, stopping in Milan just long enough to pick up a reply to the
+      telegram she had despatched to the perfect housekeeper whose permanent
+      presence enabled Mrs. Melrose to say: &ldquo;Oh, when I&rsquo;m sick of everything I
+      just rush off without warning to my little shanty at Versailles, and live
+      there all alone on scrambled eggs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The perfect house-keeper had replied to Susy&rsquo;s enquiry: &ldquo;Am sure Mrs.
+      Melrose most happy&rdquo;; and Susy, without further thought, had jumped into a
+      Versailles train, and now stood in the thin rain before the sphinx-guarded
+      threshold of the pavilion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The revolving year had brought around the season at which Mrs. Melrose&rsquo;s
+      house might be convenient: no visitors were to be feared at Versailles at
+      the end of August, and though Susy&rsquo;s reasons for seeking solitude were so
+      remote from those she had once prefigured, they were none the less cogent.
+      To be alone&mdash;alone! After those first exposed days when, in the
+      persistent presence of Fred Gillow and his satellites, and in the mocking
+      radiance of late summer on the lagoons, she had fumed and turned about in
+      her agony like a trapped animal in a cramping cage, to be alone had seemed
+      the only respite, the one craving: to be alone somewhere in a setting as
+      unlike as possible to the sensual splendours of Venice, under skies as
+      unlike its azure roof. If she could have chosen she would have crawled
+      away into a dingy inn in a rainy northern town, where she had never been
+      and no one knew her. Failing that unobtainable luxury, here she was on the
+      threshold of an empty house, in a deserted place, under lowering skies.
+      She had shaken off Fred Gillow, sulkily departing for his moor (where she
+      had half-promised to join him in September); the Prince, young
+      Breckenridge, and the few remaining survivors of the Venetian group, had
+      dispersed in the direction of the Engadine or Biarritz; and now she could
+      at least collect her wits, take stock of herself, and prepare the
+      countenance with which she was to face the next stage in her career. Thank
+      God it was raining at Versailles!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The door opened, she heard voices in the drawing-room, and a slender
+      languishing figure appeared on the threshold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Darling!&rdquo; Violet Melrose cried in an embrace, drawing her into the dusky
+      perfumed room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I thought you were in China!&rdquo; Susy stammered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In China... in China,&rdquo; Mrs. Melrose stared with dreamy eyes, and Susy
+      remembered her drifting disorganised life, a life more planless, more
+      inexplicable than that of any of the other ephemeral beings blown about
+      upon the same winds of pleasure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Madam, I thought so myself till I got a wire from Mrs. Melrose last
+      evening,&rdquo; remarked the perfect house-keeper, following with Susy&rsquo;s
+      handbag.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Melrose clutched her cavernous temples in her attenuated hands. &ldquo;Of
+      course, of course! I had meant to go to China&mdash;no, India.... But I&rsquo;ve
+      discovered a genius... and Genius, you know....&rdquo; Unable to complete her
+      thought, she sank down upon a pillowy divan, stretched out an arm, cried:
+      &ldquo;Fulmer! Fulmer!&rdquo; and, while Susy Lansing stood in the middle of the room
+      with widening eyes, a man emerged from the more deeply cushioned and
+      scented twilight of some inner apartment, and she saw with surprise Nat
+      Fulmer, the good Nat Fulmer of the New Hampshire bungalow and the
+      ubiquitous progeny, standing before her in lordly ease, his hands in his
+      pockets, a cigarette between his lips, his feet solidly planted in the
+      insidious depths of one of Violet Melrose&rsquo;s white leopard skins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Susy!&rdquo; he shouted with open arms; and Mrs. Melrose murmured: &ldquo;You didn&rsquo;t
+      know, then? You hadn&rsquo;t heard of his masterpieces?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In spite of herself, Susy burst into a laugh. &ldquo;Is Nat your genius?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Melrose looked at her reproachfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fulmer laughed. &ldquo;No; I&rsquo;m Grace&rsquo;s. But Mrs. Melrose has been our
+      Providence, and....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Providence?&rdquo; his hostess interrupted. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t talk as if you were at a
+      prayer-meeting! He had an exhibition in New York... it was the most
+      fabulous success. He&rsquo;s come abroad to make studies for the decoration of
+      my music-room in New York. Ursula Gillow has given him her garden-house at
+      Roslyn to do. And Mrs. Bockheimer&rsquo;s ball-room&mdash;oh, Fulmer, where are
+      the cartoons?&rdquo; She sprang up, tossed about some fashion-papers heaped on a
+      lacquer table, and sank back exhausted by the effort. &ldquo;I&rsquo;d got as far as
+      Brindisi. I&rsquo;ve travelled day and night to be here to meet him,&rdquo; she
+      declared. &ldquo;But, you darling,&rdquo; and she held out a caressing hand to Susy,
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m forgetting to ask if you&rsquo;ve had tea?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      An hour later, over the tea-table, Susy already felt herself mysteriously
+      reabsorbed into what had so long been her native element. Ellie Vanderlyn
+      had brought a breath of it to Venice; but Susy was then nourished on
+      another air, the air of Nick&rsquo;s presence and personality; now that she was
+      abandoned, left again to her own devices, she felt herself suddenly at the
+      mercy of the influences from which she thought she had escaped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the queer social whirligig from which she had so lately fled, it seemed
+      natural enough that a shake of the box should have tossed Nat Fulmer into
+      celebrity, and sent Violet Melrose chasing back from the ends of the earth
+      to bask in his success. Susy knew that Mrs. Melrose belonged to the class
+      of moral parasites; for in that strange world the parts were sometimes
+      reversed, and the wealthy preyed upon the pauper. Wherever there was a
+      reputation to batten on, there poor Violet appeared, a harmless vampire in
+      pearls who sought only to feed on the notoriety which all her millions
+      could not create for her. Any one less versed than Susy in the shallow
+      mysteries of her little world would have seen in Violet Melrose a baleful
+      enchantress, in Nat Fulmer her helpless victim. Susy knew better. Violet,
+      poor Violet, was not even that. The insignificant Ellie Vanderlyn, with
+      her brief trivial passions, her artless mixture of amorous and social
+      interests, was a woman with a purpose, a creature who fulfilled herself;
+      but Violet was only a drifting interrogation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And what of Fulmer? Mustering with new eyes his short sturdily-built
+      figure, his nondescript bearded face, and the eyes that dreamed and
+      wandered, and then suddenly sank into you like claws, Susy seemed to have
+      found the key to all his years of dogged toil, his indifference to
+      neglect, indifference to poverty, indifference to the needs of his growing
+      family.... Yes: for the first time she saw that he looked commonplace
+      enough to be a genius&mdash;was a genius, perhaps, even though it was
+      Violet Melrose who affirmed it! Susy looked steadily at Fulmer, their eyes
+      met, and he smiled at her faintly through his beard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I did discover him&mdash;I did,&rdquo; Mrs. Melrose was insisting, from
+      the depths of the black velvet divan in which she lay sunk like a wan
+      Nereid in a midnight sea. &ldquo;You mustn&rsquo;t believe a word that Ursula Gillow
+      tells you about having pounced on his &lsquo;Spring Snow Storm&rsquo; in a dark corner
+      of the American Artists&rsquo; exhibition&mdash;skied, if you please! They skied
+      him less than a year ago! And naturally Ursula never in her life looked
+      higher than the first line at a picture-show. And now she actually
+      pretends... oh, for pity&rsquo;s sake don&rsquo;t say it doesn&rsquo;t matter, Fulmer! Your
+      saying that just encourages her, and makes people think she did. When, in
+      reality, any one who saw me at the exhibition on varnishing-day.... Who?
+      Well, Eddy Breckenridge, for instance. He was in Egypt, you say? Perhaps
+      he was! As if one could remember the people about one, when suddenly one
+      comes upon a great work of art, as St. Paul did&mdash;didn&rsquo;t he?&mdash;and
+      the scales fell from his eyes. Well... that&rsquo;s exactly what happened to me
+      that day... and Ursula, everybody knows, was down at Roslyn at the time,
+      and didn&rsquo;t come up for the opening of the exhibition at all. And Fulmer
+      sits there and laughs, and says it doesn&rsquo;t matter, and that he&rsquo;ll paint
+      another picture any day for me to discover!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy had rung the door-bell with a hand trembling with eagerness&mdash;eagerness
+      to be alone, to be quiet, to stare her situation in the face, and collect
+      herself before she came out again among her kind. She had stood on the
+      door-step, cowering among her bags, counting the instants till a step
+      sounded and the door-knob turned, letting her in from the searching glare
+      of the outer world.... And now she had sat for an hour in Violet&rsquo;s
+      drawing-room, in the very house where her honey-moon might have been
+      spent; and no one had asked her where she had come from, or why she was
+      alone, or what was the key to the tragedy written on her shrinking
+      face....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That was the way of the world they lived in. Nobody questioned, nobody
+      wondered any more&mdash;because nobody had time to remember. The old risk of
+      prying curiosity, of malicious gossip, was virtually over: one was left
+      with one&rsquo;s drama, one&rsquo;s disaster, on one&rsquo;s hands, because there was nobody
+      to stop and notice the little shrouded object one was carrying. As Susy
+      watched the two people before her, each so frankly unaffected by her
+      presence, Violet Melrose so engrossed in her feverish pursuit of
+      notoriety, Fulmer so plunged in the golden sea of his success, she felt
+      like a ghost making inaudible and imperceptible appeals to the grosser
+      senses of the living.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I wanted to be alone,&rdquo; she thought, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m alone enough, in all
+      conscience.&rdquo; There was a deathly chill in such security. She turned to
+      Fulmer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Grace?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He beamed back without sign of embarrassment. &ldquo;Oh, she&rsquo;s here, naturally&mdash;we&rsquo;re
+      in Paris, kids and all. In a pension, where we can polish up the lingo.
+      But I hardly ever lay eyes on her, because she&rsquo;s as deep in music as I am
+      in paint; it was as big a chance for her as for me, you see, and she&rsquo;s
+      making the most of it, fiddling and listening to the fiddlers. Well, it&rsquo;s
+      a considerable change from New Hampshire.&rdquo; He looked at her dreamily, as
+      if making an intense effort to detach himself from his dream, and situate
+      her in the fading past. &ldquo;Remember the bungalow? And Nick&mdash;ah, how&rsquo;s
+      Nick?&rdquo; he brought out triumphantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes&mdash;darling Nick?&rdquo; Mrs. Melrose chimed in; and Susy, her head
+      erect, her cheeks aflame, declared with resonance: &ldquo;Most awfully well&mdash;splendidly!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s not here, though?&rdquo; from Fulmer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. He&rsquo;s off travelling&mdash;cruising.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Melrose&rsquo;s attention was faintly roused. &ldquo;With anybody interesting?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; you wouldn&rsquo;t know them. People we met....&rdquo; She did not have to
+      continue, for her hostess&rsquo;s gaze had again strayed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you&rsquo;ve come for your clothes, I suppose, darling? Don&rsquo;t listen to
+      people who say that skirts are to be wider. I&rsquo;ve discovered a new woman&mdash;a
+      Genius&mdash;and she absolutely swathes you.... Her name&rsquo;s my secret; but
+      we&rsquo;ll go to her together.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy rose from her engulphing armchair. &ldquo;Do you mind if I go up to my
+      room? I&rsquo;m rather tired&mdash;coming straight through.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course, dear. I think there are some people coming to dinner... Mrs.
+      Match will tell you. She has such a memory.... Fulmer, where on earth are
+      those cartoons of the music-room?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Their voices pursued Susy upstairs, as, in Mrs. Match&rsquo;s perpendicular
+      wake, she mounted to the white-panelled room with its gay linen hangings
+      and the low bed heaped with more cushions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If we&rsquo;d come here,&rdquo; she thought, &ldquo;everything might have been different.&rdquo;
+       And she shuddered at the sumptuous memories of the Palazzo Vanderlyn, and
+      the great painted bedroom where she had met her doom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Match, hoping she would find everything, and mentioning that dinner
+      was not till nine, shut her softly in among her terrors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Find everything?&rdquo; Susy echoed the phrase. Oh, yes, she would always find
+      everything: every time the door shut on her now, and the sound of voices
+      ceased, her memories would be there waiting for her, every one of them,
+      waiting quietly, patiently, obstinately, like poor people in a doctor&rsquo;s
+      office, the people who are always last to be attended to, but whom nothing
+      will discourage or drive away, people to whom time is nothing, fatigue
+      nothing, hunger nothing, other engagements nothing: who just wait....
+      Thank heaven, after all, that she had not found the house empty, if,
+      whenever she returned to her room, she was to meet her memories there!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was just a week since Nick had left her. During that week, crammed with
+      people, questions, packing, explaining, evading, she had believed that in
+      solitude lay her salvation. Now she understood that there was nothing she
+      was so unprepared for, so unfitted for. When, in all her life, had she
+      ever been alone? And how was she to bear it now, with all these ravening
+      memories besetting her!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dinner not till nine? What on earth was she to do till nine o&rsquo;clock? She
+      knelt before her boxes, and feverishly began to unpack.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gradually, imperceptibly, the subtle influences of her old life were
+      stealing into her. As she pulled out her tossed and crumpled dresses she
+      remembered Violet&rsquo;s emphatic warning: &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t believe the people who tell
+      you that skirts are going to be wider.&rdquo; Were hers, perhaps, too wide as it
+      was? She looked at her limp raiment, piling itself up on bed and sofa, and
+      understood that, according to Violet&rsquo;s standards, and that of all her set,
+      those dresses, which Nick had thought so original and exquisite, were
+      already commonplace and dowdy, fit only to be passed on to poor relations
+      or given to one&rsquo;s maid. And Susy would have to go on wearing them till
+      they fell to bits&mdash;or else.... Well, or else begin the old life again in
+      some new form....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She laughed aloud at the turn of her thoughts. Dresses? How little they
+      had mattered a few short weeks ago! And now, perhaps, they would again be
+      one of the foremost considerations in her life. How could it be otherwise,
+      if she were to return again to her old dependence on Ellie Vanderlyn,
+      Ursula Gillow, Violet Melrose? And beyond that, only the Bockheimers and
+      their kind awaited her....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A knock on the door&mdash;what a relief! It was Mrs. Match again, with a
+      telegram. To whom had Susy given her new address? With a throbbing heart
+      she tore open the envelope and read:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall be in Paris Friday for twenty-four hours where can I see you write
+      Nouveau Luxe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ah, yes&mdash;she remembered now: she had written to Strefford! And this
+      was his answer: he was coming. She dropped into a chair, and tried to
+      think. What on earth had she said in her letter? It had been mainly, of
+      course, one of condolence; but now she remembered having added, in a
+      precipitate postscript: &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t give your message to Nick, for he&rsquo;s gone
+      off with the Hickses&mdash;I don&rsquo;t know where, or for how long. It&rsquo;s all right,
+      of course: it was in our bargain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had not meant to put in that last phrase; but as she sealed her letter
+      to Strefford her eye had fallen on Nick&rsquo;s missive, which lay beside it.
+      Nothing in her husband&rsquo;s brief lines had embittered her as much as the
+      allusion to Strefford. It seemed to imply that Nick&rsquo;s own plans were made,
+      that his own future was secure, and that he could therefore freely and
+      handsomely take thought for hers, and give her a pointer in the right
+      direction. Sudden rage had possessed her at the thought: where she had at
+      first read jealousy she now saw only a cold providence, and in a blur of
+      tears she had scrawled her postscript to Strefford. She remembered that
+      she had not even asked him to keep her secret. Well&mdash;after all, what
+      would it matter if people should already know that Nick had left her?
+      Their parting could not long remain a mystery, and the fact that it was
+      known might help her to keep up a presence of indifference.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was in the bargain&mdash;in the bargain,&rdquo; rang through her brain as
+      she re-read Strefford&rsquo;s telegram. She understood that he had snatched the
+      time for this hasty trip solely in the hope of seeing her, and her eyes
+      filled. The more bitterly she thought of Nick the more this proof of
+      Strefford&rsquo;s friendship moved her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The clock, to her relief, reminded her that it was time to dress for
+      dinner. She would go down presently, chat with Violet and Fulmer, and with
+      Violet&rsquo;s other guests, who would probably be odd and amusing, and too much
+      out of her world to embarrass her by awkward questions. She would sit at a
+      softly-lit table, breathe delicate scents, eat exquisite food (trust Mrs.
+      Match!), and be gradually drawn again under the spell of her old
+      associations. Anything, anything but to be alone....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She dressed with even more than her habitual care, reddened her lips
+      attentively, brushed the faintest bloom of pink over her drawn cheeks, and
+      went down&mdash;to meet Mrs. Match coming up with a tray.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Madam, I thought you were too tired.... I was bringing it up to you
+      myself&mdash;just a little morsel of chicken.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy, glancing past her, saw, through the open door, that the lamps were
+      not lit in the drawing-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no, I&rsquo;m not tired, thank you. I thought Mrs. Melrose expected friends
+      at dinner!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Friends at dinner-to-night?&rdquo; Mrs. Match heaved a despairing sigh.
+      Sometimes, the sigh seemed to say, her mistress put too great a strain
+      upon her. &ldquo;Why, Mrs. Melrose and Mr. Fulmer were engaged to dine in Paris.
+      They left an hour ago. Mrs. Melrose told me she&rsquo;d told you,&rdquo; the
+      house-keeper wailed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy kept her little fixed smile. &ldquo;I must have misunderstood. In that
+      case... well, yes, if it&rsquo;s no trouble, I believe I will have my tray
+      upstairs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Slowly she turned, and followed the housekeeper up into the dread solitude
+      she had just left.
+    </p>
+
+
+<h3>XIV.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">The</span> next day a lot of people turned up unannounced for luncheon. They were
+      not of the far-fetched and the exotic, in whom Mrs. Melrose now
+      specialized, but merely commonplace fashionable people belonging to Susy&rsquo;s
+      own group, people familiar with the amusing romance of her penniless
+      marriage, and to whom she had to explain (though none of them really
+      listened to the explanation) that Nick was not with her just now but had
+      gone off cruising... cruising in the AEgean with friends... getting up
+      material for his book (this detail had occurred to her in the night).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the kind of encounter she had most dreaded; but it proved, after
+      all, easy enough to go through compared with those endless hours of
+      turning to and fro, the night before, in the cage of her lonely room.
+      Anything, anything, but to be alone....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gradually, from the force of habit, she found herself actually in tune
+      with the talk of the luncheon table, interested in the references to
+      absent friends, the light allusions to last year&rsquo;s loves and quarrels,
+      scandals and absurdities. The women, in their pale summer dresses, were so
+      graceful, indolent and sure of themselves, the men so easy and
+      good-humoured! Perhaps, after all, Susy reflected, it was the world she
+      was meant for, since the other, the brief Paradise of her dreams, had
+      already shut its golden doors upon her. And then, as they sat on the
+      terrace after luncheon, looking across at the yellow tree-tops of the
+      park, one of the women said something&mdash;made just an allusion&mdash;that
+      Susy would have let pass unnoticed in the old days, but that now filled
+      her with a sudden deep disgust.... She stood up and wandered away, away
+      from them all through the fading garden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two days later Susy and Strefford sat on the terrace of the Tuileries
+      above the Seine. She had asked him to meet her there, with the desire to
+      avoid the crowded halls and drawing-room of the Nouveau Luxe where, even
+      at that supposedly &ldquo;dead&rdquo; season, people one knew were always drifting to
+      and fro; and they sat on a bench in the pale sunlight, the discoloured
+      leaves heaped at their feet, and no one to share their solitude but a lame
+      working-man and a haggard woman who were lunching together mournfully at
+      the other end of the majestic vista.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford, in his new mourning, looked unnaturally prosperous and
+      well-valeted; but his ugly untidy features remained as undisciplined, his
+      smile as whimsical, as of old. He had been on cool though friendly terms
+      with the pompous uncle and the poor sickly cousin whose joint
+      disappearance had so abruptly transformed his future; and it was his way
+      to understate his feelings rather than to pretend more than he felt.
+      Nevertheless, beneath his habitual bantering tone Susy discerned a change.
+      The disaster had shocked him profoundly; already, in his brief sojourn
+      among his people and among the great possessions so tragically acquired,
+      old instincts had awakened, forgotten associations had spoken in him. Susy
+      listened to him wistfully, silenced by her imaginative perception of the
+      distance that these things had put between them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was horrible... seeing them both there together, laid out in that
+      hideous Pugin chapel at Altringham... the poor boy especially. I suppose
+      that&rsquo;s really what&rsquo;s cutting me up now,&rdquo; he murmured, almost
+      apologetically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, it&rsquo;s more than that&mdash;more than you know,&rdquo; she insisted; but he
+      jerked back: &ldquo;Now, my dear, don&rsquo;t be edifying, please,&rdquo; and fumbled for a
+      cigarette in the pocket which was already beginning to bulge with his
+      miscellaneous properties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now about you&mdash;for that&rsquo;s what I came for,&rdquo; he continued,
+      turning to her with one of his sudden movements. &ldquo;I couldn&rsquo;t make head or
+      tail of your letter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She paused a moment to steady her voice. &ldquo;Couldn&rsquo;t you? I suppose you&rsquo;d
+      forgotten my bargain with Nick. He hadn&rsquo;t&mdash;and he&rsquo;s asked me to fulfil it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford stared. &ldquo;What&mdash;that nonsense about your setting each other
+      free if either of you had the chance to make a good match?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She signed &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And he&rsquo;s actually asked you&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well: practically. He&rsquo;s gone off with the Hickses. Before going he wrote
+      me that we&rsquo;d better both consider ourselves free. And Coral sent me a
+      postcard to say that she would take the best of care of him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford mused, his eyes upon his cigarette. &ldquo;But what the deuce led up
+      to all this? It can&rsquo;t have happened like that, out of a clear sky.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy flushed, hesitated, looked away. She had meant to tell Strefford the
+      whole story; it had been one of her chief reasons for wishing to see him
+      again, and half-unconsciously, perhaps, she had hoped, in his laxer
+      atmosphere, to recover something of her shattered self-esteem. But now she
+      suddenly felt the impossibility of confessing to anyone the depths to
+      which Nick&rsquo;s wife had stooped. She fancied that her companion guessed the
+      nature of her hesitation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t tell me anything you don&rsquo;t want to, you know, my dear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; I do want to; only it&rsquo;s difficult. You see&mdash;we had so very
+      little money....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Nick&mdash;who was thinking of his book, and of all sorts of big
+      things, fine things&mdash;didn&rsquo;t realise... left it all to me... to
+      manage....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stumbled over the word, remembering how Nick had always winced at it.
+      But Strefford did not seem to notice her, and she hurried on, unfolding in
+      short awkward sentences the avowal of their pecuniary difficulties, and of
+      Nick&rsquo;s inability to understand that, to keep on with the kind of life they
+      were leading, one had to put up with things... accept favours....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Borrow money, you mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;yes; and all the rest.&rdquo; No&mdash;decidedly she could not
+      reveal to Strefford the episode of Ellie&rsquo;s letters. &ldquo;Nick suddenly felt, I
+      suppose, that he couldn&rsquo;t stand it,&rdquo; she continued; &ldquo;and instead of asking
+      me to try&mdash;to try to live differently, go off somewhere with him and
+      live, like work-people, in two rooms, without a servant, as I was ready to
+      do; well, instead he wrote me that it had all been a mistake from the
+      beginning, that we couldn&rsquo;t keep it up, and had better recognize the fact;
+      and he went off on the Hickses&rsquo; yacht. The last evening that you were in
+      Venice&mdash;the day he didn&rsquo;t come back to dinner&mdash;he had gone off
+      to Genoa to meet them. I suppose he intends to marry Coral.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford received this in silence. &ldquo;Well&mdash;it was your bargain,
+      wasn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo; he said at length.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; but&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Exactly: I always told you so. You weren&rsquo;t ready to have him go yet&mdash;that&rsquo;s
+      all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She flushed to the forehead. &ldquo;Oh, Streff&mdash;is it really all?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A question of time? If you doubt it, I&rsquo;d like to see you try, for a
+      while, in those two rooms without a servant; and then let me hear from
+      you. Why, my dear, it&rsquo;s only a question of time in a palace, with a steam
+      yacht lying off the door-step, and a flock of motors in the garage; look
+      around you and see. And did you ever imagine that you and Nick, of all
+      people, were going to escape the common doom, and survive like Mr. and
+      Mrs. Tithonus, while all about you the eternal passions were crumbling to
+      pieces, and your native Divorce-states piling up their revenues?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She sat with bent head, the weight of the long years to come pressing like
+      a leaden load on her shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I&rsquo;m so young... life&rsquo;s so long. What does last, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you&rsquo;re too young to believe me, if I were to tell you; though you&rsquo;re
+      intelligent enough to understand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, the hold of the things we all think we could do without. Habits&mdash;they
+      outstand the Pyramids. Comforts, luxuries, the atmosphere of ease... above
+      all, the power to get away from dulness and monotony, from constraints and
+      uglinesses. You chose that power, instinctively, before you were even
+      grown up; and so did Nick. And the only difference between you is that
+      he&rsquo;s had the sense to see sooner than you that those are the things that
+      last, the prime necessities.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t believe it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course you don&rsquo;t: at your age one doesn&rsquo;t reason one&rsquo;s materialism.
+      And besides you&rsquo;re mortally hurt that Nick has found out sooner than you,
+      and hasn&rsquo;t disguised his discovery under any hypocritical phrases.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But surely there are people&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;saints and geniuses and heroes: all the fanatics! To which of
+      their categories do you suppose we soft people belong? And the heroes and
+      the geniuses&mdash;haven&rsquo;t they their enormous frailties and their giant
+      appetites? And how should we escape being the victims of our little ones?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She sat for a while without speaking. &ldquo;But, Streff, how can you say such
+      things, when I know you care: care for me, for instance!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Care?&rdquo; He put his hand on hers. &ldquo;But, my dear, it&rsquo;s just the fugitiveness
+      of mortal caring that makes it so exquisite! It&rsquo;s because we know we can&rsquo;t
+      hold fast to it, or to each other, or to anything....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes... yes... but hush, please! Oh, don&rsquo;t say it!&rdquo; She stood up, the
+      tears in her throat, and he rose also.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come along, then; where do we lunch?&rdquo; he said with a smile, slipping his
+      hand through her arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I don&rsquo;t know. Nowhere. I think I&rsquo;m going back to Versailles.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because I&rsquo;ve disgusted you so deeply? Just my luck&mdash;when I came over
+      to ask you to marry me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She laughed, but he had become suddenly grave. &ldquo;Upon my soul, I did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear Streff! As if&mdash;now&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, not now&mdash;I know. I&rsquo;m aware that even with your accelerated
+      divorce methods&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not that. I told you it was no use, Streff&mdash;I told you long
+      ago, in Venice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He shrugged ironically. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not Streff who&rsquo;s asking you now. Streff was
+      not a marrying man: he was only trifling with you. The present offer comes
+      from an elderly peer of independent means. Think it over, my dear: as many
+      days out as you like, and five footmen kept. There&rsquo;s not the least hurry,
+      of course; but I rather think Nick himself would advise it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She flushed to the temples, remembering that Nick had; and the remembrance
+      made Strefford&rsquo;s sneering philosophy seem less unbearable. Why should she
+      not lunch with him, after all? In the first days of his mourning he had
+      come to Paris expressly to see her, and to offer her one of the oldest
+      names and one of the greatest fortunes in England. She thought of Ursula
+      Gillow, Ellie Vanderlyn, Violet Melrose, of their condescending
+      kindnesses, their last year&rsquo;s dresses, their Christmas cheques, and all
+      the careless bounties that were so easy to bestow and so hard to accept.
+      &ldquo;I should rather enjoy paying them back,&rdquo; something in her maliciously
+      murmured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She did not mean to marry Strefford&mdash;she had not even got as far as
+      contemplating the possibility of a divorce but it was undeniable that this
+      sudden prospect of wealth and freedom was like fresh air in her lungs. She
+      laughed again, but now without bitterness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very good, then; we&rsquo;ll lunch together. But it&rsquo;s Streff I want to lunch
+      with to-day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, well,&rdquo; her companion agreed, &ldquo;I rather think that for a tête-à-tête
+      he&rsquo;s better company.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      During their repast in a little restaurant over the Seine, where she
+      insisted on the cheapest dishes because she was lunching with &ldquo;Streff,&rdquo; he
+      became again his old whimsical companionable self. Once or twice she tried
+      to turn the talk to his altered future, and the obligations and interests
+      that lay before him; but he shrugged away from the subject, questioning
+      her instead about the motley company at Violet Melrose&rsquo;s, and fitting a
+      droll or malicious anecdote to each of the people she named.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not till they had finished their coffee, and she was glancing at
+      her watch with a vague notion of taking the next train, that he asked
+      abruptly: &ldquo;But what are you going to do? You can&rsquo;t stay forever at
+      Violet&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no!&rdquo; she cried with a shiver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then&mdash;you&rsquo;ve got some plan, I suppose?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have I?&rdquo; she wondered, jerked back into grim reality from the soothing
+      interlude of their hour together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can&rsquo;t drift indefinitely, can you? Unless you mean to go back to the
+      old sort of life once for all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She reddened and her eyes filled. &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t do that, Streff&mdash;I know I
+      can&rsquo;t!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then what&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She hesitated, and brought out with lowered head: &ldquo;Nick said he would
+      write again&mdash;in a few days. I must wait&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, naturally. Don&rsquo;t do anything in a hurry.&rdquo; Strefford also glanced at
+      his watch. &ldquo;Garcon, l&rsquo;addition! I&rsquo;m taking the train back to-night, and
+      I&rsquo;ve a lot of things left to do. But look here, my dear&mdash;when you
+      come to a decision one way or the other let me know, will you? Oh, I don&rsquo;t
+      mean in the matter I&rsquo;ve most at heart; we&rsquo;ll consider that closed for the
+      present. But at least I can be of use in other ways&mdash;hang it, you
+      know, I can even lend you money. There&rsquo;s a new sensation for our jaded
+      palates!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Streff... Streff!&rdquo; she could only falter; and he pressed on gaily:
+      &ldquo;Try it, now do try it&mdash;I assure you there&rsquo;ll be no interest to pay,
+      and no conditions attached. And promise to let me know when you&rsquo;ve decided
+      anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked into his humorously puckered eyes, answering. Their friendly
+      smile with hers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I promise!&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+
+
+<h3>XV.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">That</span> hour with Strefford had altered her whole perspective. Instead of
+      possible dependence, an enforced return to the old life of connivances and
+      concessions, she saw before her&mdash;whenever she chose to take them&mdash;freedom,
+      power and dignity. Dignity! It was odd what weight that word had come to
+      have for her. She had dimly felt its significance, felt the need of its
+      presence in her inmost soul, even in the young thoughtless days when she
+      had seemed to sacrifice so little to the austere divinities. And since she
+      had been Nick Lansing&rsquo;s wife she had consciously acknowledged it, had
+      suffered and agonized when she fell beneath its standard. Yes: to marry
+      Strefford would give her that sense of self-respect which, in such a world
+      as theirs, only wealth and position could ensure. If she had not the
+      mental or moral training to attain independence in any other way, was she
+      to blame for seeking it on such terms?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course there was always the chance that Nick would come back, would
+      find life without her as intolerable as she was finding it without him. If
+      that happened&mdash;ah, if that happened! Then she would cease to strain
+      her eyes into the future, would seize upon the present moment and plunge
+      into it to the very bottom of oblivion. Nothing on earth would matter then&mdash;money
+      or freedom or pride, or her precious moral dignity, if only she were in
+      Nick&rsquo;s arms again!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But there was Nick&rsquo;s icy letter, there was Coral Hicks&rsquo;s insolent
+      post-card, to show how little chance there was of such a solution. Susy
+      understood that, even before the discovery of her transaction with Ellie
+      Vanderlyn, Nick had secretly wearied, if not of his wife, at least of the
+      life that their marriage compelled him to lead. His passion was not strong
+      enough&mdash;had never been strong enough&mdash;to outweigh his prejudices,
+      scruples, principles, or whatever one chose to call them. Susy&rsquo;s dignity
+      might go up like tinder in the blaze of her love; but his was made of a
+      less combustible substance. She had felt, in their last talk together,
+      that she had forever destroyed the inner harmony between them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well&mdash;there it was, and the fault was doubtless neither hers nor his,
+      but that of the world they had grown up in, of their own moral contempt
+      for it and physical dependence on it, of his half-talents and her
+      half-principles, of the something in them both that was not stout enough
+      to resist nor yet pliant enough to yield. She stared at the fact on the
+      journey back to Versailles, and all that sleepless night in her room; and
+      the next morning, when the housemaid came in with her breakfast tray, she
+      felt the factitious energy that comes from having decided, however
+      half-heartedly, on a definite course.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had said to herself: &ldquo;If there&rsquo;s no letter from Nick this time next
+      week I&rsquo;ll write to Streff&mdash;&rdquo; and the week had passed, and there was
+      no letter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was now three weeks since he had left her, and she had had no word but
+      his note from Genoa. She had concluded that, foreseeing the probability of
+      her leaving Venice, he would write to her in care of their Paris bank. But
+      though she had immediately notified the bank of her change of address no
+      communication from Nick had reached her; and she smiled with a touch of
+      bitterness at the difficulty he was doubtless finding in the composition
+      of the promised letter. Her own scrap-basket, for the first days, had been
+      heaped with the fragments of the letters she had begun; and she told
+      herself that, since they both found it so hard to write, it was probably
+      because they had nothing left to say to each other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile the days at Mrs. Melrose&rsquo;s drifted by as they had been wont to
+      drift when, under the roofs of the rich, Susy Branch had marked time
+      between one episode and the next of her precarious existence. Her
+      experience of such sojourns was varied enough to make her acutely
+      conscious of their effect on her temporary hosts; and in the present case
+      she knew that Violet was hardly aware of her presence. But if no more than
+      tolerated she was at least not felt to be an inconvenience; when your
+      hostess forgot about you it proved that at least you were not in her way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet, as usual, was perpetually on the wing, for her profound indolence
+      expressed itself in a disordered activity. Nat Fulmer had returned to
+      Paris; but Susy guessed that his benefactress was still constantly in his
+      company, and that when Mrs. Melrose was whirled away in her noiseless
+      motor it was generally toward the scene of some new encounter between
+      Fulmer and the arts. On these occasions she sometimes offered to carry
+      Susy to Paris, and they devoted several long and hectic mornings to the
+      dress-makers, where Susy felt herself gradually succumbing to the familiar
+      spell of heaped-up finery. It seemed impossible, as furs and laces and
+      brocades were tossed aside, brought back, and at last carelessly selected
+      from, that anything but the whim of the moment need count in deciding
+      whether one should take all or none, or that any woman could be worth
+      looking at who did not possess the means to make her choice regardless of
+      cost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once alone, and in the street again, the evil fumes would evaporate, and
+      daylight re-enter Susy&rsquo;s soul; yet she felt that the old poison was slowly
+      insinuating itself into her system. To dispel it she decided one day to
+      look up Grace Fulmer. She was curious to know how the happy-go-lucky
+      companion of Fulmer&rsquo;s evil days was bearing the weight of his prosperity,
+      and she vaguely felt that it would be refreshing to see some one who had
+      never been afraid of poverty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The airless pension sitting-room, where she waited while a reluctant
+      maid-servant screamed about the house for Mrs. Fulmer, did not have the
+      hoped-for effect. It was one thing for Grace to put up with such quarters
+      when she shared them with Fulmer; but to live there while he basked in the
+      lingering radiance of Versailles, or rolled from chateau to picture
+      gallery in Mrs. Melrose&rsquo;s motor, showed a courage that Susy felt unable to
+      emulate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear! I knew you&rsquo;d look me up,&rdquo; Grace&rsquo;s joyous voice ran down the
+      stairway; and in another moment she was clasping Susy to her tumbled
+      person.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nat couldn&rsquo;t remember if he&rsquo;d given you our address, though he promised
+      me he would, the last time he was here.&rdquo; She held Susy at arms&rsquo; length,
+      beaming upon her with blinking short-sighted eyes: the same old
+      dishevelled Grace, so careless of her neglected beauty and her squandered
+      youth, so amused and absent-minded and improvident, that the boisterous
+      air of the New Hampshire bungalow seemed to enter with her into the little
+      air-tight salon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While she poured out the tale of Nat&rsquo;s sudden celebrity, and its
+      unexpected consequences, Susy marvelled and dreamed. Was the secret of his
+      triumph perhaps due to those long hard unrewarded years, the steadfast
+      scorn of popularity, the indifference to every kind of material ease in
+      which his wife had so gaily abetted him? Had it been bought at the cost of
+      her own freshness and her own talent, of the children&rsquo;s &ldquo;advantages,&rdquo; of
+      everything except the closeness of the tie between husband and wife? Well&mdash;it
+      was worth the price, no doubt; but what if, now that honours and
+      prosperity had come, the tie were snapped, and Grace were left alone among
+      the ruins?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was nothing in her tone or words to suggest such a possibility. Susy
+      noticed that her ill-assorted raiment was costlier in quality and more
+      professional in cut than the home-made garments which had draped her
+      growing bulk at the bungalow: it was clear that she was trying to dress up
+      to Nat&rsquo;s new situation. But, above all, she was rejoicing in it, filling
+      her hungry lungs with the strong air of his success. It had evidently not
+      occurred to her as yet that those who consent to share the bread of
+      adversity may want the whole cake of prosperity for themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear, it&rsquo;s too wonderful! He&rsquo;s told me to take as many concert and
+      opera tickets as I like; he lets me take all the children with me. The big
+      concerts don&rsquo;t begin till later; but of course the Opera is always going.
+      And there are little things&mdash;there&rsquo;s music in Paris at all seasons.
+      And later it&rsquo;s just possible we may get to Munich for a week&mdash;oh,
+      Susy!&rdquo; Her hands clasped, her eyes brimming, she drank the new wine of
+      life almost sacramentally.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you remember, Susy, when you and Nick came to stay at the bungalow?
+      Nat said you&rsquo;d be horrified by our primitiveness&mdash;but I knew better! And I
+      was right, wasn&rsquo;t I? Seeing us so happy made you and Nick decide to follow
+      our example, didn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo; She glowed with the remembrance. &ldquo;And now, what
+      are your plans? Is Nick&rsquo;s book nearly done? I suppose you&rsquo;ll have to live
+      very economically till he finds a publisher. And the baby, darling&mdash;when is
+      that to be? If you&rsquo;re coming home soon I could let you have a lot of the
+      children&rsquo;s little old things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re always so dear, Grace. But we haven&rsquo;t any special plans as yet&mdash;not
+      even for a baby. And I wish you&rsquo;d tell me all of yours instead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Fulmer asked nothing better: Susy perceived that, so far, the greater
+      part of her European experience had consisted in talking about what it was
+      to be. &ldquo;Well, you see, Nat is so taken up all day with sight-seeing and
+      galleries and meeting important people that he hasn&rsquo;t had time to go about
+      with us; and as so few theatres are open, and there&rsquo;s so little music,
+      I&rsquo;ve taken the opportunity to catch up with my mending. Junie helps me
+      with it now&mdash;she&rsquo;s our eldest, you remember? She&rsquo;s grown into a big
+      girl since you saw her. And later, perhaps, we&rsquo;re to travel. And the most
+      wonderful thing of all&mdash;next to Nat&rsquo;s recognition, I mean&mdash;is
+      not having to contrive and skimp, and give up something every single
+      minute. Just think&mdash;Nat has even made special arrangements here in
+      the pension, so that the children all have second helpings to everything.
+      And when I go up to bed I can think of my music, instead of lying awake
+      calculating and wondering how I can make things come out at the end of the
+      month. Oh, Susy, that&rsquo;s simply heaven!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy&rsquo;s heart contracted. She had come to her friend to be taught again the
+      lesson of indifference to material things, and instead she was hearing
+      from Grace Fulmer&rsquo;s lips the long-repressed avowal of their tyranny. After
+      all, that battle with poverty on the New Hampshire hillside had not been
+      the easy smiling business that Grace and Nat had made it appear. And yet
+      ... and yet....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy stood up abruptly, and straightened the expensive hat which hung
+      irresponsibly over Grace&rsquo;s left ear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&rsquo;s wrong with it? Junie helped me choose it, and she generally
+      knows,&rdquo; Mrs. Fulmer wailed with helpless hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s the way you wear it, dearest&mdash;and the bow is rather top-heavy.
+      Let me have it a minute, please.&rdquo; Susy lifted the hat from her friend&rsquo;s
+      head and began to manipulate its trimming. &ldquo;This is the way Maria Guy or
+      Suzanne would do it.... And now go on about Nat....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She listened musingly while Grace poured forth the tale of her husband&rsquo;s
+      triumph, of the notices in the papers, the demand for his work, the fine
+      ladies&rsquo; battles over their priority in discovering him, and the multiplied
+      orders that had resulted from their rivalry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course they&rsquo;re simply furious with each other&mdash;Mrs. Melrose and Mrs.
+      Gillow especially&mdash;because each one pretends to have been the first
+      to notice his &lsquo;Spring Snow-Storm,&rsquo; and in reality it wasn&rsquo;t either of
+      them, but only poor Bill Haslett, an art-critic we&rsquo;ve known for years, who
+      chanced on the picture, and rushed off to tell a dealer who was looking
+      for a new painter to push.&rdquo; Grace suddenly raised her soft myopic eyes to
+      Susy&rsquo;s face. &ldquo;But, do you know, the funny thing is that I believe Nat is
+      beginning to forget this, and to believe that it was Mrs. Melrose who
+      stopped short in front of his picture on the opening day, and screamed
+      out: &lsquo;This is genius!&rsquo; It seems funny he should care so much, when I&rsquo;ve
+      always known he had genius&mdash;and he has known it too. But they&rsquo;re all so
+      kind to him; and Mrs. Melrose especially. And I suppose it makes a thing
+      sound new to hear it said in a new voice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy looked at her meditatively. &ldquo;And how should you feel if Nat liked too
+      much to hear Mrs. Melrose say it? Too much, I mean, to care any longer
+      what you felt or thought?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her friend&rsquo;s worn face flushed quickly, and then paled: Susy almost
+      repented the question. But Mrs. Fulmer met it with a tranquil dignity.
+      &ldquo;You haven&rsquo;t been married long enough, dear, to understand... how people
+      like Nat and me feel about such things... or how trifling they seem, in
+      the balance... the balance of one&rsquo;s memories.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy stood up again, and flung her arms about her friend. &ldquo;Oh, Grace,&rdquo; she
+      laughed with wet eyes, &ldquo;how can you be as wise as that, and yet not have
+      sense enough to buy a decent hat?&rdquo; She gave Mrs. Fulmer a quick embrace
+      and hurried away. She had learned her lesson after all; but it was not
+      exactly the one she had come to seek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The week she had allowed herself had passed, and still there was no word
+      from Nick. She allowed herself yet another day, and that too went by
+      without a letter. She then decided on a step from which her pride had
+      hitherto recoiled; she would call at the bank and ask for Nick&rsquo;s address.
+      She called, embarrassed and hesitating; and was told, after enquiries in
+      the post-office department, that Mr. Nicholas Lansing had given no address
+      since that of the Palazzo Vanderlyn, three months previously. She went
+      back to Versailles that afternoon with the definite intention of writing
+      to Strefford unless the next morning&rsquo;s post brought a letter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next morning brought nothing from Nick, but a scribbled message from
+      Mrs. Melrose: would Susy, as soon as possible, come into her room for a
+      word, Susy jumped up, hurried through her bath, and knocked at her
+      hostess&rsquo;s door. In the immense low bed that faced the rich umbrage of the
+      park Mrs. Melrose lay smoking cigarettes and glancing over her letters.
+      She looked up with her vague smile, and said dreamily: &ldquo;Susy darling, have
+      you any particular plans&mdash;for the next few months, I mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy coloured: she knew the intonation of old, and fancied she understood
+      what it implied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Plans, dearest? Any number... I&rsquo;m tearing myself away the day after
+      to-morrow... to the Gillows&rsquo; moor, very probably,&rdquo; she hastened to
+      announce.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Instead of the relief she had expected to read on Mrs. Melrose&rsquo;s dramatic
+      countenance she discovered there the blankest disappointment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, really? That&rsquo;s too bad. Is it absolutely settled&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As far as I&rsquo;m concerned,&rdquo; said Susy crisply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other sighed. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m too sorry. You see, dear, I&rsquo;d meant to ask you to
+      stay on here quietly and look after the Fulmer children. Fulmer and I are
+      going to Spain next week&mdash;I want to be with him when he makes his
+      studies, receives his first impressions; such a marvellous experience, to
+      be there when he and Velasquez meet!&rdquo; She broke off, lost in prospective
+      ecstasy. &ldquo;And, you see, as Grace Fulmer insists on coming with us&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, I see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, there are the five children&mdash;such a problem,&rdquo; sighed the
+      benefactress. &ldquo;If you were at a loose end, you know, dear, while Nick&rsquo;s
+      away with his friends, I could really make it worth your while....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So awfully good of you, Violet; only I&rsquo;m not, as it happens.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh the relief of being able to say that, gaily, firmly and even
+      truthfully! Take charge of the Fulmer children, indeed! Susy remembered
+      how Nick and she had fled from them that autumn afternoon in New
+      Hampshire. The offer gave her a salutary glimpse of the way in which, as
+      the years passed, and she lost her freshness and novelty, she would more
+      and more be used as a convenience, a stop-gap, writer of notes, runner of
+      errands, nursery governess or companion. She called to mind several
+      elderly women of her acquaintance, pensioners of her own group, who still
+      wore its livery, struck its attitudes and chattered its jargon, but had
+      long since been ruthlessly relegated to these slave-ant offices. Never in
+      the world would she join their numbers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Melrose&rsquo;s face fell, and she looked at Susy with the plaintive
+      bewilderment of the wielder of millions to whom everything that cannot be
+      bought is imperceptible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I can&rsquo;t see why you can&rsquo;t change your plans,&rdquo; she murmured with a
+      soft persistency.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, well, you know&rdquo;&mdash;Susy paused on a slow inward smile&mdash;&ldquo;they&rsquo;re
+      not mine only, as it happens.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Melrose&rsquo;s brow clouded. The unforeseen complication of Mrs. Fulmer&rsquo;s
+      presence on the journey had evidently tried her nerves, and this new
+      obstacle to her arrangements shook her faith in the divine order of
+      things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your plans are not yours only? But surely you won&rsquo;t let Ursula Gillow
+      dictate to you?... There&rsquo;s my jade pendant; the one you said you liked the
+      other day.... The Fulmers won&rsquo;t go with me, you understand, unless they&rsquo;re
+      satisfied about the children; the whole plan will fall through. Susy
+      darling, you were always too unselfish; I hate to see you sacrificed to
+      Ursula.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy&rsquo;s smile lingered. Time was when she might have been glad to add the
+      jade pendant to the collection already enriched by Ellie Vanderlyn&rsquo;s
+      sapphires; more recently, she would have resented the offer as an insult
+      to her newly-found principles. But already the mere fact that she might
+      henceforth, if she chose, be utterly out of reach of such bribes, enabled
+      her to look down on them with tolerance. Oh, the blessed moral freedom
+      that wealth conferred! She recalled Mrs. Fulmer&rsquo;s uncontrollable cry: &ldquo;The
+      most wonderful thing of all is not having to contrive and skimp, and give
+      up something every single minute!&rdquo; Yes; it was only on such terms that one
+      could call one&rsquo;s soul one&rsquo;s own. The sense of it gave Susy the grace to
+      answer amicably: &ldquo;If I could possibly help you out, Violet, I shouldn&rsquo;t
+      want a present to persuade me. And, as you say, there&rsquo;s no reason why I
+      should sacrifice myself to Ursula&mdash;or to anybody else. Only, as it
+      happens&rdquo;&mdash;she paused and took the plunge&mdash;&ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to England
+      because I&rsquo;ve promised to see a friend.&rdquo; That night she wrote to Strefford.
+    </p>
+
+
+<h3>XVI.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">Stretched</span> out under an awning on the deck of the Ibis, Nick Lansing looked
+      up for a moment at the vanishing cliffs of Malta and then plunged again
+      into his book.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had had nearly three weeks of drug-taking on the Ibis. The drugs he had
+      absorbed were of two kinds: visions of fleeing landscapes, looming up from
+      the blue sea to vanish into it again, and visions of study absorbed from
+      the volumes piled up day and night at his elbow. For the first time in
+      months he was in reach of a real library, just the kind of scholarly yet
+      miscellaneous library, that his restless and impatient spirit craved. He
+      was aware that the books he read, like the fugitive scenes on which he
+      gazed, were merely a form of anesthetic: he swallowed them with the
+      careless greed of the sufferer who seeks only to still pain and deaden
+      memory. But they were beginning to produce in him a moral languor that was
+      not disagreeable, that, indeed, compared with the fierce pain of the first
+      days, was almost pleasurable. It was exactly the kind of drug that he
+      needed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is probably no point on which the average man has more definite
+      views than on the uselessness of writing a letter that is hard to write.
+      In the line he had sent to Susy from Genoa Nick had told her that she
+      would hear from him again in a few days; but when the few days had passed,
+      and he began to consider setting himself to the task, he found fifty
+      reasons for postponing it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Had there been any practical questions to write about it would have been
+      different; he could not have borne for twenty-four hours the idea that she
+      was in uncertainty as to money. But that had all been settled long ago.
+      From the first she had had the administering of their modest fortune. On
+      their marriage Nick&rsquo;s own meagre income, paid in, none too regularly, by
+      the agent who had managed for years the dwindling family properties, had
+      been transferred to her: it was the only wedding present he could make.
+      And the wedding cheques had of course all been deposited in her name.
+      There were therefore no &ldquo;business&rdquo; reasons for communicating with her; and
+      when it came to reasons of another order the mere thought of them benumbed
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the first few days he reproached himself for his inertia; then he
+      began to seek reasons for justifying it. After all, for both their sakes a
+      waiting policy might be the wisest he could pursue. He had left Susy
+      because he could not tolerate the conditions on which he had discovered
+      their life together to be based; and he had told her so. What more was
+      there to say?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nothing was changed in their respective situations; if they came together
+      it could be only to resume the same life; and that, as the days went by,
+      seemed to him more and more impossible. He had not yet reached the point
+      of facing a definite separation; but whenever his thoughts travelled back
+      over their past life he recoiled from any attempt to return to it. As long
+      as this state of mind continued there seemed nothing to add to the letter
+      he had already written, except indeed the statement that he was cruising
+      with the Hickses. And he saw no pressing reason for communicating that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To the Hickses he had given no hint of his situation. When Coral Hicks, a
+      fortnight earlier, had picked him up in the broiling streets of Genoa, and
+      carried him off to the Ibis, he had thought only of a cool dinner and
+      perhaps a moonlight sail. Then, in reply to their friendly urging, he had
+      confessed that he had not been well&mdash;had indeed gone off hurriedly
+      for a few days&rsquo; change of air&mdash;and that left him without defence
+      against the immediate proposal that he should take his change of air on
+      the Ibis. They were just off to Corsica and Sardinia, and from there to
+      Sicily: he could rejoin the railway at Naples, and be back at Venice in
+      ten days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ten days of respite&mdash;the temptation was irresistible. And he really
+      liked the kind uncomplicated Hickses. A wholesome honesty and simplicity
+      breathed through all their opulence, as if the rich trappings of their
+      present life still exhaled the fragrance of their native prairies. The
+      mere fact of being with such people was like a purifying bath. When the
+      yacht touched at Naples he agreed since they were so awfully kind&mdash;to
+      go on to Sicily. And when the chief steward, going ashore at Naples for
+      the last time before they got up steam, said: &ldquo;Any letters for the post,
+      sir?&rdquo; he answered, as he had answered at each previous halt: &ldquo;No, thank
+      you: none.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Now they were heading for Rhodes and Crete&mdash;Crete, where he had never
+      been, where he had so often longed to go. In spite of the lateness of the
+      season the weather was still miraculously fine: the short waves danced
+      ahead under a sky without a cloud, and the strong bows of the Ibis hardly
+      swayed as she flew forward over the flying crests.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Only his hosts and their daughter were on the yacht&mdash;of course with
+      Eldorada Tooker and Mr. Beck in attendance. An eminent archaeologist, who
+      was to have joined them at Naples, had telegraphed an excuse at the last
+      moment; and Nick noticed that, while Mrs. Hicks was perpetually
+      apologizing for the great man&rsquo;s absence, Coral merely smiled and said
+      nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As a matter of fact, Mr. and Mrs. Hicks were never as pleasant as when one
+      had them to one&rsquo;s self. In company, Mr. Hicks ran the risk of appearing
+      over-hospitable, and Mrs. Hicks confused dates and names in the desire to
+      embrace all culture in her conversation. But alone with Nick, their old
+      travelling-companion, they shone out in their native simplicity, and Mr.
+      Hicks talked soundly of investments, and Mrs. Hicks recalled her early
+      married days in Apex City, when, on being brought home to her new house in
+      Aeschylus Avenue, her first thought had been: &ldquo;How on earth shall I get
+      all those windows washed?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The loss of Mr. Buttles had been as serious to them as Nick had supposed:
+      Mr. Beck could never hope to replace him. Apart from his mysterious gift
+      of languages, and his almost superhuman faculty for knowing how to address
+      letters to eminent people, and in what terms to conclude them, he had a
+      smattering of archaeology and general culture on which Mrs. Hicks had
+      learned to depend&mdash;her own memory being, alas, so inadequate to the
+      range of her interests.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her daughter might perhaps have helped her; but it was not Miss Hicks&rsquo;s
+      way to mother her parents. She was exceedingly kind to them, but left
+      them, as it were, to bring themselves up as best they could, while she
+      pursued her own course of self-development. A sombre zeal for knowledge
+      filled the mind of this strange girl: she appeared interested only in
+      fresh opportunities of adding to her store of facts. They were illuminated
+      by little imagination and less poetry; but, carefully catalogued and
+      neatly sorted in her large cool brain, they were always as accessible as
+      the volumes in an up-to-date public library.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Nick there was something reposeful in this lucid intellectual
+      curiosity. He wanted above all things to get away from sentiment, from
+      seduction, from the moods and impulses and flashing contradictions that
+      were Susy. Susy was not a great reader: her store of facts was small, and
+      she had grown up among people who dreaded ideas as much as if they had
+      been a contagious disease. But, in the early days especially, when Nick
+      had put a book in her hand, or read a poem to her, her swift intelligence
+      had instantly shed a new light on the subject, and, penetrating to its
+      depths, had extracted from them whatever belonged to her. What a pity that
+      this exquisite insight, this intuitive discrimination, should for the most
+      part have been spent upon reading the thoughts of vulgar people, and
+      extracting a profit from them&mdash;should have been wasted, since her
+      childhood, on all the hideous intricacies of &ldquo;managing&rdquo;!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And visible beauty&mdash;how she cared for that too! He had not guessed
+      it, or rather he had not been sure of it, till the day when, on their way
+      through Paris, he had taken her to the Louvre, and they had stood before
+      the little Crucifixion of Mantegna. He had not been looking at the
+      picture, or watching to see what impression it produced on Susy. His own
+      momentary mood was for Correggio and Fragonard, the laughter of the Music
+      Lesson and the bold pagan joys of the Antiope; and then he had missed her
+      from his side, and when he came to where she stood, forgetting him,
+      forgetting everything, had seen the glare of that tragic sky in her face,
+      her trembling lip, the tears on her lashes. That was Susy....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Closing his book he stole a glance at Coral Hicks&rsquo;s profile, thrown back
+      against the cushions of the deck-chair at his side. There was something
+      harsh and bracing in her blunt primitive build, in the projection of the
+      black eyebrows that nearly met over her thick straight nose, and the faint
+      barely visible black down on her upper lip. Some miracle of will-power,
+      combined with all the artifices that wealth can buy, had turned the fat
+      sallow girl he remembered into this commanding young woman, almost
+      handsome at times indisputably handsome&mdash;in her big authoritative
+      way. Watching the arrogant lines of her profile against the blue sea, he
+      remembered, with a thrill that was sweet to his vanity, how twice&mdash;under
+      the dome of the Scalzi and in the streets of Genoa&mdash;he had seen those
+      same lines soften at his approach, turn womanly, pleading and almost
+      humble. That was Coral....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly she said, without turning toward him: &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve had no letters
+      since you&rsquo;ve been on board.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at her, surprised. &ldquo;No&mdash;thank the Lord!&rdquo; he laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you haven&rsquo;t written one either,&rdquo; she continued in her hard
+      statistical tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he again agreed, with the same laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That means that you really are free&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Free?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He saw the cheek nearest him redden. &ldquo;Really off on a holiday, I mean; not
+      tied down.&rdquo; After a pause he rejoined: &ldquo;No, I&rsquo;m not particularly tied
+      down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And your book?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, my book&mdash;&rdquo; He stopped and considered. He had thrust The Pageant
+      of Alexander into his handbag on the night of his Bight from Venice; but
+      since then he had never looked at it. Too many memories and illusions were
+      pressed between its pages; and he knew just at what page he had felt Ellie
+      Vanderlyn bending over him from behind, caught a whiff of her scent, and
+      heard her breathless &ldquo;I had to thank you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My book&rsquo;s hung up,&rdquo; he said impatiently, annoyed with Miss Hicks&rsquo;s lack
+      of tact. There was a girl who never put out feelers....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; I thought it was,&rdquo; she went on quietly, and he gave her a startled
+      glance. What the devil else did she think, he wondered? He had never
+      supposed her capable of getting far enough out of her own thick carapace
+      of self-sufficiency to penetrate into any one else&rsquo;s feelings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The truth is,&rdquo; he continued, embarrassed, &ldquo;I suppose I dug away at it
+      rather too continuously; that&rsquo;s probably why I felt the need of a change.
+      You see I&rsquo;m only a beginner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She still continued her relentless questioning. &ldquo;But later&mdash;you&rsquo;ll go
+      on with it, of course?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I don&rsquo;t know.&rdquo; He paused, glanced down the glittering deck, and then
+      out across the glittering water. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been dreaming dreams, you see. I
+      rather think I shall have to drop the book altogether, and try to look out
+      for a job that will pay. To indulge in my kind of literature one must
+      first have an assured income.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was instantly annoyed with himself for having spoken. Hitherto in his
+      relations with the Hickses he had carefully avoided the least allusion
+      that might make him feel the heavy hand of their beneficence. But the idle
+      procrastinating weeks had weakened him and he had yielded to the need of
+      putting into words his vague intentions. To do so would perhaps help to
+      make them more definite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To his relief Miss Hicks made no immediate reply; and when she spoke it
+      was in a softer voice and with an unwonted hesitation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It seems a shame that with gifts like yours you shouldn&rsquo;t find some kind
+      of employment that would leave you leisure enough to do your real
+      work....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He shrugged ironically. &ldquo;Yes&mdash;there are a goodish number of us
+      hunting for that particular kind of employment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her tone became more business-like. &ldquo;I know it&rsquo;s hard to find&mdash;almost
+      impossible. But would you take it, I wonder, if it were offered to you&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned her head slightly, and their eyes met. For an instant blank
+      terror loomed upon him; but before he had time to face it she continued,
+      in the same untroubled voice: &ldquo;Mr. Buttles&rsquo;s place, I mean. My parents
+      must absolutely have some one they can count on. You know what an easy
+      place it is.... I think you would find the salary satisfactory.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nick drew a deep breath of relief. For a moment her eyes had looked as
+      they had in the Scalzi&mdash;and he liked the girl too much not to shrink
+      from reawakening that look. But Mr. Buttles&rsquo;s place: why not?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor Buttles!&rdquo; he murmured, to gain time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;you won&rsquo;t find the same reasons as he did for throwing up
+      the job. He was the martyr of his artistic convictions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He glanced at her sideways, wondering. After all she did not know of his
+      meeting with Mr. Buttles in Genoa, nor of the latter&rsquo;s confidences;
+      perhaps she did not even know of Mr. Buttles&rsquo;s hopeless passion. At any
+      rate her face remained calm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not consider it&mdash;at least just for a few months? Till after our
+      expedition to Mesopotamia?&rdquo; she pressed on, a little breathlessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re awfully kind: but I don&rsquo;t know&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stood up with one of her abrupt movements. &ldquo;You needn&rsquo;t, all at once.
+      Take time think it over. Father wanted me to ask you,&rdquo; she appended.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He felt the inadequacy of his response. &ldquo;It tempts me awfully, of course.
+      But I must wait, at any rate&mdash;wait for letters. The fact is I shall
+      have to wire from Rhodes to have them sent. I had chucked everything, even
+      letters, for a few weeks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you are tired,&rdquo; she murmured, giving him a last downward glance as
+      she turned away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From Rhodes Nick Lansing telegraphed to his Paris bank to send his letters
+      to Candia; but when the Ibis reached Candia, and the mail was brought on
+      board, the thick envelope handed to him contained no letter from Susy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Why should it, since he had not yet written to her?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had not written, no: but in sending his address to the bank he knew he
+      had given her the opportunity of reaching him if she wished to. And she
+      had made no sign.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Late that afternoon, when they returned to the yacht from their first
+      expedition, a packet of newspapers lay on the deck-house table. Nick
+      picked up one of the London journals, and his eye ran absently down the
+      list of social events.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He read:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Among the visitors expected next week at Ruan Castle (let for the season
+      to Mr. Frederick J. Gillow of New York) are Prince Altineri of Rome, the
+      Earl of Altringham and Mrs. Nicholas Lansing, who arrived in London last
+      week from Paris.&rdquo; Nick threw down the paper. It was just a month since he
+      had left the Palazzo Vanderlyn and flung himself into the night express
+      for Milan. A whole month&mdash;and Susy had not written. Only a month&mdash;and
+      Susy and Strefford were already together!
+    </p>
+
+
+<h3>XVII.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">Susy</span> had decided to wait for Strefford in London.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The new Lord Altringham was with his family in the north, and though she
+      found a telegram on arriving, saying that he would join her in town the
+      following week, she had still an interval of several days to fill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      London was a desert; the rain fell without ceasing, and alone in the
+      shabby family hotel which, even out of season, was the best she could
+      afford, she sat at last face to face with herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the moment when Violet Melrose had failed to carry out her plan for
+      the Fulmer children her interest in Susy had visibly waned. Often before,
+      in the old days, Susy Branch had felt the same abrupt change of
+      temperature in the manner of the hostess of the moment; and often&mdash;how
+      often&mdash;had yielded, and performed the required service, rather than
+      risk the consequences of estrangement. To that, at least, thank heaven,
+      she need never stoop again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But as she hurriedly packed her trunks at Versailles, scraped together an
+      adequate tip for Mrs. Match, and bade good-bye to Violet (grown suddenly
+      fond and demonstrative as she saw her visitor safely headed for the
+      station)&mdash;as Susy went through the old familiar mummery of the
+      enforced leave-taking, there rose in her so deep a disgust for the life of
+      makeshifts and accommodations, that if at that moment Nick had reappeared
+      and held out his arms to her, she was not sure she would have had the
+      courage to return to them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In her London solitude the thirst for independence grew fiercer.
+      Independence with ease, of course. Oh, her hateful useless love of
+      beauty... the curse it had always been to her, the blessing it might have
+      been if only she had had the material means to gratify and to express it!
+      And instead, it only gave her a morbid loathing of that hideous hotel
+      bedroom drowned in yellow rain-light, of the smell of soot and cabbage
+      through the window, the blistered wall-paper, the dusty wax bouquets under
+      glass globes, and the electric lighting so contrived that as you turned on
+      the feeble globe hanging from the middle of the ceiling the feebler one
+      beside the bed went out!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What a sham world she and Nick had lived in during their few months
+      together! What right had either of them to those exquisite settings of the
+      life of leisure: the long white house hidden in camellias and cypresses
+      above the lake, or the great rooms on the Giudecca with the shimmer of the
+      canal always playing over their frescoed ceilings! Yet she had come to
+      imagine that these places really belonged to them, that they would always
+      go on living, fondly and irreproachably, in the frame of other people&rsquo;s
+      wealth.... That, again, was the curse of her love of beauty, the way she
+      always took to it as if it belonged to her!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, the awakening was bound to come, and it was perhaps better that it
+      should have come so soon. At any rate there was no use in letting her
+      thoughts wander back to that shattered fool&rsquo;s paradise of theirs. Only, as
+      she sat there and reckoned up the days till Strefford arrived, what else
+      in the world was there to think of?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her future and his?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she knew that future by heart already! She had not spent her life
+      among the rich and fashionable without having learned every detail of the
+      trappings of a rich and fashionable marriage. She had calculated long ago
+      just how many dinner-dresses, how many tea-gowns and how much lacy
+      lingerie would go to make up the outfit of the future Countess of
+      Altringham. She had even decided to which dressmaker she would go for her
+      chinchilla cloak&mdash;for she meant to have one, and down to her feet, and
+      softer and more voluminous and more extravagantly sumptuous than Violet&rsquo;s
+      or Ursula&rsquo;s... not to speak of silver foxes and sables... nor yet of the
+      Altringham jewels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She knew all this by heart; had always known it. It all belonged to the
+      make-up of the life of elegance: there was nothing new about it. What had
+      been new to her was just that short interval with Nick&mdash;a life unreal
+      indeed in its setting, but so real in its essentials: the one reality she
+      had ever known. As she looked back on it she saw how much it had given her
+      besides the golden flush of her happiness, the sudden flowering of
+      sensuous joy in heart and body. Yes&mdash;there had been the flowering
+      too, in pain like birth-pangs, of something graver, stronger, fuller of
+      future power, something she had hardly heeded in her first light rapture,
+      but that always came back and possessed her stilled soul when the rapture
+      sank: the deep disquieting sense of something that Nick and love had
+      taught her, but that reached out even beyond love and beyond Nick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her nerves were racked by the ceaseless swish, swish of the rain on the
+      dirty panes and the smell of cabbage and coal that came in under the door
+      when she shut the window. This nauseating foretaste of the luncheon she
+      must presently go down to was more than she could bear. It brought with it
+      a vision of the dank coffee-room below, the sooty Smyrna rug, the rain on
+      the sky-light, the listless waitresses handing about food that tasted as
+      if it had been rained on too. There was really no reason why she should
+      let such material miseries add to her depression....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She sprang up, put on her hat and jacket, and calling for a taxi drove to
+      the London branch of the Nouveau Luxe hotel. It was just one o&rsquo;clock and
+      she was sure to pick up a luncheon, for though London was empty that great
+      establishment was not. It never was. Along those sultry velvet-carpeted
+      halls, in that great flowered and scented dining-room, there was always a
+      come-and-go of rich aimless people, the busy people who, having nothing to
+      do, perpetually pursue their inexorable task from one end of the earth to
+      the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh, the monotony of those faces&mdash;the faces one always knew, whether
+      one knew the people they belonged to or not! A fresh disgust seized her at
+      the sight of them: she wavered, and then turned and fled. But on the
+      threshold a still more familiar figure met her: that of a lady in
+      exaggerated pearls and sables, descending from an exaggerated motor, like
+      the motors in magazine advertisements, the huge arks in which jewelled
+      beauties and slender youths pause to gaze at snowpeaks from an Alpine
+      summit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Ursula Gillow&mdash;dear old Ursula, on her way to Scotland&mdash;and
+      she and Susy fell on each other&rsquo;s necks. It appeared that Ursula, detained
+      till the next evening by a dress-maker&rsquo;s delay, was also out of a job and
+      killing time, and the two were soon smiling at each other over the
+      exquisite preliminaries of a luncheon which the head-waiter had
+      authoritatively asked Mrs. Gillow to &ldquo;leave to him, as usual.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ursula was in a good humour. It did not often happen; but when it did her
+      benevolence knew no bounds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Like Mrs. Melrose, like all her tribe in fact, she was too much absorbed
+      in her own affairs to give more than a passing thought to any one else&rsquo;s;
+      but she was delighted at the meeting with Susy, as her wandering kind
+      always were when they ran across fellow-wanderers, unless the meeting
+      happened to interfere with choicer pleasures. Not to be alone was the
+      urgent thing; and Ursula, who had been forty-eight hours alone in London,
+      at once exacted from her friend a promise that they should spend the rest
+      of the day together. But once the bargain struck her mind turned again to
+      her own affairs, and she poured out her confidences to Susy over a
+      succession of dishes that manifested the head-waiter&rsquo;s understanding of
+      the case.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ursula&rsquo;s confidences were always the same, though they were usually about
+      a different person. She demolished and rebuilt her sentimental life with
+      the same frequency and impetuosity as that with which she changed her
+      dress-makers, did over her drawing-rooms, ordered new motors, altered the
+      mounting of her jewels, and generally renewed the setting of her life.
+      Susy knew in advance what the tale would be; but to listen to it over
+      perfect coffee, an amber-scented cigarette at her lips, was pleasanter
+      than consuming cold mutton alone in a mouldy coffee-room. The contrast was
+      so soothing that she even began to take a languid interest in her friend&rsquo;s
+      narrative.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After luncheon they got into the motor together and began a systematic
+      round of the West End shops: furriers, jewellers and dealers in old
+      furniture. Nothing could be more unlike Violet Melrose&rsquo;s long hesitating
+      sessions before the things she thought she wanted till the moment came to
+      decide. Ursula pounced on silver foxes and old lacquer as promptly and
+      decisively as on the objects of her surplus sentimentality: she knew at
+      once what she wanted, and valued it more after it was hers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now&mdash;I wonder if you couldn&rsquo;t help me choose a grand piano?&rdquo; she
+      suggested, as the last antiquarian bowed them out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A piano?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes: for Ruan. I&rsquo;m sending one down for Grace Fulmer. She&rsquo;s coming to
+      stay... did I tell you? I want people to hear her. I want her to get
+      engagements in London. My dear, she&rsquo;s a Genius.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A Genius&mdash;Grace!&rdquo; Susy gasped. &ldquo;I thought it was Nat....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nat&mdash;Nat Fulmer?&rdquo; Ursula laughed derisively. &ldquo;Ah, of course&mdash;you&rsquo;ve
+      been staying with that silly Violet! The poor thing is off her head about
+      Nat&mdash;it&rsquo;s really pitiful. Of course he has talent: I saw that long
+      before Violet had ever heard of him. Why, on the opening day of the
+      American Artists&rsquo; exhibition, last winter, I stopped short before his
+      &lsquo;Spring Snow-Storm&rsquo; (which nobody else had noticed till that moment), and
+      said to the Prince, who was with me: &lsquo;The man has talent.&rsquo; But genius&mdash;why,
+      it&rsquo;s his wife who has genius! Have you never heard Grace play the violin?
+      Poor Violet, as usual, is off on the wrong tack. I&rsquo;ve given Fulmer my
+      garden-house to do&mdash;no doubt Violet told you&mdash;because I wanted
+      to help him. But Grace is my discovery, and I&rsquo;m determined to make her
+      known, and to have every one understand that she is the genius of the two.
+      I&rsquo;ve told her she simply must come to Ruan, and bring the best
+      accompanyist she can find. You know poor Nerone is dreadfully bored by
+      sport, though of course he goes out with the guns. And if one didn&rsquo;t have
+      a little art in the evening.... Oh, Susy, do you mean to tell me you don&rsquo;t
+      know how to choose a piano? I thought you were so fond of music!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am fond of it; but without knowing anything about it&mdash;in the way
+      we&rsquo;re all of us fond of the worthwhile things in our stupid set,&rdquo; she
+      added to herself&mdash;since it was obviously useless to impart such
+      reflections to Ursula.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But are you sure Grace is coming?&rdquo; she questioned aloud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite sure. Why shouldn&rsquo;t she? I wired to her yesterday. I&rsquo;m giving her a
+      thousand dollars and all her expenses.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not till they were having tea in a Piccadilly tea-room that Mrs.
+      Gillow began to manifest some interest in her companion&rsquo;s plans. The
+      thought of losing Susy became suddenly intolerable to her. The Prince, who
+      did not see why he should be expected to linger in London out of season,
+      was already at Ruan, and Ursula could not face the evening and the whole
+      of the next day by herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what are you doing in town, darling, I don&rsquo;t remember if I&rsquo;ve asked
+      you,&rdquo; she said, resting her firm elbows on the tea-table while she took a
+      light from Susy&rsquo;s cigarette.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy hesitated. She had foreseen that the time must soon come when she
+      should have to give some account of herself; and why should she not begin
+      by telling Ursula?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But telling her what?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her silence appeared to strike Mrs. Gillow as a reproach, and she
+      continued with compunction: &ldquo;And Nick? Nick&rsquo;s with you? How is he, I
+      thought you and he still were in Venice with Ellie Vanderlyn.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We were, for a few weeks.&rdquo; She steadied her voice. &ldquo;It was delightful.
+      But now we&rsquo;re both on our own again&mdash;for a while.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Gillow scrutinized her more searchingly. &ldquo;Oh, you&rsquo;re alone here,
+      then; quite alone?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes: Nick&rsquo;s cruising with some friends in the Mediterranean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ursula&rsquo;s shallow gaze deepened singularly. &ldquo;But, Susy darling, then if
+      you&rsquo;re alone&mdash;and out of a job, just for the moment?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy smiled. &ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;m not sure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, but if you are, darling, and you would come to Ruan! I know Fred
+      asked you didn&rsquo;t he? And he told me that both you and Nick had refused. He
+      was awfully huffed at your not coming; but I suppose that was because Nick
+      had other plans. We couldn&rsquo;t have him now, because there&rsquo;s no room for
+      another gun; but since he&rsquo;s not here, and you&rsquo;re free, why you know,
+      dearest, don&rsquo;t you, how we&rsquo;d love to have you? Fred would be too glad&mdash;too
+      outrageously glad&mdash;but you don&rsquo;t much mind Fred&rsquo;s love-making, do
+      you? And you&rsquo;d be such a help to me&mdash;if that&rsquo;s any argument! With
+      that big house full of men, and people flocking over every night to dine,
+      and Fred caring only for sport, and Nerone simply loathing it and
+      ridiculing it, and not a minute to myself to try to keep him in a good
+      humour.... Oh, Susy darling, don&rsquo;t say no, but let me telephone at once
+      for a place in the train to-morrow night!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy leaned back, letting the ash lengthen on her cigarette. How familiar,
+      how hatefully familiar, was that old appeal! Ursula felt the pressing need
+      of someone to flirt with Fred for a few weeks... and here was the very
+      person she needed. Susy shivered at the thought. She had never really
+      meant to go to Ruan. She had simply used the moor as a pretext when Violet
+      Melrose had gently put her out of doors. Rather than do what Ursula asked
+      she would borrow a few hundred pounds of Strefford, as he had suggested,
+      and then look about for some temporary occupation until&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Until she became Lady Altringham? Well, perhaps. At any rate, she was not
+      going back to slave for Ursula.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She shook her head with a faint smile. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m so sorry, Ursula: of course I
+      want awfully to oblige you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Gillow&rsquo;s gaze grew reproachful. &ldquo;I should have supposed you would,&rdquo;
+       she murmured. Susy, meeting her eyes, looked into them down a long vista
+      of favours bestowed, and perceived that Ursula was not the woman to forget
+      on which side the obligation lay between them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy hesitated: she remembered the weeks of ecstasy she had owed to the
+      Gillows&rsquo; wedding cheque, and it hurt her to appear ungrateful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I could, Ursula... but really... I&rsquo;m not free at the moment.&rdquo; She
+      paused, and then took an abrupt decision. &ldquo;The fact is, I&rsquo;m waiting here
+      to see Strefford.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Strefford&rsquo; Lord Altringham?&rdquo; Ursula stared. &ldquo;Ah, yes-I remember. You and
+      he used to be great friends, didn&rsquo;t you?&rdquo; Her roving attention
+      deepened.... But if Susy were waiting to see Lord Altringham&mdash;one of
+      the richest men in England! Suddenly Ursula opened her gold-meshed bag and
+      snatched a miniature diary from it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But wait a moment&mdash;yes, it is next week! I knew it was next week
+      he&rsquo;s coming to Ruan! But, you darling, that makes everything all right.
+      You&rsquo;ll send him a wire at once, and come with me to-morrow, and meet him
+      there instead of in this nasty sloppy desert.... Oh, Susy, if you knew how
+      hard life is for me in Scotland between the Prince and Fred you couldn&rsquo;t
+      possibly say no!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy still wavered; but, after all, if Strefford were really bound for
+      Ruan, why not see him there, agreeably and at leisure, instead of spending
+      a dreary day with him in roaming the wet London streets, or screaming at
+      him through the rattle of a restaurant orchestra? She knew he would not be
+      likely to postpone his visit to Ruan in order to linger in London with
+      her: such concessions had never been his way, and were less than ever
+      likely to be, now that he could do so thoroughly and completely as he
+      pleased.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the first time she fully understood how different his destiny had
+      become. Now of course all his days and hours were mapped out in advance:
+      invitations assailed him, opportunities pressed on him, he had only to
+      choose.... And the women! She had never before thought of the women. All
+      the girls in England would be wanting to marry him, not to mention her own
+      enterprising compatriots. And there were the married women, who were even
+      more to be feared. Streff might, for the time, escape marriage; though she
+      could guess the power of persuasion, family pressure, all the converging
+      traditional influences he had so often ridiculed, yet, as she knew, had
+      never completely thrown off.... Yes, those quiet invisible women at
+      Altringham&mdash;his uncle&rsquo;s widow, his mother, the spinster sisters&mdash;it
+      was not impossible that, with tact and patience&mdash;and the stupidest
+      women could be tactful and patient on such occasions&mdash;they might
+      eventually persuade him that it was his duty, they might put just the
+      right young loveliness in his way.... But meanwhile, now, at once, there
+      were the married women. Ah, they wouldn&rsquo;t wait, they were doubtless laying
+      their traps already! Susy shivered at the thought. She knew too much about
+      the way the trick was done, had followed, too often, all the sinuosities
+      of such approaches. Not that they were very sinuous nowadays: more often
+      there was just a swoop and a pounce when the time came; but she knew all
+      the arts and the wiles that led up to it. She knew them, oh, how she knew
+      them&mdash;though with Streff, thank heaven, she had never been called
+      upon to exercise them! His love was there for the asking: would she not be
+      a fool to refuse it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps; though on that point her mind still wavered. But at any rate she
+      saw that, decidedly, it would be better to yield to Ursula&rsquo;s pressure;
+      better to meet him at Ruan, in a congenial setting, where she would have
+      time to get her bearings, observe what dangers threatened him, and make up
+      her mind whether, after all, it was to be her mission to save him from the
+      other women.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, if you like, then, Ursula....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you angel, you! I&rsquo;m so glad! We&rsquo;ll go to the nearest post office, and
+      send off the wire ourselves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As they got into the motor Mrs. Gillow seized Susy&rsquo;s arm with a pleading
+      pressure. &ldquo;And you will let Fred make love to you a little, won&rsquo;t you,
+      darling?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+
+
+<h3>XVIII.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<span class="smcap">But</span> I can&rsquo;t think,&rdquo; said Ellie Vanderlyn earnestly, &ldquo;why you don&rsquo;t
+      announce your engagement before waiting for your divorce. People are
+      beginning to do it, I assure you&mdash;it&rsquo;s so much safer!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Vanderlyn, on the way back from St. Moritz to England, had paused in
+      Paris to renew the depleted wardrobe which, only two months earlier, had
+      filled so many trunks to bursting. Other ladies, flocking there from all
+      points of the globe for the same purpose, disputed with her the Louis XVI
+      suites of the Nouveau Luxe, the pink-candled tables in the restaurant, the
+      hours for trying-on at the dressmakers&rsquo;; and just because they were so
+      many, and all feverishly fighting to get the same things at the same time,
+      they were all excited, happy and at ease. It was the most momentous period
+      of the year: the height of the &ldquo;dress makers&rsquo; season.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Vanderlyn had run across Susy Lansing at one of the Rue de la Paix
+      openings, where rows of ladies wan with heat and emotion sat for hours in
+      rapt attention while spectral apparitions in incredible raiment tottered
+      endlessly past them on aching feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Distracted from the regal splendours of a chinchilla cloak by the sense
+      that another lady was also examining it, Mrs. Vanderlyn turned in surprise
+      at sight of Susy, whose head was critically bent above the fur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Susy! I&rsquo;d no idea you were here! I saw in the papers that you were with
+      the Gillows.&rdquo; The customary embraces followed; then Mrs. Vanderlyn, her
+      eyes pursuing the matchless cloak as it disappeared down a vista of
+      receding mannequins, interrogated sharply: &ldquo;Are you shopping for Ursula?
+      If you mean to order that cloak for her I&rsquo;d rather know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy smiled, and paused a moment before answering. During the pause she
+      took in all the exquisite details of Ellie Vanderlyn&rsquo;s perpetually
+      youthful person, from the plumed crown of her head to the perfect arch of
+      her patent-leather shoes. At last she said quietly: &ldquo;No&mdash;to-day I&rsquo;m
+      shopping for myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yourself? Yourself?&rdquo; Mrs. Vanderlyn echoed with a stare of incredulity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; just for a change,&rdquo; Susy serenely acknowledged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But the cloak&mdash;I meant the chinchilla cloak... the one with the
+      ermine lining....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; it is awfully good, isn&rsquo;t it? But I mean to look elsewhere before I
+      decide.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ah, how often she had heard her friends use that phrase; and how amusing
+      it was, now, to see Ellie&rsquo;s amazement as she heard it tossed off in her
+      own tone of contemptuous satiety! Susy was becoming more and more
+      dependent on such diversions; without them her days, crowded as they were,
+      would nevertheless have dragged by heavily. But it still amused her to go
+      to the big dressmakers&rsquo;, watch the mannequins sweep by, and be seen by her
+      friends superciliously examining all the most expensive dresses in the
+      procession. She knew the rumour was abroad that she and Nick were to be
+      divorced, and that Lord Altringham was &ldquo;devoted&rdquo; to her. She neither
+      confirmed nor denied the report: she just let herself be luxuriously
+      carried forward on its easy tide. But although it was now three months
+      since Nick had left the Palazzo Vanderlyn she had not yet written to him&mdash;nor
+      he to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile, in spite of all that she packed into them, the days passed more
+      and more slowly, and the excitements she had counted on no longer excited
+      her. Strefford was hers: she knew that he would marry her as soon as she
+      was free. They had been together at Ruan for ten days, and after that she
+      had motored south with him, stopping on the way to see Altringham, from
+      which, at the moment, his mourning relatives were absent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At Altringham they had parted; and after one or two more visits in England
+      she had come back to Paris, where he was now about to join her. After her
+      few hours at Altringham she had understood that he would wait for her as
+      long as was necessary: the fear of the &ldquo;other women&rdquo; had ceased to trouble
+      her. But, perhaps for that very reason, the future seemed less exciting
+      than she had expected. Sometimes she thought it was the sight of that
+      great house which had overwhelmed her: it was too vast, too venerable, too
+      like a huge monument built of ancient territorial traditions and
+      obligations. Perhaps it had been lived in for too long by too many
+      serious-minded and conscientious women: somehow she could not picture it
+      invaded by bridge and debts and adultery. And yet that was what would have
+      to be, of course... she could hardly picture either Strefford or herself
+      continuing there the life of heavy county responsibilities, dull parties,
+      laborious duties, weekly church-going, and presiding over local
+      committees.... What a pity they couldn&rsquo;t sell it and have a little house
+      on the Thames!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless she was not sorry to let it be known that Altringham was hers
+      when she chose to take it. At times she wondered whether Nick knew...
+      whether rumours had reached him. If they had, he had only his own letter
+      to thank for it. He had told her what course to pursue; and she was
+      pursuing it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment the meeting with Ellie Vanderlyn had been a shock to her; she
+      had hoped never to see Ellie again. But now that they were actually face
+      to face Susy perceived how dulled her sensibilities were. In a few moments
+      she had grown used to Ellie, as she was growing used to everybody and to
+      everything in the old life she had returned to. What was the use of making
+      such a fuss about things? She and Mrs. Vanderlyn left the dress-maker&rsquo;s
+      together, and after an absorbing session at a new milliner&rsquo;s were now
+      taking tea in Ellie&rsquo;s drawing-room at the Nouveau Luxe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ellie, with her spoiled child&rsquo;s persistency, had come back to the question
+      of the chinchilla cloak. It was the only one she had seen that she fancied
+      in the very least, and as she hadn&rsquo;t a decent fur garment left to her name
+      she was naturally in somewhat of a hurry... but, of course, if Susy had
+      been choosing that model for a friend....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy, leaning back against her cushions, examined through half-closed lids
+      Mrs. Vanderlyn&rsquo;s small delicately-restored countenance, which wore the
+      same expression of childish eagerness as when she discoursed of the young
+      Davenant of the moment. Once again Susy remarked that, in Ellie&rsquo;s agitated
+      existence, every interest appeared to be on exactly the same plane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The poor shivering dear,&rdquo; she answered laughing, &ldquo;of course it shall have
+      its nice warm winter cloak, and I&rsquo;ll choose another one instead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you darling, you! If you would! Of course, whoever you were ordering
+      it for need never know....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you can&rsquo;t comfort yourself with that, I&rsquo;m afraid. I&rsquo;ve already told
+      you that I was ordering it for myself.&rdquo; Susy paused to savour to the full
+      Ellie&rsquo;s look of blank bewilderment; then her amusement was checked by an
+      indefinable change in her friend&rsquo;s expression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, dearest&mdash;seriously? I didn&rsquo;t know there was someone....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy flushed to the forehead. A horror of humiliation overwhelmed her.
+      That Ellie should dare to think that of her&mdash;that anyone should dare
+      to!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Someone buying chinchilla cloaks for me? Thanks!&rdquo; she flared out. &ldquo;I
+      suppose I ought to be glad that the idea didn&rsquo;t immediately occur to you.
+      At least there was a decent interval of doubt....&rdquo; She stood up, laughing
+      again, and began to wander about the room. In the mirror above the mantel
+      she caught sight of her flushed angry face, and of Mrs. Vanderlyn&rsquo;s
+      disconcerted stare. She turned toward her friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose everybody else will think it if you do; so perhaps I&rsquo;d better
+      explain.&rdquo; She paused, and drew a quick breath. &ldquo;Nick and I mean to part&mdash;have
+      parted, in fact. He&rsquo;s decided that the whole thing was a mistake. He will
+      probably; marry again soon&mdash;and so shall I.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She flung the avowal out breathlessly, in her nervous dread of letting
+      Ellie Vanderlyn think for an instant longer that any other explanation was
+      conceivable. She had not meant to be so explicit; but once the words were
+      spoken she was not altogether sorry. Of course people would soon begin to
+      wonder why she was again straying about the world alone; and since it was
+      by Nick&rsquo;s choice, why should she not say so? Remembering the burning
+      anguish of those last hours in Venice she asked herself what possible
+      consideration she owed to the man who had so humbled her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ellie Vanderlyn glanced at her in astonishment. &ldquo;You? You and Nick&mdash;are
+      going to part?&rdquo; A light appeared to dawn on her. &ldquo;Ah&mdash;then that&rsquo;s why
+      he sent me back my pin, I suppose?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your pin?&rdquo; Susy wondered, not at once remembering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The poor little scarf-pin I gave him before I left Venice. He sent it
+      back almost at once, with the oddest note&mdash;just: &lsquo;I haven&rsquo;t earned
+      it, really.&rsquo; I couldn&rsquo;t think why he didn&rsquo;t care for the pin. But, now I
+      suppose it was because you and he had quarrelled; though really, even so,
+      I can&rsquo;t see why he should bear me a grudge....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy&rsquo;s quick blood surged up. Nick had sent back the pin&mdash;the fatal pin!
+      And she, Susy, had kept the bracelet&mdash;locked it up out of sight,
+      shrunk away from the little packet whenever her hand touched it in packing
+      or unpacking&mdash;but never thought of returning it, no, not once! Which
+      of the two, she wondered, had been right? Was it not an indirect slight to
+      her that Nick should fling back the gift to poor uncomprehending Ellie? Or
+      was it not rather another proof of his finer moral sensitiveness!... And
+      how could one tell, in their bewildering world, &ldquo;It was not because we&rsquo;ve
+      quarrelled; we haven&rsquo;t quarrelled,&rdquo; she said slowly, moved by the sudden
+      desire to defend her privacy and Nick&rsquo;s, to screen from every eye their
+      last bitter hour together. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve simply decided that our experiment was
+      impossible&mdash;for two paupers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, well&mdash;of course we all felt that at the time. And now somebody
+      else wants to marry you! And it&rsquo;s your trousseau you were choosing that
+      cloak for?&rdquo; Ellie cried in incredulous rapture; then she flung her arms
+      about Susy&rsquo;s shrinking shoulders. &ldquo;You lucky lucky girl! You clever clever
+      darling! But who on earth can he be?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And it was then that Susy, for the first time, had pronounced the name of
+      Lord Altringham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Streff&mdash;Streff? Our dear old Streff, You mean to say he wants to
+      marry you?&rdquo; As the news took possession of her mind Ellie became
+      dithyrambic. &ldquo;But, my dearest, what a miracle of luck! Of course I always
+      knew he was awfully gone on you: Fred Davenant used to say so, I
+      remember... and even Nelson, who&rsquo;s so stupid about such things, noticed it
+      in Venice.... But then it was so different. No one could possibly have
+      thought of marrying him then; whereas now of course every woman is trying
+      for him. Oh, Susy, whatever you do, don&rsquo;t miss your chance! You can&rsquo;t
+      conceive of the wicked plotting and intriguing there will be to get him&mdash;on
+      all sides, and even where one least suspects it. You don&rsquo;t know what
+      horrors women will do&mdash;and even girls!&rdquo; A shudder ran through her at the
+      thought, and she caught Susy&rsquo;s wrists in vehement fingers. &ldquo;But I can&rsquo;t
+      think, my dear, why you don&rsquo;t announce your engagement at once. People are
+      beginning to do it, I assure you&mdash;it&rsquo;s so much safer!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy looked at her, wondering. Not a word of sympathy for the ruin of her
+      brief bliss, not even a gleam of curiosity as to its cause! No doubt Ellie
+      Vanderlyn, like all Susy&rsquo;s other friends, had long since &ldquo;discounted&rdquo; the
+      brevity of her dream, and perhaps planned a sequel to it before she
+      herself had seen the glory fading. She and Nick had spent the greater part
+      of their few weeks together under Ellie Vanderlyn&rsquo;s roof; but to Ellie,
+      obviously, the fact meant no more than her own escapade, at the same
+      moment, with young Davenant&rsquo;s supplanter&mdash;the &ldquo;bounder&rdquo; whom
+      Strefford had never named. Her one thought for her friend was that Susy
+      should at last secure her prize&mdash;her incredible prize. And therein at
+      any rate Ellie showed the kind of cold disinterestedness that raised her
+      above the smiling perfidy of the majority of her kind. At least her advice
+      was sincere; and perhaps it was wise. Why should Susy not let every one
+      know that she meant to marry Strefford as soon as the &ldquo;formalities&rdquo; were
+      fulfilled?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She did not immediately answer Mrs. Vanderlyn&rsquo;s question; and the latter,
+      repeating it, added impatiently: &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand you; if Nick agrees&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, he agrees,&rdquo; said Susy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then what more do you want! Oh, Susy, if you&rsquo;d only follow my example!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your example?&rdquo; Susy paused, weighed the word, was struck by something
+      embarrassed, arch yet half-apologetic in her friend&rsquo;s expression. &ldquo;Your
+      example?&rdquo; she repeated. &ldquo;Why, Ellie, what on earth do you mean? Not that
+      you&rsquo;re going to part from poor Nelson?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Vanderlyn met her reproachful gaze with a crystalline glance. &ldquo;I
+      don&rsquo;t want to, heaven knows&mdash;poor dear Nelson! I assure you I simply
+      hate it. He&rsquo;s always such an angel to Clarissa... and then we&rsquo;re used to
+      each other. But what in the world am I to do? Algie&rsquo;s so rich, so
+      appallingly rich, that I have to be perpetually on the watch to keep other
+      women away from him&mdash;and it&rsquo;s too exhausting....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Algie?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Vanderlyn&rsquo;s lovely eyebrows rose. &ldquo;Algie: Algie Bockheimer. Didn&rsquo;t
+      you know, I think he said you&rsquo;ve dined with his parents. Nobody else in
+      the world is as rich as the Bockheimers; and Algie&rsquo;s their only child.
+      Yes, it was with him... with him I was so dreadfully happy last spring...
+      and now I&rsquo;m in mortal terror of losing him. And I do assure you there&rsquo;s no
+      other way of keeping them, when they&rsquo;re as hideously rich as that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy rose to her feet. A little shudder ran over her. She remembered, now,
+      having seen Algie Bockheimer at one of his parents&rsquo; first entertainments,
+      in their newly-inaugurated marble halls in Fifth Avenue. She recalled his
+      too faultless clothes and his small glossy furtive countenance. She looked
+      at Ellie Vanderlyn with sudden scorn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think you&rsquo;re abominable,&rdquo; she exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other&rsquo;s perfect little face collapsed. &ldquo;A-bo-minable? A-bo-mi-nable?
+      Susy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes... with Nelson... and Clarissa... and your past together... and all
+      the money you can possibly want... and that man! Abominable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ellie stood up trembling: she was not used to scenes, and they disarranged
+      her thoughts as much as her complexion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re very cruel, Susy&mdash;so cruel and dreadful that I hardly know
+      how to answer you,&rdquo; she stammered. &ldquo;But you simply don&rsquo;t know what you&rsquo;re
+      talking about. As if anybody ever had all the money they wanted!&rdquo; She
+      wiped her dark-rimmed eyes with a cautious handkerchief, glanced at
+      herself in the mirror, and added magnanimously: &ldquo;But I shall try to forget
+      what you&rsquo;ve said.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+
+
+<h3>XIX.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">Just</span> such a revolt as she had felt as a girl, such a disgusted recoil from
+      the standards and ideals of everybody about her as had flung her into her
+      mad marriage with Nick, now flamed in Susy Lansing&rsquo;s bosom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How could she ever go back into that world again? How echo its appraisals
+      of life and bow down to its judgments? Alas, it was only by marrying
+      according to its standards that she could escape such subjection. Perhaps
+      the same thought had actuated Nick: perhaps he had understood sooner than
+      she that to attain moral freedom they must both be above material cares.
+      Perhaps...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her talk with Ellie Vanderlyn had left Susy so oppressed and humiliated
+      that she almost shrank from her meeting with Altringham the next day. She
+      knew that he was coming to Paris for his final answer; he would wait as
+      long as was necessary if only she would consent to take immediate steps
+      for a divorce. She was staying at a modest hotel in the Faubourg St.
+      Germain, and had once more refused his suggestion that they should lunch
+      at the Nouveau Luxe, or at some fashionable restaurant of the Boulevards.
+      As before, she insisted on going to an out-of-the-way place near the
+      Luxembourg, where the prices were moderate enough for her own purse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t understand,&rdquo; Strefford objected, as they turned from her hotel
+      door toward this obscure retreat, &ldquo;why you insist on giving me bad food,
+      and depriving me of the satisfaction of being seen with you. Why must we
+      be so dreadfully clandestine? Don&rsquo;t people know by this time that we&rsquo;re to
+      be married?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy winced a little: she wondered if the word would always sound so
+      unnatural on his lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she said, with a laugh, &ldquo;they simply think, for the present, that
+      you&rsquo;re giving me pearls and chinchilla cloaks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He wrinkled his brows good-humouredly. &ldquo;Well, so I would, with joy&mdash;at
+      this particular minute. Don&rsquo;t you think perhaps you&rsquo;d better take
+      advantage of it? I don&rsquo;t wish to insist&mdash;but I foresee that I&rsquo;m much
+      too rich not to become stingy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She gave a slight shrug. &ldquo;At present there&rsquo;s nothing I loathe more than
+      pearls and chinchilla, or anything else in the world that&rsquo;s expensive and
+      enviable....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly she broke off, colouring with the consciousness that she had said
+      exactly the kind of thing that all the women who were trying for him
+      (except the very cleverest) would be sure to say; and that he would
+      certainly suspect her of attempting the conventional comedy of
+      disinterestedness, than which nothing was less likely to deceive or to
+      flatter him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His twinkling eyes played curiously over her face, and she went on,
+      meeting them with a smile: &ldquo;But don&rsquo;t imagine, all the same, that if I
+      should... decide... it would be altogether for your beaux yeux....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He laughed, she thought, rather drily. &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t suppose
+      that&rsquo;s ever likely to happen to me again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Streff&mdash;&rdquo; she faltered with compunction. It was odd&mdash;once upon a
+      time she had known exactly what to say to the man of the moment, whoever
+      he was, and whatever kind of talk he required; she had even, in the
+      difficult days before her marriage, reeled off glibly enough the sort of
+      lime-light sentimentality that plunged poor Fred Gillow into such
+      speechless beatitude. But since then she had spoken the language of real
+      love, looked with its eyes, embraced with its hands; and now the other
+      trumpery art had failed her, and she was conscious of bungling and groping
+      like a beginner under Strefford&rsquo;s ironic scrutiny.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had reached their obscure destination and he opened the door and
+      glanced in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s jammed&mdash;not a table. And stifling! Where shall we go? Perhaps
+      they could give us a room to ourselves&mdash;&rdquo; he suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She assented, and they were led up a cork-screw staircase to a
+      squat-ceilinged closet lit by the arched top of a high window, the lower
+      panes of which served for the floor below. Strefford opened the window,
+      and Susy, throwing her cloak on the divan, leaned on the balcony while he
+      ordered luncheon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the whole she was glad they were to be alone. Just because she felt so
+      sure of Strefford it seemed ungenerous to keep him longer in suspense. The
+      moment had come when they must have a decisive talk, and in the crowded
+      rooms below it would have been impossible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford, when the waiter had brought the first course and left them to
+      themselves, made no effort to revert to personal matters. He turned
+      instead to the topic always most congenial to him: the humours and ironies
+      of the human comedy, as presented by his own particular group. His
+      malicious commentary on life had always amused Susy because of the shrewd
+      flashes of philosophy he shed on the social antics they had so often
+      watched together. He was in fact the one person she knew (excepting Nick)
+      who was in the show and yet outside of it; and she was surprised, as the
+      talk proceeded, to find herself so little interested in his scraps of
+      gossip, and so little amused by his comments on them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With an inward shrug of discouragement she said to herself that probably
+      nothing would ever really amuse her again; then, as she listened, she
+      began to understand that her disappointment arose from the fact that
+      Strefford, in reality, could not live without these people whom he saw
+      through and satirized, and that the rather commonplace scandals he
+      narrated interested him as much as his own racy considerations on them;
+      and she was filled with terror at the thought that the inmost core of the
+      richly-decorated life of the Countess of Altringham would be just as poor
+      and low-ceilinged a place as the little room in which he and she now sat,
+      elbow to elbow yet so unapproachably apart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If Strefford could not live without these people, neither could she and
+      Nick; but for reasons how different! And if his opportunities had been
+      theirs, what a world they would have created for themselves! Such
+      imaginings were vain, and she shrank back from them into the present.
+      After all, as Lady Altringham she would have the power to create that
+      world which she and Nick had dreamed... only she must create it alone.
+      Well, that was probably the law of things. All human happiness was thus
+      conditioned and circumscribed, and hers, no doubt, must always be of the
+      lonely kind, since material things did not suffice for it, even though it
+      depended on them as Grace Fulmer&rsquo;s, for instance, never had. Yet even
+      Grace Fulmer had succumbed to Ursula&rsquo;s offer, and had arrived at Ruan the
+      day before Susy left, instead of going to Spain with her husband and
+      Violet Melrose. But then Grace was making the sacrifice for her children,
+      and somehow one had the feeling that in giving up her liberty she was not
+      surrendering a tittle of herself. All the difference was there....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How I do bore you!&rdquo; Susy heard Strefford exclaim. She became aware that
+      she had not been listening: stray echoes of names of places and people&mdash;Violet
+      Melrose, Ursula, Prince Altineri, others of their group and persuasion&mdash;had
+      vainly knocked at her barricaded brain; what had he been telling her about
+      them? She turned to him and their eyes met; his were full of a melancholy
+      irony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Susy, old girl, what&rsquo;s wrong?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She pulled herself together. &ldquo;I was thinking, Streff, just now&mdash;when
+      I said I hated the very sound of pearls and chinchilla&mdash;how
+      impossible it was that you should believe me; in fact, what a blunder I&rsquo;d
+      made in saying it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He smiled. &ldquo;Because it was what so many other women might be likely to say
+      so awfully unoriginal, in fact?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She laughed for sheer joy at his insight. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s going to be easier than I
+      imagined,&rdquo; she thought. Aloud she rejoined: &ldquo;Oh, Streff&mdash;how you&rsquo;re
+      always going to find me out! Where on earth shall I ever hide from you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where?&rdquo; He echoed her laugh, laying his hand lightly on hers. &ldquo;In my
+      heart, I&rsquo;m afraid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In spite of the laugh his accent shook her: something about it took all
+      the mockery from his retort, checked on her lips the: &ldquo;What? A valentine!&rdquo;
+       and made her suddenly feel that, if he were afraid, so was she. Yet she
+      was touched also, and wondered half exultingly if any other woman had ever
+      caught that particular deep inflexion of his shrill voice. She had never
+      liked him as much as at that moment; and she said to herself, with an odd
+      sense of detachment, as if she had been rather breathlessly observing the
+      vacillations of someone whom she longed to persuade but dared not: &ldquo;Now&mdash;NOW,
+      if he speaks, I shall say yes!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not speak; but abruptly, and as startlingly to her as if she had
+      just dropped from a sphere whose inhabitants had other methods of
+      expressing their sympathy, he slipped his arm around her and bent his keen
+      ugly melting face to hers....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the lightest touch&mdash;in an instant she was free again. But
+      something within her gasped and resisted long after his arm and his lips
+      were gone, and he was proceeding, with a too-studied ease, to light a
+      cigarette and sweeten his coffee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had kissed her.... Well, naturally: why not? It was not the first time
+      she had been kissed. It was true that one didn&rsquo;t habitually associate
+      Streff with such demonstrations; but she had not that excuse for surprise,
+      for even in Venice she had begun to notice that he looked at her
+      differently, and avoided her hand when he used to seek it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No&mdash;she ought not to have been surprised; nor ought a kiss to have
+      been so disturbing. Such incidents had punctuated the career of Susy
+      Branch: there had been, in particular, in far-off discarded times, Fred
+      Gillow&rsquo;s large but artless embraces. Well&mdash;nothing of that kind had
+      seemed of any more account than the click of a leaf in a woodland walk. It
+      had all been merely epidermal, ephemeral, part of the trivial accepted
+      &ldquo;business&rdquo; of the social comedy. But this kiss of Strefford&rsquo;s was what
+      Nick&rsquo;s had been, under the New Hampshire pines, on the day that had
+      decided their fate. It was a kiss with a future in it: like a ring slipped
+      upon her soul. And now, in the dreadful pause that followed&mdash;while
+      Strefford fidgeted with his cigarette-case and rattled the spoon in his
+      cup, Susy remembered what she had seen through the circle of Nick&rsquo;s kiss:
+      that blue illimitable distance which was at once the landscape at their
+      feet and the future in their souls....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps that was what Strefford&rsquo;s sharply narrowed eyes were seeing now,
+      that same illimitable distance that she had lost forever&mdash;perhaps he
+      was saying to himself, as she had said to herself when her lips left
+      Nick&rsquo;s: &ldquo;Each time we kiss we shall see it all again....&rdquo; Whereas all she
+      herself had felt was the gasping recoil from Strefford&rsquo;s touch, and an
+      intenser vision of the sordid room in which he and she sat, and of their
+      two selves, more distant from each other than if their embrace had been a
+      sudden thrusting apart....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The moment prolonged itself, and they sat numb. How long had it lasted?
+      How long ago was it that she had thought: &ldquo;It&rsquo;s going to be easier than I
+      imagined&rdquo;? Suddenly she felt Strefford&rsquo;s queer smile upon her, and saw in
+      his eyes a look, not of reproach or disappointment, but of deep and
+      anxious comprehension. Instead of being angry or hurt, he had seen, he had
+      understood, he was sorry for her!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Impulsively she slipped her hand into his, and they sat silent for another
+      moment. Then he stood up and took her cloak from the divan. &ldquo;Shall we go
+      now! I&rsquo;ve got cards for the private view of the Reynolds exhibition at the
+      Petit Palais. There are some portraits from Altringham. It might amuse
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the taxi she had time, through their light rattle of talk, to readjust
+      herself and drop back into her usual feeling of friendly ease with him. He
+      had been extraordinarily considerate, for anyone who always so
+      undisguisedly sought his own satisfaction above all things; and if his
+      considerateness were just an indirect way of seeking that satisfaction
+      now, well, that proved how much he cared for her, how necessary to his
+      happiness she had become. The sense of power was undeniably pleasant;
+      pleasanter still was the feeling that someone really needed her, that the
+      happiness of the man at her side depended on her yes or no. She abandoned
+      herself to the feeling, forgetting the abysmal interval of his caress, or
+      at least saying to herself that in time she would forget it, that really
+      there was nothing to make a fuss about in being kissed by anyone she liked
+      as much as Streff....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had guessed at once why he was taking her to see the Reynoldses.
+      Fashionable and artistic Paris had recently discovered English eighteenth
+      century art. The principal collections of England had yielded up their
+      best examples of the great portrait painter&rsquo;s work, and the private view
+      at the Petit Palais was to be the social event of the afternoon. Everybody&mdash;Strefford&rsquo;s
+      everybody and Susy&rsquo;s&mdash;was sure to be there; and these, as she knew,
+      were the occasions that revived Strefford&rsquo;s intermittent interest in art.
+      He really liked picture shows as much as the races, if one could be sure
+      of seeing as many people there. With Nick how different it would have
+      been! Nick hated openings and varnishing days, and worldly aesthetics in
+      general; he would have waited till the tide of fashion had ebbed, and
+      slipped off with Susy to see the pictures some morning when they were sure
+      to have the place to themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Susy divined that there was another reason for Strefford&rsquo;s suggestion.
+      She had never yet shown herself with him publicly, among their own group
+      of people: now he had determined that she should do so, and she knew why.
+      She had humbled his pride; he had understood, and forgiven her. But she
+      still continued to treat him as she had always treated the Strefford of
+      old, Charlie Strefford, dear old negligible impecunious Streff; and he
+      wanted to show her, ever so casually and adroitly, that the man who had
+      asked her to marry him was no longer Strefford, but Lord Altringham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the very threshold, his Ambassador&rsquo;s greeting marked the difference: it
+      was followed, wherever they turned, by ejaculations of welcome from the
+      rulers of the world they moved in. Everybody rich enough or titled enough,
+      or clever enough or stupid enough, to have forced a way into the social
+      citadel, was there, waving and flag-flying from the battlements; and to
+      all of them Lord Altringham had become a marked figure. During their slow
+      progress through the dense mass of important people who made the approach
+      to the pictures so well worth fighting for, he never left Susy&rsquo;s side, or
+      failed to make her feel herself a part of his triumphal advance. She heard
+      her name mentioned: &ldquo;Lansing&mdash;a Mrs. Lansing&mdash;an American...
+      Susy Lansing? Yes, of course.... You remember her? At Newport, At St.
+      Moritz? Exactly.... Divorced already? They say so... Susy darling! I&rsquo;d no
+      idea you were here... and Lord Altringham! You&rsquo;ve forgotten me, I know,
+      Lord Altringham.... Yes, last year, in Cairo... or at Newport... or in
+      Scotland ... Susy, dearest, when will you bring Lord Altringham to dine?
+      Any night that you and he are free I&rsquo;ll arrange to be....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You and he&rdquo;: they were &ldquo;you and he&rdquo; already!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, there&rsquo;s one of them&mdash;of my great-grandmothers,&rdquo; Strefford
+      explained, giving a last push that drew him and Susy to the front rank,
+      before a tall isolated portrait which, by sheer majesty of presentment,
+      sat in its great carved golden frame as on a throne above the other
+      pictures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy read on the scroll beneath it: &ldquo;The Hon&rsquo;ble Diana Lefanu, fifteenth
+      Countess of Altringham&rdquo;&mdash;and heard Strefford say: &ldquo;Do you remember?
+      It hangs where you noticed the empty space above the mantel-piece, in the
+      Vandyke room. They say Reynolds stipulated that it should be put with the
+      Vandykes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had never before heard him speak of his possessions, whether ancestral
+      or merely material, in just that full and satisfied tone of voice: the
+      rich man&rsquo;s voice. She saw that he was already feeling the influence of his
+      surroundings, that he was glad the portrait of a Countess of Altringham
+      should occupy the central place in the principal room of the exhibition,
+      that the crowd about it should be denser there than before any of the
+      other pictures, and that he should be standing there with Susy, letting
+      her feel, and letting all the people about them guess, that the day she
+      chose she could wear the same name as his pictured ancestress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the way back to her hotel, Strefford made no farther allusion to their
+      future; they chatted like old comrades in their respective corners of the
+      taxi. But as the carriage stopped at her door he said: &ldquo;I must go back to
+      England the day after to-morrow, worse luck! Why not dine with me to-night
+      at the Nouveau Luxe? I&rsquo;ve got to have the Ambassador and Lady Ascot, with
+      their youngest girl and my old Dunes aunt, the Dowager Duchess, who&rsquo;s over
+      here hiding from her creditors; but I&rsquo;ll try to get two or three amusing
+      men to leaven the lump. We might go on to a boite afterward, if you&rsquo;re
+      bored. Unless the dancing amuses you more....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She understood that he had decided to hasten his departure rather than
+      linger on in uncertainty; she also remembered having heard the Ascots&rsquo;
+      youngest daughter, Lady Joan Senechal, spoken of as one of the prettiest
+      girls of the season; and she recalled the almost exaggerated warmth of the
+      Ambassador&rsquo;s greeting at the private view.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I&rsquo;ll come, Streff dear!&rdquo; she cried, with an effort at gaiety
+      that sounded successful to her own strained ears, and reflected itself in
+      the sudden lighting up of his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She waved a good-bye from the step, saying to herself, as she looked after
+      him: &ldquo;He&rsquo;ll drive me home to-night, and I shall say &lsquo;yes&rsquo;; and then he&rsquo;ll
+      kiss me again. But the next time it won&rsquo;t be nearly as disagreeable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned into the hotel, glanced automatically at the empty pigeon-hole
+      for letters under her key-hook, and mounted the stairs following the same
+      train of images. &ldquo;Yes, I shall say &lsquo;yes&rsquo; to-night,&rdquo; she repeated firmly,
+      her hand on the door of her room. &ldquo;That is, unless, they&rsquo;ve brought up a
+      letter....&rdquo; She never re-entered the hotel without imagining that the
+      letter she had not found below had already been brought up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Opening the door, she turned on the light and sprang to the table on which
+      her correspondence sometimes awaited her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no letter; but the morning papers, still unread, lay at hand,
+      and glancing listlessly down the column which chronicles the doings of
+      society, she read:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After an extended cruise in the AEgean and the Black Sea on their
+      steam-yacht Ibis, Mr. and Mrs. Mortimer Hicks and their daughter are
+      established at the Nouveau Luxe in Rome. They have lately had the honour
+      of entertaining at dinner the Reigning Prince of Teutoburger-Waldhain and
+      his mother the Princess Dowager, with their suite. Among those invited to
+      meet their Serene Highnesses were the French and Spanish Ambassadors, the
+      Duchesse de Vichy, Prince and Princess Bagnidilucca, Lady Penelope
+      Pantiles&mdash;&rdquo; Susy&rsquo;s eye flew impatiently on over the long list of
+      titles&mdash;&ldquo;and Mr. Nicholas Lansing of New York, who has been cruising
+      with Mr. and Mrs. Hicks on the Ibis for the last few months.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+
+
+<h3>XX.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">The</span> Mortimer Hickses were in Rome; not, as they would in former times have
+      been, in one of the antiquated hostelries of the Piazza di Spagna or the
+      Porta del Popolo, where of old they had so gaily defied fever and
+      nourished themselves on local colour; but spread out, with all the
+      ostentation of philistine millionaires, under the piano nobile ceilings of
+      one of the high-perched &ldquo;Palaces,&rdquo; where, as Mrs. Hicks shamelessly
+      declared, they could &ldquo;rely on the plumbing,&rdquo; and &ldquo;have the privilege of
+      over-looking the Queen Mother&rsquo;s Gardens.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was that speech, uttered with beaming aplomb at a dinner-table
+      surrounded by the cosmopolitan nobility of the Eternal City, that had
+      suddenly revealed to Lansing the profound change in the Hicks point of
+      view.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he looked back over the four months since he had so unexpectedly joined
+      the Ibis at Genoa, he saw that the change, at first insidious and
+      unperceived, dated from the ill-fated day when the Hickses had run across
+      a Reigning Prince on his travels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hitherto they had been proof against such perils: both Mr. and Mrs. Hicks
+      had often declared that the aristocracy of the intellect was the only one
+      which attracted them. But in this case the Prince possessed an intellect,
+      in addition to his few square miles of territory, and to one of the most
+      beautiful Field Marshal&rsquo;s uniforms that had ever encased a royal warrior.
+      The Prince was not a warrior, however; he was stooping, pacific and
+      spectacled, and his possession of the uniform had been revealed to Mrs.
+      Hicks only by the gift of a full-length photograph in a Bond Street frame,
+      with Anastasius written slantingly across its legs. The Prince&mdash;and
+      herein lay the Hickses&rsquo; undoing&mdash;the Prince was an archaeologist: an
+      earnest anxious enquiring and scrupulous archaeologist. Delicate health
+      (so his suite hinted) banished him for a part of each year from his cold
+      and foggy principality; and in the company of his mother, the active and
+      enthusiastic Dowager Princess, he wandered from one Mediterranean shore to
+      another, now assisting at the exhumation of Ptolemaic mummies, now at the
+      excavation of Delphic temples or of North African basilicas. The beginning
+      of winter usually brought the Prince and his mother to Rome or Nice,
+      unless indeed they were summoned by family duties to Berlin, Vienna or
+      Madrid; for an extended connection with the principal royal houses of
+      Europe compelled them, as the Princess Mother said, to be always burying
+      or marrying a cousin. At other moments they were seldom seen in the
+      glacial atmosphere of courts, preferring to royal palaces those of the
+      other, and more modern type, in one of which the Hickses were now lodged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes: the Prince and his mother (they gaily avowed it) revelled in Palace
+      Hotels; and, being unable to afford the luxury of inhabiting them, they
+      liked, as often as possible, to be invited to dine there by their friends&mdash;&ldquo;or
+      even to tea, my dear,&rdquo; the Princess laughingly avowed, &ldquo;for I&rsquo;m so awfully
+      fond of buttered scones; and Anastasius gives me so little to eat in the
+      desert.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The encounter with these ambulant Highnesses had been fatal&mdash;Lansing
+      now perceived it&mdash;to Mrs. Hicks&rsquo;s principles. She had known a great
+      many archaeologists, but never one as agreeable as the Prince, and above
+      all never one who had left a throne to camp in the desert and delve in
+      Libyan tombs. And it seemed to her infinitely pathetic that these two
+      gifted beings, who grumbled when they had to go to &ldquo;marry a cousin&rdquo; at the
+      Palace of St. James or of Madrid, and hastened back breathlessly to the
+      far-off point where, metaphorically speaking, pick-axe and spade had
+      dropped from their royal hands&mdash;that these heirs of the ages should
+      be unable to offer themselves the comforts of up-to-date hotel life, and
+      should enjoy themselves &ldquo;like babies&rdquo; when they were invited to the other
+      kind of &ldquo;Palace,&rdquo; to feast on buttered scones and watch the tango.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She simply could not bear the thought of their privations; and neither,
+      after a time, could Mr. Hicks, who found the Prince more democratic than
+      anyone he had ever known at Apex City, and was immensely interested by the
+      fact that their spectacles came from the same optician.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it was, above all, the artistic tendencies of the Prince and his
+      mother which had conquered the Hickses. There was fascination in the
+      thought that, among the rabble of vulgar uneducated royalties who overran
+      Europe from Biarritz to the Engadine, gambling, tangoing, and sponging on
+      no less vulgar plebeians, they, the unobtrusive and self-respecting
+      Hickses, should have had the luck to meet this cultivated pair, who joined
+      them in gentle ridicule of their own frivolous kinsfolk, and whose tastes
+      were exactly those of the eccentric, unreliable and sometimes
+      money-borrowing persons who had hitherto represented the higher life to
+      the Hickses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now at last Mrs. Hicks saw the possibility of being at once artistic and
+      luxurious, of surrendering herself to the joys of modern plumbing and yet
+      keeping the talk on the highest level. &ldquo;If the poor dear Princess wants to
+      dine at the Nouveau Luxe why shouldn&rsquo;t we give her that pleasure?&rdquo; Mrs.
+      Hicks smilingly enquired; &ldquo;and as for enjoying her buttered scones like a
+      baby, as she says, I think it&rsquo;s the sweetest thing about her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Coral Hicks did not join in this chorus; but she accepted, with her
+      curious air of impartiality, the change in her parents&rsquo; manner of life,
+      and for the first time (as Nick observed) occupied herself with her
+      mother&rsquo;s toilet, with the result that Mrs. Hicks&rsquo;s outline became firmer,
+      her garments soberer in hue and finer in material; so that, should anyone
+      chance to detect the daughter&rsquo;s likeness to her mother, the result was
+      less likely to be disturbing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such precautions were the more needful&mdash;Lansing could not but note
+      because of the different standards of the society in which the Hickses now
+      moved. For it was a curious fact that admission to the intimacy of the
+      Prince and his mother&mdash;who continually declared themselves to be the
+      pariahs, the outlaws, the Bohemians among crowned heads nevertheless
+      involved not only living in Palace Hotels but mixing with those who
+      frequented them. The Prince&rsquo;s aide-de-camp&mdash;an agreeable young man of
+      easy manners&mdash;had smilingly hinted that their Serene Highnesses,
+      though so thoroughly democratic and unceremonious, were yet accustomed to
+      inspecting in advance the names of the persons whom their hosts wished to
+      invite with them; and Lansing noticed that Mrs. Hicks&rsquo;s lists, having been
+      &ldquo;submitted,&rdquo; usually came back lengthened by the addition of numerous
+      wealthy and titled guests. Their Highnesses never struck out a name; they
+      welcomed with enthusiasm and curiosity the Hickses&rsquo; oddest and most
+      inexplicable friends, at most putting off some of them to a later day on
+      the plea that it would be &ldquo;cosier&rdquo; to meet them on a more private
+      occasion; but they invariably added to the list any friends of their own,
+      with the gracious hint that they wished these latter (though socially so
+      well-provided for) to have the &ldquo;immense privilege&rdquo; of knowing the Hickses.
+      And thus it happened that when October gales necessitated laying up the
+      Ibis, the Hickses, finding again in Rome the august travellers from whom
+      they had parted the previous month in Athens, also found their
+      visiting-list enlarged by all that the capital contained of fashion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was true enough, as Lansing had not failed to note, that the Princess
+      Mother adored prehistoric art, and Russian music, and the paintings of
+      Gauguin and Matisse; but she also, and with a beaming unconsciousness of
+      perspective, adored large pearls and powerful motors, caravan tea and
+      modern plumbing, perfumed cigarettes and society scandals; and her son,
+      while apparently less sensible to these forms of luxury, adored his
+      mother, and was charmed to gratify her inclinations without cost to
+      himself&mdash;&ldquo;Since poor Mamma,&rdquo; as he observed, &ldquo;is so courageous when
+      we are roughing it in the desert.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The smiling aide-de-camp, who explained these things to Lansing, added
+      with an intenser smile that the Prince and his mother were under
+      obligations, either social or cousinly, to most of the titled persons whom
+      they begged Mrs. Hicks to invite; &ldquo;and it seems to their Serene
+      Highnesses,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;the most flattering return they can make for the
+      hospitality of their friends to give them such an intellectual
+      opportunity.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The dinner-table at which their Highnesses&rsquo; friends were seated on the
+      evening in question represented, numerically, one of the greatest
+      intellectual opportunities yet afforded them. Thirty guests were grouped
+      about the flower-wreathed board, from which Eldorada and Mr. Beck had been
+      excluded on the plea that the Princess Mother liked cosy parties and
+      begged her hosts that there should never be more than thirty at table.
+      Such, at least, was the reason given by Mrs. Hicks to her faithful
+      followers; but Lansing had observed that, of late, the same skilled hand
+      which had refashioned the Hickses&rsquo; social circle usually managed to
+      exclude from it the timid presences of the two secretaries. Their
+      banishment was the more displeasing to Lansing from the fact that, for the
+      last three months, he had filled Mr. Buttles&rsquo;s place, and was himself
+      their salaried companion. But since he had accepted the post, his obvious
+      duty was to fill it in accordance with his employers&rsquo; requirements; and it
+      was clear even to Eldorada and Mr. Beck that he had, as Eldorada
+      ungrudgingly said, &ldquo;Something of Mr. Buttles&rsquo;s marvellous social gifts.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      During the cruise his task had not been distasteful to him. He was glad of
+      any definite duties, however trivial, he felt more independent as the
+      Hickses&rsquo; secretary than as their pampered guest, and the large cheque
+      which Mr. Hicks handed over to him on the first of each month refreshed
+      his languishing sense of self-respect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He considered himself absurdly over-paid, but that was the Hickses&rsquo;
+      affair; and he saw nothing humiliating in being in the employ of people he
+      liked and respected. But from the moment of the ill-fated encounter with
+      the wandering Princes, his position had changed as much as that of his
+      employers. He was no longer, to Mr. and Mrs. Hicks, a useful and estimable
+      assistant, on the same level as Eldorada and Mr. Beck; he had become a
+      social asset of unsuspected value, equalling Mr. Buttles in his capacity
+      for dealing with the mysteries of foreign etiquette, and surpassing him in
+      the art of personal attraction. Nick Lansing, the Hickses found, already
+      knew most of the Princess Mother&rsquo;s rich and aristocratic friends. Many of
+      them hailed him with enthusiastic &ldquo;Old Nicks&rdquo;, and he was almost as
+      familiar as His Highness&rsquo;s own aide-de-camp with all those secret
+      ramifications of love and hate that made dinner-giving so much more of a
+      science in Rome than at Apex City.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Hicks, at first, had hopelessly lost her way in this labyrinth of
+      subterranean scandals, rivalries and jealousies; and finding Lansing&rsquo;s
+      hand within reach she clung to it with pathetic tenacity. But if the young
+      man&rsquo;s value had risen in the eyes of his employers it had deteriorated in
+      his own. He was condemned to play a part he had not bargained for, and it
+      seemed to him more degrading when paid in bank-notes than if his
+      retribution had consisted merely in good dinners and luxurious lodgings.
+      The first time the smiling aide-de-camp had caught his eye over a verbal
+      slip of Mrs. Hicks&rsquo;s, Nick had flushed to the forehead and gone to bed
+      swearing that he would chuck his job the next day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two months had passed since then, and he was still the paid secretary. He
+      had contrived to let the aide-de-camp feel that he was too deficient in
+      humour to be worth exchanging glances with; but even this had not restored
+      his self-respect, and on the evening in question, as he looked about the
+      long table, he said to himself for the hundredth time that he would give
+      up his position on the morrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Only&mdash;what was the alternative? The alternative, apparently, was
+      Coral Hicks. He glanced down the line of diners, beginning with the tall
+      lean countenance of the Princess Mother, with its small inquisitive eyes
+      perched as high as attic windows under a frizzled thatch of hair and a
+      pediment of uncleaned diamonds; passed on to the vacuous and overfed or
+      fashionably haggard masks of the ladies next in rank; and finally caught,
+      between branching orchids, a distant glimpse of Miss Hicks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In contrast with the others, he thought, she looked surprisingly noble.
+      Her large grave features made her appear like an old monument in a street
+      of Palace Hotels; and he marvelled at the mysterious law which had brought
+      this archaic face out of Apex City, and given to the oldest society of
+      Europe a look of such mixed modernity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing perceived that the aide-de-camp, who was his neighbour, was also
+      looking at Miss Hicks. His expression was serious, and even thoughtful;
+      but as his eyes met Lansing&rsquo;s he readjusted his official smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was admiring our hostess&rsquo;s daughter. Her absence of jewels is&mdash;er&mdash;an
+      inspiration,&rdquo; he remarked in the confidential tone which Lansing had come
+      to dread.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Miss Hicks is full of inspirations,&rdquo; he returned curtly, and the
+      aide-de-camp bowed with an admiring air, as if inspirations were rarer
+      than pearls, as in his milieu they undoubtedly were. &ldquo;She is the equal of
+      any situation, I am sure,&rdquo; he replied; and then abandoned the subject with
+      one of his automatic transitions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After dinner, in the embrasure of a drawing-room window, he surprised Nick
+      by returning to the same topic, and this time without thinking it needful
+      to readjust his smile. His face remained serious, though his manner was
+      studiously informal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was admiring, at dinner, Miss Hicks&rsquo;s invariable sense of
+      appropriateness. It must permit her friends to foresee for her almost any
+      future, however exalted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing hesitated, and controlled his annoyance. Decidedly he wanted to
+      know what was in his companion&rsquo;s mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean by exalted?&rdquo; he asked, with a smile of faint amusement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;equal to her marvellous capacity for shining in the public
+      eye.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing still smiled. &ldquo;The question is, I suppose, whether her desire to
+      shine equals her capacity.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The aide-de-camp stared. &ldquo;You mean, she&rsquo;s not ambitious?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On the contrary; I believe her to be immeasurably ambitious.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Immeasurably?&rdquo; The aide-de-camp seemed to try to measure it. &ldquo;But not,
+      surely, beyond&mdash;beyond what we can offer,&rdquo; his eyes completed the
+      sentence; and it was Lansing&rsquo;s turn to stare. The aide-de-camp faced the
+      stare. &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; his eyes concluded in a flash, while his lips let fall: &ldquo;The
+      Princess Mother admires her immensely.&rdquo; But at that moment a wave of Mrs.
+      Hicks&rsquo;s fan drew them hurriedly from their embrasure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Professor Darchivio had promised to explain to us the difference between
+      the Sassanian and Byzantine motives in Carolingian art; but the Manager
+      has sent up word that the two new Creole dancers from Paris have arrived,
+      and her Serene Highness wants to pop down to the ball-room and take a peep
+      at them.... She&rsquo;s sure the Professor will understand....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And accompany us, of course,&rdquo; the Princess irresistibly added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing&rsquo;s brief colloquy in the Nouveau Luxe window had lifted the scales
+      from his eyes. Innumerable dim corners of memory had been flooded with
+      light by that one quick glance of the aide-de-camp&rsquo;s: things he had heard,
+      hints he had let pass, smiles, insinuations, cordialities, rumours of the
+      improbability of the Prince&rsquo;s founding a family, suggestions as to the
+      urgent need of replenishing the Teutoburger treasury....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Hicks, perforce, had accompanied her parents and their princely
+      guests to the ballroom; but as she did not dance, and took little interest
+      in the sight of others so engaged, she remained aloof from the party,
+      absorbed in an archaeological discussion with the baffled but smiling
+      savant who was to have enlightened the party on the difference between
+      Sassanian and Byzantine ornament.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing, also aloof, had picked out a post from which he could observe the
+      girl: she wore a new look to him since he had seen her as the centre of
+      all these scattered threads of intrigue. Yes; decidedly she was growing
+      handsomer; or else she had learned how to set off her massive lines
+      instead of trying to disguise them. As she held up her long eye-glass to
+      glance absently at the dancers he was struck by the large beauty of her
+      arm and the careless assurance of the gesture. There was nothing nervous
+      or fussy about Coral Hicks; and he was not surprised that, plastically at
+      least, the Princess Mother had discerned her possibilities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nick Lansing, all that night, sat up and stared at his future. He knew
+      enough of the society into which the Hickses had drifted to guess that,
+      within a very short time, the hint of the Prince&rsquo;s aide-de-camp would
+      reappear in the form of a direct proposal. Lansing himself would probably&mdash;as
+      the one person in the Hicks entourage with whom one could intelligibly
+      commune&mdash;be entrusted with the next step in the negotiations: he would be
+      asked, as the aide-de-camp would have said, &ldquo;to feel the ground.&rdquo; It was
+      clearly part of the state policy of Teutoburg to offer Miss Hicks, with
+      the hand of its sovereign, an opportunity to replenish its treasury.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What would the girl do? Lansing could not guess; yet he dimly felt that
+      her attitude would depend in a great degree upon his own. And he knew no
+      more what his own was going to be than on the night, four months earlier,
+      when he had flung out of his wife&rsquo;s room in Venice to take the midnight
+      express for Genoa.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The whole of his past, and above all the tendency, on which he had once
+      prided himself, to live in the present and take whatever chances it
+      offered, now made it harder for him to act. He began to see that he had
+      never, even in the closest relations of life, looked ahead of his
+      immediate satisfaction. He had thought it rather fine to be able to give
+      himself so intensely to the fullness of each moment instead of hurrying
+      past it in pursuit of something more, or something else, in the manner of
+      the over-scrupulous or the under-imaginative, whom he had always grouped
+      together and equally pitied. It was not till he had linked his life with
+      Susy&rsquo;s that he had begun to feel it reaching forward into a future he
+      longed to make sure of, to fasten upon and shape to his own wants and
+      purposes, till, by an imperceptible substitution, that future had become
+      his real present, his all-absorbing moment of time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now the moment was shattered, and the power to rebuild it failed him. He
+      had never before thought about putting together broken bits: he felt like
+      a man whose house has been wrecked by an earthquake, and who, for lack of
+      skilled labour, is called upon for the first time to wield a trowel and
+      carry bricks. He simply did not know how.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Will-power, he saw, was not a thing one could suddenly decree oneself to
+      possess. It must be built up imperceptibly and laboriously out of a
+      succession of small efforts to meet definite objects, out of the facing of
+      daily difficulties instead of cleverly eluding them, or shifting their
+      burden on others. The making of the substance called character was a
+      process about as slow and arduous as the building of the Pyramids; and the
+      thing itself, like those awful edifices, was mainly useful to lodge one&rsquo;s
+      descendants in, after they too were dust. Yet the Pyramid-instinct was the
+      one which had made the world, made man, and caused his fugitive joys to
+      linger like fading frescoes on imperishable walls....
+    </p>
+
+
+<h3>XXI.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">On</span> the drive back from her dinner at the Nouveau Luxe, events had followed
+      the course foreseen by Susy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had promised Strefford to seek legal advice about her divorce, and he
+      had kissed her; and the promise had been easier to make than she had
+      expected, the kiss less difficult to receive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had gone to the dinner a-quiver with the mortification of learning
+      that her husband was still with the Hickses. Morally sure of it though she
+      had been, the discovery was a shock, and she measured for the first time
+      the abyss between fearing and knowing. No wonder he had not written&mdash;the
+      modern husband did not have to: he had only to leave it to time and the
+      newspapers to make known his intentions. Susy could imagine Nick&rsquo;s saying
+      to himself, as he sometimes used to say when she reminded him of an
+      unanswered letter: &ldquo;But there are lots of ways of answering a letter&mdash;and
+      writing doesn&rsquo;t happen to be mine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Well&mdash;he had done it in his way, and she was answered. For a minute,
+      as she laid aside the paper, darkness submerged her, and she felt herself
+      dropping down into the bottomless anguish of her dreadful vigil in the
+      Palazzo Vanderlyn. But she was weary of anguish: her healthy body and
+      nerves instinctively rejected it. The wave was spent, and she felt herself
+      irresistibly struggling back to light and life and youth. He didn&rsquo;t want
+      her! Well, she would try not to want him! There lay all the old expedients
+      at her hand&mdash;the rouge for her white lips, the atropine for her
+      blurred eyes, the new dress on her bed, the thought of Strefford and his
+      guests awaiting her, and of the conclusions that the diners of the Nouveau
+      Luxe would draw from seeing them together. Thank heaven no one would say:
+      &ldquo;Poor old Susy&mdash;did you know Nick had chucked her?&rdquo; They would all
+      say: &ldquo;Poor old Nick! Yes, I daresay she was sorry to chuck him; but
+      Altringham&rsquo;s mad to marry her, and what could she do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And once again events had followed the course she had foreseen. Seeing her
+      at Lord Altringham&rsquo;s table, with the Ascots and the old Duchess of Dunes,
+      the interested spectators could not but regard the dinner as confirming
+      the rumour of her marriage. As Ellie said, people didn&rsquo;t wait nowadays to
+      announce their &ldquo;engagements&rdquo; till the tiresome divorce proceedings were
+      over. Ellie herself, prodigally pearled and ermined, had floated in late
+      with Algie Bockheimer in her wake, and sat, in conspicuous tête-à-tête,
+      nodding and signalling her sympathy to Susy. Approval beamed from every
+      eye: it was awfully exciting, they all seemed to say, seeing Susy Lansing
+      pull it off! As the party, after dinner, drifted from the restaurant back
+      into the hall, she caught, in the smiles and hand-pressures crowding about
+      her, the scarcely-repressed hint of official congratulations; and Violet
+      Melrose, seated in a corner with Fulmer, drew her down with a wan
+      jade-circled arm, to whisper tenderly: &ldquo;It&rsquo;s most awfully clever of you,
+      darling, not to be wearing any jewels.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In all the women&rsquo;s eyes she read the reflected lustre of the jewels she
+      could wear when she chose: it was as though their glitter reached her from
+      the far-off bank where they lay sealed up in the Altringham strong-box.
+      What a fool she had been to think that Strefford would ever believe she
+      didn&rsquo;t care for them!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Ambassadress, a blank perpendicular person, had been a shade less
+      affable than Susy could have wished; but then there was Lady Joan&mdash;and
+      the girl was handsome, alarmingly handsome to account for that: probably
+      every one in the room had guessed it. And the old Duchess of Dunes was
+      delightful. She looked rather like Strefford in a wig and false pearls
+      (Susy was sure they were as false as her teeth); and her cordiality was so
+      demonstrative that the future bride found it more difficult to account for
+      than Lady Ascot&rsquo;s coldness, till she heard the old lady, as they passed
+      into the hall, breathe in a hissing whisper to her nephew: &ldquo;Streff,
+      dearest, when you have a minute&rsquo;s time, and can drop in at my wretched
+      little pension, I know you can explain in two words what I ought to do to
+      pacify those awful money-lenders.... And you&rsquo;ll bring your exquisite
+      American to see me, won&rsquo;t you!... No, Joan Senechal&rsquo;s too fair for my
+      taste.... Insipid....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes: the taste of it all was again sweet on her lips. A few days later she
+      began to wonder how the thought of Strefford&rsquo;s endearments could have been
+      so alarming. To be sure he was not lavish of them; but when he did touch
+      her, even when he kissed her, it no longer seemed to matter. An almost
+      complete absence of sensation had mercifully succeeded to the first wild
+      flurry of her nerves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so it would be, no doubt, with everything else in her new life. If it
+      failed to provoke any acute reactions, whether of pain or pleasure, the
+      very absence of sensation would make for peace. And in the meanwhile she
+      was tasting what, she had begun to suspect, was the maximum of bliss to
+      most of the women she knew: days packed with engagements, the exhilaration
+      of fashionable crowds, the thrill of snapping up a jewel or a bibelot or a
+      new &ldquo;model&rdquo; that one&rsquo;s best friend wanted, or of being invited to some
+      private show, or some exclusive entertainment, that one&rsquo;s best friend
+      couldn&rsquo;t get to. There was nothing, now, that she couldn&rsquo;t buy, nowhere
+      that she couldn&rsquo;t go: she had only to choose and to triumph. And for a
+      while the surface-excitement of her life gave her the illusion of
+      enjoyment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford, as she had expected, had postponed his return to England, and
+      they had now been for nearly three weeks together in their new, and
+      virtually avowed, relation. She had fancied that, after all, the easiest
+      part of it would be just the being with Strefford&mdash;the falling back
+      on their old tried friendship to efface the sense of strangeness. But,
+      though she had so soon grown used to his caresses, he himself remained
+      curiously unfamiliar: she was hardly sure, at times, that it was the old
+      Strefford she was talking to. It was not that his point of view had
+      changed, but that new things occupied and absorbed him. In all the small
+      sides of his great situation he took an almost childish satisfaction; and
+      though he still laughed at both its privileges and its obligations, it was
+      now with a jealous laughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It amused him inexhaustibly, for instance, to be made up to by all the
+      people who had always disapproved of him, and to unite at the same table
+      persons who had to dissemble their annoyance at being invited together
+      lest they should not be invited at all. Equally exhilarating was the
+      capricious favouring of the dull and dowdy on occasions when the brilliant
+      and disreputable expected his notice. It enchanted him, for example, to
+      ask the old Duchess of Dunes and Violet Melrose to dine with the Vicar of
+      Altringham, on his way to Switzerland for a month&rsquo;s holiday, and to watch
+      the face of the Vicar&rsquo;s wife while the Duchess narrated her last
+      difficulties with book-makers and money-lenders, and Violet proclaimed the
+      rights of Love and Genius to all that had once been supposed to belong
+      exclusively to Respectability and Dulness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy had to confess that her own amusements were hardly of a higher order;
+      but then she put up with them for lack of better, whereas Strefford, who
+      might have had what he pleased, was completely satisfied with such
+      triumphs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Somehow, in spite of his honours and his opportunities, he seemed to have
+      shrunk. The old Strefford had certainly been a larger person, and she
+      wondered if material prosperity were always a beginning of ossification.
+      Strefford had been much more fun when he lived by his wits. Sometimes,
+      now, when he tried to talk of politics, or assert himself on some question
+      of public interest, she was startled by his limitations. Formerly, when he
+      was not sure of his ground, it had been his way to turn the difficulty by
+      glib nonsense or easy irony; now he was actually dull, at times almost
+      pompous. She noticed too, for the first time, that he did not always hear
+      clearly when several people were talking at once, or when he was at the
+      theatre; and he developed a habit of saying over and over again: &ldquo;Does
+      so-and-so speak indistinctly? Or am I getting deaf, I wonder?&rdquo; which wore
+      on her nerves by its suggestion of a corresponding mental infirmity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These thoughts did not always trouble her. The current of idle activity on
+      which they were both gliding was her native element as well as his; and
+      never had its tide been as swift, its waves as buoyant. In his relation to
+      her, too, he was full of tact and consideration. She saw that he still
+      remembered their frightened exchange of glances after their first kiss;
+      and the sense of this little hidden spring of imagination in him was
+      sometimes enough for her thirst.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had always had a rather masculine punctuality in keeping her word, and
+      after she had promised Strefford to take steps toward a divorce she had
+      promptly set about doing it. A sudden reluctance prevented her asking the
+      advice of friends like Ellie Vanderlyn, whom she knew to be in the thick
+      of the same negotiations, and all she could think of was to consult a
+      young American lawyer practicing in Paris, with whom she felt she could
+      talk the more easily because he was not from New York, and probably
+      unacquainted with her history.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was so ignorant of the procedure in such matters that she was
+      surprised and relieved at his asking few personal questions; but it was a
+      shock to learn that a divorce could not be obtained, either in New York or
+      Paris, merely on the ground of desertion or incompatibility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought nowadays... if people preferred to live apart... it could
+      always be managed,&rdquo; she stammered, wondering at her own ignorance, after
+      the many conjugal ruptures she had assisted at.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young lawyer smiled, and coloured slightly. His lovely client
+      evidently intimidated him by her grace, and still more by her
+      inexperience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It can be&mdash;generally,&rdquo; he admitted; &ldquo;and especially so if... as I
+      gather is the case... your husband is equally anxious....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, quite!&rdquo; she exclaimed, suddenly humiliated by having to admit it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then&mdash;may I suggest that, to bring matters to a point, the
+      best way would be for you to write to him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She recoiled slightly. It had never occurred to her that the lawyers would
+      not &ldquo;manage it&rdquo; without her intervention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Write to him... but what about?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, expressing your wish... to recover your freedom.... The rest, I
+      assume,&rdquo; said the young lawyer, &ldquo;may be left to Mr. Lansing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She did not know exactly what he meant, and was too much perturbed by the
+      idea of having to communicate with Nick to follow any other train of
+      thought. How could she write such a letter? And yet how could she confess
+      to the lawyer that she had not the courage to do so? He would, of course,
+      tell her to go home and be reconciled. She hesitated perplexedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wouldn&rsquo;t it be better,&rdquo; she suggested, &ldquo;if the letter were to come from&mdash;from
+      your office?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He considered this politely. &ldquo;On the whole: no. If, as I take it, an
+      amicable arrangement is necessary&mdash;to secure the requisite evidence
+      then a line from you, suggesting an interview, seems to me more
+      advisable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An interview? Is an interview necessary?&rdquo; She was ashamed to show her
+      agitation to this cautiously smiling young man, who must wonder at her
+      childish lack of understanding; but the break in her voice was
+      uncontrollable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, please write to him&mdash;I can&rsquo;t! And I can&rsquo;t see him! Oh, can&rsquo;t you
+      arrange it for me?&rdquo; she pleaded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She saw now that her idea of a divorce had been that it was something one
+      went out&mdash;or sent out&mdash;to buy in a shop: something concrete and
+      portable, that Strefford&rsquo;s money could pay for, and that it required no
+      personal participation to obtain. What a fool the lawyer must think her!
+      Stiffening herself, she rose from her seat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My husband and I don&rsquo;t wish to see each other again.... I&rsquo;m sure it would
+      be useless... and very painful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are the best judge, of course. But in any case, a letter from you, a
+      friendly letter, seems wiser... considering the apparent lack of
+      evidence....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, then; I&rsquo;ll write,&rdquo; she agreed, and hurried away, scarcely
+      hearing his parting injunction that she should take a copy of her letter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That night she wrote. At the last moment it might have been impossible, if
+      at the theatre little Breckenridge had not bobbed into her box. He was
+      just back from Rome, where he had dined with the Hickses (&ldquo;a bang-up show&mdash;they&rsquo;re
+      really lances&mdash;you wouldn&rsquo;t know them!&rdquo;), and had met there Lansing, whom
+      he reported as intending to marry Coral &ldquo;as soon as things were settled&rdquo;.
+      &ldquo;You were dead right, weren&rsquo;t you, Susy,&rdquo; he snickered, &ldquo;that night in
+      Venice last summer, when we all thought you were joking about their
+      engagement? Pity now you chucked our surprise visit to the Hickses, and
+      sent Streff up to drag us back just as we were breaking in! You remember?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He flung off the &ldquo;Streff&rdquo; airily, in the old way, but with a tentative
+      side-glance at his host; and Lord Altringham, leaning toward Susy, said
+      coldly: &ldquo;Was Breckenridge speaking about me? I didn&rsquo;t catch what he said.
+      Does he speak indistinctly&mdash;or am I getting deaf, I wonder?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After that it seemed comparatively easy, when Strefford had dropped her at
+      her hotel, to go upstairs and write. She dashed off the date and her
+      address, and then stopped; but suddenly she remembered Breckenridge&rsquo;s
+      snicker, and the words rushed from her. &ldquo;Nick dear, it was July when you
+      left Venice, and I have had no word from you since the note in which you
+      said you had gone for a few days, and that I should hear soon again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You haven&rsquo;t written yet, and it is five months since you left me. That
+      means, I suppose, that you want to take back your freedom and give me
+      mine. Wouldn&rsquo;t it be kinder, in that case, to tell me so? It is worse than
+      anything to go on as we are now. I don&rsquo;t know how to put these things but
+      since you seem unwilling to write to me perhaps you would prefer to send
+      your answer to Mr. Frederic Spearman, the American lawyer here. His
+      address is 100, Boulevard Haussmann. I hope&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She broke off on the last word. Hope? What did she hope, either for him or
+      for herself? Wishes for his welfare would sound like a mockery&mdash;and
+      she would rather her letter should seem bitter than unfeeling. Above all,
+      she wanted to get it done. To have to re-write even those few lines would
+      be torture. So she left &ldquo;I hope,&rdquo; and simply added: &ldquo;to hear before long
+      what you have decided.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She read it over, and shivered. Not one word of the past&mdash;not one allusion
+      to that mysterious interweaving of their lives which had enclosed them one
+      in the other like the flower in its sheath! What place had such memories
+      in such a letter? She had the feeling that she wanted to hide that other
+      Nick away in her own bosom, and with him the other Susy, the Susy he had
+      once imagined her to be.... Neither of them seemed concerned with the
+      present business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The letter done, she stared at the sealed envelope till its presence in
+      the room became intolerable, and she understood that she must either tear
+      it up or post it immediately. She went down to the hall of the sleeping
+      hotel, and bribed the night-porter to carry the letter to the nearest post
+      office, though he objected that, at that hour, no time would be gained. &ldquo;I
+      want it out of the house,&rdquo; she insisted: and waited sternly by the desk,
+      in her dressing-gown, till he had performed the errand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As she re-entered her room, the disordered writing-table struck her; and
+      she remembered the lawyer&rsquo;s injunction to take a copy of her letter. A
+      copy to be filed away with the documents in &ldquo;Lansing versus Lansing!&rdquo; She
+      burst out laughing at the idea. What were lawyers made of, she wondered?
+      Didn&rsquo;t the man guess, by the mere look in her eyes and the sound of her
+      voice, that she would never, as long as she lived, forget a word of that
+      letter&mdash;that night after night she would lie down, as she was lying
+      down to-night, to stare wide-eyed for hours into the darkness, while a
+      voice in her brain monotonously hammered out: &ldquo;Nick dear, it was July when
+      you left me...&rdquo; and so on, word after word, down to the last fatal
+      syllable?
+    </p>
+
+
+<h3>XXII.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">Strefford</span> was leaving for England.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once assured that Susy had taken the first step toward freeing herself, he
+      frankly regarded her as his affianced wife, and could see no reason for
+      further mystery. She understood his impatience to have their plans
+      settled; it would protect him from the formidable menace of the
+      marriageable, and cause people, as he said, to stop meddling. Now that the
+      novelty of his situation was wearing off, his natural indolence reasserted
+      itself, and there was nothing he dreaded more than having to be on his
+      guard against the innumerable plans that his well-wishers were perpetually
+      making for him. Sometimes Susy fancied he was marrying her because to do
+      so was to follow the line of least resistance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To marry me is the easiest way of not marrying all the others,&rdquo; she
+      laughed, as he stood before her one day in a quiet alley of the Bois de
+      Boulogne, insisting on the settlement of various preliminaries. &ldquo;I believe
+      I&rsquo;m only a protection to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      An odd gleam passed behind his eyes, and she instantly guessed that he was
+      thinking: &ldquo;And what else am I to you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She changed colour, and he rejoined, laughing also: &ldquo;Well, you&rsquo;re that at
+      any rate, thank the Lord!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She pondered, and then questioned: &ldquo;But in the interval&mdash;how are you going
+      to defend yourself for another year?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you&rsquo;ve got to see to that; you&rsquo;ve got to take a little house in
+      London. You&rsquo;ve got to look after me, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was on the tip of her tongue to flash back: &ldquo;Oh, if that&rsquo;s all you care&mdash;!&rdquo;
+       But caring was exactly the factor she wanted, as much as possible, to keep
+      out of their talk and their thoughts. She could not ask him how much he
+      cared without laying herself open to the same question; and that way
+      terror lay. As a matter of fact, though Strefford was not an ardent wooer&mdash;perhaps
+      from tact, perhaps from temperament, perhaps merely from the long habit of
+      belittling and disintegrating every sentiment and every conviction&mdash;yet
+      she knew he did care for her as much as he was capable of caring for
+      anyone. If the element of habit entered largely into the feeling&mdash;if
+      he liked her, above all, because he was used to her, knew her views, her
+      indulgences, her allowances, knew he was never likely to be bored, and
+      almost certain to be amused, by her; why, such ingredients though not of
+      the fieriest, were perhaps those most likely to keep his feeling for her
+      at a pleasant temperature. She had had a taste of the tropics, and wanted
+      more equable weather; but the idea of having to fan his flame gently for a
+      year was unspeakably depressing to her. Yet all this was precisely what
+      she could not say. The long period of probation, during which, as she
+      knew, she would have to amuse him, to guard him, to hold him, and to keep
+      off the other women, was a necessary part of their situation. She was sure
+      that, as little Breckenridge would have said, she could &ldquo;pull it off&rdquo;; but
+      she did not want to think about it. What she would have preferred would
+      have been to go away&mdash;no matter where and not see Strefford again
+      till they were married. But she dared not tell him that either.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A little house in London&mdash;?&rdquo; She wondered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I suppose you&rsquo;ve got to have some sort of a roof over your head.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat down beside her. &ldquo;If you like me well enough to live at Altringham
+      some day, won&rsquo;t you, in the meantime, let me provide you with a smaller
+      and more convenient establishment?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Still she hesitated. The alternative, she knew, would be to live on Ursula
+      Gillow, Violet Melrose, or some other of her rich friends, any one of whom
+      would be ready to lavish the largest hospitality on the prospective Lady
+      Altringham. Such an arrangement, in the long run, would be no less
+      humiliating to her pride, no less destructive to her independence, than
+      Altringham&rsquo;s little establishment. But she temporized. &ldquo;I shall go over to
+      London in December, and stay for a while with various people&mdash;then we
+      can look about.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right; as you like.&rdquo; He obviously considered her hesitation
+      ridiculous, but was too full of satisfaction at her having started divorce
+      proceedings to be chilled by her reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now, look here, my dear; couldn&rsquo;t I give you some sort of a ring?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A ring?&rdquo; She flushed at the suggestion. &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the use, Streff, dear?
+      With all those jewels locked away in London&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I daresay you&rsquo;ll think them old-fashioned. And, hang it, why
+      shouldn&rsquo;t I give you something new, I ran across Ellie and Bockheimer
+      yesterday, in the rue de la Paix, picking out sapphires. Do you like
+      sapphires, or emeralds? Or just a diamond? I&rsquo;ve seen a thumping one....
+      I&rsquo;d like you to have it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ellie and Bockheimer! How she hated the conjunction of the names! Their
+      case always seemed to her like a caricature of her own, and she felt an
+      unreasoning resentment against Ellie for having selected the same season
+      for her unmating and re-mating.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish you wouldn&rsquo;t speak of them, Streff... as if they were like us! I
+      can hardly bear to sit in the same room with Ellie Vanderlyn.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hullo? What&rsquo;s wrong? You mean because of her giving up Clarissa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not that only.... You don&rsquo;t know.... I can&rsquo;t tell you....&rdquo; She shivered
+      at the memory, and rose restlessly from the bench where they had been
+      sitting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford gave his careless shrug. &ldquo;Well, my dear, you can hardly expect
+      me to agree, for after all it was to Ellie I owed the luck of being so
+      long alone with you in Venice. If she and Algie hadn&rsquo;t prolonged their
+      honeymoon at the villa&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stopped abruptly, and looked at Susy. She was conscious that every drop
+      of blood had left her face. She felt it ebbing away from her heart,
+      flowing out of her as if from all her severed arteries, till it seemed as
+      though nothing were left of life in her but one point of irreducible pain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ellie&mdash;at your villa? What do you mean? Was it Ellie and Bockheimer
+      who&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford still stared. &ldquo;You mean to say you didn&rsquo;t know?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who came after Nick and me...?&rdquo; she insisted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, do you suppose I&rsquo;d have turned you out otherwise? That beastly
+      Bockheimer simply smothered me with gold. Ah, well, there&rsquo;s one good
+      thing: I shall never have to let the villa again! I rather like the little
+      place myself, and I daresay once in a while we might go there for a day or
+      two.... Susy, what&rsquo;s the matter?&rdquo; he exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She returned his stare, but without seeing him. Everything swam and danced
+      before her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then she was there while I was posting all those letters for her&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Letters&mdash;what letters? What makes you look so frightfully upset?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She pursued her thought as if he had not spoken. &ldquo;She and Algie Bockheimer
+      arrived there the very day that Nick and I left?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose so. I thought she&rsquo;d told you. Ellie always tells everybody
+      everything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She would have told me, I daresay&mdash;but I wouldn&rsquo;t let her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, my dear, that was hardly my fault, was it? Though I really don&rsquo;t
+      see&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Susy, still blind to everything but the dance of dizzy sparks before
+      her eyes, pressed on as if she had not heard him. &ldquo;It was their motor,
+      then, that took us to Milan! It was Algie Bockheimer&rsquo;s motor!&rdquo; She did not
+      know why, but this seemed to her the most humiliating incident in the
+      whole hateful business. She remembered Nick&rsquo;s reluctance to use the
+      motor&mdash;she remembered his look when she had boasted of her &ldquo;managing.&rdquo; The
+      nausea mounted to her throat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford burst out laughing. &ldquo;I say&mdash;you borrowed their motor? And
+      you didn&rsquo;t know whose it was?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How could I know? I persuaded the chauffeur... for a little tip.... It
+      was to save our railway fares to Milan... extra luggage costs so
+      frightfully in Italy....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good old Susy! Well done! I can see you doing it&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, how horrible&mdash;how horrible!&rdquo; she groaned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Horrible? What&rsquo;s horrible?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, your not seeing... not feeling...&rdquo; she began impetuously; and then
+      stopped. How could she explain to him that what revolted her was not so
+      much the fact of his having given the little house, as soon as she and
+      Nick had left it, to those two people of all others&mdash;though the
+      vision of them in the sweet secret house, and under the plane-trees of the
+      terrace, drew such a trail of slime across her golden hours? No, it was
+      not that from which she most recoiled, but from the fact that Strefford,
+      living in luxury in Nelson Vanderlyn&rsquo;s house, should at the same time have
+      secretly abetted Ellie Vanderlyn&rsquo;s love-affairs, and allowed her&mdash;for
+      a handsome price&mdash;to shelter them under his own roof. The reproach
+      trembled on her lip&mdash;but she remembered her own part in the wretched
+      business, and the impossibility of avowing it to Strefford, and of
+      revealing to him that Nick had left her for that very reason. She was not
+      afraid that the discovery would diminish her in Strefford&rsquo;s eyes: he was
+      untroubled by moral problems, and would laugh away her avowal, with a
+      sneer at Nick in his new part of moralist. But that was just what she
+      could not bear: that anyone should cast a doubt on the genuineness of
+      Nick&rsquo;s standards, or should know how far below them she had fallen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She remained silent, and Strefford, after a moment, drew her gently down
+      to the seat beside him. &ldquo;Susy, upon my soul I don&rsquo;t know what you&rsquo;re
+      driving at. Is it me you&rsquo;re angry with&mdash;or yourself? And what&rsquo;s it all
+      about! Are you disgusted because I let the villa to a couple who weren&rsquo;t
+      married! But, hang it, they&rsquo;re the kind that pay the highest price and I
+      had to earn my living somehow! One doesn&rsquo;t run across a bridal pair every
+      day....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She lifted her eyes to his puzzled incredulous face. Poor Streff! No, it
+      was not with him that she was angry. Why should she be? Even that
+      ill-advised disclosure had told her nothing she had not already known
+      about him. It had simply revealed to her once more the real point of view
+      of the people he and she lived among had shown her that, in spite of the
+      superficial difference, he felt as they felt, judged as they judged, was
+      blind as they were&mdash;and as she would be expected to be, should she once
+      again become one of them. What was the use of being placed by fortune
+      above such shifts and compromises, if in one&rsquo;s heart one still condoned
+      them? And she would have to&mdash;she would catch the general note, grow
+      blunted as those other people were blunted, and gradually come to wonder
+      at her own revolt, as Strefford now honestly wondered at it. She felt as
+      though she were on the point of losing some new-found treasure, a treasure
+      precious only to herself, but beside which all he offered her was nothing,
+      the triumph of her wounded pride nothing, the security of her future
+      nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it, Susy?&rdquo; he asked, with the same puzzled gentleness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ah, the loneliness of never being able to make him understand! She had
+      felt lonely enough when the flaming sword of Nick&rsquo;s indignation had shut
+      her out from their Paradise; but there had been a cruel bliss in the pain.
+      Nick had not opened her eyes to new truths, but had waked in her again
+      something which had lain unconscious under years of accumulated
+      indifference. And that re-awakened sense had never left her since, and had
+      somehow kept her from utter loneliness because it was a secret shared with
+      Nick, a gift she owed to Nick, and which, in leaving her, he could not
+      take from her. It was almost, she suddenly felt, as if he had left her
+      with a child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear girl,&rdquo; Strefford said, with a resigned glance at his watch, &ldquo;you
+      know we&rsquo;re dining at the Embassy....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the Embassy? She looked at him vaguely: then she remembered. Yes, they
+      were dining that night at the Ascots&rsquo;, with Strefford&rsquo;s cousin, the Duke
+      of Dunes, and his wife, the handsome irreproachable young Duchess; with
+      the old gambling Dowager Duchess, whom her son and daughter-in-law had
+      come over from England to see; and with other English and French guests of
+      a rank and standing worthy of the Duneses. Susy knew that her inclusion in
+      such a dinner could mean but one thing: it was her definite recognition as
+      Altringham&rsquo;s future wife. She was &ldquo;the little American&rdquo; whom one had to
+      ask when one invited him, even on ceremonial occasions. The family had
+      accepted her; the Embassy could but follow suit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s late, dear; and I&rsquo;ve got to see someone on business first,&rdquo;
+       Strefford reminded her patiently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Streff&mdash;I can&rsquo;t, I can&rsquo;t!&rdquo; The words broke from her without her
+      knowing what she was saying. &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t go with you&mdash;I can&rsquo;t go to the
+      Embassy. I can&rsquo;t go on any longer like this....&rdquo; She lifted her eyes to
+      his in desperate appeal. &ldquo;Oh, understand&mdash;do please understand!&rdquo; she
+      wailed, knowing, while she spoke, the utter impossibility of what she
+      asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford&rsquo;s face had gradually paled and hardened. From sallow it turned
+      to a dusky white, and lines of obstinacy deepened between the ironic
+      eyebrows and about the weak amused mouth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Understand? What do you want me to understand,&rdquo; He laughed. &ldquo;That you&rsquo;re
+      trying to chuck me already?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She shrank at the sneer of the &ldquo;already,&rdquo; but instantly remembered that it
+      was the only thing he could be expected to say, since it was just because
+      he couldn&rsquo;t understand that she was flying from him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Streff&mdash;if I knew how to tell you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It doesn&rsquo;t so much matter about the how. Is that what you&rsquo;re trying to
+      say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her head drooped, and she saw the dead leaves whirling across the path at
+      her feet, lifted on a sudden wintry gust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The reason,&rdquo; he continued, clearing his throat with a stiff smile, &ldquo;is
+      not quite as important to me as the fact.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stood speechless, agonized by his pain. But still, she thought, he had
+      remembered the dinner at the Embassy. The thought gave her courage to go
+      on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It wouldn&rsquo;t do, Streff. I&rsquo;m not a bit the kind of person to make you
+      happy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, leave that to me, please, won&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I can&rsquo;t. Because I should be unhappy too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He clicked at the leaves as they whirled past. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve taken a rather long
+      time to find it out.&rdquo; She saw that his new-born sense of his own
+      consequence was making him suffer even more than his wounded affection;
+      and that again gave her courage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I&rsquo;ve taken long it&rsquo;s all the more reason why I shouldn&rsquo;t take longer.
+      If I&rsquo;ve made a mistake it&rsquo;s you who would have suffered from it....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thanks,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;for your extreme solicitude.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at him helplessly, penetrated by the despairing sense of their
+      inaccessibility to each other. Then she remembered that Nick, during their
+      last talk together, had seemed as inaccessible, and wondered if, when
+      human souls try to get too near each other, they do not inevitably become
+      mere blurs to each other&rsquo;s vision. She would have liked to say this to
+      Streff&mdash;but he would not have understood it either. The sense of loneliness
+      once more enveloped her, and she groped in vain for a word that should
+      reach him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me go home alone, won&rsquo;t you?&rdquo; she appealed to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alone?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She nodded. &ldquo;To-morrow&mdash;to-morrow....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He tried, rather valiantly, to smile. &ldquo;Hang to-morrow! Whatever is wrong,
+      it needn&rsquo;t prevent my seeing you home.&rdquo; He glanced toward the taxi that
+      awaited them at the end of the deserted drive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, please. You&rsquo;re in a hurry; take the taxi. I want immensely a long
+      long walk by myself... through the streets, with the lights coming
+      out....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He laid his hand on her arm. &ldquo;I say, my dear, you&rsquo;re not ill?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; I&rsquo;m not ill. But you may say I am, to-night at the Embassy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He released her and drew back. &ldquo;Oh, very well,&rdquo; he answered coldly; and
+      she understood by his tone that the knot was cut, and that at that moment
+      he almost hated her. She turned away, hastening down the deserted alley,
+      flying from him, and knowing, as she fled, that he was still standing
+      there motionless, staring after her, wounded, humiliated, uncomprehending.
+      It was neither her fault nor his....
+    </p>
+
+
+<h3>XXIII.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">As</span> she fled on toward the lights of the streets a breath of freedom seemed
+      to blow into her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Like a weary load the accumulated hypocrisies of the last months had
+      dropped from her: she was herself again, Nick&rsquo;s Susy, and no one else&rsquo;s.
+      She sped on, staring with bright bewildered eyes at the stately facades of
+      the La Muette quarter, the perspectives of bare trees, the awakening
+      glitter of shop-windows holding out to her all the things she would never
+      again be able to buy....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In an avenue of shops she paused before a milliner&rsquo;s window, and said to
+      herself: &ldquo;Why shouldn&rsquo;t I earn my living by trimming hats?&rdquo; She met
+      work-girls streaming out under a doorway, and scattering to catch trams
+      and omnibuses; and she looked with newly-wakened interest at their tired
+      independent faces. &ldquo;Why shouldn&rsquo;t I earn my living as well as they do?&rdquo;
+       she thought. A little farther on she passed a Sister of Charity with
+      softly trotting feet, a calm anonymous glance, and hands hidden in her
+      capacious sleeves. Susy looked at her and thought: &ldquo;Why shouldn&rsquo;t I be a
+      Sister, and have no money to worry about, and trot about under a white
+      coif helping poor people?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All these strangers on whom she smiled in passing, and glanced back at
+      enviously, were free from the necessities that enslaved her, and would not
+      have known what she meant if she had told them that she must have so much
+      money for her dresses, so much for her cigarettes, so much for bridge and
+      cabs and tips, and all kinds of extras, and that at that moment she ought
+      to be hurrying back to a dinner at the British Embassy, where her
+      permanent right to such luxuries was to be solemnly recognized and
+      ratified.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The artificiality and unreality of her life overcame her as with stifling
+      fumes. She stopped at a street-corner, drawing long panting breaths as if
+      she had been running a race. Then, slowly and aimlessly, she began to
+      saunter along a street of small private houses in damp gardens that led to
+      the Avenue du Bois. She sat down on a bench. Not far off, the Arc de
+      Triomphe raised its august bulk, and beyond it a river of lights streamed
+      down toward Paris, and the stir of the city&rsquo;s heart-beats troubled the
+      quiet in her bosom. But not for long. She seemed to be looking at it all
+      from the other side of the grave; and as she got up and wandered down the
+      Champs Elysees, half empty in the evening lull between dusk and dinner,
+      she felt as if the glittering avenue were really changed into the Field of
+      Shadows from which it takes its name, and as if she were a ghost among
+      ghosts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Halfway home, a weakness of loneliness overcame her, and she seated
+      herself under the trees near the Rond Point. Lines of motors and carriages
+      were beginning to animate the converging thoroughfares, streaming abreast,
+      crossing, winding in and out of each other in a tangle of hurried
+      pleasure-seeking. She caught the light on jewels and shirt-fronts and hard
+      bored eyes emerging from dim billows of fur and velvet. She seemed to hear
+      what the couples were saying to each other, she pictured the
+      drawing-rooms, restaurants, dance-halls they were hastening to, the
+      breathless routine that was hurrying them along, as Time, the old
+      vacuum-cleaner, swept them away with the dust of their carriage-wheels.
+      And again the loneliness vanished in a sense of release....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the corner of the Place de la Concorde she stopped, recognizing a man
+      in evening dress who was hailing a taxi. Their eyes met, and Nelson
+      Vanderlyn came forward. He was the last person she cared to run across,
+      and she shrank back involuntarily. What did he know, what had he guessed,
+      of her complicity in his wife&rsquo;s affairs? No doubt Ellie had blabbed it all
+      out by this time; she was just as likely to confide her love-affairs to
+      Nelson as to anyone else, now that the Bockheimer prize was landed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;well&mdash;well&mdash;so I&rsquo;ve caught you at it! Glad to see
+      you, Susy, my dear.&rdquo; She found her hand cordially clasped in Vanderlyn&rsquo;s,
+      and his round pink face bent on her with all its old urbanity. Did nothing
+      matter, then, in this world she was fleeing from, did no one love or hate
+      or remember?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No idea you were in Paris&mdash;just got here myself,&rdquo; Vanderlyn
+      continued, visibly delighted at the meeting. &ldquo;Look here, don&rsquo;t suppose
+      you&rsquo;re out of a job this evening by any chance, and would come and cheer
+      up a lone bachelor, eh? No? You are? Well, that&rsquo;s luck for once! I say,
+      where shall we go? One of the places where they dance, I suppose? Yes, I
+      twirl the light fantastic once in a while myself. Got to keep up with the
+      times! Hold on, taxi! Here&mdash;I&rsquo;ll drive you home first, and wait while
+      you jump into your toggery. Lots of time.&rdquo; As he steered her toward the
+      carriage she noticed that he had a gouty limp, and pulled himself in after
+      her with difficulty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mayn&rsquo;t I come as I am, Nelson, I don&rsquo;t feel like dancing. Let&rsquo;s go and
+      dine in one of those nice smoky little restaurants by the Place de la
+      Bourse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He seemed surprised but relieved at the suggestion, and they rolled off
+      together. In a corner at Bauge&rsquo;s they found a quiet table, screened from
+      the other diners, and while Vanderlyn adjusted his eyeglasses to study the
+      carte Susy stole a long look at him. He was dressed with even more than
+      his usual formal trimness, and she detected, in an ultra-flat wrist-watch
+      and discreetly expensive waistcoat buttons, an attempt at smartness
+      altogether new. His face had undergone the same change: its familiar look
+      of worn optimism had been, as it were, done up to match his clothes, as
+      though a sort of moral cosmetic had made him pinker, shinier and
+      sprightlier without really rejuvenating him. A thin veil of high spirits
+      had merely been drawn over his face, as the shining strands of hair were
+      skilfully brushed over his baldness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here! Carte des vins, waiter! What champagne, Susy?&rdquo; He chose,
+      fastidiously, the best the cellar could produce, grumbling a little at the
+      bourgeois character of the dishes. &ldquo;Capital food of its kind, no doubt,
+      but coarsish, don&rsquo;t you think? Well, I don&rsquo;t mind... it&rsquo;s rather a jolly
+      change from the Luxe cooking. A new sensation&mdash;I&rsquo;m all for new
+      sensations, ain&rsquo;t you, my dear?&rdquo; He re-filled their champagne glasses,
+      flung an arm sideways over his chair, and smiled at her with a foggy
+      benevolence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the champagne flowed his confidences flowed with it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Suppose you know what I&rsquo;m here for&mdash;this divorce business? We wanted
+      to settle it quietly without a fuss, and of course Paris is the best place
+      for that sort of job. Live and let live; no questions asked. None of your
+      dirty newspapers. Great country, this. No hypocrisy... they understand
+      Life over here!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy gazed and listened. She remembered that people had thought Nelson
+      would make a row when he found out. He had always been addicted to
+      truculent anecdotes about unfaithful wives, and the very formula of his
+      perpetual ejaculation&mdash;&ldquo;Caught you at it, eh?&rdquo;&mdash;seemed to hint
+      at a constant preoccupation with such ideas. But now it was evident that,
+      as the saying was, he had &ldquo;swallowed his dose&rdquo; like all the others. No
+      strong blast of indignation had momentarily lifted him above his normal
+      stature: he remained a little man among little men, and his eagerness to
+      rebuild his life with all the old smiling optimism reminded Susy of the
+      patient industry of an ant remaking its ruined ant-heap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell you what, great thing, this liberty! Everything&rsquo;s changed nowadays;
+      why shouldn&rsquo;t marriage be too? A man can get out of a business partnership
+      when he wants to; but the parsons want to keep us noosed up to each other
+      for life because we&rsquo;ve blundered into a church one day and said &lsquo;Yes&rsquo;
+      before one of ’em. No, no&mdash;that&rsquo;s too easy. We&rsquo;ve got beyond that.
+      Science, and all these new discoveries.... I say the Ten Commandments were
+      made for man, and not man for the Commandments; and there ain&rsquo;t a word
+      against divorce in ’em, anyhow! That&rsquo;s what I tell my poor old mother, who
+      builds everything on her Bible. Find me the place where it says: &lsquo;Thou
+      shalt not sue for divorce.&rsquo; It makes her wild, poor old lady, because she
+      can&rsquo;t; and she doesn&rsquo;t know how they happen to have left it out.... I
+      rather think Moses left it out because he knew more about human nature
+      than these snivelling modern parsons do. Not that they&rsquo;ll always bear
+      investigating either; but I don&rsquo;t care about that. Live and let live, eh,
+      Susy? Haven&rsquo;t we all got a right to our Affinities? I hear you&rsquo;re
+      following our example yourself. First-rate idea: I don&rsquo;t mind telling you
+      I saw it coming on last summer at Venice. Caught you at it, so to speak!
+      Old Nelson ain&rsquo;t as blind as people think. Here, let&rsquo;s open another bottle
+      to the health of Streff and Mrs. Streff!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She caught the hand with which he was signalling to the sommelier. This
+      flushed and garrulous Nelson moved her more poignantly than a more heroic
+      figure. &ldquo;No more champagne, please, Nelson. Besides,&rdquo; she suddenly added,
+      &ldquo;it&rsquo;s not true.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stared. &ldquo;Not true that you&rsquo;re going to marry Altringham?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By George then what on earth did you chuck Nick for? Ain&rsquo;t you got an
+      Affinity, my dear?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She laughed and shook her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean to tell me it&rsquo;s all Nick&rsquo;s doing, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know. Let&rsquo;s talk of you instead, Nelson. I&rsquo;m glad you&rsquo;re in such
+      good spirits. I rather thought&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He interrupted her quickly. &ldquo;Thought I&rsquo;d cut up a rumpus&mdash;do some shooting?
+      I know&mdash;people did.&rdquo; He twisted his moustache, evidently proud of his
+      reputation. &ldquo;Well, maybe I did see red for a day or two&mdash;but I&rsquo;m a
+      philosopher, first and last. Before I went into banking I&rsquo;d made and lost
+      two fortunes out West. Well, how did I build ’em up again? Not by shooting
+      anybody even myself. By just buckling to, and beginning all over again.
+      That&rsquo;s how... and that&rsquo;s what I am doing now. Beginning all over again.&rdquo;
+       His voice dropped from boastfulness to a note of wistful melancholy, the
+      look of strained jauntiness fell from his face like a mask, and for an
+      instant she saw the real man, old, ruined, lonely. Yes, that was it: he
+      was lonely, desperately lonely, foundering in such deep seas of solitude
+      that any presence out of the past was like a spar to which he clung.
+      Whatever he knew or guessed of the part she had played in his disaster, it
+      was not callousness that had made him greet her with such forgiving
+      warmth, but the same sense of smallness, insignificance and isolation
+      which perpetually hung like a cold fog on her own horizon. Suddenly she
+      too felt old&mdash;old and unspeakably tired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s been nice seeing you, Nelson. But now I must be getting home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He offered no objection, but asked for the bill, resumed his jaunty air
+      while he scattered largesse among the waiters, and sauntered out behind
+      her after calling for a taxi.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They drove off in silence. Susy was thinking: &ldquo;And Clarissa?&rdquo; but dared
+      not ask. Vanderlyn lit a cigarette, hummed a dance-tune, and stared out of
+      the window. Suddenly she felt his hand on hers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Susy&mdash;do you ever see her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;See&mdash;Ellie?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He nodded, without turning toward her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not often... sometimes....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you do, for God&rsquo;s sake tell her I&rsquo;m happy... happy as a king... tell
+      her you could see for yourself that I was....&rdquo; His voice broke in a little
+      gasp. &ldquo;I... I&rsquo;ll be damned if... if she shall ever be unhappy about me...
+      if I can help it....&rdquo; The cigarette dropped from his fingers, and with a
+      sob he covered his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, poor Nelson&mdash;poor Nelson,&rdquo; Susy breathed. While their cab
+      rattled across the Place du Carrousel, and over the bridge, he continued
+      to sit beside her with hidden face. At last he pulled out a scented
+      handkerchief, rubbed his eyes with it, and groped for another cigarette.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m all right! Tell her that, will you, Susy? There are some of our old
+      times I don&rsquo;t suppose I shall ever forget; but they make me feel kindly to
+      her, and not angry. I didn&rsquo;t know it would be so, beforehand&mdash;but it
+      is.... And now the thing&rsquo;s settled I&rsquo;m as right as a trivet, and you can
+      tell her so.... Look here, Susy...&rdquo; he caught her by the arm as the taxi
+      drew up at her hotel.... &ldquo;Tell her I understand, will you? I&rsquo;d rather like
+      her to know that....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll tell her, Nelson,&rdquo; she promised; and climbed the stairs alone to her
+      dreary room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy&rsquo;s one fear was that Strefford, when he returned the next day, should
+      treat their talk of the previous evening as a fit of &ldquo;nerves&rdquo; to be jested
+      away. He might, indeed, resent her behaviour too deeply to seek to see her
+      at once; but his easygoing modern attitude toward conduct and convictions
+      made that improbable. She had an idea that what he had most minded was her
+      dropping so unceremoniously out of the Embassy Dinner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, after all, why should she see him again? She had had enough of
+      explanations during the last months to have learned how seldom they
+      explain anything. If the other person did not understand at the first
+      word, at the first glance even, subsequent elucidations served only to
+      deepen the obscurity. And she wanted above all&mdash;and especially since
+      her hour with Nelson Vanderlyn&mdash;to keep herself free, aloof, to
+      retain her hold on her precariously recovered self. She sat down and wrote
+      to Strefford&mdash;and the letter was only a little less painful to write
+      than the one she had despatched to Nick. It was not that her own feelings
+      were in any like measure engaged; but because, as the decision to give up
+      Strefford affirmed itself, she remembered only his kindness, his
+      forbearance, his good humour, and all the other qualities she had always
+      liked in him; and because she felt ashamed of the hesitations which must
+      cause him so much pain and humiliation. Yes: humiliation chiefly. She knew
+      that what she had to say would hurt his pride, in whatever way she framed
+      her renunciation; and her pen wavered, hating its task. Then she
+      remembered Vanderlyn&rsquo;s words about his wife: &ldquo;There are some of our old
+      times I don&rsquo;t suppose I shall ever forget&mdash;&rdquo; and a phrase of Grace
+      Fulmer&rsquo;s that she had but half grasped at the time: &ldquo;You haven&rsquo;t been
+      married long enough to understand how trifling such things seem in the
+      balance of one&rsquo;s memories.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here were two people who had penetrated farther than she into the
+      labyrinth of the wedded state, and struggled through some of its thorniest
+      passages; and yet both, one consciously, the other half-unaware, testified
+      to the mysterious fact which was already dawning on her: that the
+      influence of a marriage begun in mutual understanding is too deep not to
+      reassert itself even in the moment of flight and denial.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The real reason is that you&rsquo;re not Nick&rdquo; was what she would have said to
+      Strefford if she had dared to set down the bare truth; and she knew that,
+      whatever she wrote, he was too acute not to read that into it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;ll think it&rsquo;s because I&rsquo;m still in love with Nick... and perhaps I am.
+      But even if I were, the difference doesn&rsquo;t seem to lie there, after all,
+      but deeper, in things we&rsquo;ve shared that seem to be meant to outlast love,
+      or to change it into something different.&rdquo; If she could have hoped to make
+      Strefford understand that, the letter would have been easy enough to write&mdash;but
+      she knew just at what point his imagination would fail, in what obvious
+      and superficial inferences it would rest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor Streff&mdash;poor me!&rdquo; she thought as she sealed the letter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After she had despatched it a sense of blankness descended on her. She had
+      succeeded in driving from her mind all vain hesitations, doubts, returns
+      upon herself: her healthy system naturally rejected them. But they left a
+      queer emptiness in which her thoughts rattled about as thoughts might, she
+      supposed, in the first moments after death&mdash;before one got used to
+      it. To get used to being dead: that seemed to be her immediate business.
+      And she felt such a novice at it&mdash;felt so horribly alive! How had
+      those others learned to do without living? Nelson&mdash;well, he was still
+      in the throes; and probably never would understand, or be able to
+      communicate, the lesson when he had mastered it. But Grace Fulmer&mdash;she
+      suddenly remembered that Grace was in Paris, and set forth to find her.
+    </p>
+
+
+<h3>XXIV.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">Nick Lansing</span> had walked out a long way into the Campagna. His hours were
+      seldom his own, for both Mr. and Mrs. Hicks were becoming more and more
+      addicted to sudden and somewhat imperious demands upon his time; but on
+      this occasion he had simply slipped away after luncheon, and taking the
+      tram to the Porta Salaria, had wandered on thence in the direction of the
+      Ponte Nomentano.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He wanted to get away and think; but now that he had done it the business
+      proved as unfruitful as everything he had put his hand to since he had
+      left Venice. Think&mdash;think about what? His future seemed to him a
+      negligible matter since he had received, two months earlier, the few lines
+      in which Susy had asked him for her freedom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The letter had been a shock&mdash;though he had fancied himself so
+      prepared for it&mdash;yet it had also, in another sense, been a relief,
+      since, now that at last circumstances compelled him to write to her, they
+      also told him what to say. And he had said it as briefly and simply as
+      possible, telling her that he would put no obstacle in the way of her
+      release, that he held himself at her lawyer&rsquo;s disposal to answer any
+      further communication&mdash;and that he would never forget their days
+      together, or cease to bless her for them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That was all. He gave his Roman banker&rsquo;s address, and waited for another
+      letter; but none came. Probably the &ldquo;formalities,&rdquo; whatever they were,
+      took longer than he had supposed; and being in no haste to recover his own
+      liberty, he did not try to learn the cause of the delay. From that moment,
+      however, he considered himself virtually free, and ceased, by the same
+      token, to take any interest in his own future. His life seemed as flat as
+      a convalescent&rsquo;s first days after the fever has dropped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The only thing he was sure of was that he was not going to remain in the
+      Hickses&rsquo; employ: when they left Rome for Central Asia he had no intention
+      of accompanying them. The part of Mr. Buttles&rsquo; successor was becoming
+      daily more intolerable to him, for the very reasons that had probably made
+      it most gratifying to Mr. Buttles. To be treated by Mr. and Mrs. Hicks as
+      a paid oracle, a paraded and petted piece of property, was a good deal
+      more distasteful than he could have imagined any relation with these
+      kindly people could be. And since their aspirations had become frankly
+      social he found his task, if easier, yet far less congenial than during
+      his first months with them. He preferred patiently explaining to Mrs.
+      Hicks, for the hundredth time, that Sassanian and Saracenic were not
+      interchangeable terms, to unravelling for her the genealogies of her
+      titled guests, and reminding her, when she &ldquo;seated&rdquo; her dinner-parties,
+      that Dukes ranked higher than Princes. No&mdash;the job was decidedly
+      intolerable; and he would have to look out for another means of earning
+      his living. But that was not what he had really got away to think about.
+      He knew he should never starve; he had even begun to believe again in his
+      book. What he wanted to think of was Susy&mdash;or rather, it was Susy
+      that he could not help thinking of, on whatever train of thought he set
+      out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again and again he fancied he had established a truce with the past: had
+      come to terms&mdash;the terms of defeat and failure with that bright enemy
+      called happiness. And, in truth, he had reached the point of definitely
+      knowing that he could never return to the kind of life that he and Susy
+      had embarked on. It had been the tragedy, of their relation that loving
+      her roused in him ideals she could never satisfy. He had fallen in love
+      with her because she was, like himself, amused, unprejudiced and
+      disenchanted; and he could not go on loving her unless she ceased to be
+      all these things. From that circle there was no issue, and in it he
+      desperately revolved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If he had not heard such persistent rumours of her re-marriage to Lord
+      Altringham he might have tried to see her again; but, aware of the danger
+      and the hopelessness of a meeting, he was, on the whole, glad to have a
+      reason for avoiding it. Such, at least, he honestly supposed to be his
+      state of mind until he found himself, as on this occasion, free to follow
+      out his thought to its end. That end, invariably, was Susy; not the bundle
+      of qualities and defects into which his critical spirit had tried to sort
+      her out, but the soft blur of identity, of personality, of eyes, hair,
+      mouth, laugh, tricks of speech and gesture, that were all so solely and
+      profoundly her own, and yet so mysteriously independent of what she might
+      do, say, think, in crucial circumstances. He remembered her once saying to
+      him: &ldquo;After all, you were right when you wanted me to be your mistress,&rdquo;
+       and the indignant stare of incredulity with which he had answered her. Yet
+      in these hours it was the palpable image of her that clung closest, till,
+      as invariably happened, his vision came full circle, and feeling her on
+      his breast he wanted her also in his soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well&mdash;such all-encompassing loves were the rarest of human
+      experiences; he smiled at his presumption in wanting no other. Wearily he
+      turned, and tramped homeward through the winter twilight....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the door of the hotel he ran across the Prince of Teutoburg&rsquo;s
+      aide-de-camp. They had not met for some days, and Nick had a vague feeling
+      that if the Prince&rsquo;s matrimonial designs took definite shape he himself
+      was not likely, after all, to be their chosen exponent. He had surprised,
+      now and then, a certain distrustful coldness under the Princess Mother&rsquo;s
+      cordial glance, and had concluded that she perhaps suspected him of being
+      an obstacle to her son&rsquo;s aspirations. He had no idea of playing that part,
+      but was not sorry to appear to; for he was sincerely attached to Coral
+      Hicks, and hoped for her a more human fate than that of becoming Prince
+      Anastasius&rsquo;s consort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This evening, however, he was struck by the beaming alacrity of the
+      aide-de-camp&rsquo;s greeting. Whatever cloud had hung between them had lifted:
+      the Teutoburg clan, for one reason or another, no longer feared or
+      distrusted him. The change was conveyed in a mere hand-pressure, a brief
+      exchange of words, for the aide-de-camp was hastening after a well-known
+      dowager of the old Roman world, whom he helped into a large coronetted
+      brougham which looked as if it had been extracted, for some ceremonial
+      purpose, from a museum of historic vehicles. And in an instant it flashed
+      on Lansing that this lady had been the person chosen to lay the Prince&rsquo;s
+      offer at Miss Hicks&rsquo;s feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The discovery piqued him; and instead of making straight for his own room
+      he went up to Mrs. Hicks&rsquo;s drawing-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The room was empty, but traces of elaborate tea pervaded it, and an
+      immense bouquet of stiff roses lay on the centre table. As he turned away,
+      Eldorada Tooker, flushed and tear-stained, abruptly entered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Mr. Lansing&mdash;we were looking everywhere for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Looking for me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Coral especially... she wants to see you. She wants you to come to
+      her own sitting-room.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She led him across the ante-chamber and down the passage to the separate
+      suite which Miss Hicks inhabited. On the threshold Eldorada gasped out
+      emotionally: &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll find her looking lovely&mdash;&rdquo; and jerked away with
+      a sob as he entered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Coral Hicks was never lovely: but she certainly looked unusually handsome.
+      Perhaps it was the long dress of black velvet which, outlined against a
+      shaded lamp, made her strong build seem slenderer, or perhaps the slight
+      flush on her dusky cheek: a bloom of womanhood hung upon her which she
+      made no effort to dissemble. Indeed, it was one of her originalities that
+      she always gravely and courageously revealed the utmost of whatever mood
+      possessed her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How splendid you look!&rdquo; he said, smiling at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She threw her head back and gazed him straight in the eyes. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s going
+      to be my future job.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To look splendid?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And wear a crown?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And wear a crown....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They continued to consider each other without speaking. Nick&rsquo;s heart
+      contracted with pity and perplexity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Coral&mdash;it&rsquo;s not decided?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She scrutinized him for a last penetrating moment; then she looked away.
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m never long deciding.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He hesitated, choking with contradictory impulses, and afraid to formulate
+      any, lest they should either mislead or pain her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why didn&rsquo;t you tell me?&rdquo; he questioned lamely; and instantly perceived
+      his blunder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She sat down, and looked up at him under brooding lashes&mdash;had he ever
+      noticed the thickness of her lashes before?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would it have made any difference if I had told you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Any difference&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sit down by me,&rdquo; she commanded. &ldquo;I want to talk to you. You can say now
+      whatever you might have said sooner. I&rsquo;m not married yet: I&rsquo;m still free.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You haven&rsquo;t given your answer?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It doesn&rsquo;t matter if I have.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The retort frightened him with the glimpse of what she still expected of
+      him, and what he was still so unable to give.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That means you&rsquo;ve said yes?&rdquo; he pursued, to gain time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes or no&mdash;it doesn&rsquo;t matter. I had to say something. What I want is
+      your advice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At the eleventh hour?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Or the twelfth.&rdquo; She paused. &ldquo;What shall I do?&rdquo; she questioned, with a
+      sudden accent of helplessness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at her as helplessly. He could not say: &ldquo;Ask yourself&mdash;ask
+      your parents.&rdquo; Her next word would sweep away such frail hypocrisies. Her
+      &ldquo;What shall I do?&rdquo; meant &ldquo;What are you going to do?&rdquo; and he knew it, and
+      knew that she knew it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m a bad person to give any one matrimonial advice,&rdquo; he began, with a
+      strained smile; &ldquo;but I had such a different vision for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What kind of a vision?&rdquo; She was merciless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Merely what people call happiness, dear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;People call&rsquo;&mdash;you see you don&rsquo;t believe in it yourself! Well,
+      neither do I&mdash;in that form, at any rate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He considered. &ldquo;I believe in trying for it&mdash;even if the trying&rsquo;s the
+      best of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;ve tried, and failed. And I&rsquo;m twenty-two, and I never was young.
+      I suppose I haven&rsquo;t enough imagination.&rdquo; She drew a deep breath. &ldquo;Now I
+      want something different.&rdquo; She appeared to search for the word. &ldquo;I want to
+      be&mdash;prominent,&rdquo; she declared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Prominent?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She reddened swarthily. &ldquo;Oh, you smile&mdash;you think it&rsquo;s ridiculous: it
+      doesn&rsquo;t seem worth while to you. That&rsquo;s because you&rsquo;ve always had all
+      those things. But I haven&rsquo;t. I know what father pushed up from, and I want
+      to push up as high again&mdash;higher. No, I haven&rsquo;t got much imagination.
+      I&rsquo;ve always liked Facts. And I find I shall like the fact of being a
+      Princess&mdash;choosing the people I associate with, and being up above
+      all these European grandees that father and mother bow down to, though
+      they think they despise them. You can be up above these people by just
+      being yourself; you know how. But I need a platform&mdash;a sky-scraper.
+      Father and mother slaved to give me my education. They thought education
+      was the important thing; but, since we&rsquo;ve all three of us got mediocre
+      minds, it has just landed us among mediocre people. Don&rsquo;t you suppose I
+      see through all the sham science and sham art and sham everything we&rsquo;re
+      surrounded with? That&rsquo;s why I want to buy a place at the very top, where I
+      shall be powerful enough to get about me the people I want, the big
+      people, the right people, and to help them I want to promote culture, like
+      those Renaissance women you&rsquo;re always talking about. I want to do it for
+      Apex City; do you understand? And for father and mother too. I want all
+      those titles carved on my tombstone. They&rsquo;re facts, anyhow! Don&rsquo;t laugh at
+      me....&rdquo; She broke off with one of her clumsy smiles, and moved away from
+      him to the other end of the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat looking at her with a curious feeling of admiration. Her harsh
+      positivism was like a tonic to his disenchanted mood, and he thought:
+      &ldquo;What a pity!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Aloud he said: &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t feel like laughing at you. You&rsquo;re a great woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I shall be a great Princess.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh&mdash;but you might have been something so much greater!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her face flamed again. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t say that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood up involuntarily, and drew near her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because you&rsquo;re the only man with whom I can imagine the other kind of
+      greatness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It moved him&mdash;moved him unexpectedly. He got as far as saying to
+      himself: &ldquo;Good God, if she were not so hideously rich&mdash;&rdquo; and then of
+      yielding for a moment to the persuasive vision of all that he and she
+      might do with those very riches which he dreaded. After all, there was
+      nothing mean in her ideals they were hard and material, in keeping with
+      her primitive and massive person; but they had a certain grim nobility.
+      And when she spoke of &ldquo;the other kind of greatness&rdquo; he knew that she
+      understood what she was talking of, and was not merely saying something to
+      draw him on, to get him to commit himself. There was not a drop of guile
+      in her, except that which her very honesty distilled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The other kind of greatness?&rdquo; he repeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, isn&rsquo;t that what you said happiness was? I wanted to be happy... but
+      one can&rsquo;t choose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He went up to her. &ldquo;No, one can&rsquo;t choose. And how can anyone give you
+      happiness who hasn&rsquo;t got it himself?&rdquo; He took her hands, feeling how
+      large, muscular and voluntary they were, even as they melted in his palms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My poor Coral, of what use can I ever be to you? What you need is to be
+      loved.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She drew back and gave him one of her straight strong glances: &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she
+      said gallantly, &ldquo;but just to love.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_PART3" id="link2H_PART3">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PART III
+    </h2>
+
+    <h3>
+      XXV.
+    </h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">In</span> the persistent drizzle of a Paris winter morning Susy Lansing walked
+      back alone from the school at which she had just deposited the four eldest
+      Fulmers to the little house in Passy where, for the last two months, she
+      had been living with them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had on ready-made boots, an old waterproof and a last year&rsquo;s hat; but
+      none of these facts disturbed her, though she took no particular pride in
+      them. The truth was that she was too busy to think much about them. Since
+      she had assumed the charge of the Fulmer children, in the absence of both
+      their parents in Italy, she had had to pass through such an arduous
+      apprenticeship of motherhood that every moment of her waking hours was
+      packed with things to do at once, and other things to remember to do
+      later. There were only five Fulmers; but at times they were like an army
+      with banners, and their power of self-multiplication was equalled only by
+      the manner in which they could dwindle, vanish, grow mute, and become as
+      it were a single tumbled brown head bent over a book in some corner of the
+      house in which nobody would ever have thought of hunting for them&mdash;and
+      which, of course, were it the bonne&rsquo;s room in the attic, or the
+      subterranean closet where the trunks were kept, had been singled out by
+      them for that very reason.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These changes from ubiquity to invisibility would have seemed to Susy, a
+      few months earlier, one of the most maddening of many characteristics not
+      calculated to promote repose. But now she felt differently. She had grown
+      interested in her charges, and the search for a clue to their methods,
+      whether tribal or individual, was as exciting to her as the development of
+      a detective story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What interested her most in the whole stirring business was the discovery
+      that they had a method. These little creatures, pitched upward into
+      experience on the tossing waves of their parents&rsquo; agitated lives, had
+      managed to establish a rough-and-ready system of self-government. Junie,
+      the eldest (the one who already chose her mother&rsquo;s hats, and tried to put
+      order in her wardrobe) was the recognized head of the state. At twelve she
+      knew lots of things which her mother had never thoroughly learned, and
+      Susy, her temporary mother, had never even guessed at: she spoke with
+      authority on all vital subjects, from castor-oil to flannel under-clothes,
+      from the fair sharing of stamps or marbles to the number of helpings of
+      rice-pudding or jam which each child was entitled to.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was hardly any appeal from her verdict; yet each of her subjects
+      revolved in his or her own orbit of independence, according to laws which
+      Junie acknowledged and respected; and the interpreting of this mysterious
+      charter of rights and privileges had not been without difficulty for Susy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Besides this, there were material difficulties to deal with. The six of
+      them, and the breathless bonne who cooked and slaved for them all, had but
+      a slim budget to live on; and, as Junie remarked, you&rsquo;d have thought the
+      boys ate their shoes, the way they vanished. They ate, certainly, a great
+      deal else, and mostly of a nourishing and expensive kind. They had
+      definite views about the amount and quality of their food, and were
+      capable of concerted rebellion when Susy&rsquo;s catering fell beneath their
+      standard. All this made her life a hurried and harassing business, but
+      never&mdash;what she had most feared it would be a dull or depressing one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not, she owned to herself, that the society of the Fulmer children
+      had roused in her any abstract passion for the human young. She knew&mdash;had
+      known since Nick&rsquo;s first kiss&mdash;how she would love any child of his
+      and hers; and she had cherished poor little Clarissa Vanderlyn with a
+      shrinking and wistful solicitude. But in these rough young Fulmers she
+      took a positive delight, and for reasons that were increasingly clear to
+      her. It was because, in the first place, they were all intelligent; and
+      because their intelligence had been fed only on things worth caring for.
+      However inadequate Grace Fulmer&rsquo;s bringing-up of her increasing tribe had
+      been, they had heard in her company nothing trivial or dull: good music,
+      good books and good talk had been their daily food, and if at times they
+      stamped and roared and crashed about like children unblessed by such
+      privileges, at others they shone with the light of poetry and spoke with
+      the voice of wisdom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That had been Susy&rsquo;s discovery: for the first time she was among awakening
+      minds which had been wakened only to beauty. From their cramped and
+      uncomfortable household Grace and Nat Fulmer had managed to keep out mean
+      envies, vulgar admirations, shabby discontents; above all the din and
+      confusion the great images of beauty had brooded, like those ancestral
+      figures that stood apart on their shelf in the poorest Roman households.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No, the task she had undertaken for want of a better gave Susy no sense of
+      a missed vocation: &ldquo;mothering&rdquo; on a large scale would never, she
+      perceived, be her job. Rather it gave her, in odd ways, the sense of being
+      herself mothered, of taking her first steps in the life of immaterial
+      values which had begun to seem so much more substantial than any she had
+      known.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the day when she had gone to Grace Fulmer for counsel and comfort she
+      had little guessed that they would come to her in this form. She had found
+      her friend, more than ever distracted and yet buoyant, riding the large
+      untidy waves of her life with the splashed ease of an amphibian. Grace was
+      probably the only person among Susy&rsquo;s friends who could have understood
+      why she could not make up her mind to marry Altringham; but at the moment
+      Grace was too much absorbed in her own problems to pay much attention to
+      her friend&rsquo;s, and, according to her wont, she immediately &ldquo;unpacked&rdquo; her
+      difficulties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nat was not getting what she had hoped out of his European opportunity.
+      Oh, she was enough of an artist herself to know that there must be fallow
+      periods&mdash;that the impact of new impressions seldom produced immediate
+      results. She had allowed for all that. But her past experience of Nat&rsquo;s
+      moods had taught her to know just when he was assimilating, when
+      impressions were fructifying in him. And now they were not, and he knew it
+      as well as she did. There had been too much rushing about, too much
+      excitement and sterile flattery... Mrs. Melrose? Well, yes, for a while...
+      the trip to Spain had been a love-journey, no doubt. Grace spoke calmly,
+      but the lines of her face sharpened: she had suffered, oh horribly, at his
+      going to Spain without her. Yet she couldn&rsquo;t, for the children&rsquo;s sake,
+      afford to miss the big sum that Ursula Gillow had given her for her
+      fortnight at Ruan. And her playing had struck people, and led, on the way
+      back, to two or three profitable engagements in private houses in London.
+      Fashionable society had made &ldquo;a little fuss&rdquo; about her, and it had
+      surprised and pleased Nat, and given her a new importance in his eyes. &ldquo;He
+      was beginning to forget that I wasn&rsquo;t only a nursery-maid, and it&rsquo;s been a
+      good thing for him to be reminded... but the great thing is that with what
+      I&rsquo;ve earned he and I can go off to southern Italy and Sicily for three
+      months. You know I know how to manage... and, alone with me, Nat will
+      settle down to work: to observing, feeling, soaking things in. It&rsquo;s the
+      only way. Mrs. Melrose wants to take him, to pay all the expenses
+      again&mdash;well she shan&rsquo;t. I&rsquo;ll pay them.&rdquo; Her worn cheek flushed with
+      triumph. &ldquo;And you&rsquo;ll see what wonders will come of it.... Only there&rsquo;s the
+      problem of the children. Junie quite agrees that we can&rsquo;t take them....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thereupon she had unfolded her idea. If Susy was at a loose end, and hard
+      up, why shouldn&rsquo;t she take charge of the children while their parents were
+      in Italy? For three months at most&mdash;Grace could promise it shouldn&rsquo;t be
+      longer. They couldn&rsquo;t pay her much, of course, but at least she would be
+      lodged and fed. &ldquo;And, you know, it will end by interesting you&mdash;I&rsquo;m
+      sure it will,&rdquo; the mother concluded, her irrepressible hopefulness rising
+      even to this height, while Susy stood before her with a hesitating smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Take care of five Fulmers for three months! The prospect cowed her. If
+      there had been only Junie and Geordie, the oldest and youngest of the
+      band, she might have felt less hesitation. But there was Nat, the second
+      in age, whose motor-horn had driven her and Nick out to the hill-side on
+      their fatal day at the Fulmers&rsquo; and there were the twins, Jack and Peggy,
+      of whom she had kept memories almost equally disquieting. To rule this
+      uproarious tribe would be a sterner business than trying to beguile
+      Clarissa Vanderlyn&rsquo;s ladylike leisure; and she would have refused on the
+      spot, as she had refused once before, if the only possible alternatives
+      had not come to seem so much less bearable, and if Junie, called in for
+      advice, and standing there, small, plain and competent, had not said in
+      her quiet grown-up voice: &ldquo;Oh, yes, I&rsquo;m sure Mrs. Lansing and I can manage
+      while you&rsquo;re away&mdash;especially if she reads aloud well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Reads aloud well! The stipulation had enchanted Susy. She had never before
+      known children who cared to be read aloud to; she remembered with a shiver
+      her attempts to interest Clarissa in anything but gossip and the fashions,
+      and the tone in which the child had said, showing Strefford&rsquo;s trinket to
+      her father: &ldquo;Because I said I&rsquo;d rather have it than a book.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And here were children who consented to be left for three months by their
+      parents, but on condition that a good reader was provided for them!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well&mdash;I will! But what shall I be expected to read to you?&rdquo; she
+      had gaily questioned; and Junie had answered, after one of her sober
+      pauses of reflection: &ldquo;The little ones like nearly everything; but Nat and
+      I want poetry particularly, because if we read it to ourselves we so often
+      pronounce the puzzling words wrong, and then it sounds so horrid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I hope I shall pronounce them right,&rdquo; Susy murmured, stricken with
+      self-distrust and humility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Apparently she did; for her reading was a success, and even the twins and
+      Geordie, once they had grown used to her, seemed to prefer a ringing page
+      of Henry V, or the fairy scenes from the Midsummer Night&rsquo;s Dream, to their
+      own more specialized literature, though that had also at times to be
+      provided.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were, in fact, no lulls in her life with the Fulmers; but its
+      commotions seemed to Susy less meaningless, and therefore less fatiguing,
+      than those that punctuated the existence of people like Altringham, Ursula
+      Gillow, Ellie Vanderlyn and their train; and the noisy uncomfortable
+      little house at Passy was beginning to greet her with the eyes of home
+      when she returned there after her tramps to and from the children&rsquo;s
+      classes. At any rate she had the sense of doing something useful and even
+      necessary, and of earning her own keep, though on so modest a scale; and
+      when the children were in their quiet mood, and demanded books or music
+      (or, even, on one occasion, at the surprising Junie&rsquo;s instigation, a
+      collective visit to the Louvre, where they recognized the most unlikely
+      pictures, and the two elders emitted startling technical judgments, and
+      called their companion&rsquo;s attention to details she had not observed); on
+      these occasions, Susy had a surprised sense of being drawn back into her
+      brief life with Nick, or even still farther and deeper, into those visions
+      of Nick&rsquo;s own childhood on which the trivial later years had heaped their
+      dust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was curious to think that if he and she had remained together, and she
+      had had a child&mdash;the vision used to come to her, in her sleepless
+      hours, when she looked at little Geordie, in his cot by her bed&mdash;their
+      life together might have been very much like the life she was now leading,
+      a small obscure business to the outer world, but to themselves how wide
+      and deep and crowded!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She could not bear, at that moment, the thought of giving up this mystic
+      relation to the life she had missed. In spite of the hurry and fatigue of
+      her days, the shabbiness and discomfort of everything, and the hours when
+      the children were as &ldquo;horrid&rdquo; as any other children, and turned a
+      conspiracy of hostile faces to all her appeals; in spite of all this she
+      did not want to give them up, and had decided, when their parents
+      returned, to ask to go back to America with them. Perhaps, if Nat&rsquo;s
+      success continued, and Grace was able to work at her music, they would
+      need a kind of governess-companion. At any rate, she could picture no
+      future less distasteful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had not sent to Mr. Spearman Nick&rsquo;s answer to her letter. In the
+      interval between writing to him and receiving his reply she had broken
+      with Strefford; she had therefore no object in seeking her freedom. If
+      Nick wanted his, he knew he had only to ask for it; and his silence, as
+      the weeks passed, woke a faint hope in her. The hope flamed high when she
+      read one day in the newspapers a vague but evidently &ldquo;inspired&rdquo; allusion
+      to the possibility of an alliance between his Serene Highness the reigning
+      Prince of Teutoburg-Waldhain and Miss Coral Hicks of Apex City; it sank to
+      ashes when, a few days later, her eye lit on a paragraph wherein Mr. and
+      Mrs. Mortimer Hicks &ldquo;requested to state&rdquo; that there was no truth in the
+      report.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the foundation of these two statements Susy raised one watch-tower of
+      hope after another, feverish edifices demolished or rebuilt by every
+      chance hint from the outer world wherein Nick&rsquo;s name figured with the
+      Hickses&rsquo;. And still, as the days passed and she heard nothing, either from
+      him or from her lawyer, her flag continued to fly from the quaking
+      structures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Apart from the custody of the children there was indeed little to distract
+      her mind from these persistent broodings. She winced sometimes at the
+      thought of the ease with which her fashionable friends had let her drop
+      out of sight. In the perpetual purposeless rush of their days, the
+      feverish making of winter plans, hurrying off to the Riviera or St.
+      Moritz, Egypt or New York, there was no time to hunt up the vanished or to
+      wait for the laggard. Had they learned that she had broken her
+      &ldquo;engagement&rdquo; (how she hated the word!) to Strefford, and had the fact gone
+      about that she was once more only a poor hanger-on, to be taken up when it
+      was convenient, and ignored in the intervals? She did not know; though she
+      fancied Strefford&rsquo;s newly-developed pride would prevent his revealing to
+      any one what had passed between them. For several days after her abrupt
+      flight he had made no sign; and though she longed to write and ask his
+      forgiveness she could not find the words. Finally it was he who wrote: a
+      short note, from Altringham, typical of all that was best in the old
+      Strefford. He had gone down to Altringham, he told her, to think quietly
+      over their last talk, and try to understand what she had been driving at.
+      He had to own that he couldn&rsquo;t; but that, he supposed, was the very head
+      and front of his offending. Whatever he had done to displease her, he was
+      sorry for; but he asked, in view of his invincible ignorance, to be
+      allowed not to regard his offence as a cause for a final break. The
+      possibility of that, he found, would make him even more unhappy than he
+      had foreseen; as she knew, his own happiness had always been his first
+      object in life, and he therefore begged her to suspend her decision a
+      little longer. He expected to be in Paris within another two months, and
+      before arriving he would write again, and ask her to see him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The letter moved her but did not make her waver. She simply wrote that she
+      was touched by his kindness, and would willingly see him if he came to
+      Paris later; though she was bound to tell him that she had not yet changed
+      her mind, and did not believe it would promote his happiness to have her
+      try to do so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not reply to this, and there was nothing further to keep her
+      thoughts from revolving endlessly about her inmost hopes and fears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the rainy afternoon in question, tramping home from the &ldquo;cours&rdquo; (to
+      which she was to return at six), she had said to herself that it was two
+      months that very day since Nick had known she was ready to release him&mdash;and
+      that after such a delay he was not likely to take any further steps. The
+      thought filled her with a vague ecstasy. She had had to fix an arbitrary
+      date as the term of her anguish, and she had fixed that one; and behold
+      she was justified. For what could his silence mean but that he too....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the hall-table lay a typed envelope with the Paris postage-mark. She
+      opened it carelessly, and saw that the letter-head bore Mr. Spearman&rsquo;s
+      office address. The words beneath spun round before her eyes.... &ldquo;Has
+      notified us that he is at your disposal... carry out your wishes...
+      arriving in Paris... fix an appointment with his lawyers....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nick&mdash;it was Nick the words were talking of! It was the fact of
+      Nick&rsquo;s return to Paris that was being described in those preposterous
+      terms! She sank down on the bench beside the dripping umbrella-stand and
+      stared vacantly before her. It had fallen at last&mdash;this blow in which
+      she now saw that she had never really believed! And yet she had imagined
+      she was prepared for it, had expected it, was already planning her future
+      life in view of it&mdash;an effaced impersonal life in the service of
+      somebody else&rsquo;s children&mdash;when, in reality, under that thin surface
+      of abnegation and acceptance, all the old hopes had been smouldering
+      red-hot in their ashes! What was the use of any self-discipline, any
+      philosophy, any experience, if the lawless self underneath could in an
+      instant consume them like tinder?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She tried to collect herself&mdash;to understand what had happened. Nick
+      was coming to Paris&mdash;coming not to see her but to consult his lawyer!
+      It meant, of course, that he had definitely resolved to claim his freedom;
+      and that, if he had made up his mind to this final step, after more than
+      six months of inaction and seeming indifference, it could be only because
+      something unforeseen and decisive had happened to him. Feverishly, she put
+      together again the stray scraps of gossip and the newspaper paragraphs
+      that had reached her in the last months. It was evident that Miss Hicks&rsquo;s
+      projected marriage with the Prince of Teutoburg-Waldhain had been broken
+      off at the last moment; and broken off because she intended to marry Nick.
+      The announcement of his arrival in Paris and the publication of Mr. and
+      Mrs. Hicks&rsquo;s formal denial of their daughter&rsquo;s betrothal coincided too
+      closely to admit of any other inference. Susy tried to grasp the reality
+      of these assembled facts, to picture to herself their actual tangible
+      results. She thought of Coral Hicks bearing the name of Mrs. Nick Lansing&mdash;her
+      name, Susy&rsquo;s own!&mdash;and entering drawing-rooms with Nick in her wake,
+      gaily welcomed by the very people who, a few months before, had welcomed
+      Susy with the same warmth. In spite of Nick&rsquo;s growing dislike of society,
+      and Coral&rsquo;s attitude of intellectual superiority, their wealth would
+      fatally draw them back into the world to which Nick was attached by all
+      his habits and associations. And no doubt it would amuse him to re-enter
+      that world as a dispenser of hospitality, to play the part of host where
+      he had so long been a guest; just as Susy had once fancied it would amuse
+      her to re-enter it as Lady Altringham.... But, try as she would, now that
+      the reality was so close on her, she could not visualize it or relate it
+      to herself. The mere juxtaposition of the two names&mdash;Coral, Nick&mdash;which
+      in old times she had so often laughingly coupled, now produced a blur in
+      her brain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She continued to sit helplessly beside the hall-table, the tears running
+      down her cheeks. The appearance of the bonne aroused her. Her youngest
+      charge, Geordie, had been feverish for a day or two; he was better, but
+      still confined to the nursery, and he had heard Susy unlock the
+      house-door, and could not imagine why she had not come straight up to him.
+      He now began to manifest his indignation in a series of racking howls, and
+      Susy, shaken out of her trance, dropped her cloak and umbrella and hurried
+      up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, that child!&rdquo; she groaned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Under the Fulmer roof there was little time or space for the indulgence of
+      private sorrows. From morning till night there was always some immediate
+      practical demand on one&rsquo;s attention; and Susy was beginning to see how, in
+      contracted households, children may play a part less romantic but not less
+      useful than that assigned to them in fiction, through the mere fact of
+      giving their parents no leisure to dwell on irremediable grievances.
+      Though her own apprenticeship to family life had been so short, she had
+      already acquired the knack of rapid mental readjustment, and as she
+      hurried up to the nursery her private cares were dispelled by a dozen
+      problems of temperature, diet and medicine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such readjustment was of course only momentary; yet each time it happened
+      it seemed to give her more firmness and flexibility of temper. &ldquo;What a
+      child I was myself six months ago!&rdquo; she thought, wondering that Nick&rsquo;s
+      influence, and the tragedy of their parting, should have done less to
+      mature and steady her than these few weeks in a house full of children.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pacifying Geordie was not easy, for he had long since learned to use his
+      grievances as a pretext for keeping the offender at his beck with a
+      continuous supply of stories, songs and games. &ldquo;You&rsquo;d better be careful
+      never to put yourself in the wrong with Geordie,&rdquo; the astute Junie had
+      warned Susy at the outset, &ldquo;because he&rsquo;s got such a memory, and he won&rsquo;t
+      make it up with you till you&rsquo;ve told him every fairy-tale he&rsquo;s ever heard
+      before.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But on this occasion, as soon as he saw her, Geordie&rsquo;s indignation melted.
+      She was still in the doorway, compunctious, abject and racking her dazed
+      brain for his favourite stories, when she saw, by the smoothing out of his
+      mouth and the sudden serenity of his eyes, that he was going to give her
+      the delicious but not wholly reassuring shock of being a good boy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thoughtfully he examined her face as she knelt down beside the cot; then
+      he poked out a finger and pressed it on her tearful cheek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor Susy got a pain too,&rdquo; he said, putting his arms about her; and as
+      she hugged him close, he added philosophically: &ldquo;Tell Geordie a new story,
+      darling, and you&rsquo;ll forget all about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+
+
+<h3>XXVI.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">Nick Lansing</span> arrived in Paris two days after his lawyer had announced his
+      coming to Mr. Spearman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had left Rome with the definite purpose of freeing himself and Susy;
+      and though he was not pledged to Coral Hicks he had not concealed from her
+      the object of his journey. In vain had he tried to rouse in himself any
+      sense of interest in his own future. Beyond the need of reaching a
+      definite point in his relation to Susy his imagination could not travel.
+      But he had been moved by Coral&rsquo;s confession, and his reason told him that
+      he and she would probably be happy together, with the temperate happiness
+      based on a community of tastes and an enlargement of opportunities. He
+      meant, on his return to Rome, to ask her to marry him; and he knew that
+      she knew it. Indeed, if he had not spoken before leaving it was with no
+      idea of evading his fate, or keeping her longer in suspense, but simply
+      because of the strange apathy that had fallen on him since he had received
+      Susy&rsquo;s letter. In his incessant self-communings he dressed up this apathy
+      as a discretion which forbade his engaging Coral&rsquo;s future till his own was
+      assured. But in truth he knew that Coral&rsquo;s future was already engaged, and
+      his with it: in Rome the fact had seemed natural and even inevitable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In Paris, it instantly became the thinnest of unrealities. Not because
+      Paris was not Rome, nor because it was Paris; but because hidden away
+      somewhere in that vast unheeding labyrinth was the half-forgotten part of
+      himself that was Susy.... For weeks, for months past, his mind had been
+      saturated with Susy: she had never seemed more insistently near him than
+      as their separation lengthened, and the chance of reunion became less
+      probable. It was as if a sickness long smouldering in him had broken out
+      and become acute, enveloping him in the Nessus-shirt of his memories.
+      There were moments when, to his memory, their actual embraces seemed
+      perfunctory, accidental, compared with this deep deliberate imprint of her
+      soul on his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet now it had become suddenly different. Now that he was in the same
+      place with her, and might at any moment run across her, meet her eyes,
+      hear her voice, avoid her hand&mdash;now that penetrating ghost of her
+      with which he had been living was sucked back into the shadows, and he
+      seemed, for the first time since their parting, to be again in her actual
+      presence. He woke to the fact on the morning of his arrival, staring down
+      from his hotel window on a street she would perhaps walk through that very
+      day, and over a limitless huddle of roofs, one of which covered her at
+      that hour. The abruptness of the transition startled him; he had not known
+      that her mere geographical nearness would take him by the throat in that
+      way. What would it be, then, if she were to walk into the room?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thank heaven that need never happen! He was sufficiently informed as to
+      French divorce proceedings to know that they would not necessitate a
+      confrontation with his wife; and with ordinary luck, and some precautions,
+      he might escape even a distant glimpse of her. He did not mean to remain
+      in Paris more than a few days; and during that time it would be easy&mdash;knowing,
+      as he did, her tastes and Altringham&rsquo;s&mdash;to avoid the places where she
+      was likely to be met. He did not know where she was living, but imagined
+      her to be staying with Mrs. Melrose, or some other rich friend, or else
+      lodged, in prospective affluence, at the Nouveau Luxe, or in a pretty flat
+      of her own. Trust Susy&mdash;ah, the pang of it&mdash;to &ldquo;manage&rdquo;!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His first visit was to his lawyer&rsquo;s; and as he walked through the familiar
+      streets each approaching face, each distant figure seemed hers. The
+      obsession was intolerable. It would not last, of course; but meanwhile he
+      had the exposed sense of a fugitive in a nightmare, who feels himself the
+      only creature visible in a ghostly and besetting multitude. The eye of the
+      metropolis seemed fixed on him in an immense unblinking stare.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the lawyer&rsquo;s he was told that, as a first step to freedom, he must
+      secure a domicile in Paris. He had of course known of this necessity: he
+      had seen too many friends through the Divorce Court, in one country or
+      another, not to be fairly familiar with the procedure. But the fact
+      presented a different aspect as soon as he tried to relate it to himself
+      and Susy: it was as though Susy&rsquo;s personality were a medium through which
+      events still took on a transfiguring colour. He found the &ldquo;domicile&rdquo; that
+      very day: a tawdrily furnished rez-de-chaussee, obviously destined to far
+      different uses. And as he sat there, after the concierge had discreetly
+      withdrawn with the first quarter&rsquo;s payment in her pocket, and stared about
+      him at the vulgar plushy place, he burst out laughing at what it was about
+      to figure in the eyes of the law: a Home, and a Home desecrated by his own
+      act! The Home in which he and Susy had reared their precarious bliss, and
+      seen it crumble at the brutal touch of his unfaithfulness and his cruelty&mdash;for
+      he had been told that he must be cruel to her as well as unfaithful! He
+      looked at the walls hung with sentimental photogravures, at the shiny
+      bronze &ldquo;nudes,&rdquo; the moth-eaten animal-skins and the bedizened bed&mdash;and once
+      more the unreality, the impossibility, of all that was happening to him
+      entered like a drug into his veins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To rouse himself he stood up, turned the key on the hideous place, and
+      returned to his lawyer&rsquo;s. He knew that in the hard dry atmosphere of the
+      office the act of giving the address of the flat would restore some kind
+      of reality to the phantasmal transaction. And with wonder he watched the
+      lawyer, as a matter of course, pencil the street and the number on one of
+      the papers enclosed in a folder on which his own name was elaborately
+      engrossed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he took leave it occurred to him to ask where Susy was living. At least
+      he imagined that it had just occurred to him, and that he was making the
+      enquiry merely as a measure of precaution, in order to know what quarter
+      of Paris to avoid; but in reality the question had been on his lips since
+      he had first entered the office, and lurking in his mind since he had
+      emerged from the railway station that morning. The fact of not knowing
+      where she lived made the whole of Paris a meaningless unintelligible
+      place, as useless to him as the face of a huge clock that has lost its
+      hour hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The address in Passy surprised him: he had imagined that she would be
+      somewhere in the neighborhood of the Champs Elysees or the Place de
+      l&rsquo;Etoile. But probably either Mrs. Melrose or Ellie Vanderlyn had taken a
+      house at Passy. Well&mdash;it was something of a relief to know that she
+      was so far off. No business called him to that almost suburban region
+      beyond the Trocadero, and there was much less chance of meeting her than
+      if she had been in the centre of Paris.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All day he wandered, avoiding the fashionable quarters, the streets in
+      which private motors glittered five deep, and furred and feathered
+      silhouettes glided from them into tea-rooms, picture-galleries and
+      jewellers&rsquo; shops. In some such scenes Susy was no doubt figuring:
+      slenderer, finer, vivider, than the other images of clay, but imitating
+      their gestures, chattering their jargon, winding her hand among the same
+      pearls and sables. He struck away across the Seine, along the quays to the
+      Cite, the net-work of old Paris, the great grey vaults of St. Eustache,
+      the swarming streets of the Marais. He gazed at monuments dawdled before
+      shop-windows, sat in squares and on quays, watching people bargain, argue,
+      philander, quarrel, work-girls stroll past in linked bands, beggars whine
+      on the bridges, derelicts doze in the pale winter sun, mothers in mourning
+      hasten by taking children to school, and street-walkers beat their weary
+      rounds before the cafes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The day drifted on. Toward evening he began to grow afraid of his
+      solitude, and to think of dining at the Nouveau Luxe, or some other
+      fashionable restaurant where he would be fairly sure to meet
+      acquaintances, and be carried off to a theatre, a boite or a dancing-hall.
+      Anything, anything now, to get away from the maddening round of his
+      thoughts. He felt the same blank fear of solitude as months ago in
+      Genoa.... Even if he were to run across Susy and Altringham, what of it?
+      Better get the job over. People had long since ceased to take on tragedy
+      airs about divorce: dividing couples dined together to the last, and met
+      afterward in each other&rsquo;s houses, happy in the consciousness that their
+      respective remarriages had provided two new centres of entertainment. Yet
+      most of the couples who took their re-matings so philosophically had
+      doubtless had their hour of enchantment, of belief in the immortality of
+      loving; whereas he and Susy had simply and frankly entered into a business
+      contract for their mutual advantage. The fact gave the last touch of
+      incongruity to his agonies and exaltations, and made him appear to himself
+      as grotesque and superannuated as the hero of a romantic novel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood up from a bench on which he had been lounging in the Luxembourg
+      gardens, and hailed a taxi. Dusk had fallen, and he meant to go back to
+      his hotel, take a rest, and then go out to dine. But instead, he threw
+      Susy&rsquo;s address to the driver, and settled down in the cab, resting both
+      hands on the knob of his umbrella and staring straight ahead of him as if
+      he were accomplishing some tiresome duty that had to be got through with
+      before he could turn his mind to more important things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s the easiest way,&rdquo; he heard himself say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the street-corner&mdash;her street-corner&mdash;he stopped the cab, and
+      stood motionless while it rattled away. It was a short vague street, much
+      farther off than he had expected, and fading away at the farther end in a
+      dusky blur of hoardings overhung by trees. A thin rain was beginning to
+      fall, and it was already night in this inadequately lit suburban quarter.
+      Lansing walked down the empty street. The houses stood a few yards apart,
+      with bare-twigged shrubs between, and gates and railings dividing them
+      from the pavement. He could not, at first, distinguish their numbers; but
+      presently, coming abreast of a street-lamp, he discovered that the small
+      shabby facade it illuminated was precisely the one he sought. The
+      discovery surprised him. He had imagined that, as frequently happened in
+      the outlying quarters of Passy and La Muette, the mean street would lead
+      to a stately private hotel, built upon some bowery fragment of an old
+      country-place. It was the latest whim of the wealthy to establish
+      themselves on these outskirts of Paris, where there was still space for
+      verdure; and he had pictured Susy behind some pillared house-front, with
+      lights pouring across glossy turf to sculptured gateposts. Instead, he saw
+      a six-windowed house, huddled among neighbours of its kind, with the
+      family wash fluttering between meagre bushes. The arc-light beat
+      ironically on its front, which had the worn look of a tired work-woman&rsquo;s
+      face; and Lansing, as he leaned against the opposite railing, vainly tried
+      to fit his vision of Susy into so humble a setting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The probable explanation was that his lawyer had given him the wrong
+      address; not only the wrong number but the wrong street. He pulled out the
+      slip of paper, and was crossing over to decipher it under the lamp, when
+      an errand-boy appeared out of the obscurity, and approached the house.
+      Nick drew back, and the boy, unlatching the gate, ran up the steps and
+      gave the bell a pull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Almost immediately the door opened; and there stood Susy, the light full
+      upon her, and upon a red-checked child against her shoulder. The space
+      behind them was dark, or so dimly lit that it formed a black background to
+      her vivid figure. She looked at the errand-boy without surprise, took his
+      parcel, and after he had turned away, lingered a moment in the door,
+      glancing down the empty street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That moment, to her watcher, seemed quicker than a flash yet as long as a
+      life-time. There she was, a stone&rsquo;s throw away, but utterly unconscious of
+      his presence: his Susy, the old Susy, and yet a new Susy, curiously
+      transformed, transfigured almost, by the new attitude in which he beheld
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the first shock of the vision he forgot his surprise at her being in
+      such a place, forgot to wonder whose house she was in, or whose was the
+      sleepy child in her arms. For an instant she stood out from the blackness
+      behind her, and through the veil of the winter night, a thing apart, an
+      unconditioned vision, the eternal image of the woman and the child; and in
+      that instant everything within him was changed and renewed. His eyes were
+      still absorbing her, finding again the familiar curves of her light body,
+      noting the thinness of the lifted arm that upheld the little boy, the
+      droop of the shoulder he weighed on, the brooding way in which her cheek
+      leaned to his even while she looked away; then she drew back, the door
+      closed, and the street-lamp again shone on blankness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But she&rsquo;s mine!&rdquo; Nick cried, in a fierce triumph of recovery...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His eyes were so full of her that he shut them to hold in the crowding
+      vision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It remained with him, at first, as a complete picture; then gradually it
+      broke up into its component parts, the child vanished, the strange house
+      vanished, and Susy alone stood before him, his own Susy, only his Susy,
+      yet changed, worn, tempered&mdash;older, even&mdash;with sharper shadows
+      under the cheek-bones, the brows drawn, the joint of the slim wrist more
+      prominent. It was not thus that his memory had evoked her, and he
+      recalled, with a remorseful pang, the fact that something in her look, her
+      dress, her tired and drooping attitude, suggested poverty, dependence,
+      seemed to make her after all a part of the shabby house in which, at first
+      sight, her presence had seemed so incongruous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But she looks poor!&rdquo; he thought, his heart tightening. And instantly it
+      occurred to him that these must be the Fulmer children whom she was living
+      with while their parents travelled in Italy. Rumours of Nat Fulmer&rsquo;s
+      sudden ascension had reached him, and he had heard that the couple had
+      lately been seen in Naples and Palermo. No one had mentioned Susy&rsquo;s name
+      in connection with them, and he could hardly tell why he had arrived at
+      this conclusion, except perhaps because it seemed natural that, if Susy
+      were in trouble, she should turn to her old friend Grace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But why in trouble? What trouble? What could have happened to check her
+      triumphant career?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s what I mean to find out!&rdquo; he exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His heart was beating with a tumult of new hopes and old memories. The
+      sight of his wife, so remote in mien and manner from the world in which he
+      had imagined her to be re-absorbed, changed in a flash his own relation to
+      life, and flung a mist of unreality over all that he had been trying to
+      think most solid and tangible. Nothing now was substantial to him but the
+      stones of the street in which he stood, the front of the house which hid
+      her, the bell-handle he already felt in his grasp. He started forward, and
+      was halfway to the threshold when a private motor turned the corner, the
+      twin glitter of its lamps carpeting the wet street with gold to Susy&rsquo;s
+      door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing drew back into the shadow as the motor swept up to the house. A
+      man jumped out, and the light fell on Strefford&rsquo;s shambling figure, its
+      lazy disjointed movements so unmistakably the same under his fur coat, and
+      in the new setting of prosperity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing stood motionless, staring at the door. Strefford rang, and waited.
+      Would Susy appear again? Perhaps she had done so before only because she
+      had been on the watch....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But no: after a slight delay a bonne appeared&mdash;the breathless
+      maid-of-all-work of a busy household&mdash;and at once effaced herself,
+      letting the visitor in. Lansing was sure that not a word passed between
+      the two, of enquiry on Lord Altringham&rsquo;s part, or of acquiescence on the
+      servant&rsquo;s. There could be no doubt that he was expected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The door closed on him, and a light appeared behind the blind of the
+      adjoining window. The maid had shown the visitor into the sitting-room and
+      lit the lamp. Upstairs, meanwhile, Susy was no doubt running skilful
+      fingers through her tumbled hair and daubing her pale lips with red. Ah,
+      how Lansing knew every movement of that familiar rite, even to the pucker
+      of the brow and the pouting thrust-out of the lower lip! He was seized
+      with a sense of physical sickness as the succession of remembered gestures
+      pressed upon his eyes.... And the other man? The other man, inside the
+      house, was perhaps at that very instant smiling over the remembrance of
+      the same scene!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the thought, Lansing plunged away into the night.
+    </p>
+
+
+<h3>XXVII.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">Susy</span> and Lord Altringham sat in the little drawing-room, divided from each
+      other by a table carrying a smoky lamp and heaped with tattered
+      school-books.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In another half hour the bonne, despatched to fetch the children from
+      their classes, would be back with her flock; and at any moment Geordie&rsquo;s
+      imperious cries might summon his slave up to the nursery. In the scant
+      time allotted them, the two sat, and visibly wondered what to say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford, on entering, had glanced about the dreary room, with its piano
+      laden with tattered music, the children&rsquo;s toys littering the lame sofa,
+      the bunches of dyed grass and impaled butterflies flanking the cast-bronze
+      clock. Then he had turned to Susy and asked simply: &ldquo;Why on earth are you
+      here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had not tried to explain; from the first, she had understood the
+      impossibility of doing so. And she would not betray her secret longing to
+      return to Nick, now that she knew that Nick had taken definite steps for
+      his release. In dread lest Strefford should have heard of this, and should
+      announce it to her, coupling it with the news of Nick&rsquo;s projected
+      marriage, and lest, hearing her fears thus substantiated, she should lose
+      her self-control, she had preferred to say, in a voice that she tried to
+      make indifferent: &ldquo;The &lsquo;proceedings,&rsquo; or whatever the lawyers call them,
+      have begun. While they&rsquo;re going on I like to stay quite by myself.... I
+      don&rsquo;t know why....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford, at that, had looked at her keenly. &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; he murmured; and his
+      lips were twisted into their old mocking smile. &ldquo;Speaking of proceedings,&rdquo;
+       he went on carelessly, &ldquo;what stage have Ellie&rsquo;s reached, I wonder? I saw
+      her and Vanderlyn and Bockheimer all lunching cheerfully together to-day
+      at Larue&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The blood rushed to Susy&rsquo;s forehead. She remembered her tragic evening
+      with Nelson Vanderlyn, only two months earlier, and thought to herself.
+      &ldquo;In time, then, I suppose, Nick and I....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Aloud she said: &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t imagine how Nelson and Ellie can ever want to see
+      each other again. And in a restaurant, of all places!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford continued to smile. &ldquo;My dear, you&rsquo;re incorrigibly old-fashioned.
+      Why should two people who&rsquo;ve done each other the best turn they could by
+      getting out of each other&rsquo;s way at the right moment behave like sworn
+      enemies ever afterward? It&rsquo;s too absurd; the humbug&rsquo;s too flagrant.
+      Whatever our generation has failed to do, it&rsquo;s got rid of humbug; and
+      that&rsquo;s enough to immortalize it. I daresay Nelson and Ellie never liked
+      each other better than they do to-day. Twenty years ago, they&rsquo;d have been
+      afraid to confess it; but why shouldn&rsquo;t they now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy looked at Strefford, conscious that under his words was the ache of
+      the disappointment she had caused him; and yet conscious also that that
+      very ache was not the overwhelming penetrating emotion he perhaps wished
+      it to be, but a pang on a par with a dozen others; and that even while he
+      felt it he foresaw the day when he should cease to feel it. And she
+      thought to herself that this certainty of oblivion must be bitterer than
+      any certainty of pain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A silence had fallen between them. He broke it by rising from his seat,
+      and saying with a shrug: &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll end by driving me to marry Joan
+      Senechal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy smiled. &ldquo;Well, why not? She&rsquo;s lovely.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; but she&rsquo;ll bore me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor Streff! So should I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps. But nothing like as soon&mdash;&rdquo; He grinned sardonically.
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;d be more margin.&rdquo; He appeared to wait for her to speak. &ldquo;And what
+      else on earth are you going to do?&rdquo; he concluded, as she still remained
+      silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Streff, I couldn&rsquo;t marry you for a reason like that!&rdquo; she murmured at
+      length.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then marry me, and find your reason afterward.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her lips made a movement of denial, and still in silence she held out her
+      hand for good-bye. He clasped it, and then turned away; but on the
+      threshold he paused, his screwed-up eyes fixed on her wistfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The look moved her, and she added hurriedly: &ldquo;The only reason I can find
+      is one for not marrying you. It&rsquo;s because I can&rsquo;t yet feel unmarried
+      enough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Unmarried enough? But I thought Nick was doing his best to make you feel
+      that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. But even when he has&mdash;sometimes I think even that won&rsquo;t make
+      any difference.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He still scrutinized her hesitatingly, with the gravest eyes she had ever
+      seen in his careless face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear, that&rsquo;s rather the way I feel about you,&rdquo; he said simply as he
+      turned to go.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That evening after the children had gone to bed Susy sat up late in the
+      cheerless sitting-room. She was not thinking of Strefford but of Nick. He
+      was coming to Paris&mdash;perhaps he had already arrived. The idea that he
+      might be in the same place with her at that very moment, and without her
+      knowing it, was so strange and painful that she felt a violent revolt of
+      all her strong and joy-loving youth. Why should she go on suffering so
+      unbearably, so abjectly, so miserably? If only she could see him, hear his
+      voice, even hear him say again such cruel and humiliating words as he had
+      spoken on that dreadful day in Venice when that would be better than this
+      blankness, this utter and final exclusion from his life! He had been cruel
+      to her, unimaginably cruel: hard, arrogant, unjust; and had been so,
+      perhaps, deliberately, because he already wanted to be free. But she was
+      ready to face even that possibility, to humble herself still farther than
+      he had humbled her&mdash;she was ready to do anything, if only she might
+      see him once again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She leaned her aching head on her hands and pondered. Do anything? But
+      what could she do? Nothing that should hurt him, interfere with his
+      liberty, be false to the spirit of their pact: on that she was more than
+      ever resolved. She had made a bargain, and she meant to stick to it, not
+      for any abstract reason, but simply because she happened to love him in
+      that way. Yes&mdash;but to see him again, only once!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly she remembered what Strefford had said about Nelson Vanderlyn and
+      his wife. &ldquo;Why should two people who&rsquo;ve just done each other the best turn
+      they could behave like sworn enemies ever after?&rdquo; If in offering Nick his
+      freedom she had indeed done him such a service as that, perhaps he no
+      longer hated her, would no longer be unwilling to see her.... At any rate,
+      why should she not write to him on that assumption, write in a spirit of
+      simple friendliness, suggesting that they should meet and &ldquo;settle things&rdquo;?
+      The business-like word &ldquo;settle&rdquo; (how she hated it) would prove to him that
+      she had no secret designs upon his liberty; and besides he was too
+      unprejudiced, too modern, too free from what Strefford called humbug, not
+      to understand and accept such a suggestion. After all, perhaps Strefford
+      was right; it was something to have rid human relations of hypocrisy, even
+      if, in the process, so many exquisite things seemed somehow to have been
+      torn away with it....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She ran up to her room, scribbled a note, and hurried with it through the
+      rain and darkness to the post-box at the corner. As she returned through
+      the empty street she had an odd feeling that it was not empty&mdash;that
+      perhaps Nick was already there, somewhere near her in the night, about to
+      follow her to the door, enter the house, go up with her to her bedroom in
+      the old way. It was strange how close he had been brought by the mere fact
+      of her having written that little note to him!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the bedroom, Geordie lay in his crib in ruddy slumber, and she blew out
+      the candle and undressed softly for fear of waking him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nick Lansing, the next day, received Susy&rsquo;s letter, transmitted to his
+      hotel from the lawyer&rsquo;s office.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He read it carefully, two or three times over, weighing and scrutinizing
+      the guarded words. She proposed that they should meet to &ldquo;settle things.&rdquo;
+       What things? And why should he accede to such a request? What secret
+      purpose had prompted her? It was horrible that nowadays, in thinking of
+      Susy, he should always suspect ulterior motives, be meanly on the watch
+      for some hidden tortuousness. What on earth was she trying to &ldquo;manage&rdquo;
+       now, he wondered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A few hours ago, at the sight of her, all his hardness had melted, and he
+      had charged himself with cruelty, with injustice, with every sin of pride
+      against himself and her; but the appearance of Strefford, arriving at that
+      late hour, and so evidently expected and welcomed, had driven back the
+      rising tide of tenderness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet, after all, what was there to wonder at? Nothing was changed in their
+      respective situations. He had left his wife, deliberately, and for reasons
+      which no subsequent experience had caused him to modify. She had
+      apparently acquiesced in his decision, and had utilized it, as she was
+      justified in doing, to assure her own future.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In all this, what was there to wail or knock the breast between two people
+      who prided themselves on looking facts in the face, and making their grim
+      best of them, without vain repinings? He had been right in thinking their
+      marriage an act of madness. Her charms had overruled his judgment, and
+      they had had their year... their mad year... or at least all but two or
+      three months of it. But his first intuition had been right; and now they
+      must both pay for their madness. The Fates seldom forget the bargains made
+      with them, or fail to ask for compound interest. Why not, then, now that
+      the time had come, pay up gallantly, and remember of the episode only what
+      had made it seem so supremely worth the cost?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sent a pneumatic telegram to Mrs. Nicholas Lansing to say that he would
+      call on her that afternoon at four. &ldquo;That ought to give us time,&rdquo; he
+      reflected drily, &ldquo;to &lsquo;settle things,&rsquo; as she calls it, without interfering
+      with Strefford&rsquo;s afternoon visit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+
+
+<h3>XXVIII.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">Her</span> husband&rsquo;s note had briefly said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To-day at four o&rsquo;clock. N.L.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All day she pored over the words in an agony of longing, trying to read
+      into them regret, emotion, memories, some echo of the tumult in her own
+      bosom. But she had signed &ldquo;Susy,&rdquo; and he signed &ldquo;N.L.&rdquo; That seemed to put
+      an abyss between them. After all, she was free and he was not. Perhaps, in
+      view of his situation, she had only increased the distance between them by
+      her unconventional request for a meeting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She sat in the little drawing-room, and the cast-bronze clock ticked out
+      the minutes. She would not look out of the window: it might bring bad luck
+      to watch for him. And it seemed to her that a thousand invisible spirits,
+      hidden demons of good and evil, pressed about her, spying out her
+      thoughts, counting her heart-beats, ready to pounce upon the least symptom
+      of over-confidence and turn it deftly to derision. Oh, for an altar on
+      which to pour out propitiatory offerings! But what sweeter could they have
+      than her smothered heart-beats, her choked-back tears?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bell rang, and she stood up as if a spring had jerked her to her feet.
+      In the mirror between the dried grasses her face looked long pale
+      inanimate. Ah, if he should find her too changed&mdash;! If there were but
+      time to dash upstairs and put on a touch of red....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The door opened; it shut on him; he was there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He said: &ldquo;You wanted to see me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She answered: &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo; And her heart seemed to stop beating.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At first she could not make out what mysterious change had come over him,
+      and why it was that in looking at him she seemed to be looking at a
+      stranger; then she perceived that his voice sounded as it used to sound
+      when he was talking to other people; and she said to herself, with a sick
+      shiver of understanding, that she had become an &ldquo;other person&rdquo; to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a deathly pause; then she faltered out, not knowing what she
+      said: &ldquo;Nick&mdash;you&rsquo;ll sit down?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He said: &ldquo;Thanks,&rdquo; but did not seem to have heard her, for he continued to
+      stand motionless, half the room between them. And slowly the uselessness,
+      the hopelessness of his being there overcame her. A wall of granite seemed
+      to have built itself up between them. She felt as if it hid her from him,
+      as if with those remote new eyes of his he were staring into the wall and
+      not at her. Suddenly she said to herself: &ldquo;He&rsquo;s suffering more than I am,
+      because he pities me, and is afraid to tell me that he is going to be
+      married.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The thought stung her pride, and she lifted her head and met his eyes with
+      a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you think,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;it&rsquo;s more sensible&mdash;with everything so
+      changed in our lives&mdash;that we should meet as friends, in this way? I
+      wanted to tell you that you needn&rsquo;t feel&mdash;feel in the least unhappy
+      about me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A deep flush rose to his forehead. &ldquo;Oh, I know&mdash;I know that&mdash;&rdquo;
+       he declared hastily; and added, with a factitious animation: &ldquo;But thank
+      you for telling me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s nothing, is there,&rdquo; she continued, &ldquo;to make our meeting in this
+      way in the least embarrassing or painful to either of us, when both have
+      found....&rdquo; She broke off, and held her hand out to him. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve heard about
+      you and Coral,&rdquo; she ended.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He just touched her hand with cold fingers, and let it drop. &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo;
+       he said for the third time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You won&rsquo;t sit down?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you think,&rdquo; she continued, &ldquo;that the new way of... of meeting as
+      friends... and talking things over without ill-will... is much pleasanter
+      and more sensible, after all?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He smiled. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s immensely kind of you to feel that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I do feel it!&rdquo; She stopped short, and wondered what on earth she had
+      meant to say next, and why she had so abruptly lost the thread of her
+      discourse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the pause she heard him cough slightly and clear his throat. &ldquo;Let me
+      say, then,&rdquo; he began, &ldquo;that I&rsquo;m glad too&mdash;immensely glad that your
+      own future is so satisfactorily settled.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She lifted her glance again to his walled face, in which not a muscle
+      stirred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes: it&mdash;it makes everything easier for you, doesn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For you too, I hope.&rdquo; He paused, and then went on: &ldquo;I want also to tell
+      you that I perfectly understand&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; she interrupted, &ldquo;so do I; your point of view, I mean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They were again silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nick, why can&rsquo;t we be friends real friends? Won&rsquo;t it be easier?&rdquo; she
+      broke out at last with twitching lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Easier&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean, about talking things over&mdash;arrangements. There are
+      arrangements to be made, I suppose?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose so.&rdquo; He hesitated. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m doing what I&rsquo;m told&mdash;simply following
+      out instructions. The business is easy enough, apparently. I&rsquo;m taking the
+      necessary steps&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She reddened a little, and drew a gasping breath. &ldquo;The necessary steps:
+      what are they? Everything the lawyers tell one is so confusing.... I don&rsquo;t
+      yet understand&mdash;how it&rsquo;s done.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My share, you mean? Oh, it&rsquo;s very simple.&rdquo; He paused, and added in a tone
+      of laboured ease: &ldquo;I&rsquo;m going down to Fontainebleau to-morrow&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stared, not understanding. &ldquo;To Fontainebleau&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her bewilderment drew from him his first frank smile. &ldquo;Well&mdash;I chose
+      Fontainebleau&mdash;I don&rsquo;t know why... except that we&rsquo;ve never been there
+      together.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At that she suddenly understood, and the blood rushed to her forehead. She
+      stood up without knowing what she was doing, her heart in her throat. &ldquo;How
+      grotesque&mdash;how utterly disgusting!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He gave a slight shrug. &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t make the laws....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But isn&rsquo;t it too stupid and degrading that such things should be
+      necessary when two people want to part&mdash;?&rdquo; She broke off again,
+      silenced by the echo of that fatal &ldquo;want to part.&rdquo;...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He seemed to prefer not to dwell farther on the legal obligations
+      involved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You haven&rsquo;t yet told me,&rdquo; he suggested, &ldquo;how you happen to be living
+      here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here&mdash;with the Fulmer children?&rdquo; She roused herself, trying to catch
+      his easier note. &ldquo;Oh, I&rsquo;ve simply been governessing them for a few weeks,
+      while Nat and Grace are in Sicily.&rdquo; She did not say: &ldquo;It&rsquo;s because I&rsquo;ve
+      parted with Strefford.&rdquo; Somehow it helped her wounded pride a little to
+      keep from him the secret of her precarious independence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked his wonder. &ldquo;All alone with that bewildered bonne? But how many
+      of them are there? Five? Good Lord!&rdquo; He contemplated the clock with
+      unseeing eyes, and then turned them again on her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should have thought a lot of children would rather get on your nerves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, not these children. They&rsquo;re so good to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, well, I suppose it won&rsquo;t be for long.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He sent his eyes again about the room, which his absent-minded gaze seemed
+      to reduce to its dismal constituent elements, and added, with an obvious
+      effort at small talk: &ldquo;I hear the Fulmers are not hitting it off very well
+      since his success. Is it true that he&rsquo;s going to marry Violet Melrose?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The blood rose to Susy&rsquo;s face. &ldquo;Oh, never, never! He and Grace are
+      travelling together now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I didn&rsquo;t know. People say things....&rdquo; He was visibly embarrassed with
+      the subject, and sorry that he had broached it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some of the things that people say are true. But Grace doesn&rsquo;t mind. She
+      says she and Nat belong to each other. They can&rsquo;t help it, she thinks,
+      after having been through such a lot together.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear old Grace!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had risen from his chair, and this time she made no effort to detain
+      him. He seemed to have recovered his self-composure, and it struck her
+      painfully, humiliatingly almost, that he should have spoken in that light
+      way of the expedition to Fontainebleau on the morrow.... Well, men were
+      different, she supposed; she remembered having felt that once before about
+      Nick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was on the tip of her tongue to cry out: &ldquo;But wait&mdash;wait! I&rsquo;m not
+      going to marry Strefford after all!&rdquo;&mdash;but to do so would seem like an
+      appeal to his compassion, to his indulgence; and that was not what she
+      wanted. She could never forget that he had left her because he had not
+      been able to forgive her for &ldquo;managing&rdquo;&mdash;and not for the world would
+      she have him think that this meeting had been planned for such a purpose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he doesn&rsquo;t see that I am different, in spite of appearances... and
+      that I never was what he said I was that day&mdash;if in all these months
+      it hasn&rsquo;t come over him, what&rsquo;s the use of trying to make him see it now?&rdquo;
+       she mused. And then, her thoughts hurrying on: &ldquo;Perhaps he&rsquo;s suffering too&mdash;I
+      believe he is suffering&mdash;at any rate, he&rsquo;s suffering for me, if not for
+      himself. But if he&rsquo;s pledged to Coral, what can he do? What would he think
+      of me if I tried to make him break his word to her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There he stood&mdash;the man who was &ldquo;going to Fontainebleau to-morrow&rdquo;;
+      who called it &ldquo;taking the necessary steps!&rdquo; Who could smile as he made the
+      careless statement! A world seemed to divide them already: it was as if
+      their parting were already over. All the words, cries, arguments beating
+      loud wings in her dropped back into silence. The only thought left was:
+      &ldquo;How much longer does he mean to go on standing there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He may have read the question in her face, for turning back from an
+      absorbed contemplation of the window curtains he said: &ldquo;There&rsquo;s nothing
+      else?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing else?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean: you spoke of things to be settled&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She flushed, suddenly remembering the pretext she had used to summon him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; she faltered, &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t know... I thought there might be.... But the
+      lawyers, I suppose....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She saw the relief on his contracted face. &ldquo;Exactly. I&rsquo;ve always thought
+      it was best to leave it to them. I assure you&rdquo;&mdash;again for a moment
+      the smile strained his lips&mdash;&ldquo;I shall do nothing to interfere with a
+      quick settlement.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stood motionless, feeling herself turn to stone. He appeared already a
+      long way off, like a figure vanishing down a remote perspective.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then&mdash;good-bye,&rdquo; she heard him say from its farther end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&mdash;good-bye,&rdquo; she faltered, as if she had not had the word ready,
+      and was relieved to have him supply it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stopped again on the threshold, looked back at her, began to speak.
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve&mdash;&rdquo; he said; then he repeated &ldquo;Good-bye,&rdquo; as though to make sure
+      he had not forgotten to say it; and the door closed on him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was over; she had had her last chance and missed it. Now, whatever
+      happened, the one thing she had lived and longed for would never be. He
+      had come, and she had let him go again....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How had it come about? Would she ever be able to explain it to herself?
+      How was it that she, so fertile in strategy, so practiced in feminine
+      arts, had stood there before him, helpless, inarticulate, like a
+      school-girl a-choke with her first love-longing? If he was gone, and gone
+      never to return, it was her own fault, and none but hers. What had she
+      done to move him, detain him, make his heart beat and his head swim as
+      hers were beating and swimming? She stood aghast at her own inadequacy,
+      her stony inexpressiveness....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And suddenly she lifted her hands to her throbbing forehead and cried out:
+      &ldquo;But this is love! This must be love!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had loved him before, she supposed; for what else was she to call the
+      impulse that had drawn her to him, taught her how to overcome his
+      scruples, and whirled him away with her on their mad adventure? Well, if
+      that was love, this was something so much larger and deeper that the other
+      feeling seemed the mere dancing of her blood in tune with his....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, no! Real love, great love, the love that poets sang, and privileged
+      and tortured beings lived and died of, that love had its own superior
+      expressiveness, and the sure command of its means. The petty arts of
+      coquetry were no farther from it than the numbness of the untaught girl.
+      Great love was wise, strong, powerful, like genius, like any other
+      dominant form of human power. It knew itself, and what it wanted, and how
+      to attain its ends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not great love, then... but just the common humble average of human love
+      was hers. And it had come to her so newly, so overwhelmingly, with a face
+      so grave, a touch so startling, that she had stood there petrified,
+      humbled at the first look of its eyes, recognizing that what she had once
+      taken for love was merely pleasure and spring-time, and the flavour of
+      youth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But how was I to know? And now it&rsquo;s too late!&rdquo; she wailed.
+    </p>
+
+
+<h3>XXIX.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">The</span> inhabitants of the little house in Passy were of necessity early
+      risers; but when Susy jumped out of bed the next morning no one else was
+      astir, and it lacked nearly an hour of the call of the bonne&rsquo;s
+      alarm-clock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment Susy leaned out of her dark room into the darker night. A
+      cold drizzle fell on her face, and she shivered and drew back. Then,
+      lighting a candle, and shading it, as her habit was, from the sleeping
+      child, she slipped on her dressing-gown and opened the door. On the
+      threshold she paused to look at her watch. Only half-past five! She
+      thought with compunction of the unkindness of breaking in on Junie
+      Fulmer&rsquo;s slumbers; but such scruples did not weigh an ounce in the balance
+      of her purpose. Poor Junie would have to oversleep herself on Sunday, that
+      was all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy stole into the passage, opened a door, and cast her light on the
+      girl&rsquo;s face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Junie! Dearest Junie, you must wake up!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Junie lay in the abandonment of youthful sleep; but at the sound of her
+      name she sat up with the promptness of a grown person on whom domestic
+      burdens have long weighed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which one of them is it?&rdquo; she asked, one foot already out of bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Junie dear, no... it&rsquo;s nothing wrong with the children... or with
+      anybody,&rdquo; Susy stammered, on her knees by the bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the candlelight, she saw Junie&rsquo;s anxious brow darken reproachfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Susy, then why&mdash;? I was just dreaming we were all driving about
+      Rome in a great big motor-car with father and mother!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m so sorry, dear. What a lovely dream! I&rsquo;m a brute to have interrupted
+      it&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She felt the little girl&rsquo;s awakening scrutiny. &ldquo;If there&rsquo;s nothing wrong
+      with anybody, why are you crying, Susy? Is it you there&rsquo;s something wrong
+      with? What has happened?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Am I crying?&rdquo; Susy rose from her knees and sat down on the counterpane.
+      &ldquo;Yes, it is me. And I had to disturb you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Susy, darling, what is it?&rdquo; Junie&rsquo;s arms were about her in a flash,
+      and Susy grasped them in burning fingers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Junie, listen! I&rsquo;ve got to go away at once&mdash;to leave you all for the
+      whole day. I may not be back till late this evening; late to-night; I
+      can&rsquo;t tell. I promised your mother I&rsquo;d never leave you; but I&rsquo;ve got to&mdash;I&rsquo;ve
+      got to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Junie considered her agitated face with fully awakened eyes. &ldquo;Oh, I won&rsquo;t
+      tell, you know, you old brick,&rdquo; she said with simplicity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy hugged her. &ldquo;Junie, Junie, you darling! But that wasn&rsquo;t what I meant.
+      Of course you may tell&mdash;you must tell. I shall write to your mother
+      myself. But what worries me is the idea of having to go away&mdash;away
+      from Paris&mdash;for the whole day, with Geordie still coughing a little,
+      and no one but that silly Angele to stay with him while you&rsquo;re out&mdash;and
+      no one but you to take yourself and the others to school. But Junie,
+      Junie, I&rsquo;ve got to do it!&rdquo; she sobbed out, clutching the child tighter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Junie Fulmer, with her strangely mature perception of the case, and
+      seemingly of every case that fate might call on her to deal with, sat for
+      a moment motionless in Susy&rsquo;s hold. Then she freed her wrists with an
+      adroit twist, and leaning back against the pillows said judiciously:
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll never in the world bring up a family of your own if you take on
+      like this over other people&rsquo;s children.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Through all her turmoil of spirit the observation drew a laugh from Susy.
+      &ldquo;Oh, a family of my own&mdash;I don&rsquo;t deserve one, the way I&rsquo;m behaving to
+      your&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Junie still considered her. &ldquo;My dear, a change will do you good: you need
+      it,&rdquo; she pronounced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy rose with a laughing sigh. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not at all sure it will! But I&rsquo;ve got
+      to have it, all the same. Only I do feel anxious&mdash;and I can&rsquo;t even
+      leave you my address!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Junie still seemed to examine the case.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can&rsquo;t you even tell me where you&rsquo;re going?&rdquo; she ventured, as if not quite
+      sure of the delicacy of asking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;no, I don&rsquo;t think I can; not till I get back. Besides, even if
+      I could it wouldn&rsquo;t be much use, because I couldn&rsquo;t give you my address
+      there. I don&rsquo;t know what it will be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what does it matter, if you&rsquo;re coming back to-night?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I&rsquo;m coming back! How could you possibly imagine I should think
+      of leaving you for more than a day?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I shouldn&rsquo;t be afraid&mdash;not much, that is, with the poker, and
+      Nat&rsquo;s water-pistol,&rdquo; emended Junie, still judicious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy again enfolded her vehemently, and then turned to more practical
+      matters. She explained that she wished if possible to catch an
+      eight-thirty train from the Gare de Lyon, and that there was not a moment
+      to lose if the children were to be dressed and fed, and full instructions
+      written out for Junie and Angele, before she rushed for the underground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While she bathed Geordie, and then hurried into her own clothes, she could
+      not help wondering at her own extreme solicitude for her charges. She
+      remembered, with a pang, how often she had deserted Clarissa Vanderlyn for
+      the whole day, and even for two or three in succession&mdash;poor little
+      Clarissa, whom she knew to be so unprotected, so exposed to evil
+      influences. She had been too much absorbed in her own greedy bliss to be
+      more than intermittently aware of the child; but now, she felt, no sorrow
+      however ravaging, no happiness however absorbing, would ever again isolate
+      her from her kind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then these children were so different! The exquisite Clarissa was
+      already the predestined victim of her surroundings: her budding soul was
+      divided from Susy&rsquo;s by the same barrier of incomprehension that separated
+      the latter from Mrs. Vanderlyn. Clarissa had nothing to teach Susy but the
+      horror of her own hard little appetites; whereas the company of the noisy
+      argumentative Fulmers had been a school of wisdom and abnegation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As she applied the brush to Geordie&rsquo;s shining head and the handkerchief to
+      his snuffling nose, the sense of what she owed him was so borne in on Susy
+      that she interrupted the process to catch him to her bosom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll have such a story to tell you when I get back to-night, if you&rsquo;ll
+      promise me to be good all day,&rdquo; she bargained with him; and Geordie,
+      always astute, bargained back: &ldquo;Before I promise, I&rsquo;d like to know what
+      story.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At length all was in order. Junie had been enlightened, and Angele
+      stunned, by the minuteness of Susy&rsquo;s instructions; and the latter,
+      waterproofed and stoutly shod, descended the doorstep, and paused to wave
+      at the pyramid of heads yearning to her from an upper window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was hardly light, and still raining, when she turned into the dismal
+      street. As usual, it was empty; but at the corner she perceived a
+      hesitating taxi, with luggage piled beside the driver. Perhaps it was some
+      early traveller, just arriving, who would release the carriage in time for
+      her to catch it, and thus avoid the walk to the metro, and the subsequent
+      strap-hanging; for it was the work-people&rsquo;s hour. Susy raced toward the
+      vehicle, which, overcoming its hesitation, was beginning to move in her
+      direction. Observing this, she stopped to see where it would discharge its
+      load. Thereupon the taxi stopped also, and the load discharged itself in
+      front of her in the shape of Nick Lansing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two stood staring at each other through the rain till Nick broke out:
+      &ldquo;Where are you going? I came to get you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To get me? To get me?&rdquo; she repeated. Beside the driver she had suddenly
+      remarked the old suit-case from which her husband had obliged her to
+      extract Strefford&rsquo;s cigars as they were leaving Como; and everything that
+      had happened since seemed to fall away and vanish in the pang and rapture
+      of that memory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To get you; yes. Of course.&rdquo; He spoke the words peremptorily, almost as
+      if they were an order. &ldquo;Where were you going?&rdquo; he repeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Without answering, she turned toward the house. He followed her, and the
+      laden taxi closed the procession.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why are you out in such weather without an umbrella?&rdquo; he continued, in
+      the same severe tone, drawing her under the shelter of his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, because Junie&rsquo;s umbrella is in tatters, and I had to leave her mine,
+      as I was going away for the whole day.&rdquo; She spoke the words like a person
+      in a trance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For the whole day? At this hour? Where?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They were on the doorstep, and she fumbled automatically for her key, let
+      herself in, and led the way to the sitting-room. It had not been tidied up
+      since the night before. The children&rsquo;s school books lay scattered on the
+      table and sofa, and the empty fireplace was grey with ashes. She turned to
+      Nick in the pallid light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was going to see you,&rdquo; she stammered, &ldquo;I was going to follow you to
+      Fontainebleau, if necessary, to tell you... to prevent you....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He repeated in the same aggressive tone: &ldquo;Tell me what? Prevent what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell you that there must be some other way... some decent way... of our
+      separating... without that horror, that horror of your going off with a
+      woman....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stared, and then burst into a laugh. The blood rushed to her face. She
+      had caught a familiar ring in his laugh, and it wounded her. What business
+      had he, at such a time, to laugh in the old way?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry; but there is no other way, I&rsquo;m afraid. No other way but one,&rdquo;
+       he corrected himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She raised her head sharply. &ldquo;Well?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That you should be the woman.&mdash;Oh, my dear!&rdquo; He had dropped his
+      mocking smile, and was at her side, her hands in his. &ldquo;Oh, my dear, don&rsquo;t
+      you see that we&rsquo;ve both been feeling the same thing, and at the same hour?
+      You lay awake thinking of it all night, didn&rsquo;t you? So did I. Whenever the
+      clock struck, I said to myself: &lsquo;She&rsquo;s hearing it too.&rsquo; And I was up
+      before daylight, and packed my traps&mdash;for I never want to set foot
+      again in that awful hotel where I&rsquo;ve lived in hell for the last three
+      days. And I swore to myself that I&rsquo;d go off with a woman by the first
+      train I could catch&mdash;and so I mean to, my dear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stood before him numb. Yes, numb: that was the worst of it! The
+      violence of the reaction had been too great, and she could hardly
+      understand what he was saying. Instead, she noticed that the tassel of the
+      window-blind was torn off again (oh, those children!), and vaguely
+      wondered if his luggage were safe on the waiting taxi. One heard such
+      stories....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His voice came back to her. &ldquo;Susy! Listen!&rdquo; he was entreating. &ldquo;You must
+      see yourself that it can&rsquo;t be. We&rsquo;re married&mdash;isn&rsquo;t that all that
+      matters? Oh, I know&mdash;I&rsquo;ve behaved like a brute: a cursed arrogant
+      ass! You couldn&rsquo;t wish that ass a worse kicking than I&rsquo;ve given him! But
+      that&rsquo;s not the point, you see. The point is that we&rsquo;re married....
+      Married.... Doesn&rsquo;t it mean something to you, something&mdash;inexorable?
+      It does to me. I didn&rsquo;t dream it would&mdash;in just that way. But all I
+      can say is that I suppose the people who don&rsquo;t feel it aren&rsquo;t really
+      married&mdash;and they&rsquo;d better separate; much better. As for us&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Through her tears she gasped out: &ldquo;That&rsquo;s what I felt... that&rsquo;s what I
+      said to Streff....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was upon her with a great embrace. &ldquo;My darling! My darling! You have
+      told him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she panted. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s why I&rsquo;m living here.&rdquo; She paused. &ldquo;And you&rsquo;ve
+      told Coral?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She felt his embrace relax. He drew away a little, still holding her, but
+      with lowered head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No... I... haven&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Nick! But then&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He caught her to him again, resentfully. &ldquo;Well&mdash;then what? What do
+      you mean? What earthly difference does it make?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But if you&rsquo;ve told her you were going to marry her&mdash;&rdquo; (Try as she
+      would, her voice was full of silver chimes.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Marry her? Marry her?&rdquo; he echoed. &ldquo;But how could I? What does marriage
+      mean anyhow? If it means anything at all it means&mdash;you! And I can&rsquo;t
+      ask Coral Hicks just to come and live with me, can I?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Between crying and laughing she lay on his breast, and his hand passed
+      over her hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were silent for a while; then he began again: &ldquo;You said it yourself
+      yesterday, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She strayed back from sunlit distances. &ldquo;Yesterday?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes: that Grace Fulmer says you can&rsquo;t separate two people who&rsquo;ve been
+      through a lot of things&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, been through them together&mdash;it&rsquo;s not the things, you see, it&rsquo;s
+      the togetherness,&rdquo; she interrupted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The togetherness&mdash;that&rsquo;s it!&rdquo; He seized on the word as if it had
+      just been coined to express their case, and his mind could rest in it
+      without farther labour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The door-bell rang, and they started. Through the window they saw the
+      taxi-driver gesticulating enquiries as to the fate of the luggage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He wants to know if he&rsquo;s to leave it here,&rdquo; Susy laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&mdash;no! You&rsquo;re to come with me,&rdquo; her husband declared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come with you?&rdquo; She laughed again at the absurdity of the suggestion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course: this very instant. What did you suppose? That I was going away
+      without you? Run up and pack your things,&rdquo; he commanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My things? My things? But I can&rsquo;t leave the children!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stared, between indignation and amusement. &ldquo;Can&rsquo;t leave the children?
+      Nonsense! Why, you said yourself you were going to follow me to
+      Fontainebleau&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She reddened again, this time a little painfully &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t know what I was
+      doing.... I had to find you... but I should have come back this evening,
+      no matter what happened.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No matter what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She nodded, and met his gaze resolutely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; but really&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Really, I can&rsquo;t leave the children till Nat and Grace come back. I
+      promised I wouldn&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; but you didn&rsquo;t know then.... Why on earth can&rsquo;t their nurse look
+      after them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There isn&rsquo;t any nurse but me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good Lord!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it&rsquo;s only for two weeks more,&rdquo; she pleaded. &ldquo;Two weeks! Do you know
+      how long I&rsquo;ve been without you!&rdquo; He seized her by both wrists, and drew
+      them against his breast. &ldquo;Come with me at least for two days&mdash;Susy!&rdquo;
+       he entreated her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;that&rsquo;s the very first time you&rsquo;ve said my name!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Susy, Susy, then&mdash;my Susy&mdash;Susy! And you&rsquo;ve only said mine
+      once, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nick!&rdquo; she sighed, at peace, as if the one syllable were a magic seed
+      that hung out great branches to envelop them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, Susy, be reasonable. Come!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Reasonable&mdash;oh, reasonable!&rdquo; she sobbed through laughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Unreasonable, then! That&rsquo;s even better.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She freed herself, and drew back gently. &ldquo;Nick, I swore I wouldn&rsquo;t leave
+      them; and I can&rsquo;t. It&rsquo;s not only my promise to their mother&mdash;it&rsquo;s
+      what they&rsquo;ve been to me themselves. You don&rsquo;t, know... You can&rsquo;t imagine
+      the things they&rsquo;ve taught me. They&rsquo;re awfully naughty at times, because
+      they&rsquo;re so clever; but when they&rsquo;re good they&rsquo;re the wisest people I
+      know.&rdquo; She paused, and a sudden inspiration illuminated her. &ldquo;But why
+      shouldn&rsquo;t we take them with us?&rdquo; she exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her husband&rsquo;s arms fell away from her, and he stood dumfounded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take them with us?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All five of them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course&mdash;I couldn&rsquo;t possibly separate them. And Junie and Nat will
+      help us to look after the young ones.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Help us!&rdquo; he groaned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you&rsquo;ll see; they won&rsquo;t bother you. Just leave it to me; I&rsquo;ll manage&mdash;&rdquo;
+       The word stopped her short, and an agony of crimson suffused her from brow
+      to throat. Their eyes met; and without a word he stooped and laid his lips
+      gently on the stain of red on her neck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nick,&rdquo; she breathed, her hands in his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But those children&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Instead of answering, she questioned: &ldquo;Where are we going?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His face lit up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Anywhere, dearest, that you choose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;I choose Fontainebleau!&rdquo; she exulted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So do I! But we can&rsquo;t take all those children to an hotel at
+      Fontainebleau, can we?&rdquo; he questioned weakly. &ldquo;You see, dear, there&rsquo;s the
+      mere expense of it&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her eyes were already travelling far ahead of him. &ldquo;The expense won&rsquo;t
+      amount to much. I&rsquo;ve just remembered that Angele, the bonne, has a sister
+      who is cook there in a nice old-fashioned pension which must be almost
+      empty at this time of year. I&rsquo;m sure I can ma&mdash;arrange easily,&rdquo; she
+      hurried on, nearly tripping again over the fatal word. &ldquo;And just think of
+      the treat it will be to them! This is Friday, and I can get them let off
+      from their afternoon classes, and keep them in the country till Monday.
+      Poor darlings, they haven&rsquo;t been out of Paris for months! And I daresay
+      the change will cure Geordie&rsquo;s cough&mdash;Geordie&rsquo;s the youngest,&rdquo; she
+      explained, surprised to find herself, even in the rapture of reunion, so
+      absorbed in the welfare of the Fulmers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was conscious that her husband was surprised also; but instead of
+      prolonging the argument he simply questioned: &ldquo;Was Geordie the chap you
+      had in your arms when you opened the front door the night before last?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She echoed: &ldquo;I opened the front door the night before last?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To a boy with a parcel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; she sobbed, &ldquo;you were there? You were watching?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He held her to him, and the currents flowed between them warm and full as
+      on the night of their moon over Como.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a trice, after that, she had the matter in hand and her forces
+      marshalled. The taxi was paid, Nick&rsquo;s luggage deposited in the vestibule,
+      and the children, just piling down to breakfast, were summoned in to hear
+      the news.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was apparent that, seasoned to surprises as they were, Nick&rsquo;s presence
+      took them aback. But when, between laughter and embraces, his identity,
+      and his right to be where he was, had been made clear to them, Junie
+      dismissed the matter by asking him in her practical way: &ldquo;Then I suppose
+      we may talk about you to Susy now?&rdquo;&mdash;and thereafter all five
+      addressed themselves to the vision of their imminent holiday.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From that moment the little house became the centre of a whirlwind. Treats
+      so unforeseen, and of such magnitude, were rare in the young Fulmers&rsquo;
+      experience, and had it not been for Junie&rsquo;s steadying influence Susy&rsquo;s
+      charges would have got out of hand. But young Nat, appealed to by Nick on
+      the ground of their common manhood, was induced to forego celebrating the
+      event on his motor horn (the very same which had tortured the New
+      Hampshire echoes), and to assert his authority over his juniors; and
+      finally a plan began to emerge from the chaos, and each child to fit into
+      it like a bit of a picture puzzle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy, riding the whirlwind with her usual firmness, nevertheless felt an
+      undercurrent of anxiety. There had been no time as yet, between her and
+      Nick, to revert to money matters; and where there was so little money it
+      could not, obviously, much matter. But that was the more reason for being
+      secretly aghast at her intrepid resolve not to separate herself from her
+      charges. A three days&rsquo; honey-moon with five children in the party&mdash;and
+      children with the Fulmer appetite&mdash;could not but be a costly
+      business; and while she settled details, packed them off to school, and
+      routed out such nondescript receptacles as the house contained in the way
+      of luggage, her thoughts remained fixed on the familiar financial problem.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes&mdash;it was cruel to have it rear its hated head, even through the
+      bursting boughs of her new spring; but there it was, the perpetual serpent
+      in her Eden, to be bribed, fed, sent to sleep with such scraps as she
+      could beg, borrow or steal for it. And she supposed it was the price that
+      fate meant her to pay for her blessedness, and was surer than ever that
+      the blessedness was worth it. Only, how was she to compound the business
+      with her new principles?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With the children&rsquo;s things to pack, luncheon to be got ready, and the
+      Fontainebleau pension to be telephoned to, there was little time to waste
+      on moral casuistry; and Susy asked herself with a certain irony if the
+      chronic lack of time to deal with money difficulties had not been the
+      chief cause of her previous lapses. There was no time to deal with this
+      question either; no time, in short, to do anything but rush forward on a
+      great gale of plans and preparations, in the course of which she whirled
+      Nick forth to buy some charcuterie for luncheon, and telephone to
+      Fontainebleau.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once he was gone&mdash;and after watching him safely round the corner&mdash;she
+      too got into her wraps, and transferring a small packet from her
+      dressing-case to her pocket, hastened out in a different direction.
+    </p>
+
+
+<h3>XXX.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">It</span> took two brimming taxi-cabs to carry the Nicholas Lansings to the
+      station on their second honey-moon. In the first were Nick, Susy and the
+      luggage of the whole party (little Nat&rsquo;s motor horn included, as a last
+      concession, and because he had hitherto forborne to play on it); and in
+      the second, the five Fulmers, the bonne, who at the eleventh hour had
+      refused to be left, a cage-full of canaries, and a foundling kitten who
+      had murderous designs on them; all of which had to be taken because, if
+      the bonne came, there would be nobody left to look after them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the corner Susy tore herself from Nick&rsquo;s arms and held up the
+      procession while she ran back to the second taxi to make sure that the
+      bonne had brought the house-key. It was found of course that she hadn&rsquo;t
+      but that Junie had; whereupon the caravan got under way again, and reached
+      the station just as the train was starting; and there, by some miracle of
+      good nature on the part of the guard, they were all packed together into
+      an empty compartment&mdash;no doubt, as Susy remarked, because train
+      officials never failed to spot a newly-married couple, and treat them
+      kindly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The children, sentinelled by Junie, at first gave promise of superhuman
+      goodness; but presently their feelings overflowed, and they were not to be
+      quieted till it had been agreed that Nat should blow his motor-horn at
+      each halt, while the twins called out the names of the stations, and
+      Geordie, with the canaries and kitten, affected to change trains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Luckily the halts were few; but the excitement of travel, combined with
+      over-indulgence in the chocolates imprudently provided by Nick,
+      overwhelmed Geordie with a sudden melancholy that could be appeased only
+      by Susy&rsquo;s telling him stories till they arrived at Fontainebleau.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The day was soft, with mild gleams of sunlight on decaying foliage; and
+      after luggage and livestock had been dropped at the pension Susy confessed
+      that she had promised the children a scamper in the forest, and buns in a
+      tea-shop afterward. Nick placidly agreed, and darkness had long fallen,
+      and a great many buns been consumed, when at length the procession turned
+      down the street toward the pension, headed by Nick with the sleeping
+      Geordie on his shoulder, while the others, speechless with fatigue and
+      food, hung heavily on Susy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It had been decided that, as the bonne was of the party, the children
+      might be entrusted to her for the night, and Nick and Susy establish
+      themselves in an adjacent hotel. Nick had flattered himself that they
+      might remove their possessions there when they returned from the tea-room;
+      but Susy, manifestly surprised at the idea, reminded him that her charges
+      must first be given their supper and put to bed. She suggested that he
+      should meanwhile take the bags to the hotel, and promised to join him as
+      soon as Geordie was asleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was a long time coming, but waiting for her was sweet, even in a
+      deserted hotel reading-room insufficiently heated by a sulky stove; and
+      after he had glanced through his morning&rsquo;s mail, hurriedly thrust into his
+      pocket as he left Paris, he sank into a state of drowsy beatitude. It was
+      all the maddest business in the world, yet it did not give him the sense
+      of unreality that had made their first adventure a mere golden dream; and
+      he sat and waited with the security of one in whom dear habits have struck
+      deep roots. In this mood of acquiescence even the presence of the five
+      Fulmers seemed a natural and necessary consequence of all the rest; and
+      when Susy at length appeared, a little pale and tired, with the brooding
+      inward look that busy mothers bring from the nursery, that too seemed
+      natural and necessary, and part of the new order of things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had wandered out to a cheap restaurant for dinner; now, in the damp
+      December night, they were walking back to the hotel under a sky full of
+      rain-clouds. They seemed to have said everything to each other, and yet
+      barely to have begun what they had to tell; and at each step they took,
+      their heavy feet dragged a great load of bliss.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the hotel almost all the lights were already out; and they groped their
+      way to the third floor room which was the only one that Susy had found
+      cheap enough. A ray from a street-lamp struck up through the unshuttered
+      windows; and after Nick had revived the fire they drew their chairs close
+      to it, and sat quietly for a while in the dark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Their silence was so sweet that Nick could not make up his mind to break
+      it; not to do so gave his tossing spirit such a sense of permanence, of
+      having at last unlimited time before him in which to taste his joy and let
+      its sweetness stream through him. But at length he roused himself to say:
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s queer how things coincide. I&rsquo;ve had a little bit of good news in one
+      of the letters I got this morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy took the announcement serenely. &ldquo;Well, you would, you know,&rdquo; she
+      commented, as if the day had been too obviously designed for bliss to
+      escape the notice of its dispensers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he continued with a thrill of pardonable pride. &ldquo;During the cruise
+      I did a couple of articles on Crete&mdash;oh, just travel-impressions, of
+      course; they couldn&rsquo;t be more. But the editor of the New Review has
+      accepted them, and asks for others. And here&rsquo;s his cheque, if you please!
+      So you see you might have let me take the jolly room downstairs with the
+      pink curtains. And it makes me awfully hopeful about my book.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had expected a rapturous outburst, and perhaps some reassertion of
+      wifely faith in the glorious future that awaited The Pageant of Alexander;
+      and deep down under the lover&rsquo;s well-being the author felt a faint twinge
+      of mortified vanity when Susy, leaping to her feet, cried out, ravenously
+      and without preamble: &ldquo;Oh, Nick, Nick&mdash;let me see how much they&rsquo;ve
+      given you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He flourished the cheque before her in the firelight. &ldquo;A couple of
+      hundred, you mercenary wretch!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, oh&mdash;&rdquo; she gasped, as if the good news had been almost too much
+      for her tense nerves; and then surprised him by dropping to the ground,
+      and burying her face against his knees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Susy, my Susy,&rdquo; he whispered, his hand on her shaking shoulder. &ldquo;Why,
+      dear, what is it? You&rsquo;re not crying?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Nick, Nick&mdash;two hundred? Two hundred dollars? Then I&rsquo;ve got to
+      tell you&mdash;oh now, at once!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A faint chill ran over him, and involuntarily his hand drew back from her
+      bowed figure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now? Oh, why now?&rdquo; he protested. &ldquo;What on earth does it matter now&mdash;whatever
+      it is?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it does matter&mdash;it matters more than you can think!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She straightened herself, still kneeling before him, and lifted her head
+      so that the firelight behind her turned her hair into a ruddy halo. &ldquo;Oh,
+      Nick, the bracelet&mdash;Ellie&rsquo;s bracelet.... I&rsquo;ve never returned it to
+      her,&rdquo; she faltered out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He felt himself recoiling under the hands with which she clutched his
+      knees. For an instant he did not remember what she alluded to; it was the
+      mere mention of Ellie Vanderlyn&rsquo;s name that had fallen between them like
+      an icy shadow. What an incorrigible fool he had been to think they could
+      ever shake off such memories, or cease to be the slaves of such a past!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The bracelet?&mdash;Oh, yes,&rdquo; he said, suddenly understanding, and
+      feeling the chill mount slowly to his lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, the bracelet... Oh, Nick, I meant to give it back at once; I did&mdash;I
+      did; but the day you went away I forgot everything else. And when I found
+      the thing, in the bottom of my bag, weeks afterward, I thought everything
+      was over between you and me, and I had begun to see Ellie again, and she
+      was kind to me and how could I?&rdquo; To save his life he could have found no
+      answer, and she pressed on: &ldquo;And so this morning, when I saw you were
+      frightened by the expense of bringing all the children with us, and when I
+      felt I couldn&rsquo;t leave them, and couldn&rsquo;t leave you either, I remembered
+      the bracelet; and I sent you off to telephone while I rushed round the
+      corner to a little jeweller&rsquo;s where I&rsquo;d been before, and pawned it so that
+      you shouldn&rsquo;t have to pay for the children.... But now, darling, you see,
+      if you&rsquo;ve got all that money, I can get it out of pawn at once, can&rsquo;t I,
+      and send it back to her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She flung her arms about him, and he held her fast, wondering if the tears
+      he felt were hers or his. Still he did not speak; but as he clasped her
+      close she added, with an irrepressible flash of her old irony: &ldquo;Not that
+      Ellie will understand why I&rsquo;ve done it. She&rsquo;s never yet been able to make
+      out why you returned her scarf-pin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a long time she continued to lean against him, her head on his knees,
+      as she had done on the terrace of Como on the last night of their
+      honeymoon. She had ceased to talk, and he sat silent also, passing his
+      hand quietly to and fro over her hair. The first rapture had been
+      succeeded by soberer feelings. Her confession had broken up the frozen
+      pride about his heart, and humbled him to the earth; but it had also
+      roused forgotten things, memories and scruples swept aside in the first
+      rush of their reunion. He and she belonged to each other for always: he
+      understood that now. The impulse which had first drawn them together
+      again, in spite of reason, in spite of themselves almost, that deep-seated
+      instinctive need that each had of the other, would never again wholly let
+      them go. Yet as he sat there he thought of Strefford, he thought of Coral
+      Hicks. He had been a coward in regard to Coral, and Susy had been sincere
+      and courageous in regard to Strefford. Yet his mind dwelt on Coral with
+      tenderness, with compunction, with remorse; and he was almost sure that
+      Susy had already put Strefford utterly out of her mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the old contrast between the two ways of loving, the man&rsquo;s way and
+      the woman&rsquo;s; and after a moment it seemed to Nick natural enough that
+      Susy, from the very moment of finding him again, should feel neither pity
+      nor regret, and that Strefford should already be to her as if he had never
+      been. After all, there was something Providential in such arrangements.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stooped closer, pressed her dreaming head between his hands, and
+      whispered: &ldquo;Wake up; it&rsquo;s bedtime.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She rose; but as she moved away to turn on the light he caught her hand
+      and drew her to the window. They leaned on the sill in the darkness, and
+      through the clouds, from which a few drops were already falling, the moon,
+      labouring upward, swam into a space of sky, cast her troubled glory on
+      them, and was again hidden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
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+</pre>
+  </body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Glimpses of the Moon, by Edith Wharton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Glimpses of the Moon
+
+Author: Edith Wharton
+
+Posting Date: September 15, 2008 [EBook #1263]
+Release Date: April, 1998
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GLIMPSES OF THE MOON ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Dean Gilley
+
+
+
+
+
+THE GLIMPSES OF THE MOON
+
+By Edith Wharton
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+I
+
+IT rose for them--their honey-moon--over the waters of a lake so famed
+as the scene of romantic raptures that they were rather proud of not
+having been afraid to choose it as the setting of their own.
+
+"It required a total lack of humour, or as great a gift for it as ours,
+to risk the experiment," Susy Lansing opined, as they hung over the
+inevitable marble balustrade and watched their tutelary orb roll its
+magic carpet across the waters to their feet.
+
+"Yes--or the loan of Strefford's villa," her husband emended, glancing
+upward through the branches at a long low patch of paleness to which the
+moonlight was beginning to give the form of a white house-front.
+
+"Oh, come when we'd five to choose from. At least if you count the
+Chicago flat."
+
+"So we had--you wonder!" He laid his hand on hers, and his touch renewed
+the sense of marvelling exultation which the deliberate survey of their
+adventure always roused in her.... It was characteristic that she merely
+added, in her steady laughing tone: "Or, not counting the flat--for
+I hate to brag--just consider the others: Violet Melrose's place at
+Versailles, your aunt's villa at Monte Carlo--and a moor!"
+
+She was conscious of throwing in the moor tentatively, and yet with
+a somewhat exaggerated emphasis, as if to make sure that he shouldn't
+accuse her of slurring it over. But he seemed to have no desire to
+do so. "Poor old Fred!" he merely remarked; and she breathed out
+carelessly: "Oh, well--"
+
+His hand still lay on hers, and for a long interval, while they stood
+silent in the enveloping loveliness of the night, she was aware only of
+the warm current running from palm to palm, as the moonlight below them
+drew its line of magic from shore to shore.
+
+Nick Lansing spoke at last. "Versailles in May would have been
+impossible: all our Paris crowd would have run us down within
+twenty-four hours. And Monte Carlo is ruled out because it's exactly
+the kind of place everybody expected us to go. So--with all respect to
+you--it wasn't much of a mental strain to decide on Como."
+
+His wife instantly challenged this belittling of her capacity. "It took
+a good deal of argument to convince you that we could face the ridicule
+of Como!"
+
+"Well, I should have preferred something in a lower key; at least I
+thought I should till we got here. Now I see that this place is idiotic
+unless one is perfectly happy; and that then it's-as good as any other."
+
+She sighed out a blissful assent. "And I must say that Streffy has done
+things to a turn. Even the cigars--who do you suppose gave him those
+cigars?" She added thoughtfully: "You'll miss them when we have to go."
+
+"Oh, I say, don't let's talk to-night about going. Aren't we outside of
+time and space...? Smell that guinea-a-bottle stuff over there: what is
+it? Stephanotis?"
+
+"Y-yes.... I suppose so. Or gardenias.... Oh, the fire-flies! Look...
+there, against that splash of moonlight on the water. Apples of silver
+in a net-work of gold...." They leaned together, one flesh from shoulder
+to finger-tips, their eyes held by the snared glitter of the ripples.
+
+"I could bear," Lansing remarked, "even a nightingale at this
+moment...."
+
+A faint gurgle shook the magnolias behind them, and a long liquid
+whisper answered it from the thicket of laurel above their heads.
+
+"It's a little late in the year for them: they're ending just as we
+begin."
+
+Susy laughed. "I hope when our turn comes we shall say good-bye to each
+other as sweetly."
+
+It was in her husband's mind to answer: "They're not saying good-bye,
+but only settling down to family cares." But as this did not happen to
+be in his plan, or in Susy's, he merely echoed her laugh and pressed her
+closer.
+
+The spring night drew them into its deepening embrace. The ripples of
+the lake had gradually widened and faded into a silken smoothness, and
+high above the mountains the moon was turning from gold to white in
+a sky powdered with vanishing stars. Across the lake the lights of a
+little town went out, one after another, and the distant shore became a
+floating blackness. A breeze that rose and sank brushed their faces with
+the scents of the garden; once it blew out over the water a great white
+moth like a drifting magnolia petal. The nightingales had paused and the
+trickle of the fountain behind the house grew suddenly insistent.
+
+When Susy spoke it was in a voice languid with visions. "I have been
+thinking," she said, "that we ought to be able to make it last at least
+a year longer."
+
+Her husband received the remark without any sign of surprise or
+disapprobation; his answer showed that he not only understood her, but
+had been inwardly following the same train of thought.
+
+"You mean," he enquired after a pause, "without counting your
+grandmother's pearls?"
+
+"Yes--without the pearls."
+
+He pondered a while, and then rejoined in a tender whisper: "Tell me
+again just how."
+
+"Let's sit down, then. No, I like the cushions best." He stretched
+himself in a long willow chair, and she curled up on a heap of
+boat-cushions and leaned her head against his knee. Just above her,
+when she lifted her lids, she saw bits of moon-flooded sky incrusted
+like silver in a sharp black patterning of plane-boughs. All about them
+breathed of peace and beauty and stability, and her happiness was so
+acute that it was almost a relief to remember the stormy background of
+bills and borrowing against which its frail structure had been reared.
+"People with a balance can't be as happy as all this," Susy mused,
+letting the moonlight filter through her lazy lashes.
+
+People with a balance had always been Susy Branch's bugbear; they were
+still, and more dangerously, to be Susy Lansing's. She detested them,
+detested them doubly, as the natural enemies of mankind and as the
+people one always had to put one's self out for. The greater part of her
+life having been passed among them, she knew nearly all that there was
+to know about them, and judged them with the contemptuous lucidity
+of nearly twenty years of dependence. But at the present moment her
+animosity was diminished not only by the softening effect of love but
+by the fact that she had got out of those very people more--yes, ever so
+much more--than she and Nick, in their hours of most reckless planning,
+had ever dared to hope for.
+
+"After all, we owe them this!" she mused.
+
+Her husband, lost in the drowsy beatitude of the hour, had not repeated
+his question; but she was still on the trail of the thought he had
+started. A year--yes, she was sure now that with a little management
+they could have a whole year of it! "It" was their marriage, their being
+together, and away from bores and bothers, in a comradeship of which
+both of them had long ago guessed the immediate pleasure, but she at
+least had never imagined the deeper harmony.
+
+It was at one of their earliest meetings--at one of the heterogeneous
+dinners that the Fred Gillows tried to think "literary"--that the young
+man who chanced to sit next to her, and of whom it was vaguely rumoured
+that he had "written," had presented himself to her imagination as the
+sort of luxury to which Susy Branch, heiress, might conceivably have
+treated herself as a crowning folly. Susy Branch, pauper, was fond of
+picturing how this fancied double would employ her millions: it was one
+of her chief grievances against her rich friends that they disposed of
+theirs so unimaginatively.
+
+"I'd rather have a husband like that than a steam-yacht!" she had
+thought at the end of her talk with the young man who had written, and
+as to whom it had at once been clear to her that nothing his pen had
+produced, or might hereafter set down, would put him in a position to
+offer his wife anything more costly than a row-boat.
+
+"His wife! As if he could ever have one! For he's not the kind to marry
+for a yacht either." In spite of her past, Susy had preserved enough
+inner independence to detect the latent signs of it in others, and also
+to ascribe it impulsively to those of the opposite sex who happened to
+interest her. She had a natural contempt for people who gloried in what
+they need only have endured. She herself meant eventually to marry,
+because one couldn't forever hang on to rich people; but she was going
+to wait till she found some one who combined the maximum of wealth with
+at least a minimum of companionableness.
+
+She had at once perceived young Lansing's case to be exactly the
+opposite: he was as poor as he could be, and as companionable as it was
+possible to imagine. She therefore decided to see as much of him as her
+hurried and entangled life permitted; and this, thanks to a series of
+adroit adjustments, turned out to be a good deal. They met frequently
+all the rest of that winter; so frequently that Mrs. Fred Gillow one
+day abruptly and sharply gave Susy to understand that she was "making
+herself ridiculous."
+
+"Ah--" said Susy with a long breath, looking her friend and patroness
+straight in the painted eyes.
+
+"Yes," cried Ursula Gillow in a sob, "before you interfered Nick liked
+me awfully... and, of course, I don't want to reproach you... but when I
+think...."
+
+Susy made no answer. How could she, when she thought? The dress she had
+on had been given her by Ursula; Ursula's motor had carried her to the
+feast from which they were both returning. She counted on spending the
+following August with the Gillows at Newport... and the only alternative
+was to go to California with the Bockheimers, whom she had hitherto
+refused even to dine with.
+
+"Of course, what you fancy is perfect nonsense, Ursula; and as to my
+interfering--" Susy hesitated, and then murmured: "But if it will make
+you any happier I'll arrange to see him less often...." She sounded the
+lowest depths of subservience in returning Ursula's tearful kiss....
+
+Susy Branch had a masculine respect for her word; and the next day she
+put on her most becoming hat and sought out young Mr. Lansing in his
+lodgings. She was determined to keep her promise to Ursula; but she
+meant to look her best when she did it.
+
+She knew at what time the young man was likely to be found, for he was
+doing a dreary job on a popular encyclopaedia (V to X), and had told her
+what hours were dedicated to the hateful task. "Oh, if only it were a
+novel!" she thought as she mounted his dingy stairs; but immediately
+reflected that, if it were the kind that she could bear to read, it
+probably wouldn't bring him in much more than his encyclopaedia. Miss
+Branch had her standards in literature....
+
+The apartment to which Mr. Lansing admitted her was a good deal cleaner,
+but hardly less dingy, than his staircase. Susy, knowing him to be
+addicted to Oriental archaeology, had pictured him in a bare room
+adorned by a single Chinese bronze of flawless shape, or by some
+precious fragment of Asiatic pottery. But such redeeming features were
+conspicuously absent, and no attempt had been made to disguise the
+decent indigence of the bed-sitting-room.
+
+Lansing welcomed his visitor with every sign of pleasure, and with
+apparent indifference as to what she thought of his furniture. He seemed
+to be conscious only of his luck in seeing her on a day when they had
+not expected to meet. This made Susy all the sorrier to execute her
+promise, and the gladder that she had put on her prettiest hat; and for
+a moment or two she looked at him in silence from under its conniving
+brim.
+
+Warm as their mutual liking was, Lansing had never said a word of love
+to her; but this was no deterrent to his visitor, whose habit it was
+to speak her meaning clearly when there were no reasons, worldly or
+pecuniary, for its concealment. After a moment, therefore, she told him
+why she had come; it was a nuisance, of course, but he would understand.
+Ursula Gillow was jealous, and they would have to give up seeing each
+other.
+
+The young man's burst of laughter was music to her; for, after all, she
+had been rather afraid that being devoted to Ursula might be as much in
+his day's work as doing the encyclopaedia.
+
+"But I give you my word it's a raving-mad mistake! And I don't believe
+she ever meant me, to begin with--" he protested; but Susy, her
+common-sense returning with her reassurance, promptly cut short his
+denial.
+
+"You can trust Ursula to make herself clear on such occasions. And it
+doesn't make any difference what you think. All that matters is what she
+believes."
+
+"Oh, come! I've got a word to say about that too, haven't I?"
+
+Susy looked slowly and consideringly about the room. There was nothing
+in it, absolutely nothing, to show that he had ever possessed a spare
+dollar--or accepted a present.
+
+"Not as far as I'm concerned," she finally pronounced.
+
+"How do you mean? If I'm as free as air--?"
+
+"I'm not."
+
+He grew thoughtful. "Oh, then, of course--. It only seems a little odd,"
+he added drily, "that in that case, the protest should have come from
+Mrs. Gillow."
+
+"Instead of coming from my millionaire bridegroom, Oh, I haven't any; in
+that respect I'm as free as you."
+
+"Well, then--? Haven't we only got to stay free?"
+
+Susy drew her brows together anxiously. It was going to be rather more
+difficult than she had supposed.
+
+"I said I was as free in that respect. I'm not going to marry--and I
+don't suppose you are?"
+
+"God, no!" he ejaculated fervently.
+
+"But that doesn't always imply complete freedom...."
+
+He stood just above her, leaning his elbow against the hideous black
+marble arch that framed his fireless grate. As she glanced up she saw
+his face harden, and the colour flew to hers.
+
+"Was that what you came to tell me?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, you don't understand--and I don't see why you don't, since we've
+knocked about so long among exactly the same kind of people." She stood
+up impulsively and laid her hand on his arm. "I do wish you'd help
+me--!"
+
+He remained motionless, letting the hand lie untouched.
+
+"Help you to tell me that poor Ursula was a pretext, but that there IS
+someone who--for one reason or another--really has a right to object to
+your seeing me too often?"
+
+Susy laughed impatiently. "You talk like the hero of a novel--the kind
+my governess used to read. In the first place I should never recognize
+that kind of right, as you call it--never!"
+
+"Then what kind do you?" he asked with a clearing brow.
+
+"Why--the kind I suppose you recognize on the part of your publisher."
+This evoked a hollow laugh from him. "A business claim, call it," she
+pursued. "Ursula does a lot for me: I live on her for half the year.
+This dress I've got on now is one she gave me. Her motor is going to
+take me to a dinner to-night. I'm going to spend next summer with her
+at Newport.... If I don't, I've got to go to California with the
+Bockheimers-so good-bye."
+
+Suddenly in tears, she was out of the door and down his steep three
+flights before he could stop her--though, in thinking it over, she
+didn't even remember if he had tried to. She only recalled having stood
+a long time on the corner of Fifth Avenue, in the harsh winter radiance,
+waiting till a break in the torrent of motors laden with fashionable
+women should let her cross, and saying to herself: "After all, I might
+have promised Ursula... and kept on seeing him...."
+
+Instead of which, when Lansing wrote the next day entreating a word with
+her, she had sent back a friendly but firm refusal; and had managed soon
+afterward to get taken to Canada for a fortnight's ski-ing, and then to
+Florida for six weeks in a house-boat....
+
+As she reached this point in her retrospect the remembrance of Florida
+called up a vision of moonlit waters, magnolia fragrance and balmy airs;
+merging with the circumambient sweetness, it laid a drowsy spell upon
+her lids. Yes, there had been a bad moment: but it was over; and she was
+here, safe and blissful, and with Nick; and this was his knee her head
+rested on, and they had a year ahead of them... a whole year.... "Not
+counting the pearls," she murmured, shutting her eyes....
+
+
+
+II.
+
+LANSING threw the end of Strefford's expensive cigar into the lake, and
+bent over his wife. Poor child! She had fallen asleep.... He leaned
+back and stared up again at the silver-flooded sky. How queer--how
+inexpressibly queer--it was to think that that light was shed by his
+honey-moon! A year ago, if anyone had predicted his risking such an
+adventure, he would have replied by asking to be locked up at the first
+symptoms....
+
+There was still no doubt in his mind that the adventure was a mad one.
+It was all very well for Susy to remind him twenty times a day that they
+had pulled it off--and so why should he worry? Even in the light of her
+far-seeing cleverness, and of his own present bliss, he knew the future
+would not bear the examination of sober thought. And as he sat there
+in the summer moonlight, with her head on his knee, he tried to
+recapitulate the successive steps that had landed them on Streffy's
+lake-front.
+
+On Lansing's side, no doubt, it dated back to his leaving Harvard with
+the large resolve not to miss anything. There stood the evergreen Tree
+of Life, the Four Rivers flowing from its foot; and on every one of the
+four currents he meant to launch his little skiff. On two of them he had
+not gone very far, on the third he had nearly stuck in the mud; but the
+fourth had carried him to the very heart of wonder. It was the stream of
+his lively imagination, of his inexhaustible interest in every form of
+beauty and strangeness and folly. On this stream, sitting in the stout
+little craft of his poverty, his insignificance and his independence, he
+had made some notable voyages.... And so, when Susy Branch, whom he had
+sought out through a New York season as the prettiest and most amusing
+girl in sight, had surprised him with the contradictory revelation of
+her modern sense of expediency and her old-fashioned standard of good
+faith, he had felt an irresistible desire to put off on one more cruise
+into the unknown.
+
+It was of the essence of the adventure that, after her one brief visit
+to his lodgings, he should have kept his promise and not tried to see
+her again. Even if her straightforwardness had not roused his emulation,
+his understanding of her difficulties would have moved his pity. He knew
+on how frail a thread the popularity of the penniless hangs, and how
+miserably a girl like Susy was the sport of other people's moods and
+whims. It was a part of his difficulty and of hers that to get what they
+liked they so often had to do what they disliked. But the keeping of his
+promise was a greater bore than he had expected. Susy Branch had become
+a delightful habit in a life where most of the fixed things were
+dull, and her disappearance had made it suddenly clear to him that his
+resources were growing more and more limited. Much that had once amused
+him hugely now amused him less, or not at all: a good part of his world
+of wonder had shrunk to a village peep-show. And the things which had
+kept their stimulating power--distant journeys, the enjoyment of art,
+the contact with new scenes and strange societies--were becoming less
+and less attainable. Lansing had never had more than a pittance; he had
+spent rather too much of it in his first plunge into life, and the best
+he could look forward to was a middle-age of poorly-paid hack-work,
+mitigated by brief and frugal holidays. He knew that he was more
+intelligent than the average, but he had long since concluded that
+his talents were not marketable. Of the thin volume of sonnets which a
+friendly publisher had launched for him, just seventy copies had been
+sold; and though his essay on "Chinese Influences in Greek Art" had
+created a passing stir, it had resulted in controversial correspondence
+and dinner invitations rather than in more substantial benefits.
+There seemed, in short, no prospect of his ever earning money, and his
+restricted future made him attach an increasing value to the kind of
+friendship that Susy Branch had given him. Apart from the pleasure of
+looking at her and listening to her--of enjoying in her what others less
+discriminatingly but as liberally appreciated--he had the sense, between
+himself and her, of a kind of free-masonry of precocious tolerance and
+irony. They had both, in early youth, taken the measure of the world
+they happened to live in: they knew just what it was worth to them
+and for what reasons, and the community of these reasons lent to their
+intimacy its last exquisite touch. And now, because of some jealous whim
+of a dissatisfied fool of a woman, as to whom he felt himself no more to
+blame than any young man who has paid for good dinners by good manners,
+he was to be deprived of the one complete companionship he had ever
+known....
+
+His thoughts travelled on. He recalled the long dull spring in New York
+after his break with Susy, the weary grind on his last articles,
+his listless speculations as to the cheapest and least boring way of
+disposing of the summer; and then the amazing luck of going, reluctantly
+and at the last minute, to spend a Sunday with the poor Nat Fulmers, in
+the wilds of New Hampshire, and of finding Susy there--Susy, whom he had
+never even suspected of knowing anybody in the Fulmers' set!
+
+She had behaved perfectly--and so had he--but they were obviously much
+too glad to see each other. And then it was unsettling to be with her in
+such a house as the Fulmers', away from the large setting of luxury
+they were both used to, in the cramped cottage where their host had
+his studio in the verandah, their hostess practiced her violin in the
+dining-room, and five ubiquitous children sprawled and shouted and blew
+trumpets and put tadpoles in the water-jugs, and the mid-day dinner was
+two hours late-and proportionately bad--because the Italian cook was
+posing for Fulmer.
+
+Lansing's first thought had been that meeting Susy in such circumstances
+would be the quickest way to cure them both of their regrets. The case
+of the Fulmers was an awful object-lesson in what happened to young
+people who lost their heads; poor Nat, whose pictures nobody bought, had
+gone to seed so terribly-and Grace, at twenty-nine, would never again be
+anything but the woman of whom people say, "I can remember her when she
+was lovely."
+
+But the devil of it was that Nat had never been such good company, or
+Grace so free from care and so full of music; and that, in spite of
+their disorder and dishevelment, and the bad food and general crazy
+discomfort, there was more amusement to be got out of their society
+than out of the most opulently staged house-party through which Susy and
+Lansing had ever yawned their way.
+
+It was almost a relief to tile young man when, on the second afternoon,
+Miss Branch drew him into the narrow hall to say: "I really can't
+stand the combination of Grace's violin and little Nat's motor-horn any
+longer. Do let us slip out till the duet is over."
+
+"How do they stand it, I wonder?" he basely echoed, as he followed her
+up the wooded path behind the house.
+
+"It might be worth finding out," she rejoined with a musing smile.
+
+But he remained resolutely skeptical. "Oh, give them a year or two more
+and they'll collapse--! His pictures will never sell, you know. He'll
+never even get them into a show."
+
+"I suppose not. And she'll never have time to do anything worth while
+with her music."
+
+They had reached a piny knoll high above the ledge on which the house
+was perched. All about them stretched an empty landscape of endless
+featureless wooded hills. "Think of sticking here all the year round!"
+Lansing groaned.
+
+"I know. But then think of wandering over the world with some people!"
+
+"Oh, Lord, yes. For instance, my trip to India with the Mortimer
+Hickses. But it was my only chance and what the deuce is one to do?"
+
+"I wish I knew!" she sighed, thinking of the Bockheimers; and he turned
+and looked at her.
+
+"Knew what?"
+
+"The answer to your question. What is one to do--when one sees both
+sides of the problem? Or every possible side of it, indeed?"
+
+They had seated themselves on a commanding rock under the pines, but
+Lansing could not see the view at their feet for the stir of the brown
+lashes on her cheek.
+
+"You mean: Nat and Grace may after all be having the best of it?"
+
+"How can I say, when I've told you I see all the sides? Of course,"
+Susy added hastily, "I couldn't live as they do for a week. But it's
+wonderful how little it's dimmed them."
+
+"Certainly Nat was never more coruscating. And she keeps it up even
+better." He reflected. "We do them good, I daresay."
+
+"Yes--or they us. I wonder which?"
+
+After that, he seemed to remember that they sat a long time silent, and
+that his next utterance was a boyish outburst against the tyranny of the
+existing order of things, abruptly followed by the passionate query why,
+since he and she couldn't alter it, and since they both had the habit of
+looking at facts as they were, they wouldn't be utter fools not to take
+their chance of being happy in the only way that was open to them, To
+this challenge he did not recall Susy's making any definite answer; but
+after another interval, in which all the world seemed framed in a
+sudden kiss, he heard her murmur to herself in a brooding tone: "I don't
+suppose it's ever been tried before; but we might--." And then and there
+she had laid before him the very experiment they had since hazarded.
+
+She would have none of surreptitious bliss, she began by declaring;
+and she set forth her reasons with her usual lucid impartiality. In the
+first place, she should have to marry some day, and when she made the
+bargain she meant it to be an honest one; and secondly, in the matter
+of love, she would never give herself to anyone she did not really care
+for, and if such happiness ever came to her she did not want it shorn of
+half its brightness by the need of fibbing and plotting and dodging.
+
+"I've seen too much of that kind of thing. Half the women I know who've
+had lovers have had them for the fun of sneaking and lying about it; but
+the other half have been miserable. And I should be miserable."
+
+It was at this point that she unfolded her plan. Why shouldn't they
+marry; belong to each other openly and honourably, if for ever so short
+a time, and with the definite understanding that whenever either of them
+got the chance to do better he or she should be immediately released?
+The law of their country facilitated such exchanges, and society was
+beginning to view them as indulgently as the law. As Susy talked, she
+warmed to her theme and began to develop its endless possibilities.
+
+"We should really, in a way, help more than we should hamper each
+other," she ardently explained. "We both know the ropes so well; what
+one of us didn't see the other might--in the way of opportunities, I
+mean. And then we should be a novelty as married people. We're both
+rather unusually popular--why not be frank!--and it's such a blessing
+for dinner-givers to be able to count on a couple of whom neither one is
+a blank. Yes, I really believe we should be more than twice the success
+we are now; at least," she added with a smile, "if there's that amount
+of room for improvement. I don't know how you feel; a man's popularity
+is so much less precarious than a girl's--but I know it would furbish me
+up tremendously to reappear as a married woman." She glanced away from
+him down the long valley at their feet, and added in a lower tone: "And
+I should like, just for a little while, to feel I had something in life
+of my very own--something that nobody had lent me, like a fancy-dress or
+a motor or an opera cloak."
+
+The suggestion, at first, had seemed to Lansing as mad as it was
+enchanting: it had thoroughly frightened him. But Susy's arguments were
+irrefutable, her ingenuities inexhaustible. Had he ever thought it all
+out? She asked. No. Well, she had; and would he kindly not interrupt? In
+the first place, there would be all the wedding-presents. Jewels, and a
+motor, and a silver dinner service, did she mean? Not a bit of it! She
+could see he'd never given the question proper thought. Cheques, my
+dear, nothing but cheques--she undertook to manage that on her side: she
+really thought she could count on about fifty, and she supposed he could
+rake up a few more? Well, all that would simply represent pocket-money!
+For they would have plenty of houses to live in: he'd see. People were
+always glad to lend their house to a newly-married couple. It was such
+fun to pop down and see them: it made one feel romantic and jolly. All
+they need do was to accept the houses in turn: go on honey-mooning for
+a year! What was he afraid of? Didn't he think they'd be happy enough to
+want to keep it up? And why not at least try--get engaged, and then
+see what would happen? Even if she was all wrong, and her plan failed,
+wouldn't it have been rather nice, just for a month or two, to fancy
+they were going to be happy? "I've often fancied it all by myself,"
+she concluded; "but fancying it with you would somehow be so awfully
+different...."
+
+That was how it began: and this lakeside dream was what it had led up
+to. Fantastically improbable as they had seemed, all her previsions had
+come true. If there were certain links in the chain that Lansing
+had never been able to put his hand on, certain arrangements and
+contrivances that still needed further elucidation, why, he was lazily
+resolved to clear them up with her some day; and meanwhile it was worth
+all the past might have cost, and every penalty the future might exact
+of him, just to be sitting here in the silence and sweetness, her
+sleeping head on his knee, clasped in his joy as the hushed world was
+clasped in moonlight.
+
+He stooped down and kissed her. "Wake up," he whispered, "it's
+bed-time."
+
+
+
+III.
+
+THEIR month of Como was within a few hours of ending. Till the last
+moment they had hoped for a reprieve; but the accommodating Streffy had
+been unable to put the villa at their disposal for a longer time, since
+he had had the luck to let it for a thumping price to some beastly
+bouncers who insisted on taking possession at the date agreed on.
+
+Lansing, leaving Susy's side at dawn, had gone down to the lake for a
+last plunge; and swimming homeward through the crystal light he looked
+up at the garden brimming with flowers, the long low house with the
+cypress wood above it, and the window behind which his wife still
+slept. The month had been exquisite, and their happiness as rare, as
+fantastically complete, as the scene before him. He sank his chin into
+the sunlit ripples and sighed for sheer content....
+
+It was a bore to be leaving the scene of such complete well-being, but
+the next stage in their progress promised to be hardly less delightful.
+Susy was a magician: everything she predicted came true. Houses were
+being showered on them; on all sides he seemed to see beneficent spirits
+winging toward them, laden with everything from a piano nobile in Venice
+to a camp in the Adirondacks. For the present, they had decided on the
+former. Other considerations apart, they dared not risk the expense of a
+journey across the Atlantic; so they were heading instead for the Nelson
+Vanderlyns' palace on the Giudecca. They were agreed that, for reasons
+of expediency, it might be wise to return to New York for the coming
+winter. It would keep them in view, and probably lead to fresh
+opportunities; indeed, Susy already had in mind the convenient flat that
+she was sure a migratory cousin (if tactfully handled, and assured that
+they would not overwork her cook) could certainly be induced to lend
+them. Meanwhile the need of making plans was still remote; and if there
+was one art in which young Lansing's twenty-eight years of existence had
+perfected him it was that of living completely and unconcernedly in the
+present....
+
+If of late he had tried to look into the future more insistently than
+was his habit, it was only because of Susy. He had meant, when they
+married, to be as philosophic for her as for himself; and he knew she
+would have resented above everything his regarding their partnership as
+a reason for anxious thought. But since they had been together she had
+given him glimpses of her past that made him angrily long to shelter
+and defend her future. It was intolerable that a spirit as fine as hers
+should be ever so little dulled or diminished by the kind of compromises
+out of which their wretched lives were made. For himself, he didn't care
+a hang: he had composed for his own guidance a rough-and-ready code,
+a short set of "mays" and "mustn'ts" which immensely simplified his
+course. There were things a fellow put up with for the sake of certain
+definite and otherwise unattainable advantages; there were other things
+he wouldn't traffic with at any price. But for a woman, he began to
+see, it might be different. The temptations might be greater, the cost
+considerably higher, the dividing line between the "mays" and "mustn'ts"
+more fluctuating and less sharply drawn. Susy, thrown on the world
+at seventeen, with only a weak wastrel of a father to define that
+treacherous line for her, and with every circumstance soliciting her to
+overstep it, seemed to have been preserved chiefly by an innate scorn
+of most of the objects of human folly. "Such trash as he went to pieces
+for," was her curt comment on her parent's premature demise: as
+though she accepted in advance the necessity of ruining one's self for
+something, but was resolved to discriminate firmly between what was
+worth it and what wasn't.
+
+This philosophy had at first enchanted Lansing; but now it began to
+rouse vague fears. The fine armour of her fastidiousness had preserved
+her from the kind of risks she had hitherto been exposed to; but what if
+others, more subtle, found a joint in it? Was there, among her delicate
+discriminations, any equivalent to his own rules? Might not her taste
+for the best and rarest be the very instrument of her undoing; and if
+something that wasn't "trash" came her way, would she hesitate a second
+to go to pieces for it?
+
+He was determined to stick to the compact that they should do nothing to
+interfere with what each referred to as the other's "chance"; but what
+if, when hers came, he couldn't agree with her in recognizing it? He
+wanted for her, oh, so passionately, the best; but his conception of
+that best had so insensibly, so subtly been transformed in the light of
+their first month together!
+
+His lazy strokes were carrying him slowly shoreward; but the hour was so
+exquisite that a few yards from the landing he laid hold of the mooring
+rope of Streffy's boat and floated there, following his dream.... It
+was a bore to be leaving; no doubt that was what made him turn things
+inside-out so uselessly. Venice would be delicious, of course; but
+nothing would ever again be as sweet as this. And then they had only a
+year of security before them; and of that year a month was gone.
+
+Reluctantly he swam ashore, walked up to the house, and pushed open a
+window of the cool painted drawing-room. Signs of departure were already
+visible. There were trunks in the hall, tennis rackets on the stairs; on
+the landing, the cook Giulietta had both arms around a slippery hold-all
+that refused to let itself be strapped. It all gave him a chill sense
+of unreality, as if the past month had been an act on the stage, and its
+setting were being folded away and rolled into the wings to make room
+for another play in which he and Susy had no part.
+
+By the time he came down again, dressed and hungry, to the terrace
+where coffee awaited him, he had recovered his usual pleasant sense of
+security. Susy was there, fresh and gay, a rose in her breast and the
+sun in her hair: her head was bowed over Bradshaw, but she waved a fond
+hand across the breakfast things, and presently looked up to say: "Yes,
+I believe we can just manage it."
+
+"Manage what?"
+
+"To catch the train at Milan--if we start in the motor at ten sharp."
+
+He stared. "The motor? What motor?"
+
+"Why, the new people's--Streffy's tenants. He's never told me their
+name, and the chauffeur says he can't pronounce it. The chauffeur's is
+Ottaviano, anyhow; I've been making friends with him. He arrived last
+night, and he says they're not due at Como till this evening. He simply
+jumped at the idea of running us over to Milan."
+
+"Good Lord--" said Lansing, when she stopped.
+
+She sprang up from the table with a laugh. "It will be a scramble; but
+I'll manage it, if you'll go up at once and pitch the last things into
+your trunk."
+
+"Yes; but look here--have you any idea what it's going to cost?"
+
+She raised her eyebrows gaily. "Why, a good deal less than our railway
+tickets. Ottaviano's got a sweetheart in Milan, and hasn't seen her for
+six months. When I found that out I knew he'd be going there anyhow."
+
+It was clever of her, and he laughed. But why was it that he had grown
+to shrink from even such harmless evidence of her always knowing how to
+"manage"? "Oh, well," he said to himself, "she's right: the fellow would
+be sure to be going to Milan."
+
+Upstairs, on the way to his dressing room, he found her in a cloud of
+finery which her skilful hands were forcibly compressing into a last
+portmanteau. He had never seen anyone pack as cleverly as Susy: the way
+she coaxed reluctant things into a trunk was a symbol of the way she
+fitted discordant facts into her life. "When I'm rich," she often said,
+"the thing I shall hate most will be to see an idiot maid at my trunks."
+
+As he passed, she glanced over her shoulder, her face pink with the
+struggle, and drew a cigar-box from the depths. "Dearest, do put a
+couple of cigars into your pocket as a tip for Ottaviano."
+
+Lansing stared. "Why, what on earth are you doing with Streffy's
+cigars?"
+
+"Packing them, of course.... You don't suppose he meant them for those
+other people?" She gave him a look of honest wonder.
+
+"I don't know whom he meant them for--but they're not ours...."
+
+She continued to look at him wonderingly. "I don't see what there is to
+be solemn about. The cigars are not Streffy's either... you may be sure
+he got them out of some bounder. And there's nothing he'd hate more than
+to have them passed on to another."
+
+"Nonsense. If they're not Streffy's they're much less mine. Hand them
+over, please, dear."
+
+"Just as you like. But it does seem a waste; and, of course, the other
+people will never have one of them.... The gardener and Giulietta's
+lover will see to that!"
+
+Lansing looked away from her at the waves of lace and muslin from which
+she emerged like a rosy Nereid. "How many boxes of them are left?"
+
+"Only four."
+
+"Unpack them, please."
+
+Before she moved there was a pause so full of challenge that Lansing had
+time for an exasperated sense of the disproportion between his anger and
+its cause. And this made him still angrier.
+
+She held out a box. "The others are in your suitcase downstairs. It's
+locked and strapped."
+
+"Give me the key, then."
+
+"We might send them back from Venice, mightn't we? That lock is so
+nasty: it will take you half an hour."
+
+"Give me the key, please." She gave it.
+
+He went downstairs and battled with the lock, for the allotted
+half-hour, under the puzzled eyes of Giulietta and the sardonic grin of
+the chauffeur, who now and then, from the threshold, politely reminded
+him how long it would take to get to Milan. Finally the key turned, and
+Lansing, broken-nailed and perspiring, extracted the cigars and stalked
+with them into the deserted drawing room. The great bunches of golden
+roses that he and Susy had gathered the day before were dropping their
+petals on the marble embroidery of the floor, pale camellias floated in
+the alabaster tazzas between the windows, haunting scents of the garden
+blew in on him with the breeze from the lake. Never had Streffy's little
+house seemed so like a nest of pleasures. Lansing laid the cigar boxes
+on a console and ran upstairs to collect his last possessions. When
+he came down again, his wife, her eyes brilliant with achievement, was
+seated in their borrowed chariot, the luggage cleverly stowed away, and
+Giulietta and the gardener kissing her hand and weeping out inconsolable
+farewells.
+
+"I wonder what she's given them?" he thought, as he jumped in beside her
+and the motor whirled them through the nightingale-thickets to the gate.
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+CHARLIE STREFFORD'S villa was like a nest in a rose-bush; the Nelson
+Vanderlyns' palace called for loftier analogies.
+
+Its vastness and splendour seemed, in comparison, oppressive to Susy.
+Their landing, after dark, at the foot of the great shadowy staircase,
+their dinner at a dimly-lit table under a ceiling weighed down with
+Olympians, their chilly evening in a corner of a drawing room where
+minuets should have been danced before a throne, contrasted with the
+happy intimacies of Como as their sudden sense of disaccord contrasted
+with the mutual confidence of the day before.
+
+The journey had been particularly jolly: both Susy and Lansing had had
+too long a discipline in the art of smoothing things over not to make
+a special effort to hide from each other the ravages of their first
+disagreement. But, deep down and invisible, the disagreement remained;
+and compunction for having been its cause gnawed at Susy's bosom as she
+sat in her tapestried and vaulted bedroom, brushing her hair before a
+tarnished mirror.
+
+"I thought I liked grandeur; but this place is really out of scale," she
+mused, watching the reflection of a pale hand move back and forward
+in the dim recesses of the mirror. "And yet," she continued, "Ellie
+Vanderlyn's hardly half an inch taller than I am; and she certainly
+isn't a bit more dignified.... I wonder if it's because I feel so
+horribly small to-night that the place seems so horribly big."
+
+She loved luxury: splendid things always made her feel handsome and
+high ceilings arrogant; she did not remember having ever before been
+oppressed by the evidences of wealth.
+
+She laid down the brush and leaned her chin on her clasped hands....
+Even now she could not understand what had made her take the cigars.
+She had always been alive to the value of her inherited scruples: her
+reasoned opinions were unusually free, but with regard to the things
+one couldn't reason about she was oddly tenacious. And yet she had taken
+Streffy's cigars! She had taken them--yes, that was the point--she
+had taken them for Nick, because the desire to please him, to make
+the smallest details of his life easy and agreeable and luxurious,
+had become her absorbing preoccupation. She had committed, for him,
+precisely the kind of little baseness she would most have scorned to
+commit for herself; and, since he hadn't instantly felt the difference,
+she would never be able to explain it to him.
+
+She stood up with a sigh, shook out her loosened hair, and glanced
+around the great frescoed room. The maid-servant had said something
+about the Signora's having left a letter for her; and there it lay on
+the writing-table, with her mail and Nick's; a thick envelope addressed
+in Ellie's childish scrawl, with a glaring "Private" dashed across the
+corner.
+
+"What on earth can she have to say, when she hates writing so," Susy
+mused.
+
+She broke open the envelope, and four or five stamped and sealed letters
+fell from it. All were addressed, in Ellie's hand, to Nelson Vanderlyn
+Esqre; and in the corner of each was faintly pencilled a number and a
+date: one, two, three, four--with a week's interval between the dates.
+
+"Goodness--" gasped Susy, understanding.
+
+She had dropped into an armchair near the table, and for a long time
+she sat staring at the numbered letters. A sheet of paper covered with
+Ellie's writing had fluttered out among them, but she let it lie;
+she knew so well what it would say! She knew all about her friend, of
+course; except poor old Nelson, who didn't, But she had never imagined
+that Ellie would dare to use her in this way. It was unbelievable... she
+had never pictured anything so vile.... The blood rushed to her face,
+and she sprang up angrily, half minded to tear the letters in bits and
+throw them all into the fire.
+
+She heard her husband's knock on the door between their rooms, and swept
+the dangerous packet under the blotting-book.
+
+"Oh, go away, please, there's a dear," she called out; "I haven't
+finished unpacking, and everything's in such a mess." Gathering up
+Nick's papers and letters, she ran across the room and thrust them
+through the door. "Here's something to keep you quiet," she laughed,
+shining in on him an instant from the threshold.
+
+She turned back feeling weak with shame. Ellie's letter lay on the
+floor: reluctantly she stooped to pick it up, and one by one the
+expected phrases sprang out at her.
+
+"One good turn deserves another.... Of course you and Nick are welcome
+to stay all summer.... There won't be a particle of expense for you--the
+servants have orders.... If you'll just be an angel and post these
+letters yourself.... It's been my only chance for such an age; when we
+meet I'll explain everything. And in a month at latest I'll be back to
+fetch Clarissa...."
+
+Susy lifted the letter to the lamp to be sure she had read aright. To
+fetch Clarissa! Then Ellie's child was here? Here, under the roof with
+them, left to their care? She read on, raging. "She's so delighted, poor
+darling, to know you're coming. I've had to sack her beastly governess
+for impertinence, and if it weren't for you she'd be all alone with a
+lot of servants I don't much trust. So for pity's sake be good to my
+child, and forgive me for leaving her. She thinks I've gone to take a
+cure; and she knows she's not to tell her Daddy that I'm away, because
+it would only worry him if he thought I was ill. She's perfectly to be
+trusted; you'll see what a clever angel she is...." And then, at the
+bottom of the page, in a last slanting postscript: "Susy darling, if
+you've ever owed me anything in the way of kindness, you won't, on your
+sacred honour, say a word of this to any one, even to Nick. And I know I
+can count on you to rub out the numbers."
+
+Susy sprang up and tossed Mrs. Vanderlyn's letter into the fire: then
+she came slowly back to the chair. There, at her elbow, lay the four
+fatal envelopes; and her next affair was to make up her mind what to do
+with them.
+
+To destroy them on the spot had seemed, at first thought, inevitable: it
+might be saving Ellie as well as herself. But such a step seemed to Susy
+to involve departure on the morrow, and this in turn involved notifying
+Ellie, whose letter she had vainly scanned for an address. Well--perhaps
+Clarissa's nurse would know where one could write to her mother; it was
+unlikely that even Ellie would go off without assuring some means of
+communication with her child. At any rate, there was nothing to be done
+that night: nothing but to work out the details of their flight on the
+morrow, and rack her brains to find a substitute for the hospitality
+they were rejecting. Susy did not disguise from herself how much she had
+counted on the Vanderlyn apartment for the summer: to be able to do
+so had singularly simplified the future. She knew Ellie's largeness of
+hand, and had been sure in advance that as long as they were her guests
+their only expense would be an occasional present to the servants. And
+what would the alternative be? She and Lansing, in their endless talks,
+had so lived themselves into the vision of indolent summer days on the
+lagoon, of flaming hours on the beach of the Lido, and evenings of music
+and dreams on their broad balcony above the Giudecca, that the idea of
+having to renounce these joys, and deprive her Nick of them, filled Susy
+with a wrath intensified by his having confided in her that when they
+were quietly settled in Venice he "meant to write." Already nascent in
+her breast was the fierce resolve of the author's wife to defend her
+husband's privacy and facilitate his encounters with the Muse. It was
+abominable, simply abominable, that Ellie Vanderlyn should have drawn
+her into such a trap!
+
+Well--there was nothing for it but to make a clean breast of the whole
+thing to Nick. The trivial incident of the cigars-how trivial it now
+seemed!--showed her the kind of stand he would take, and communicated to
+her something of his own uncompromising energy. She would tell him the
+whole story in the morning, and try to find a way out with him: Susy's
+faith in her power of finding a way out was inexhaustible. But suddenly
+she remembered the adjuration at the end of Mrs. Vanderlyn's letter: "If
+you're ever owed me anything in the way of kindness, you won't, on your
+sacred honour, say a word to Nick...."
+
+It was, of course, exactly what no one had the right to ask of her: if
+indeed the word "right", could be used in any conceivable relation to
+this coil of wrongs. But the fact remained that, in the way of kindness,
+she did owe much to Ellie; and that this was the first payment her
+friend had ever exacted. She found herself, in fact, in exactly the same
+position as when Ursula Gillow, using the same argument, had appealed
+to her to give up Nick Lansing. Yes, Susy reflected; but then Nelson
+Vanderlyn had been kind to her too; and the money Ellie had been so kind
+with was Nelson's.... The queer edifice of Susy's standards tottered on
+its base she honestly didn't know where fairness lay, as between so much
+that was foul.
+
+The very depth of her perplexity puzzled her. She had been in "tight
+places" before; had indeed been in so few that were not, in one way or
+another, constricting! As she looked back on her past it lay before her
+as a very network of perpetual concessions and contrivings. But
+never before had she had such a sense of being tripped up, gagged and
+pinioned. The little misery of the cigars still galled her, and now
+this big humiliation superposed itself on the raw wound. Decidedly, the
+second month of their honey-moon was beginning cloudily....
+
+She glanced at the enamel led travelling-clock on her dressing
+table--one of the few wedding-presents she had consented to accept in
+kind--and was startled at the lateness of the hour. In a moment Nick
+would be coming; and an uncomfortable sensation in her throat warned
+her that through sheer nervousness and exasperation she might blurt out
+something ill-advised. The old habit of being always on her guard made
+her turn once more to the looking-glass. Her face was pale and haggard;
+and having, by a swift and skilful application of cosmetics, increased
+its appearance of fatigue, she crossed the room and softly opened her
+husband's door.
+
+He too sat by a lamp, reading a letter which he put aside as she
+entered. His face was grave, and she said to herself that he was
+certainly still thinking about the cigars.
+
+"I'm very tired, dearest, and my head aches so horribly that I've come
+to bid you good-night." Bending over the back of his chair, she laid
+her arms on his shoulders. He lifted his hands to clasp hers, but, as
+he threw his head back to smile up at her she noticed that his look was
+still serious, almost remote. It was as if, for the first time, a faint
+veil hung between his eyes and hers.
+
+"I'm so sorry: it's been a long day for you," he said absently, pressing
+his lips to her hands
+
+She felt the dreaded twitch in her throat.
+
+"Nick!" she burst out, tightening her embrace, "before I go, you've got
+to swear to me on your honour that you know I should never have taken
+those cigars for myself!"
+
+For a moment he stared at her, and she stared back at him with equal
+gravity; then the same irresistible mirth welled up in both, and Susy's
+compunctions were swept away on a gale of laughter.
+
+When she woke the next morning the sun was pouring in between her
+curtains of old brocade, and its refraction from the ripples of the
+Canal was drawing a network of golden scales across the vaulted ceiling.
+The maid had just placed a tray on a slim marquetry table near the bed,
+and over the edge of the tray Susy discovered the small serious face
+of Clarissa Vanderlyn. At the sight of the little girl all her dormant
+qualms awoke.
+
+Clarissa was just eight, and small for her age: her little round chin
+was barely on a level with the tea-service, and her clear brown eyes
+gazed at Susy between the ribs of the toast-rack and the single tea-rose
+in an old Murano glass. Susy had not seen her for two years, and she
+seemed, in the interval, to have passed from a thoughtful infancy to
+complete ripeness of feminine experience. She was looking with approval
+at her mother's guest.
+
+"I'm so glad you've come," she said in a small sweet voice. "I like you
+so very much. I know I'm not to be often with you; but at least you'll
+have an eye on me, won't you?"
+
+"An eye on you! I shall never want to have it off you, if you say such
+nice things to me!" Susy laughed, leaning from her pillows to draw the
+little girl up to her side.
+
+Clarissa smiled and settled herself down comfortably on the silken
+bedspread. "Oh, I know I'm not to be always about, because you're just
+married; but could you see to it that I have my meals regularly?"
+
+"Why, you poor darling! Don't you always?"
+
+"Not when mother's away on these cures. The servants don't always obey
+me: you see I'm so little for my age. In a few years, of course, they'll
+have to--even if I don't grow much," she added judiciously. She put out
+her hand and touched the string of pearls about Susy's throat. "They're
+small, but they're very good. I suppose you don't take the others when
+you travel?"
+
+"The others? Bless you! I haven't any others--and never shall have,
+probably."
+
+"No other pearls?"
+
+"No other jewels at all."
+
+Clarissa stared. "Is that really true?" she asked, as if in the presence
+of the unprecedented.
+
+"Awfully true," Susy confessed. "But I think I can make the servants
+obey me all the same."
+
+This point seemed to have lost its interest for Clarissa, who was still
+gravely scrutinizing her companion. After a while she brought forth
+another question.
+
+"Did you have to give up all your jewels when you were divorced?"
+
+"Divorced--?" Susy threw her head back against the pillows and laughed.
+"Why, what are you thinking of? Don't you remember that I wasn't even
+married the last time you saw me?"
+
+"Yes; I do. But that was two years ago." The little girl wound her arms
+about Susy's neck and leaned against her caressingly. "Are you going to
+be soon, then? I'll promise not to tell if you don't want me to."
+
+"Going to be divorced? Of course not! What in the world made you think
+so? "
+
+"Because you look so awfully happy," said Clarissa Vanderlyn simply.
+
+
+
+V.
+
+IT was a trifling enough sign, but it had remained in Susy's mind: that
+first morning in Venice Nick had gone out without first coming in to see
+her. She had stayed in bed late, chatting with Clarissa, and expecting
+to see the door open and her husband appear; and when the child left,
+and she had jumped up and looked into Nick's room, she found it empty,
+and a line on his dressing table informed her that he had gone out to
+send a telegram.
+
+It was lover-like, and even boyish, of him to think it necessary to
+explain his absence; but why had he not simply come in and told her! She
+instinctively connected the little fact with the shade of preoccupation
+she had noticed on his face the night before, when she had gone to his
+room and found him absorbed in letter; and while she dressed she had
+continued to wonder what was in the letter, and whether the telegram he
+had hurried out to send was an answer to it.
+
+She had never found out. When he reappeared, handsome and happy as the
+morning, he proffered no explanation; and it was part of her life-long
+policy not to put uncalled-for questions. It was not only that her
+jealous regard for her own freedom was matched by an equal respect for
+that of others; she had steered too long among the social reefs and
+shoals not to know how narrow is the passage that leads to peace of
+mind, and she was determined to keep her little craft in mid-channel.
+But the incident had lodged itself in her memory, acquiring a sort of
+symbolic significance, as of a turning-point in her relations with her
+husband. Not that these were less happy, but that she now beheld them,
+as she had always formerly beheld such joys, as an unstable islet in
+a sea of storms. Her present bliss was as complete as ever, but it was
+ringed by the perpetual menace of all she knew she was hiding from Nick,
+and of all she suspected him of hiding from her....
+
+She was thinking of these things one afternoon about three weeks after
+their arrival in Venice. It was near sunset, and she sat alone on the
+balcony, watching the cross-lights on the water weave their pattern
+above the flushed reflection of old palace-basements. She was
+almost always alone at that hour. Nick had taken to writing in the
+afternoons--he had been as good as his word, and so, apparently, had the
+Muse and it was his habit to join his wife only at sunset, for a late
+row on the lagoon. She had taken Clarissa, as usual, to the Giardino
+Pubblico, where that obliging child had politely but indifferently
+"played"--Clarissa joined in the diversions of her age as if conforming
+to an obsolete tradition--and had brought her back for a music lesson,
+echoes of which now drifted down from a distant window.
+
+Susy had come to be extremely thankful for Clarissa. But for the little
+girl, her pride in her husband's industry might have been tinged with
+a faint sense of being at times left out and forgotten; and as Nick's
+industry was the completest justification for their being where they
+were, and for her having done what she had, she was grateful to Clarissa
+for helping her to feel less alone. Clarissa, indeed, represented the
+other half of her justification: it was as much on the child's account
+as on Nick's that Susy had held her tongue, remained in Venice, and
+slipped out once a week to post one of Ellie's numbered letters. A
+day's experience of the Palazzo Vanderlyn had convinced Susy of the
+impossibility of deserting Clarissa. Long experience had shown her that
+the most crowded households often contain the loneliest nurseries,
+and that the rich child is exposed to evils unknown to less pampered
+infancy; but hitherto such things had merely been to her one of the
+uglier bits in the big muddled pattern of life. Now she found herself
+feeling where before she had only judged: her precarious bliss came to
+her charged with a new weight of pity.
+
+She was thinking of these things, and of the approaching date of Ellie
+Vanderlyn's return, and of the searching truths she was storing up for
+that lady's private ear, when she noticed a gondola turning its
+prow toward the steps below the balcony. She leaned over, and a tall
+gentleman in shabby clothes, glancing up at her as he jumped out, waved
+a mouldy Panama in joyful greeting.
+
+"Streffy!" she exclaimed as joyfully; and she was half-way down the
+stairs when he ran up them followed by his luggage-laden boatman.
+
+"It's all right, I suppose?--Ellie said I might come," he explained in
+a shrill cheerful voice; "and I'm to have my same green room with the
+parrot-panels, because its furniture is already so frightfully stained
+with my hair-wash."
+
+Susy was beaming on him with the deep sense of satisfaction which his
+presence always produced in his friends. There was no one in the world,
+they all agreed, half as ugly and untidy and delightful as Streffy; no
+one who combined such outspoken selfishness with such imperturbable good
+humour; no one who knew so well how to make you believe he was being
+charming to you when it was you who were being charming to him.
+
+In addition to these seductions, of which none estimated the value
+more accurately than their possessor, Strefford had for Susy another
+attraction of which he was probably unconscious. It was that of being
+the one rooted and stable being among the fluid and shifting figures
+that composed her world. Susy had always lived among people so
+denationalized that those one took for Russians generally turned out to
+be American, and those one was inclined to ascribe to New York proved to
+have originated in Rome or Bucharest. These cosmopolitan people, who, in
+countries not their own, lived in houses as big as hotels, or in
+hotels where the guests were as international as the waiters, had
+inter-married, inter-loved and inter-divorced each other over the whole
+face of Europe, and according to every code that attempts to regulate
+human ties. Strefford, too, had his home in this world, but only one
+of his homes. The other, the one he spoke of, and probably thought
+of, least often, was a great dull English country-house in a northern
+county, where a life as monotonous and self-contained as his own was
+chequered and dispersed had gone on for generation after generation;
+and it was the sense of that house, and of all it typified even to his
+vagrancy and irreverence, which, coming out now and then in his talk, or
+in his attitude toward something or somebody, gave him a firmer
+outline and a steadier footing than the other marionettes in the dance.
+Superficially so like them all, and so eager to outdo them in detachment
+and adaptability, ridiculing the prejudices he had shaken off, and the
+people to whom he belonged, he still kept, under his easy pliancy, the
+skeleton of old faiths and old fashions. "He talks every language as
+well as the rest of us," Susy had once said of him, "but at least he
+talks one language better than the others"; and Strefford, told of the
+remark, had laughed, called her an idiot, and been pleased.
+
+As he shambled up the stairs with her, arm in arm, she was thinking of
+this quality with a new appreciation of its value. Even she and Lansing,
+in spite of their unmixed Americanism, their substantial background of
+old-fashioned cousinships in New York and Philadelphia, were as
+mentally detached, as universally at home, as touts at an International
+Exhibition. If they were usually recognized as Americans it was only
+because they spoke French so well, and because Nick was too fair to be
+"foreign," and too sharp-featured to be English. But Charlie Strefford
+was English with all the strength of an inveterate habit; and something
+in Susy was slowly waking to a sense of the beauty of habit.
+
+Lounging on the balcony, whither he had followed her without pausing
+to remove the stains of travel, Strefford showed himself immensely
+interested in the last chapter of her history, greatly pleased at its
+having been enacted under his roof, and hugely and flippantly amused
+at the firmness with which she refused to let him see Nick till the
+latter's daily task was over.
+
+"Writing? Rot! What's he writing? He's breaking you in, my dear; that's
+what he's doing: establishing an alibi. What'll you bet he's just
+sitting there smoking and reading Le Rire? Let's go and see."
+
+But Susy was firm. "He's read me his first chapter: it's wonderful. It's
+a philosophic romance--rather like Marius, you know."
+
+"Oh, yes--I do!" said Strefford, with a laugh that she thought idiotic.
+
+She flushed up like a child. "You're stupid, Streffy. You forget that
+Nick and I don't need alibis. We've got rid of all that hyprocrisy by
+agreeing that each will give the other a hand up when either of us wants
+a change. We've not married to spy and lie, and nag each other; we've
+formed a partnership for our mutual advantage."
+
+"I see; that's capital. But how can you be sure that, when Nick wants a
+change, you'll consider it for his advantage to have one?"
+
+It was the point that had always secretly tormented Susy; she often
+wondered if it equally tormented Nick.
+
+"I hope I shall have enough common sense--" she began.
+
+"Oh, of course: common sense is what you're both bound to base your
+argument on, whichever way you argue."
+
+This flash of insight disconcerted her, and she said, a little
+irritably: "What should you do then, if you married?--Hush, Streffy! I
+forbid you to shout like that--all the gondolas are stopping to look!"
+
+"How can I help it?" He rocked backward and forward in his chair. "'If
+you marry,' she says: 'Streffy, what have you decided to do if you
+suddenly become a raving maniac?'"
+
+"I said no such thing. If your uncle and your cousin died, you'd marry
+to-morrow; you know you would."
+
+"Oh, now you're talking business." He folded his long arms and leaned
+over the balcony, looking down at the dusky ripples streaked with fire.
+"In that case I should say: 'Susan, my dear--Susan--now that by
+the merciful intervention of Providence you have become Countess of
+Altringham in the peerage of Great Britain, and Baroness Dunsterville
+and d'Amblay in the peerages of Ireland and Scotland, I'll thank you to
+remember that you are a member of one of the most ancient houses in the
+United Kingdom--and not to get found out.'"
+
+Susy laughed. "We know what those warnings mean! I pity my namesake."
+
+He swung about and gave her a quick look out of his small ugly twinkling
+eyes. "Is there any other woman in the world named Susan?"
+
+"I hope so, if the name's an essential. Even if Nick chucks me, don't
+count on me to carry out that programme. I've seen it in practice too
+often."
+
+"Oh, well: as far as I know, everybody's in perfect health at
+Altringham." He fumbled in his pocket and drew out a fountain pen,
+a handkerchief over which it had leaked, and a packet of dishevelled
+cigarettes. Lighting one, and restoring the other objects to his pocket,
+he continued calmly: "Tell me how did you manage to smooth things over
+with the Gillows? Ursula was running amuck when I was in Newport last
+Summer; it was just when people were beginning to say that you were
+going to marry Nick. I was afraid she'd put a spoke in your wheel; and I
+hear she put a big cheque in your hand instead."
+
+Susy was silent. From the first moment of Strefford's appearance she had
+known that in the course of time he would put that question. He was as
+inquisitive as a monkey, and when he had made up his mind to find out
+anything it was useless to try to divert his attention. After a moment's
+hesitation she said: "I flirted with Fred. It was a bore but he was very
+decent."
+
+"He would be--poor Fred. And you got Ursula thoroughly frightened!"
+
+"Well--enough. And then luckily that young Nerone Altineri turned up
+from Rome: he went over to New York to look for a job as an engineer,
+and Ursula made Fred put him in their iron works." She paused again,
+and then added abruptly: "Streffy! If you knew how I hate that kind of
+thing. I'd rather have Nick come in now and tell me frankly, as I know
+he would, that he's going off with--"
+
+"With Coral Hicks?" Strefford suggested.
+
+She laughed. "Poor Coral Hicks! What on earth made you think of the
+Hickses?"
+
+"Because I caught a glimpse of them the other day at Capri. They're
+cruising about: they said they were coming in here."
+
+"What a nuisance! I do hope they won't find us out. They were
+awfully kind to Nick when he went to India with them, and they're so
+simple-minded that they would expect him to be glad to see them."
+
+Strefford aimed his cigarette-end at a tourist on a puggaree who was
+gazing up from his guidebook at the palace. "Ah," he murmured with
+satisfaction, seeing the shot take effect; then he added: "Coral Hicks
+is growing up rather pretty."
+
+"Oh, Streff--you're dreaming! That lump of a girl with spectacles and
+thick ankles! Poor Mrs. Hicks used to say to Nick: 'When Mr. Hicks and
+I had Coral educated we presumed culture was in greater demand in Europe
+than it appears to be.'"
+
+"Well, you'll see: that girl's education won't interfere with her, once
+she's started. So then: if Nick came in and told you he was going off--"
+
+"I should be so thankful if it was with a fright like Coral! But you
+know," she added with a smile, "we've agreed that it's not to happen for
+a year."
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+SUSY found Strefford, after his first burst of nonsense, unusually kind
+and responsive. The interest he showed in her future and Nick's seemed
+to proceed not so much from his habitual spirit of scientific curiosity
+as from simple friendliness. He was privileged to see Nick's first
+chapter, of which he formed so favourable an impression that he spoke
+sternly to Susy on the importance of respecting her husband's working
+hours; and he even carried his general benevolence to the length
+of showing a fatherly interest in Clarissa Vanderlyn. He was always
+charming to children, but fitfully and warily, with an eye on his
+independence, and on the possibility of being suddenly bored by them;
+Susy had never seen him abandon these precautions so completely as he
+did with Clarissa.
+
+"Poor little devil! Who looks after her when you and Nick are off
+together? Do you mean to tell me Ellie sacked the governess and went
+away without having anyone to take her place?"
+
+"I think she expected me to do it," said Susy with a touch of asperity.
+There were moments when her duty to Clarissa weighed on her somewhat
+heavily; whenever she went off alone with Nick she was pursued by the
+vision of a little figure waving wistful farewells from the balcony.
+
+"Ah, that's like Ellie: you might have known she'd get an equivalent
+when she lent you all this. But I don't believe she thought you'd be so
+conscientious about it."
+
+Susy considered. "I don't suppose she did; and perhaps I shouldn't have
+been, a year ago. But you see"--she hesitated--"Nick's so awfully good:
+it's made me look; at a lot of things differently...."
+
+"Oh, hang Nick's goodness! It's happiness that's done it, my dear.
+You're just one of the people with whom it happens to agree."
+
+Susy, leaning back, scrutinized between her lashes his crooked ironic
+face.
+
+"What is it that's agreeing with you, Streffy? I've never seen you so
+human. You must be getting an outrageous price for the villa."
+
+Strefford laughed and clapped his hand on his breast-pocket. "I should
+be an ass not to: I've got a wire here saying they must have it for
+another month at any price."
+
+"What luck! I'm so glad. Who are they, by the way?"
+
+He drew himself up out of the long chair in which he was disjointedly
+lounging, and looked down at her with a smile. "Another couple of
+love-sick idiots like you and Nick.... I say, before I spend it all
+let's go out and buy something ripping for Clarissa."
+
+The days passed so quickly and radiantly that, but for her concern
+for Clarissa, Susy would hardly have been conscious of her hostess's
+protracted absence. Mrs. Vanderlyn had said: "Four weeks at the latest,"
+and the four weeks were over, and she had neither arrived nor written
+to explain her non-appearance. She had, in fact, given no sign of life
+since her departure, save in the shape of a post-card which had
+reached Clarissa the day after the Lansings' arrival, and in which Mrs.
+Vanderlyn instructed her child to be awfully good, and not to forget
+to feed the mongoose. Susy noticed that this missive had been posted in
+Milan.
+
+She communicated her apprehensions to Strefford. "I don't trust
+that green-eyed nurse. She's forever with the younger gondolier; and
+Clarissa's so awfully sharp. I don't see why Ellie hasn't come: she was
+due last Monday."
+
+Her companion laughed, and something in the sound of his laugh suggested
+that he probably knew as much of Ellie's movements as she did, if not
+more. The sense of disgust which the subject always roused in her made
+her look away quickly from his tolerant smile. She would have given
+the world, at that moment, to have been free to tell Nick what she had
+learned on the night of their arrival, and then to have gone away with
+him, no matter where. But there was Clarissa--!
+
+To fortify herself against the temptation, she resolutely fixed her
+thoughts on her husband. Of Nick's beatitude there could be no doubt.
+He adored her, he revelled in Venice, he rejoiced in his work; and
+concerning the quality of that work her judgment was as confident as
+her heart. She still doubted if he would ever earn a living by what
+he wrote, but she no longer doubted that he would write something
+remarkable. The mere fact that he was engaged on a philosophic romance,
+and not a mere novel, seemed the proof of an intrinsic superiority. And
+if she had mistrusted her impartiality Strefford's approval would have
+reassured her. Among their friends Strefford passed as an authority on
+such matters: in summing him up his eulogists always added: "And you
+know he writes." As a matter of fact, the paying public had remained
+cold to his few published pages; but he lived among the kind of people
+who confuse taste with talent, and are impressed by the most artless
+attempts at literary expression; and though he affected to disdain their
+judgment, and his own efforts, Susy knew he was not sorry to have it
+said of him: "Oh, if only Streffy had chosen--!"
+
+Strefford's approval of the philosophic romance convinced her that it
+had been worth while staying in Venice for Nick's sake; and if
+only Ellie would come back, and carry off Clarissa to St. Moritz or
+Deauville, the disagreeable episode on which their happiness was based
+would vanish like a cloud, and leave them to complete enjoyment.
+
+Ellie did not come; but the Mortimer Hickses did, and Nick Lansing was
+assailed by the scruples his wife had foreseen. Strefford, coming back
+one evening from the Lido, reported having recognized the huge outline
+of the Ibis among the pleasure craft of the outer harbour; and the very
+next evening, as the guests of Palazzo Vanderlyn were sipping their ices
+at Florian's, the Hickses loomed up across the Piazza.
+
+Susy pleaded in vain with her husband in defence of his privacy.
+"Remember you're here to write, dearest; it's your duty not to let any
+one interfere with that. Why shouldn't we tell them we're just leaving!"
+
+"Because it's no use: we're sure to be always meeting them. And besides,
+I'll be hanged if I'm going to shirk the Hickses. I spent five whole
+months on the Ibis, and if they bored me occasionally, India didn't."
+
+"We'll make them take us to Aquileia anyhow," said Strefford
+philosophically; and the next moment the Hickses were bearing down on
+the defenceless trio.
+
+They presented a formidable front, not only because of their mere
+physical bulk--Mr. and Mrs. Hicks were equally and majestically
+three-dimensional--but because they never moved abroad without the
+escort of two private secretaries (one for the foreign languages), Mr.
+Hicks's doctor, a maiden lady known as Eldoradder Tooker, who was Mrs.
+Hicks's cousin and stenographer, and finally their daughter, Coral
+Hicks.
+
+Coral Hicks, when Susy had last encountered the party, had been a
+fat spectacled school-girl, always lagging behind her parents, with a
+reluctant poodle in her wake. Now the poodle had gone, and his mistress
+led the procession. The fat school-girl had changed into a young lady
+of compact if not graceful outline; a long-handled eyeglass had replaced
+the spectacles, and through it, instead of a sullen glare, Miss Coral
+Hicks projected on the world a glance at once confident and critical.
+She looked so strong and so assured that Susy, taking her measure in
+a flash, saw that her position at the head of the procession was not
+fortuitous, and murmured inwardly: "Thank goodness she's not pretty
+too!"
+
+If she was not pretty, she was well-dressed; and if she was
+overeducated, she seemed capable, as Strefford had suggested, of
+carrying off even this crowning disadvantage. At any rate, she was above
+disguising it; and before the whole party had been seated five minutes
+in front of a fresh supply of ices (with Eldorada and the secretaries
+at a table slightly in the background) she had taken up with Nick the
+question of exploration in Mesopotamia.
+
+"Queer child, Coral," he said to Susy that night as they smoked a last
+cigarette on their balcony. "She told me this afternoon that she'd
+remembered lots of things she heard me say in India. I thought at the
+time that she cared only for caramels and picture-puzzles, but it seems
+she was listening to everything, and reading all the books she could lay
+her hands on; and she got so bitten with Oriental archaeology that she
+took a course last year at Bryn Mawr. She means to go to Bagdad next
+spring, and back by the Persian plateau and Turkestan."
+
+Susy laughed luxuriously: she was sitting with her hand in Nick's, while
+the late moon--theirs again--rounded its orange-coloured glory above the
+belfry of San Giorgio.
+
+"Poor Coral! How dreary--" Susy murmured
+
+"Dreary? Why? A trip like that is about as well worth doing as anything
+I know."
+
+"Oh, I meant: dreary to do it without you or me," she laughed, getting up
+lazily to go indoors. A broad band of moonlight, dividing her room onto
+two shadowy halves, lay on the painted Venetian bed with its folded-back
+sheet, its old damask coverlet and lace-edged pillows. She felt the
+warmth of Nick's enfolding arm and lifted her face to his.
+
+The Hickses retained the most tender memory of Nick's sojourn on the
+Ibis, and Susy, moved by their artless pleasure in meeting him again,
+was glad he had not followed her advice and tried to elude them. She had
+always admired Strefford's ruthless talent for using and discarding the
+human material in his path, but now she began to hope that Nick would
+not remember her suggestion that he should mete out that measure to the
+Hickses. Even if it had been less pleasant to have a big yacht at their
+door during the long golden days and the nights of silver fire, the
+Hickses' admiration for Nick would have made Susy suffer them gladly.
+She even began to be aware of a growing liking for them, a liking
+inspired by the very characteristics that would once have provoked her
+disapproval. Susy had had plenty of training in liking common people
+with big purses; in such cases her stock of allowances and extenuations
+was inexhaustible. But they had to be successful common people; and the
+trouble was that the Hickses, judged by her standards, were failures.
+It was not only that they were ridiculous; so, heaven knew, were many
+of their rivals. But the Hickses were both ridiculous and unsuccessful.
+They had consistently resisted the efforts of the experienced advisers
+who had first descried them on the horizon and tried to help them
+upward. They were always taking up the wrong people, giving the wrong
+kind of party, and spending millions on things that nobody who mattered
+cared about. They all believed passionately in "movements" and "causes"
+and "ideals," and were always attended by the exponents of their latest
+beliefs, always asking you to hear lectures by haggard women in peplums,
+and having their portraits painted by wild people who never turned out
+to be the fashion.
+
+All this would formerly have increased Susy's contempt; now she found
+herself liking the Hickses most for their failings. She was touched by
+their simple good faith, their isolation in the midst of all their
+queer apostles and parasites, their way of drifting about an alien
+and indifferent world in a compactly clinging group of which Eldorada
+Tooker, the doctor and the two secretaries formed the outer fringe, and
+by their view of themselves as a kind of collective re-incarnation of
+some past state of princely culture, symbolised for Mrs. Hicks in what
+she called "the court of the Renaissance." Eldorada, of course, was
+their chief prophetess; but even the intensely "bright" and modern young
+secretaries, Mr. Beck and Mr. Buttles, showed a touching tendency to
+share her view, and spoke of Mr. Hicks as "promoting art," in the spirit
+of Pandolfino celebrating the munificence of the Medicis.
+
+"I'm getting really fond of the Hickses; I believe I should be nice to
+them even if they were staying at Danieli's," Susy said to Strefford.
+
+"And even if you owned the yacht?" he answered; and for once his banter
+struck her as beside the point.
+
+The Ibis carried them, during the endless June days, far and wide along
+the enchanted shores; they roamed among the Euganeans, they saw Aquileia
+and Pomposa and Ravenna. Their hosts would gladly have taken them
+farther, across the Adriatic and on into the golden network of the
+Aegean; but Susy resisted this infraction of Nick's rules, and he
+himself preferred to stick to his task. Only now he wrote in the early
+mornings, so that on most days they could set out before noon and steam
+back late to the low fringe of lights on the lagoon. His work continued
+to progress, and as page was added to page Susy obscurely but surely
+perceived that each one corresponded with a hidden secretion of energy,
+the gradual forming within him of something that might eventually alter
+both their lives. In what sense she could not conjecture: she merely
+felt that the fact of his having chosen a job and stuck to it, if only
+through a few rosy summer weeks, had already given him a new way of
+saying "Yes" and "No."
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+OF some new ferment at work in him Nick Lansing himself was equally
+aware. He was a better judge of the book he was trying to write than
+either Susy or Strefford; he knew its weaknesses, its treacheries,
+its tendency to slip through his fingers just as he thought his grasp
+tightest; but he knew also that at the very moment when it seemed to
+have failed him it would suddenly be back, beating its loud wings in his
+face.
+
+He had no delusions as to its commercial value, and had winced more than
+he triumphed when Susy produced her allusion to Marius. His book was to
+be called The Pageant of Alexander. His imagination had been enchanted
+by the idea of picturing the young conqueror's advance through the
+fabulous landscapes of Asia: he liked writing descriptions, and vaguely
+felt that under the guise of fiction he could develop his theory of
+Oriental influences in Western art at the expense of less learning than
+if he had tried to put his ideas into an essay. He knew enough of his
+subject to know that he did not know enough to write about it; but he
+consoled himself by remembering that Wilhelm Meister has survived many
+weighty volumes on aesthetics; and between his moments of self-disgust
+he took himself at Susy's valuation, and found an unmixed joy in his
+task.
+
+Never--no, never!--had he been so boundlessly, so confidently happy. His
+hack-work had given him the habit of application, and now habit wore the
+glow of inspiration. His previous literary ventures had been timid and
+tentative: if this one was growing and strengthening on his hands, it
+must be because the conditions were so different. He was at ease, he was
+secure, he was satisfied; and he had also, for the first time since his
+early youth, before his mother's death, the sense of having some one to
+look after, some one who was his own particular care, and to whom he
+was answerable for himself and his actions, as he had never felt himself
+answerable to the hurried and indifferent people among whom he had
+chosen to live.
+
+Susy had the same standards as these people: she spoke their language,
+though she understood others, she required their pleasures if she did
+not revere their gods. But from the moment that she had become his
+property he had built up in himself a conception of her answering to
+some deep-seated need of veneration. She was his, he had chosen her,
+she had taken her place in the long line of Lansing women who had been
+loved, honoured, and probably deceived, by bygone Lansing men. He didn't
+pretend to understand the logic of it; but the fact that she was his
+wife gave purpose and continuity to his scattered impulses, and a
+mysterious glow of consecration to his task.
+
+Once or twice, in the first days of his marriage, he had asked himself
+with a slight shiver what would happen if Susy should begin to bore
+him. The thing had happened to him with other women as to whom his first
+emotions had not differed in intensity from those she inspired. The part
+he had played in his previous love-affairs might indeed have been summed
+up in the memorable line: "I am the hunter and the prey," for he had
+invariably ceased to be the first only to regard himself as the second.
+This experience had never ceased to cause him the liveliest pain, since
+his sympathy for his pursuer was only less keen than his commiseration
+for himself; but as he was always a little sorrier for himself, he had
+always ended by distancing the pursuer.
+
+All these pre-natal experiences now seemed utterly inapplicable to the
+new man he had become. He could not imagine being bored by Susy--or
+trying to escape from her if he were. He could not think of her as
+an enemy, or even as an accomplice, since accomplices are potential
+enemies: she was some one with whom, by some unheard-of miracle, joys
+above the joys of friendship were to be tasted, but who, even through
+these fleeting ecstasies, remained simply and securely his friend.
+
+These new feelings did not affect his general attitude toward life: they
+merely confirmed his faith in its ultimate "jolliness." Never had he
+more thoroughly enjoyed the things he had always enjoyed. A good dinner
+had never been as good to him, a beautiful sunset as beautiful; he still
+rejoiced in the fact that he appreciated both with an equal acuity. He
+was as proud as ever of Susy's cleverness and freedom from prejudice:
+she couldn't be too "modern" for him now that she was his. He shared to
+the full her passionate enjoyment of the present, and all her feverish
+eagerness to make it last. He knew when she was thinking of ways of
+extending their golden opportunity, and he secretly thought with her,
+wondering what new means they could devise. He was thankful that Ellie
+Vanderlyn was still absent, and began to hope they might have the palace
+to themselves for the remainder of the summer. If they did, he would
+have time to finish his book, and Susy to lay up a little interest on
+their wedding cheques; and thus their enchanted year might conceivably
+be prolonged to two.
+
+Late as the season was, their presence and Strefford's in Venice had
+already drawn thither several wandering members of their set. It was
+characteristic of these indifferent but agglutinative people that they
+could never remain long parted from each other without a dim sense of
+uneasiness. Lansing was familiar with the feeling. He had known slight
+twinges of it himself, and had often ministered to its qualms in others.
+It was hardly stronger than the faint gnawing which recalls the tea-hour
+to one who has lunched well and is sure of dining as abundantly; but it
+gave a purpose to the purposeless, and helped many hesitating spirits
+over the annual difficulty of deciding between Deauville and St. Moritz,
+Biarritz and Capri.
+
+Nick was not surprised to learn that it was becoming the fashion, that
+summer, to pop down to Venice and take a look at the Lansings. Streffy
+had set the example, and Streffy's example was always followed. And then
+Susy's marriage was still a subject of sympathetic speculation. People
+knew the story of the wedding cheques, and were interested in seeing
+how long they could be made to last. It was going to be the thing,
+that year, to help prolong the honey-moon by pressing houses on the
+adventurous couple. Before June was over a band of friends were basking
+with the Lansings on the Lido.
+
+Nick found himself unexpectedly disturbed by their arrival. To avoid
+comment and banter he put his book aside and forbade Susy to speak
+of it, explaining to her that he needed an interval of rest. His wife
+instantly and exaggeratedly adopted this view, guarding him from the
+temptation to work as jealously as she had discouraged him from idling;
+and he was careful not to let her find out that the change in his habits
+coincided with his having reached a difficult point in his book. But
+though he was not sorry to stop writing he found himself unexpectedly
+oppressed by the weight of his leisure. For the first time communal
+dawdling had lost its charm for him; not because his fellow dawdlers
+were less congenial than of old, but because in the interval he had
+known something so immeasurably better. He had always felt himself to be
+the superior of his habitual associates, but now the advantage was too
+great: really, in a sense, it was hardly fair to them.
+
+He had flattered himself that Susy would share this feeling; but he
+perceived with annoyance that the arrival of their friends heightened
+her animation. It was as if the inward glow which had given her a new
+beauty were now refracted upon her by the presence of the very people
+they had come to Venice to avoid.
+
+Lansing was vaguely irritated; and when he asked her how she liked being
+with their old crowd again his irritation was increased by her answering
+with a laugh that she only hoped the poor dears didn't see too plainly
+how they bored her. The patent insincerity of the reply was a shock to
+Lansing. He knew that Susy was not really bored, and he understood that
+she had simply guessed his feelings and instinctively adopted them: that
+henceforth she was always going to think as he thought. To confirm this
+fear he said carelessly: "Oh, all the same, it's rather jolly knocking
+about with them again for a bit;" and she answered at once, and with
+equal conviction: "Yes, isn't it? The old darlings--all the same!"
+
+A fear of the future again laid its cold touch on Lansing. Susy's
+independence and self-sufficiency had been among her chief attractions;
+if she were to turn into an echo their delicious duet ran the risk of
+becoming the dullest of monologues. He forgot that five minutes earlier
+he had resented her being glad to see their friends, and for a moment
+he found himself leaning dizzily over that insoluble riddle of the
+sentimental life: that to be differed with is exasperating, and to be
+agreed with monotonous.
+
+Once more he began to wonder if he were not fundamentally unfitted for
+the married state; and was saved from despair only by remembering that
+Susy's subjection to his moods was not likely to last. But even then
+it never occurred to him to reflect that his apprehensions were
+superfluous, since their tie was avowedly a temporary one. Of the
+special understanding on which their marriage had been based not a trace
+remained in his thoughts of her; the idea that he or she might ever
+renounce each other for their mutual good had long since dwindled to the
+ghost of an old joke.
+
+It was borne in on him, after a week or two of unbroken sociability,
+that of all his old friends it was the Mortimer Hickses who bored him
+the least. The Hickses had left the Ibis for an apartment in a vast
+dilapidated palace near the Canareggio. They had hired the apartment
+from a painter (one of their newest discoveries), and they put up
+philosophically with the absence of modern conveniences in order to
+secure the inestimable advantage of "atmosphere." In this privileged
+air they gathered about them their usual mixed company of quiet
+studious people and noisy exponents of new theories, themselves totally
+unconscious of the disparity between their different guests, and
+beamingly convinced that at last they were seated at the source of
+wisdom.
+
+In old days Lansing would have got half an hour's amusement, followed
+by a long evening of boredom, from the sight of Mrs. Hicks, vast and
+jewelled, seated between a quiet-looking professor of archaeology and a
+large-browed composer, or the high priest of a new dance-step, while
+Mr. Hicks, beaming above his vast white waistcoat, saw to it that the
+champagne flowed more abundantly than the talk, and the bright young
+secretaries industriously "kept up" with the dizzy cross-current of
+prophecy and erudition. But a change had come over Lansing. Hitherto
+it was in contrast to his own friends that the Hickses had seemed most
+insufferable; now it was as an escape from these same friends that they
+had become not only sympathetic but even interesting. It was something,
+after all, to be with people who did not regard Venice simply as
+affording exceptional opportunities for bathing and adultery, but who
+were reverently if confusedly aware that they were in the presence of
+something unique and ineffable, and determined to make the utmost of
+their privilege.
+
+"After all," he said to himself one evening, as his eyes wandered, with
+somewhat of a convalescent's simple joy, from one to another of their
+large confiding faces, "after all, they've got a religion...." The
+phrase struck him, in the moment of using it, as indicating a new
+element in his own state of mind, and as being, in fact, the key to his
+new feeling about the Hickses. Their muddled ardour for great things
+was related to his own new view of the universe: the people who felt,
+however dimly, the wonder and weight of life must ever after be nearer
+to him than those to whom it was estimated solely by one's balance at
+the bank. He supposed, on reflexion, that that was what he meant when he
+thought of the Hickses as having "a religion"....
+
+A few days later, his well-being was unexpectedly disturbed by the
+arrival of Fred Gillow. Lansing had always felt a tolerant liking for
+Gillow, a large smiling silent young man with an intense and serious
+desire to miss nothing attainable by one of his fortune and standing.
+What use he made of his experiences, Lansing, who had always gone into
+his own modest adventures rather thoroughly, had never been able to
+guess; but he had always suspected the prodigal Fred of being no more
+than a well-disguised looker-on. Now for the first time he began to view
+him with another eye. The Gillows were, in fact, the one uneasy point in
+Nick's conscience. He and Susy from the first, had talked of them less
+than of any other members of their group: they had tacitly avoided the
+name from the day on which Susy had come to Lansing's lodgings to say
+that Ursula Gillow had asked her to renounce him, till that other day,
+just before their marriage, when she had met him with the rapturous cry:
+"Here's our first wedding present! Such a thumping big cheque from Fred
+and Ursula!"
+
+Plenty of sympathizing people were ready, Lansing knew, to tell him just
+what had happened in the interval between those two dates; but he had
+taken care not to ask. He had even affected an initiation so complete
+that the friends who burned to enlighten him were discouraged by his so
+obviously knowing more than they; and gradually he had worked himself
+around to their view, and had taken it for granted that he really did.
+
+Now he perceived that he knew nothing at all, and that the "Hullo, old
+Fred!" with which Susy hailed Gillow's arrival might be either the usual
+tribal welcome--since they were all "old," and all nicknamed, in their
+private jargon--or a greeting that concealed inscrutable depths of
+complicity.
+
+Susy was visibly glad to see Gillow; but she was glad of everything just
+then, and so glad to show her gladness! The fact disarmed her husband
+and made him ashamed of his uneasiness. "You ought to have thought this
+all out sooner, or else you ought to chuck thinking of it at all,"
+was the sound but ineffectual advice he gave himself on the day after
+Gillow's arrival; and immediately set to work to rethink the whole
+matter.
+
+Fred Gillow showed no consciousness of disturbing any one's peace of
+mind. Day after day he sprawled for hours on the Lido sands, his arms
+folded under his head, listening to Streffy's nonsense and watching Susy
+between sleepy lids; but he betrayed no desire to see her alone, or
+to draw her into talk apart from the others. More than ever he seemed
+content to be the gratified spectator of a costly show got up for his
+private entertainment. It was not until he heard her, one morning,
+grumble a little at the increasing heat and the menace of mosquitoes,
+that he said, quite as if they had talked the matter over long before,
+and finally settled it: "The moor will be ready any time after the first
+of August."
+
+Nick fancied that Susy coloured a little, and drew herself up more
+defiantly than usual as she sent a pebble skimming across the dying
+ripples at their feet.
+
+"You'll be a lot cooler in Scotland," Fred added, with what, for him,
+was an unusual effort at explicitness.
+
+"Oh, shall we?" she retorted gaily; and added with an air of mystery
+and importance, pivoting about on her high heels: "Nick's got work to do
+here. It will probably keep us all summer."
+
+"Work? Rot! You'll die of the smells." Gillow stared perplexedly skyward
+from under his tilted hat-brim; and then brought out, as from the depth
+of a rankling grievance: "I thought it was all understood."
+
+"Why," Nick asked his wife that night, as they re-entered Ellie's cool
+drawing-room after a late dinner at the Lido, "did Gillow think it was
+understood that we were going to his moor in August?" He was conscious
+of the oddness of speaking of their friend by his surname, and reddened
+at his blunder.
+
+Susy had let her lace cloak slide to her feet, and stood before him
+in the faintly-lit room, slim and shimmering-white through black
+transparencies.
+
+She raised her eyebrows carelessly. "I told you long ago he'd asked us
+there for August."
+
+"You didn't tell me you'd accepted."
+
+She smiled as if he had said something as simple as Fred. "I accepted
+everything--from everybody!"
+
+What could he answer? It was the very principle on which their bargain
+had been struck. And if he were to say: "Ah, but this is different,
+because I'm jealous of Gillow," what light would such an answer shed on
+his past? The time for being jealous-if so antiquated an attitude were
+on any ground defensible-would have been before his marriage, and before
+the acceptance of the bounties which had helped to make it possible. He
+wondered a little now that in those days such scruples had not troubled
+him. His inconsistency irritated him, and increased his irritation
+against Gillow. "I suppose he thinks he owns us!" he grumbled inwardly.
+
+He had thrown himself into an armchair, and Susy, advancing across the
+shining arabesques of the floor, slid down at his feet, pressed her
+slender length against him, and whispered with lifted face and lips
+close to his: "We needn't ever go anywhere you don't want to." For
+once her submission was sweet, and folding her close he whispered back
+through his kiss: "Not there, then."
+
+In her response to his embrace he felt the acquiescence of her whole
+happy self in whatever future he decided on, if only it gave them enough
+of such moments as this; and as they held each other fast in silence his
+doubts and distrust began to seem like a silly injustice.
+
+"Let us stay here as long as ever Ellie will let us," he said, as if the
+shadowy walls and shining floors were a magic boundary drawn about his
+happiness.
+
+She murmured her assent and stood up, stretching her sleepy arm above
+her shoulders. "How dreadfully late it is.... Will you unhook me?... Oh,
+there's a telegram."
+
+She picked it up from the table, and tearing it open stared a moment at
+the message. "It's from Ellie. She's coming to-morrow."
+
+She turned to the window and strayed out onto the balcony. Nick followed
+her with enlacing arm. The canal below them lay in moonless shadow,
+barred with a few lingering lights. A last snatch of gondola-music came
+from far off, carried upward on a sultry gust.
+
+"Dear old Ellie. All the same... I wish all this belonged to you and
+me." Susy sighed.
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+IT was not Mrs. Vanderlyn's fault if, after her arrival, her palace
+seemed to belong any less to the Lansings.
+
+She arrived in a mood of such general benevolence that it was impossible
+for Susy, when they finally found themselves alone, to make her view
+even her own recent conduct in any but the most benevolent light.
+
+"I knew you'd be the veriest angel about it all, darling, because I knew
+you'd understand me--especially now," she declared, her slim hands
+in Susy's, her big eyes (so like Clarissa's) resplendent with past
+pleasures and future plans.
+
+The expression of her confidence was unexpectedly distasteful to Susy
+Lansing, who had never lent so cold an ear to such warm avowals. She had
+always imagined that being happy one's self made one--as Mrs. Vanderlyn
+appeared to assume--more tolerant of the happiness of others, of however
+doubtful elements composed; and she was almost ashamed of responding so
+languidly to her friend's outpourings. But she herself had no desire to
+confide her bliss to Ellie; and why should not Ellie observe a similar
+reticence?
+
+"It was all so perfect--you see, dearest, I was meant to be happy,"
+that lady continued, as if the possession of so unusual a characteristic
+singled her out for special privileges.
+
+Susy, with a certain sharpness, responded that she had always supposed
+we all were.
+
+"Oh, no, dearest: not governesses and mothers-in-law and companions, and
+that sort of people. They wouldn't know how if they tried. But you and
+I, darling--"
+
+"Oh, I don't consider myself in any way exceptional," Susy intervened.
+She longed to add: "Not in your way, at any rate--" but a few minutes
+earlier Mrs. Vanderlyn had told her that the palace was at her disposal
+for the rest of the summer, and that she herself was only going to perch
+there--if they'd let her!--long enough to gather up her things and
+start for St. Moritz. The memory of this announcement had the effect of
+curbing Susy's irony, and of making her shift the conversation to the
+safer if scarcely less absorbing topic of the number of day and evening
+dresses required for a season at St. Moritz.
+
+As she listened to Mrs. Vanderlyn--no less eloquent on this theme
+than on the other--Susy began to measure the gulf between her past and
+present. "This is the life I used to lead; these are the things I used
+to live for," she thought, as she stood before the outspread glories of
+Mrs. Vanderlyn's wardrobe. Not that she did not still care: she could
+not look at Ellie's laces and silks and furs without picturing herself
+in them, and wondering by what new miracle of management she could give
+herself the air of being dressed by the same consummate artists. But
+these had become minor interests: the past few months had given her a
+new perspective, and the thing that most puzzled and disconcerted her
+about Ellie was the fact that love and finery and bridge and dining-out
+were seemingly all on the same plane to her.
+
+The inspection of the dresses lasted a long time, and was marked by
+many fluctuations of mood on the part of Mrs. Vanderlyn, who passed
+from comparative hopefulness to despair at the total inadequacy of her
+wardrobe. It wouldn't do to go to St. Moritz looking like a frump, and
+yet there was no time to get anything sent from Paris, and, whatever she
+did, she wasn't going to show herself in any dowdy re-arrangements done
+at home. But suddenly light broke on her, and she clasped her hands
+for joy. "Why, Nelson'll bring them--I'd forgotten all about Nelson!
+There'll be just time if I wire to him at once."
+
+"Is Nelson going to join you at St. Moritz?" Susy asked, surprised.
+
+"Heavens, no! He's coming here to pick up Clarissa and take her to some
+stuffy cure in Austria with his mother. It's too lucky: there's just
+time to telegraph him to bring my things. I didn't mean to wait for him;
+but it won't delay me more than day or two."
+
+Susy's heart sank. She was not much afraid of Ellie alone, but Ellie and
+Nelson together formed an incalculable menace. No one could tell what
+spark of truth might dash from their collision. Susy felt that she could
+deal with the two dangers separately and successively, but not together
+and simultaneously.
+
+"But, Ellie, why should you wait for Nelson? I'm certain to find someone
+here who's going to St. Moritz and will take your things if he brings
+them. It's a pity to risk losing your rooms."
+
+This argument appealed for a moment to Mrs. Vanderlyn. "That's
+true; they say all the hotels are jammed. You dear, you're always
+so practical!" She clasped Susy to her scented bosom. "And you know,
+darling, I'm sure you'll be glad to get rid of me--you and Nick! Oh,
+don't be hypocritical and say 'Nonsense!' You see, I understand... I
+used to think of you so often, you two... during those blessed weeks
+when we two were alone...."
+
+The sudden tears, brimming over Ellie's lovely eyes, and threatening to
+make the blue circles below them run into the adjoining carmine, filled
+Susy with compunction.
+
+"Poor thing--oh, poor thing!" she thought; and hearing herself called
+by Nick, who was waiting to take her out for their usual sunset on the
+lagoon, she felt a wave of pity for the deluded creature who would
+never taste that highest of imaginable joys. "But all the same," Susy
+reflected, as she hurried down to her husband, "I'm glad I persuaded her
+not to wait for Nelson."
+
+Some days had elapsed since Susy and Nick had had a sunset to
+themselves, and in the interval Susy had once again learned the superior
+quality of the sympathy that held them together. She now viewed all the
+rest of life as no more than a show: a jolly show which it would have
+been a thousand pities to miss, but which, if the need arose, they could
+get up and leave at any moment--provided that they left it together.
+
+In the dusk, while their prow slid over inverted palaces, and through
+the scent of hidden gardens, she leaned against him and murmured, her
+mind returning to the recent scene with Ellie: "Nick, should you hate me
+dreadfully if I had no clothes?"
+
+Her husband was kindling a cigarette, and the match lit up the grin
+with which he answered: "But, my dear, have I ever shown the slightest
+symptom--?"
+
+"Oh, rubbish! When a woman says: 'No clothes,' she means: 'Not the right
+clothes.'"
+
+He took a meditative puff. "Ah, you've been going over Ellie's finery
+with her."
+
+"Yes: all those trunks and trunks full. And she finds she's got nothing
+for St. Moritz!"
+
+"Of course," he murmured, drowsy with content, and manifesting but a
+languid interest in the subject of Mrs. Vanderlyn's wardrobe.
+
+"Only fancy--she very nearly decided to stop over for Nelson's arrival
+next week, so that he might bring her two or three more trunkfuls from
+Paris. But mercifully I've managed to persuade her that it would be
+foolish to wait."
+
+Susy felt a hardly perceptible shifting of her husband's lounging body,
+and was aware, through all her watchful tentacles, of a widening of his
+half-closed lids.
+
+"You 'managed'--?" She fancied he paused on the word ironically. "But
+why?"
+
+"Why--what?"
+
+"Why on earth should you try to prevent Ellie's waiting for Nelson, if
+for once in her life she wants to?"
+
+Susy, conscious of reddening suddenly, drew back as though the leap
+of her tell-tale heart might have penetrated the blue flannel shoulder
+against which she leaned.
+
+"Really, dearest--!" she murmured; but with a sudden doggedness he
+renewed his "Why?"
+
+"Because she's in such a fever to get to St. Moritz--and in such a funk
+lest the hotel shouldn't keep her rooms," Susy somewhat breathlessly
+produced.
+
+"Ah--I see." Nick paused again. "You're a devoted friend, aren't you!"
+
+"What an odd question! There's hardly anyone I've reason to be more
+devoted to than Ellie," his wife answered; and she felt his contrite
+clasp on her hand.
+
+"Darling! No; nor I--. Or more grateful to for leaving us alone in this
+heaven."
+
+Dimness had fallen on the waters, and her lifted lips met his bending
+ones.
+
+Trailing late into dinner that evening, Ellie announced that, after all,
+she had decided it was safest to wait for Nelson.
+
+"I should simply worry myself ill if I weren't sure of getting my
+things," she said, in the tone of tender solicitude with which she
+always discussed her own difficulties. "After all, people who deny
+themselves everything do get warped and bitter, don't they?" she argued
+plaintively, her lovely eyes wandering from one to the other of her
+assembled friends.
+
+Strefford remarked gravely that it was the complaint which had fatally
+undermined his own health; and in the laugh that followed the party
+drifted into the great vaulted dining-room.
+
+"Oh, I don't mind your laughing at me, Streffy darling," his hostess
+retorted, pressing his arm against her own; and Susy, receiving the
+shock of their rapidly exchanged glance, said to herself, with a sharp
+twinge of apprehension: "Of course Streffy knows everything; he showed
+no surprise at finding Ellie away when he arrived. And if he knows,
+what's to prevent Nelson's finding out?" For Strefford, in a mood of
+mischief, was no more to be trusted than a malicious child.
+
+Susy instantly resolved to risk speaking to him, if need be even
+betraying to him the secret of the letters. Only by revealing the depth
+of her own danger could she hope to secure his silence.
+
+On the balcony, late in the evening, while the others were listening
+indoors to the low modulations of a young composer who had embroidered
+his fancies on Browning's "Toccata," Susy found her chance. Strefford,
+unsummoned, had followed her out, and stood silently smoking at her
+side.
+
+"You see, Streff--oh, why should you and I make mysteries to each
+other?" she suddenly began.
+
+"Why, indeed: but do we?"
+
+Susy glanced back at the group around the piano. "About Ellie, I
+mean--and Nelson."
+
+"Lord! Ellie and Nelson? You call that a mystery? I should as soon apply
+the term to one of the million candle-power advertisements that adorn
+your native thoroughfares."
+
+"Well, yes. But--" She stopped again. Had she not tacitly promised Ellie
+not to speak?
+
+"My Susan, what's wrong?" Strefford asked.
+
+"I don't know...."
+
+"Well, I do, then: you're afraid that, if Ellie and Nelson meet here,
+she'll blurt out something--injudicious."
+
+"Oh, she won't!" Susy cried with conviction.
+
+"Well, then--who will! I trust that superhuman child not to. And you and
+I and Nick--"
+
+"Oh," she gasped, interrupting him, "that's just it. Nick doesn't
+know... doesn't even suspect. And if he did...."
+
+Strefford flung away his cigar and turned to scrutinize her. "I don't
+see--hanged if I do. What business is it of any of us, after all?"
+
+That, of course, was the old view that cloaked connivance in an air of
+decency. But to Susy it no longer carried conviction, and she hesitated.
+
+"If Nick should find out that I know...."
+
+"Good Lord--doesn't he know that you know? After all, I suppose it's not
+the first time--"
+
+She remained silent.
+
+"The first time you've received confidences--from married friends. Does
+Nick suppose you've lived even to your tender age without... Hang it,
+what's come over you, child?"
+
+What had, indeed, that she could make clear to him? And yet more than
+ever she felt the need of having him securely on her side. Once his word
+was pledged, he was safe: otherwise there was no limit to his capacity
+for wilful harmfulness.
+
+"Look here, Streff, you and I know that Ellie hasn't been away for a
+cure; and that if poor Clarissa was sworn to secrecy it was not because
+it 'worries father' to think that mother needs to take care of her
+health." She paused, hating herself for the ironic note she had tried to
+sound.
+
+"Well--?" he questioned, from the depths of the chair into which he had
+sunk.
+
+"Well, Nick doesn't... doesn't dream of it. If he knew that we owed our
+summer here to... to my knowing...."
+
+Strefford sat silent: she felt his astonished stare through the
+darkness. "Jove!" he said at last, with a low whistle Susy bent over the
+balustrade, her heart thumping against the stone rail.
+
+"What was left of soul, I wonder--?" the young composer's voice shrilled
+through the open windows.
+
+Strefford sank into another silence, from which he roused himself only
+as Susy turned back toward the lighted threshold.
+
+"Well, my dear, we'll see it through between us; you and I-and
+Clarissa," he said with his rasping laugh, rising to follow her. He
+caught her hand and gave it a short pressure as they re-entered the
+drawing-room, where Ellie was saying plaintively to Fred Gillow: "I can
+never hear that thing sung without wanting to cry like a baby."
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+NELSON VANDERLYN, still in his travelling clothes, paused on the
+threshold of his own dining-room and surveyed the scene with pardonable
+satisfaction.
+
+He was a short round man, with a grizzled head, small facetious eyes and
+a large and credulous smile.
+
+At the luncheon table sat his wife, between Charlie Strefford and Nick
+Lansing. Next to Strefford, perched on her high chair, Clarissa throned
+in infant beauty, while Susy Lansing cut up a peach for her. Through
+wide orange awnings the sun slanted in upon the white-clad group.
+
+"Well--well--well! So I've caught you at it!" cried the happy father,
+whose inveterate habit it was to address his wife and friends as if he
+had surprised them at an inopportune moment. Stealing up from behind, he
+lifted his daughter into the air, while a chorus of "Hello, old Nelson,"
+hailed his appearance.
+
+It was two or three years since Nick Lansing had seen Mr. Vanderlyn, who
+was now the London representative of the big New York bank of Vanderlyn
+& Co., and had exchanged his sumptuous house in Fifth Avenue for
+another, more sumptuous still, in Mayfair; and the young man looked
+curiously and attentively at his host.
+
+Mr. Vanderlyn had grown older and stouter, but his face still kept
+its look of somewhat worn optimism. He embraced his wife, greeted Susy
+affectionately, and distributed cordial hand-grasps to the two men.
+
+"Hullo," he exclaimed, suddenly noticing a pearl and coral trinket
+hanging from Clarissa's neck. "Who's been giving my daughter jewellery,
+I'd like to know!"
+
+"Oh, Streffy did--just think, father! Because I said I'd rather have it
+than a book, you know," Clarissa lucidly explained, her arms tight about
+her father's neck, her beaming eyes on Strefford.
+
+Nelson Vanderlyn's own eyes took on the look of shrewdness which came
+into them whenever there was a question of material values.
+
+"What, Streffy? Caught you at it, eh? Upon my soul-spoiling the brat
+like that! You'd no business to, my dear chap-a lovely baroque pearl--"
+he protested, with the half-apologetic tone of the rich man embarrassed
+by too costly a gift from an impecunious friend.
+
+"Oh, hadn't I? Why? Because it's too good for Clarissa, or too expensive
+for me? Of course you daren't imply the first; and as for me--I've had a
+windfall, and am blowing it in on the ladies."
+
+Strefford, Lansing had noticed, always used American slang when he was
+slightly at a loss, and wished to divert attention from the main point.
+But why was he embarrassed, whose attention did he wish to divert, It
+was plain that Vanderlyn's protest had been merely formal: like most of
+the wealthy, he had only the dimmest notion of what money represented
+to the poor. But it was unusual for Strefford to give any one a present,
+and especially an expensive one: perhaps that was what had fixed
+Vanderlyn's attention.
+
+"A windfall?" he gaily repeated.
+
+"Oh, a tiny one: I was offered a thumping rent for my little place at
+Como, and dashed over here to squander my millions with the rest of
+you," said Strefford imperturbably.
+
+Vanderlyn's look immediately became interested and sympathetic.
+"What--the scene of the honey-moon?" He included Nick and Susy in his
+friendly smile.
+
+"Just so: the reward of virtue. I say, give me a cigar, will you, old
+man, I left some awfully good ones at Como, worse luck--and I don't mind
+telling you that Ellie's no judge of tobacco, and that Nick's too far
+gone in bliss to care what he smokes," Strefford grumbled, stretching a
+hand toward his host's cigar-case.
+
+"I do like jewellery best," Clarissa murmured, hugging her father.
+
+Nelson Vanderlyn's first word to his wife had been that he had
+brought her all her toggery; and she had welcomed him with appropriate
+enthusiasm. In fact, to the lookers-on her joy at seeing him seemed
+rather too patently in proportion to her satisfaction at getting her
+clothes. But no such suspicion appeared to mar Mr. Vanderlyn's happiness
+in being, for once, and for nearly twenty-four hours, under the same
+roof with his wife and child. He did not conceal his regret at having
+promised his mother to join her the next day; and added, with a wistful
+glance at Ellie: "If only I'd known you meant to wait for me!"
+
+But being a man of duty, in domestic as well as business affairs, he did
+not even consider the possibility of disappointing the exacting old lady
+to whom he owed his being. "Mother cares for so few people," he used to
+say, not without a touch of filial pride in the parental exclusiveness,
+"that I have to be with her rather more than if she were more sociable";
+and with smiling resignation he gave orders that Clarissa should be
+ready to start the next evening.
+
+"And meanwhile," he concluded, "we'll have all the good time that's
+going."
+
+The ladies of the party seemed united in the desire to further this
+resolve; and it was settled that as soon as Mr. Vanderlyn had despatched
+a hasty luncheon, his wife, Clarissa and Susy should carry him off for a
+tea-picnic at Torcello. They did not even suggest that Strefford or Nick
+should be of the party, or that any of the other young men of the group
+should be summoned; as Susy said, Nelson wanted to go off alone with his
+harem. And Lansing and Strefford were left to watch the departure of the
+happy Pasha ensconced between attentive beauties.
+
+"Well--that's what you call being married!" Strefford commented, waving
+his battered Panama at Clarissa.
+
+"Oh, no, I don't!" Lansing laughed.
+
+"He does. But do you know--" Strefford paused and swung about on his
+companion--"do you know, when the Rude Awakening comes, I don't care to
+be there. I believe there'll be some crockery broken."
+
+"Shouldn't wonder," Lansing answered indifferently. He wandered away to
+his own room, leaving Strefford to philosophize to his pipe.
+
+Lansing had always known about poor old Nelson: who hadn't, except poor
+old Nelson? The case had once seemed amusing because so typical; now, it
+rather irritated Nick that Vanderlyn should be so complete an ass. But
+he would be off the next day, and so would Ellie, and then, for many
+enchanted weeks, the palace would once more be the property of Nick and
+Susy. Of all the people who came and went in it, they were the only ones
+who appreciated it, or knew how it was meant to be lived in; and that
+made it theirs in the only valid sense. In this light it became easy to
+regard the Vanderlyns as mere transient intruders.
+
+Having relegated them to this convenient distance, Lansing shut himself
+up with his book. He had returned to it with fresh energy after his few
+weeks of holiday-making, and was determined to finish it quickly. He did
+not expect that it would bring in much money; but if it were moderately
+successful it might give him an opening in the reviews and magazines,
+and in that case he meant to abandon archaeology for novels, since
+it was only as a purveyor of fiction that he could count on earning a
+living for himself and Susy.
+
+Late in the afternoon he laid down his pen and wandered out of doors.
+He loved the increasing heat of the Venetian summer, the bruised
+peach-tints of worn house-fronts, the enamelling of sunlight on dark
+green canals, the smell of half-decayed fruits and flowers thickening
+the languid air. What visions he could build, if he dared, of being
+tucked away with Susy in the attic of some tumble-down palace, above
+a jade-green waterway, with a terrace overhanging a scrap of neglected
+garden--and cheques from the publishers dropping in at convenient
+intervals! Why should they not settle in Venice if he pulled it off!
+
+He found himself before the church of the Scalzi, and pushing open the
+leathern door wandered up the nave under the whirl of rose-and-lemon
+angels in Tiepolo's great vault. It was not a church in which one was
+likely to run across sight-seers; but he presently remarked a young lady
+standing alone near the choir, and assiduously applying her field-glass
+to the celestial vortex, from which she occasionally glanced down at an
+open manual.
+
+As Lansing's step sounded on the pavement, the young lady, turning,
+revealed herself as Miss Hicks.
+
+"Ah--you like this too? It's several centuries out of your line, though,
+isn't it!" Nick asked as they shook hands.
+
+She gazed at him gravely. "Why shouldn't one like things that are out
+of one's line?" she answered; and he agreed, with a laugh, that it was
+often an incentive.
+
+She continued to fix her grave eyes on him, and after one or two remarks
+about the Tiepolos he perceived that she was feeling her way toward a
+subject of more personal interest.
+
+"I'm glad to see you alone," she said at length, with an abruptness that
+might have seemed awkward had it not been so completely unconscious.
+She turned toward a cluster of straw chairs, and signed to Nick to seat
+himself beside her.
+
+"I seldom do," she added, with the serious smile that made her heavy
+face almost handsome; and she went on, giving him no time to protest: "I
+wanted to speak to you--to explain about father's invitation to go with
+us to Persia and Turkestan."
+
+"To explain?"
+
+"Yes. You found the letter when you arrived here just after your
+marriage, didn't you? You must have thought it odd, our asking you just
+then; but we hadn't heard that you were married."
+
+"Oh, I guessed as much: it happened very quietly, and I was remiss about
+announcing it, even to old friends."
+
+Lansing frowned. His thoughts had wandered away to the evening when he
+had found Mrs. Hicks's letter in the mail awaiting him at Venice.
+The day was associated in his mind with the ridiculous and mortifying
+episode of the cigars--the expensive cigars that Susy had wanted to
+carry away from Strefford's villa. Their brief exchange of views on the
+subject had left the first blur on the perfect surface of his happiness,
+and he still felt an uncomfortable heat at the remembrance. For a few
+hours the prospect of life with Susy had seemed unendurable; and it was
+just at that moment that he had found the letter from Mrs. Hicks, with
+its almost irresistible invitation. If only her daughter had known how
+nearly he had accepted it!
+
+"It was a dreadful temptation," he said, smiling.
+
+"To go with us? Then why--?"
+
+"Oh, everything's different now: I've got to stick to my writing."
+
+Miss Hicks still bent on him the same unblinking scrutiny. "Does that
+mean that you're going to give up your real work?"
+
+"My real work--archaeology?" He smiled again to hide a twitch of regret.
+"Why, I'm afraid it hardly produces a living wage; and I've got to think
+of that." He coloured suddenly, as if suspecting that Miss Hicks might
+consider the avowal an opening for he hardly knew what ponderous
+offer of aid. The Hicks munificence was too uncalculating not to be
+occasionally oppressive. But looking at her again he saw that her eyes
+were full of tears.
+
+"I thought it was your vocation," she said.
+
+"So did I. But life comes along, and upsets things."
+
+"Oh, I understand. There may be things--worth giving up all other things
+for."
+
+"There are!" cried Nick with beaming emphasis.
+
+He was conscious that Miss Hicks's eyes demanded of him even more than
+this sweeping affirmation.
+
+"But your novel may fail," she said with her odd harshness.
+
+"It may--it probably will," he agreed. "But if one stopped to consider
+such possibilities--"
+
+"Don't you have to, with a wife?"
+
+"Oh, my dear Coral--how old are you? Not twenty?" he questioned, laying
+a brotherly hand on hers.
+
+She stared at him a moment, and sprang up clumsily from her chair. "I
+was never young... if that's what you mean. It's lucky, isn't it, that
+my parents gave me such a grand education? Because, you see, art's a
+wonderful resource." (She pronounced it RE-source.)
+
+He continued to look at her kindly. "You won't need it--or any
+other--when you grow young, as you will some day," he assured her.
+
+"Do you mean, when I fall in love? But I am in love--Oh, there's
+Eldorada and Mr. Beck!" She broke off with a jerk, signalling with her
+field-glass to the pair who had just appeared at the farther end of the
+nave. "I told them that if they'd meet me here to-day I'd try to make
+them understand Tiepolo. Because, you see, at home we never really
+have understood Tiepolo; and Mr. Beck and Eldorada are the only ones to
+realize it. Mr. Buttles simply won't." She turned to Lansing and held
+out her hand. "I am in love," she repeated earnestly, "and that's the
+reason why I find art such a RE source."
+
+She restored her eye-glasses, opened her manual, and strode across the
+church to the expectant neophytes.
+
+Lansing, looking after her, wondered for half a moment whether Mr. Beck
+were the object of this apparently unrequited sentiment; then, with a
+queer start of introspection, abruptly decided that, no, he certainly
+was not. But then--but then--. Well, there was no use in following up
+such conjectures.... He turned home-ward, wondering if the picnickers
+had already reached Palazzo Vanderlyn.
+
+They got back only in time for a late dinner, full of chaff and
+laughter, and apparently still enchanted with each other's society.
+Nelson Vanderlyn beamed on his wife, sent his daughter off to bed with a
+kiss, and leaning back in his armchair before the fruit-and-flower-laden
+table, declared that he'd never spent a jollier day in his life. Susy
+seemed to come in for a full share of his approbation, and Lansing
+thought that Ellie was unusually demonstrative to her friend. Strefford,
+from his hostess's side, glanced across now and then at young Mrs.
+Lansing, and his glance seemed to Lansing a confidential comment on the
+Vanderlyn raptures. But then Strefford was always having private jokes
+with people or about them; and Lansing was irritated with himself for
+perpetually suspecting his best friends of vague complicities at his
+expense. "If I'm going to be jealous of Streffy now--!" he concluded
+with a grimace of self-derision.
+
+Certainly Susy looked lovely enough to justify the most irrational
+pangs. As a girl she had been, for some people's taste, a trifle
+fine-drawn and sharp-edged; now, to her old lightness of line was added
+a shadowy bloom, a sort of star-reflecting depth. Her movements were
+slower, less angular; her mouth had a needing droop, her lids seemed
+weighed down by their lashes; and then suddenly the old spirit would
+reveal itself through the new languor, like the tartness at the core
+of a sweet fruit. As her husband looked at her across the flowers and
+lights he laughed inwardly at the nothingness of all things else.
+
+Vanderlyn and Clarissa left betimes the next morning; and Mrs.
+Vanderlyn, who was to start for St. Moritz in the afternoon, devoted
+her last hours to anxious conferences with her maid and Susy. Strefford,
+with Fred Gillow and the others, had gone for a swim at the Lido, and
+Lansing seized the opportunity to get back to his book.
+
+The quietness of the great echoing place gave him a foretaste of the
+solitude to come. By mid-August all their party would be scattered: the
+Hickses off on a cruise to Crete and the AEgean, Fred Gillow on the way
+to his moor, Strefford to stay with friends in Capri till his annual
+visit to Northumberland in September. One by one the others would
+follow, and Lansing and Susy be left alone in the great sun-proof
+palace, alone under the star-laden skies, alone with the great orange
+moons-still theirs!--above the bell-tower of San Giorgio. The novel, in
+that blessed quiet, would unfold itself as harmoniously as his dreams.
+
+He wrote on, forgetful of the passing hours, till the door opened and he
+heard a step behind him. The next moment two hands were clasped over his
+eyes, and the air was full of Mrs. Vanderlyn's last new scent.
+
+"You dear thing--I'm just off, you know," she said. "Susy told me you
+were working, and I forbade her to call you down. She and Streffy are
+waiting to take me to the station, and I've run up to say good-bye."
+
+"Ellie, dear!" Full of compunction, Lansing pushed aside his writing and
+started up; but she pressed him back into his seat.
+
+"No, no! I should never forgive myself if I'd interrupted you. I
+oughtn't to have come up; Susy didn't want me to. But I had to tell you,
+you dear.... I had to thank you..."
+
+In her dark travelling dress and hat, so discreetly conspicuous, so
+negligent and so studied, with a veil masking her paint, and gloves
+hiding her rings, she looked younger, simpler, more natural than he had
+ever seen her. Poor Ellie such a good fellow, after all!
+
+"To thank me? For what? For being so happy here?" he laughed, taking her
+hands.
+
+She looked at him, laughed back, and flung her arms about his neck.
+
+"For helping me to be so happy elsewhere--you and Susy, you two blessed
+darlings!" she cried, with a kiss on his cheek.
+
+Their eyes met for a second; then her arms slipped slowly downward,
+dropping to her sides. Lansing sat before her like a stone.
+
+"Oh," she gasped, "why do you stare so? Didn't you know...?"
+
+They heard Strefford's shrill voice on the stairs. "Ellie, where the
+deuce are you? Susy's in the gondola. You'll miss the train!"
+
+Lansing stood up and caught Mrs. Vanderlyn by the wrist. "What do you
+mean? What are you talking about?"
+
+"Oh, nothing... But you were both such bricks about the letters.... And
+when Nelson was here, too.... Nick, don't hurt my wrist so! I must run!"
+
+He dropped her hand and stood motionless, staring after her and
+listening to the click of her high heels as she fled across the room and
+along the echoing corridor.
+
+When he turned back to the table he noticed that a small morocco case
+had fallen among his papers. In falling it had opened, and before him,
+on the pale velvet lining, lay a scarf-pin set with a perfect pearl. He
+picked the box up, and was about to hasten after Mrs. Vanderlyn--it
+was so like her to shed jewels on her path!--when he noticed his own
+initials on the cover.
+
+He dropped the box as if it had been a hot coal, and sat for a long
+while gazing at the gold N. L., which seemed to have burnt itself into
+his flesh.
+
+At last he roused himself and stood up.
+
+
+
+X.
+
+WITH a sigh of relief Susy drew the pins from her hat and threw herself
+down on the lounge.
+
+The ordeal she had dreaded was over, and Mr. and Mrs. Vanderlyn had
+safely gone their several ways. Poor Ellie was not noted for prudence,
+and when life smiled on her she was given to betraying her gratitude too
+openly; but thanks to Susy's vigilance (and, no doubt, to Strefford's
+tacit co-operation), the dreaded twenty-four hours were happily over.
+Nelson Vanderlyn had departed without a shadow on his brow, and though
+Ellie's, when she came down from bidding Nick good-bye, had seemed to
+Susy less serene than usual, she became her normal self as soon as it
+was discovered that the red morocco bag with her jewel-box was missing.
+Before it had been discovered in the depths of the gondola they had
+reached the station, and there was just time to thrust her into her
+"sleeper," from which she was seen to wave an unperturbed farewell to
+her friends.
+
+"Well, my dear, we've been it through," Strefford remarked with a deep
+breath as the St. Moritz express rolled away.
+
+"Oh," Susy sighed in mute complicity; then, as if to cover her
+self-betrayal: "Poor darling, she does so like what she likes!"
+
+"Yes--even if it's a rotten bounder," Strefford agreed.
+
+"A rotten bounder? Why, I thought--"
+
+"That it was still young Davenant? Lord, no--not for the last six
+months. Didn't she tell you--?"
+
+Susy felt herself redden. "I didn't ask her--"
+
+"Ask her? You mean you didn't let her!"
+
+"I didn't let her. And I don't let you," Susy added sharply, as he
+helped her into the gondola.
+
+"Oh, all right: I daresay you're right. It simplifies things," Strefford
+placidly acquiesced.
+
+She made no answer, and in silence they glided homeward.
+
+Now, in the quiet of her own room, Susy lay and pondered on the distance
+she had travelled during the last year. Strefford had read her mind with
+his usual penetration. It was true that there had been a time when
+she would have thought it perfectly natural that Ellie should tell
+her everything; that the name of young Davenant's successor should be
+confided to her as a matter of course. Apparently even Ellie had been
+obscurely aware of the change, for after a first attempt to force her
+confidences on Susy she had contented herself with vague expressions of
+gratitude, allusive smiles and sighs, and the pretty "surprise" of the
+sapphire bangle slipped onto her friend's wrist in the act of their
+farewell embrace.
+
+The bangle was extremely handsome. Susy, who had an auctioneer's eye
+for values, knew to a fraction the worth of those deep convex stones
+alternating with small emeralds and brilliants. She was glad to own the
+bracelet, and enchanted with the effect it produced on her slim wrist;
+yet, even while admiring it, and rejoicing that it was hers, she had
+already transmuted it into specie, and reckoned just how far it would go
+toward the paying of domestic necessities. For whatever came to her now
+interested her only as something more to be offered up to Nick.
+
+The door opened and Nick came in. Dusk had fallen, and she could not
+see his face; but something in the jerk of the door-handle roused her
+ever-wakeful apprehension. She hurried toward him with outstretched
+wrist.
+
+"Look, dearest--wasn't it too darling of Ellie?"
+
+She pressed the button of the lamp that lit her dressing-table, and her
+husband's face started unfamiliarly out of the twilight. She slipped off
+the bracelet and held it up to him.
+
+"Oh, I can go you one better," he said with a laugh; and pulling a
+morocco case from his pocket he flung it down among the scent-bottles.
+
+Susy opened the case automatically, staring at the pearl because she was
+afraid to look again at Nick.
+
+"Ellie--gave you this?" she asked at length.
+
+"Yes. She gave me this." There was a pause. "Would you mind telling
+me," Lansing continued in the same dead-level tone, "exactly for what
+services we've both been so handsomely paid?"
+
+"The pearl is beautiful," Susy murmured, to gain time, while her head
+spun round with unimaginable terrors.
+
+"So are your sapphires; though, on closer examination, my services would
+appear to have been valued rather higher than yours. Would you be kind
+enough to tell me just what they were?"
+
+Susy threw her head back and looked at him. "What on earth are you
+talking about, Nick! Why shouldn't Ellie have given us these things? Do
+you forget that it's like our giving her a pen-wiper or a button-hook?
+What is it you are trying to suggest?"
+
+It had cost her a considerable effort to hold his eyes while she put
+the questions. Something had happened between him and Ellie, that was
+evident-one of those hideous unforeseeable blunders that may cause one's
+cleverest plans to crumble at a stroke; and again Susy shuddered at
+the frailty of her bliss. But her old training stood her in good stead.
+There had been more than one moment in her past when everything-somebody
+else's everything-had depended on her keeping a cool head and a clear
+glance. It would have been a wonder if now, when she felt her own
+everything at stake, she had not been able to put up as good a defence.
+
+"What is it?" she repeated impatiently, as Lansing continued to remain
+silent.
+
+"That's what I'm here to ask," he returned, keeping his eyes as steady
+as she kept hers. "There's no reason on earth, as you say, why Ellie
+shouldn't give us presents--as expensive presents as she likes; and the
+pearl is a beauty. All I ask is: for what specific services were they
+given? For, allowing for all the absence of scruple that marks the
+intercourse of truly civilized people, you'll probably agree that there
+are limits; at least up to now there have been limits...."
+
+"I really don't know what you mean. I suppose Ellie wanted to show that
+she was grateful to us for looking after Clarissa."
+
+"But she gave us all this in exchange for that, didn't she?" he
+suggested, with a sweep of the hand around the beautiful shadowy room.
+"A whole summer of it if we choose."
+
+Susy smiled. "Apparently she didn't think that enough."
+
+"What a doting mother! It shows the store she sets upon her child."
+
+"Well, don't you set store upon Clarissa?"
+
+"Clarissa is exquisite; but her mother didn't mention her in offering me
+this recompense."
+
+Susy lifted her head again. "Whom did she mention?"
+
+"Vanderlyn," said Lansing.
+
+"Vanderlyn? Nelson?"
+
+"Yes--and some letters... something about letters.... What is it, my
+dear, that you and I have been hired to hide from Vanderlyn? Because I
+should like to know," Nick broke out savagely, "if we've been adequately
+paid."
+
+Susy was silent: she needed time to reckon up her forces, and study her
+next move; and her brain was in such a whirl of fear that she could at
+last only retort: "What is it that Ellie said to you?"
+
+Lansing laughed again. "That's just what you'd like to find out--isn't
+it?--in order to know the line to take in making your explanation."
+
+The sneer had an effect that he could not have foreseen, and that Susy
+herself had not expected.
+
+"Oh, don't--don't let us speak to each other like that!" she cried; and
+sinking down by the dressing-table she hid her face in her hands.
+
+It seemed to her, now, that nothing mattered except that their love
+for each other, their faith in each other, should be saved from some
+unhealable hurt. She was willing to tell Nick everything--she wanted to
+tell him everything--if only she could be sure of reaching a responsive
+chord in him. But the scene of the cigars came back to her, and benumbed
+her. If only she could make him see that nothing was of any account as
+long as they continued to love each other!
+
+His touch fell compassionately on her shoulder. "Poor child--don't," he
+said.
+
+Their eyes met, but his expression checked the smile breaking through
+her tears. "Don't you see," he continued, "that we've got to have this
+thing out?"
+
+She continued to stare at him through a prism of tears. "I can't--while
+you stand up like that," she stammered, childishly.
+
+She had cowered down again into a corner of the lounge; but Lansing did
+not seat himself at her side. He took a chair facing her, like a caller
+on the farther side of a stately tea-tray. "Will that do?" he asked with
+a stiff smile, as if to humour her.
+
+"Nothing will do--as long as you're not you!"
+
+"Not me?"
+
+She shook her head wearily. "What's the use? You accept things
+theoretically--and then when they happen...."
+
+"What things? What has happened!"
+
+A sudden impatience mastered her. What did he suppose, after all--? "But
+you know all about Ellie. We used to talk about her often enough in old
+times," she said.
+
+"Ellie and young Davenant?"
+
+"Young Davenant; or the others...."
+
+"Or the others. But what business was it of ours?"
+
+"Ah, that's just what I think!" she cried, springing up with an
+explosion of relief. Lansing stood up also, but there was no answering
+light in his face.
+
+"We're outside of all that; we've nothing to do with it, have we?" he
+pursued.
+
+"Nothing whatever."
+
+"Then what on earth is the meaning of Ellie's gratitude? Gratitude for
+what we've done about some letters--and about Vanderlyn?"
+
+"Oh, not you," Susy cried, involuntarily.
+
+"Not I? Then you?" He came close and took her by the wrist. "Answer me.
+Have you been mixed up in some dirty business of Ellie's?"
+
+There was a pause. She found it impossible to speak, with that burning
+grasp on the wrist where the bangle had been. At length he let her go
+and moved away. "Answer," he repeated.
+
+"I've told you it was my business and not yours."
+
+He received this in silence; then he questioned: "You've been sending
+letters for her, I suppose? To whom?"
+
+"Oh, why do you torment me? Nelson was not supposed to know that she'd
+been away. She left me the letters to post to him once a week. I found
+them here the night we arrived.... It was the price--for this. Oh,
+Nick, say it's been worth it-say at least that it's been worth it!" she
+implored him.
+
+He stood motionless, unresponding. One hand drummed on the corner of her
+dressing-table, making the jewelled bangle dance.
+
+"How many letters?"
+
+"I don't know... four... five... What does it matter?"
+
+"And once a week, for six weeks--?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And you took it all as a matter of course?"
+
+"No: I hated it. But what could I do?"
+
+"What could you do?"
+
+"When our being together depended on it? Oh, Nick, how could you think
+I'd give you up?"
+
+"Give me up?" he echoed.
+
+"Well--doesn't our being together depend on--on what we can get out of
+people? And hasn't there always got to be some give-and-take? Did you
+ever in your life get anything for nothing?" she cried with sudden
+exasperation. "You've lived among these people as long as I have; I
+suppose it's not the first time--"
+
+"By God, but it is," he exclaimed, flushing. "And that's the
+difference--the fundamental difference."
+
+"The difference!"
+
+"Between you and me. I've never in my life done people's dirty work for
+them--least of all for favours in return. I suppose you guessed it, or
+you wouldn't have hidden this beastly business from me."
+
+The blood rose to Susy's temples also. Yes, she had guessed it;
+instinctively, from the day she had first visited him in his bare
+lodgings, she had been aware of his stricter standard. But how could she
+tell him that under his influence her standard had become stricter
+too, and that it was as much to hide her humiliation from herself as to
+escape his anger that she had held her tongue?
+
+"You knew I wouldn't have stayed here another day if I'd known," he
+continued.
+
+"Yes: and then where in the world should we have gone?"
+
+"You mean that--in one way or another--what you call give-and-take is
+the price of our remaining together?"
+
+"Well--isn't it," she faltered.
+
+"Then we'd better part, hadn't we?"
+
+He spoke in a low tone, thoughtfully and deliberately, as if this had
+been the inevitable conclusion to which their passionate argument had
+led.
+
+Susy made no answer. For a moment she ceased to be conscious of the
+causes of what had happened; the thing itself seemed to have smothered
+her under its ruins.
+
+Nick wandered away from the dressing-table and stood gazing out of the
+window at the darkening canal flecked with lights. She looked at his
+back, and wondered what would happen if she were to go up to him and
+fling her arms about him. But even if her touch could have broken the
+spell, she was not sure she would have chosen that way of breaking it.
+Beneath her speechless anguish there burned the half-conscious sense
+of having been unfairly treated. When they had entered into their
+queer compact, Nick had known as well as she on what compromises and
+concessions the life they were to live together must be based. That he
+should have forgotten it seemed so unbelievable that she wondered, with
+a new leap of fear, if he were using the wretched Ellie's indiscretion
+as a means of escape from a tie already wearied of. Suddenly she raised
+her head with a laugh.
+
+"After all--you were right when you wanted me to be your mistress."
+
+He turned on her with an astonished stare. "You--my mistress?"
+
+Through all her pain she thrilled with pride at the discovery that
+such a possibility had long since become unthinkable to him. But she
+insisted. "That day at the Fulmers'--have you forgotten? When you said
+it would be sheer madness for us to marry."
+
+Lansing stood leaning in the embrasure of the window, his eyes fixed on
+the mosaic volutes of the floor.
+
+"I was right enough when I said it would be sheer madness for us to
+marry," he rejoined at length.
+
+She sprang up trembling. "Well, that's easily settled. Our compact--"
+
+"Oh, that compact--" he interrupted her with an impatient laugh.
+
+"Aren't you asking me to carry it out now?"
+
+"Because I said we'd better part?" He paused. "But the compact--I'd
+almost forgotten it--was to the effect, wasn't it, that we were to give
+each other a helping hand if either of us had a better chance? The thing
+was absurd, of course; a mere joke; from my point of view, at least. I
+shall never want any better chance... any other chance...."
+
+"Oh, Nick, oh, Nick... but then...." She was close to him, his face
+looming down through her tears; but he put her back.
+
+"It would have been easy enough, wouldn't it," he rejoined, "if we'd
+been as detachable as all that? As it is, it's going to hurt horribly.
+But talking it over won't help. You were right just now when you asked
+how else we were going to live. We're born parasites, both, I suppose,
+or we'd have found out some way long ago. But I find there are things I
+might put up with for myself, at a pinch--and should, probably, in time
+that I can't let you put up with for me... ever.... Those cigars at
+Como: do you suppose I didn't know it was for me? And this too? Well, it
+won't do... it won't do...."
+
+He stopped, as if his courage failed him; and she moaned out: "But your
+writing--if your book's a success...."
+
+"My poor Susy--that's all part of the humbug. We both know that my sort
+of writing will never pay. And what's the alternative except more of
+the same kind of baseness? And getting more and more blunted to it? At
+least, till now, I've minded certain things; I don't want to go on till
+I find myself taking them for granted."
+
+She reached out a timid hand. "But you needn't ever, dear... if you'd
+only leave it to me...."
+
+He drew back sharply. "That seems simple to you, I suppose? Well, men
+are different." He walked toward the dressing-table and glanced at the
+little enamelled clock which had been one of her wedding-presents.
+
+"Time to dress, isn't it? Shall you mind if I leave you to dine with
+Streffy, and whoever else is coming? I'd rather like a long tramp, and
+no more talking just at present except with myself."
+
+He passed her by and walked rapidly out of the room. Susy stood
+motionless, unable to lift a detaining hand or to find a final word
+of appeal. On her disordered dressing-table Mrs. Vanderlyn's gifts
+glittered in the rosy lamp-light.
+
+Yes: men were different, as he said.
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+BUT there were necessary accommodations, there always had been; Nick in
+old times, had been the first to own it.... How they had laughed at the
+Perpendicular People, the people who went by on the other side (since
+you couldn't be a good Samaritan without stooping over and poking
+into heaps of you didn't know what)! And now Nick had suddenly become
+perpendicular....
+
+Susy, that evening, at the head of the dinner table, saw--in the breaks
+between her scudding thoughts--the nauseatingly familiar faces of the
+people she called her friends: Strefford, Fred Gillow, a giggling fool
+of a young Breckenridge, of their New York group, who had arrived that
+day, and Prince Nerone Altineri, Ursula's Prince, who, in Ursula's
+absence at a tiresome cure, had, quite simply and naturally, preferred
+to join her husband at Venice. Susy looked from one to the other of
+them, as if with newly-opened eyes, and wondered what life would be like
+with no faces but such as theirs to furnish it....
+
+Ah, Nick had become perpendicular!... After all, most people went
+through life making a given set of gestures, like dance-steps learned
+in advance. If your dancing manual told you at a given time to be
+perpendicular, you had to be, automatically--and that was Nick!
+
+"But what on earth, Susy," Gillow's puzzled voice suddenly came to her
+as from immeasurable distances, "Are you going to do in this beastly
+stifling hole for the rest of the summer?"
+
+"Ask Nick, my dear fellow," Strefford answered for her; and: "By the
+way, where is Nick--if one may ask?" young Breckenridge interposed,
+glancing up to take belated note of his host's absence.
+
+"Dining out," said Susy glibly. "People turned up: blighting bores that
+I wouldn't have dared to inflict on you." How easily the old familiar
+fibbing came to her!
+
+"The kind to whom you say, 'Now mind you look me up'; and then spend the
+rest of your life dodging-like our good Hickses," Strefford amplified.
+
+The Hickses--but, of course, Nick was with the Hickses! It went through
+Susy like a knife, and the dinner she had so lightly fibbed became a
+hateful truth. She said to herself feverishly: "I'll call him up there
+after dinner--and then he will feel silly"--but only to remember that
+the Hickses, in their mediaeval setting, had of course sternly denied
+themselves a telephone.
+
+The fact of Nick's temporary inaccessibility--since she was now
+convinced that he was really at the Hickses'--turned her distress to a
+mocking irritation. Ah, that was where he carried his principles, his
+standards, or whatever he called the new set of rules he had suddenly
+begun to apply to the old game! It was stupid of her not to have guessed
+it at once.
+
+"Oh, the Hickses--Nick adores them, you know. He's going to marry Coral
+next," she laughed out, flashing the joke around the table with all her
+practiced flippancy.
+
+"Lord!" grasped Gillow, inarticulate: while the Prince displayed the
+unsurprised smile which Susy accused him of practicing every morning
+with his Mueller exercises.
+
+Suddenly Susy felt Strefford's eyes upon her.
+
+"What's the matter with me? Too much rouge?" she asked, passing her arm
+in his as they left the table.
+
+"No: too little. Look at yourself," he answered in a low tone.
+
+"Oh, in these cadaverous old looking-glasses-everybody looks fished up
+from the canal!"
+
+She jerked away from him to spin down the long floor of the sala, hands
+on hips, whistling a rag-time tune. The Prince and young Breckenridge
+caught her up, and she spun back with the latter, while Gillow-it was
+believed to be his sole accomplishment-snapped his fingers in simulation
+of bones, and shuffled after the couple on stamping feet.
+
+Susy sank down on a sofa near the window, fanning herself with a
+floating scarf, and the men foraged for cigarettes, and rang for the
+gondoliers, who came in with trays of cooling drinks.
+
+"Well, what next--this ain't all, is it?" Gillow presently queried, from
+the divan where he lolled half-asleep with dripping brow. Fred Gillow,
+like Nature, abhorred a void, and it was inconceivable to him that every
+hour of man's rational existence should not furnish a motive for getting
+up and going somewhere else. Young Breckenridge, who took the same view,
+and the Prince, who earnestly desired to, reminded the company that
+somebody they knew was giving a dance that night at the Lido.
+
+Strefford vetoed the Lido, on the ground that he'd just come back from
+there, and proposed that they should go out on foot for a change.
+
+"Why not? What fun!" Susy was up in an instant. "Let's pay somebody a
+surprise visit--I don't know who! Streffy, Prince, can't you think of
+somebody who'd be particularly annoyed by our arrival?"
+
+"Oh, the list's too long. Let's start, and choose our victim on the
+way," Strefford suggested.
+
+Susy ran to her room for a light cloak, and without changing her
+high-heeled satin slippers went out with the four men. There was no
+moon--thank heaven there was no moon!--but the stars hung over them as
+close as fruit, and secret fragrances dropped on them from garden-walls.
+Susy's heart tightened with memories of Como.
+
+They wandered on, laughing and dawdling, and yielding to the drifting
+whims of aimless people. Presently someone proposed taking a nearer look
+at the facade of San Giorgio Maggiore, and they hailed a gondola and
+were rowed out through the bobbing lanterns and twanging guitar-strings.
+When they landed again, Gillow, always acutely bored by scenery, and
+particularly resentful of midnight aesthetics, suggested a night club
+near at hand, which was said to be jolly. The Prince warmly supported
+this proposal; but on Susy's curt refusal they started their rambling
+again, circuitously threading the vague dark lanes and making for the
+Piazza and Florian's ices. Suddenly, at a calle-corner, unfamiliar and
+yet somehow known to her, Susy paused to stare about her with a laugh.
+
+"But the Hickses--surely that's their palace? And the windows all lit
+up! They must be giving a party! Oh, do let's go up and surprise them!"
+The idea struck her as one of the drollest that she had ever originated,
+and she wondered that her companions should respond so languidly.
+
+"I can't see anything very thrilling in surprising the Hickses," Gillow
+protested, defrauded of possible excitements; and Strefford added: "It
+would surprise me more than them if I went."
+
+But Susy insisted feverishly: "You don't know. It may be awfully
+exciting! I have an idea that Coral's announcing her engagement--her
+engagement to Nick! Come, give me a hand, Streff--and you the other,
+Fred-" she began to hum the first bars of Donna Anna's entrance in Don
+Giovanni. "Pity I haven't got a black cloak and a mask...."
+
+"Oh, your face will do," said Strefford, laying his hand on her arm.
+
+She drew back, flushing crimson. Breckenridge and the Prince had sprung
+on ahead, and Gillow, lumbering after them, was already halfway up the
+stairs.
+
+"My face? My face? What's the matter with my face? Do you know any
+reason why I shouldn't go to the Hickses to-night?" Susy broke out in
+sudden wrath.
+
+"None whatever; except that if you do it will bore me to death,"
+Strefford returned, with serenity.
+
+"Oh, in that case--!"
+
+"No; come on. I hear those fools banging on the door already." He caught
+her by the hand, and they started up the stairway. But on the first
+landing she paused, twisted her hand out of his, and without a word,
+without a conscious thought, dashed down the long flight, across the
+great resounding vestibule and out into the darkness of the calle.
+
+Strefford caught up with her, and they stood a moment silent in the
+night.
+
+"Susy--what the devil's the matter?"
+
+"The matter? Can't you see? That I'm tired, that I've got a splitting
+headache--that you bore me to death, one and all of you!" She turned and
+laid a deprecating hand on his arm. "Streffy, old dear, don't mind me:
+but for God's sake find a gondola and send me home."
+
+"Alone?"
+
+"Alone."
+
+It was never any concern of Streff's if people wanted to do things he
+did not understand, and she knew that she could count on his obedience.
+They walked on in silence to the next canal, and he picked up a passing
+gondola and put her in it.
+
+"Now go and amuse yourself," she called after him, as the boat shot
+under the nearest bridge. Anything, anything, to be alone, away from the
+folly and futility that would be all she had left if Nick were to drop
+out of her life....
+
+"But perhaps he has dropped already--dropped for good," she thought as
+she set her foot on the Vanderlyn threshold.
+
+The short summer night was already growing transparent: a new born
+breeze stirred the soiled surface of the water and sent it lapping
+freshly against the old palace doorways. Nearly two o'clock! Nick had no
+doubt come back long ago. Susy hurried up the stairs, reassured by the
+mere thought of his nearness. She knew that when their eyes and their
+lips met it would be impossible for anything to keep them apart.
+
+The gondolier dozing on the landing roused himself to receive her, and
+to proffer two envelopes. The upper one was a telegram for Strefford:
+she threw it down again and paused under the lantern hanging from the
+painted vault, the other envelope in her hand. The address it bore was
+in Nick's writing. "When did the signore leave this for me? Has he gone
+out again?"
+
+Gone out again? But the signore had not come in since dinner: of that
+the gondolier was positive, as he had been on duty all the evening.
+A boy had brought the letter--an unknown boy: he had left it without
+waiting. It must have been about half an hour after the signora had
+herself gone out with her guests.
+
+Susy, hardly hearing him, fled on to her own room, and there, beside the
+very lamp which, two months before, had illuminated Ellie Vanderlyn's
+fatal letter, she opened Nick's.
+
+"Don't think me hard on you, dear; but I've got to work this thing out
+by myself. The sooner the better-don't you agree? So I'm taking the
+express to Milan presently. You'll get a proper letter in a day or two.
+I wish I could think, now, of something to say that would show you I'm
+not a brute--but I can't. N. L."
+
+There was not much of the night left in which to sleep, even had a
+semblance of sleep been achievable. The letter fell from Susy's hands,
+and she crept out onto the balcony and cowered there, her forehead
+pressed against the balustrade, the dawn wind stirring in her thin
+laces. Through her closed eyelids and the tightly-clenched fingers
+pressed against them, she felt the penetration of the growing light,
+the relentless advance of another day--a day without purpose and without
+meaning--a day without Nick. At length she dropped her hands, and
+staring from dry lids saw a rim of fire above the roofs across the Grand
+Canal. She sprang up, ran back into her room, and dragging the heavy
+curtains shut across the windows, stumbled over in the darkness to the
+lounge and fell among its pillows-face downward--groping, delving for a
+deeper night....
+
+She started up, stiff and aching, to see a golden wedge of sun on the
+floor at her feet. She had slept, then--was it possible?--it must
+be eight or nine o'clock already! She had slept--slept like a
+drunkard--with that letter on the table at her elbow! Ah, now she
+remembered--she had dreamed that the letter was a dream! But there,
+inexorably, it lay; and she picked it up, and slowly, painfully re-read
+it. Then she tore it into shreds hunted for a match, and kneeling before
+the empty hearth, as though she were accomplishing some funeral rite,
+she burnt every shred of it to ashes. Nick would thank her for that some
+day!
+
+After a bath and a hurried toilet she began to be aware of feeling
+younger and more hopeful. After all, Nick had merely said that he was
+going away for "a day or two." And the letter was not cruel: there
+were tender things in it, showing through the curt words. She smiled
+at herself a little stiffly in the glass, put a dash of red on her
+colourless lips, and rang for the maid.
+
+"Coffee, Giovanna, please; and will you tell Mr. Strefford that I should
+like to see him presently."
+
+If Nick really kept to his intention of staying away for a few days she
+must trump up some explanation of his absence; but her mind refused to
+work, and the only thing she could think of was to take Strefford into
+her confidence. She knew that he could be trusted in a real difficulty;
+his impish malice transformed itself into a resourceful ingenuity when
+his friends required it.
+
+The maid stood looking at her with a puzzled gaze, and Susy somewhat
+sharply repeated her order. "But don't wake him on purpose," she added,
+foreseeing the probable effect on Strefford's temper.
+
+"But, signora, the gentleman is already out."
+
+"Already out?" Strefford, who could hardly be routed from his bed before
+luncheon-time! "Is it so late?" Susy cried, incredulous.
+
+"After nine. And the gentleman took the eight o'clock train for England.
+Gervaso said he had received a telegram. He left word that he would
+write to the signora."
+
+The door closed upon the maid, and Susy continued to gaze at her painted
+image in the glass, as if she had been trying to outstare an importunate
+stranger. There was no one left for her to take counsel of, then--no one
+but poor Fred Gillow! She made a grimace at the idea.
+
+But what on earth could have summoned Strefford back to England?
+
+
+
+XII
+
+NICK LANSING, in the Milan express, was roused by the same bar of
+sunshine lying across his knees. He yawned, looked with disgust at his
+stolidly sleeping neighbours, and wondered why he had decided to go to
+Milan, and what on earth he should do when he got there. The difficulty
+about trenchant decisions was that the next morning they generally left
+one facing a void....
+
+When the train drew into the station at Milan, he scrambled out, got
+some coffee, and having drunk it decided to continue his journey to
+Genoa. The state of being carried passively onward postponed action and
+dulled thought; and after twelve hours of furious mental activity that
+was exactly what he wanted.
+
+He fell into a doze again, waking now and then to haggard intervals
+of more thinking, and then dropping off to the clank and rattle of the
+train. Inside his head, in his waking intervals, the same clanking and
+grinding of wheels and chains went on unremittingly. He had done all his
+lucid thinking within an hour of leaving the Palazzo Vanderlyn the
+night before; since then, his brain had simply continued to revolve
+indefatigably about the same old problem. His cup of coffee, instead of
+clearing his thoughts, had merely accelerated their pace.
+
+At Genoa he wandered about in the hot streets, bought a cheap suit-case
+and some underclothes, and then went down to the port in search of a
+little hotel he remembered there. An hour later he was sitting in the
+coffee-room, smoking and glancing vacantly over the papers while he
+waited for dinner, when he became aware of being timidly but intently
+examined by a small round-faced gentleman with eyeglasses who sat alone
+at the adjoining table.
+
+"Hullo--Buttles!" Lansing exclaimed, recognising with surprise the
+recalcitrant secretary who had resisted Miss Hicks's endeavour to
+convert him to Tiepolo.
+
+Mr. Buttles, blushing to the roots of his scant hair, half rose and
+bowed ceremoniously.
+
+Nick Lansing's first feeling was of annoyance at being disturbed in his
+solitary broodings; his next, of relief at having to postpone them even
+to converse with Mr. Buttles.
+
+"No idea you were here: is the yacht in harbour?" he asked, remembering
+that the Ibis must be just about to spread her wings.
+
+Mr. Buttles, at salute behind his chair, signed a mute negation: for the
+moment he seemed too embarrassed to speak.
+
+"Ah--you're here as an advance guard? I remember now--I saw Miss Hicks
+in Venice the day before yesterday," Lansing continued, dazed at the
+thought that hardly forty-eight hours had passed since his encounter
+with Coral in the Scalzi.
+
+Mr. Buttles, instead of speaking, had tentatively approached his table.
+"May I take this seat for a moment, Mr. Lansing? Thank you. No, I am
+not here as an advance guard--though I believe the Ibis is due some
+time to-morrow." He cleared his throat, wiped his eyeglasses on a silk
+handkerchief, replaced them on his nose, and went on solemnly: "Perhaps,
+to clear up any possible misunderstanding, I ought to say that I am no
+longer in the employ of Mr. Hicks."
+
+Lansing glanced at him sympathetically. It was clear that he suffered
+horribly in imparting this information, though his compact face did not
+lend itself to any dramatic display of emotion.
+
+"Really," Nick smiled, and then ventured: "I hope it's not owing to
+conscientious objections to Tiepolo?"
+
+Mr. Buttles's blush became a smouldering agony. "Ah, Miss Hicks
+mentioned to you... told you...? No, Mr. Lansing. I am principled
+against the effete art of Tiepolo, and of all his contemporaries, I
+confess; but if Miss Hicks chooses to surrender herself momentarily
+to the unwholesome spell of the Italian decadence it is not for me to
+protest or to criticize. Her intellectual and aesthetic range so far
+exceeds my humble capacity that it would be ridiculous, unbecoming...."
+
+He broke off, and once more wiped a faint moisture from his eyeglasses.
+It was evident that he was suffering from a distress which he longed and
+yet dreaded to communicate. But Nick made no farther effort to bridge
+the gulf of his own preoccupations; and Mr. Buttles, after an expectant
+pause, went on: "If you see me here to-day it is only because, after
+a somewhat abrupt departure, I find myself unable to take leave of
+our friends without a last look at the Ibis--the scene of so many
+stimulating hours. But I must beg you," he added earnestly, "should you
+see Miss Hicks--or any other member of the party--to make no allusion
+to my presence in Genoa. I wish," said Mr. Buttles with simplicity, "to
+preserve the strictest incognito."
+
+Lansing glanced at him kindly. "Oh, but--isn't that a little
+unfriendly?"
+
+"No other course is possible, Mr. Lansing," said the ex-secretary, "and
+I commit myself to your discretion. The truth is, if I am here it is not
+to look once more at the Ibis, but at Miss Hicks: once only. You will
+understand me, and appreciate what I am suffering."
+
+He bowed again, and trotted away on his small, tightly-booted feet;
+pausing on the threshold to say: "From the first it was hopeless,"
+before he disappeared through the glass doors.
+
+A gleam of commiseration flashed through Nick's mind: there was
+something quaintly poignant in the sight of the brisk and efficient
+Mr. Buttles reduced to a limp image of unrequited passion. And what
+a painful surprise to the Hickses to be thus suddenly deprived of the
+secretary who possessed "the foreign languages"! Mr. Beck kept the
+accounts and settled with the hotel-keepers; but it was Mr. Buttles's
+loftier task to entertain in their own tongues the unknown geniuses who
+flocked about the Hickses, and Nick could imagine how disconcerting his
+departure must be on the eve of their Grecian cruise which Mrs. Hicks
+would certainly call an Odyssey.
+
+The next moment the vision of Coral's hopeless suitor had faded, and
+Nick was once more spinning around on the wheel of his own woes.
+The night before, when he had sent his note to Susy, from a little
+restaurant close to Palazzo Vanderlyn that they often patronized, he had
+done so with the firm intention of going away for a day or two in order
+to collect his wits and think over the situation. But after his letter
+had been entrusted to the landlord's little son, who was a particular
+friend of Susy's, Nick had decided to await the lad's return. The
+messenger had not been bidden to ask for an answer; but Nick, knowing
+the friendly and inquisitive Italian mind, was almost sure that the boy,
+in the hope of catching a glimpse of Susy, would linger about while the
+letter was carried up. And he pictured the maid knocking at his wife's
+darkened room, and Susy dashing some powder on her tear-stained face
+before she turned on the light--poor foolish child!
+
+The boy had returned rather sooner than Nick expected, and he had
+brought no answer, but merely the statement that the signora was out:
+that everybody was out.
+
+"Everybody?"
+
+"The signora and the four gentlemen who were dining at the palace. They
+all went out together on foot soon after dinner. There was no one to
+whom I could give the note but the gondolier on the landing, for the
+signora had said she would be very late, and had sent the maid to bed;
+and the maid had, of course, gone out immediately with her innamorato."
+
+"Ah--" said Nick, slipping his reward into the boy's hand, and walking
+out of the restaurant.
+
+Susy had gone out--gone out with their usual band, as she did every
+night in these sultry summer weeks, gone out after her talk with Nick,
+as if nothing had happened, as if his whole world and hers had not
+crashed in ruins at their feet. Ah, poor Susy! After all, she had merely
+obeyed the instinct of self preservation, the old hard habit of keeping
+up, going ahead and hiding her troubles; unless indeed the habit had
+already engendered indifference, and it had become as easy for her as
+for most of her friends to pass from drama to dancing, from sorrow to
+the cinema. What of soul was left, he wondered--?
+
+His train did not start till midnight, and after leaving the restaurant
+Nick tramped the sultry by-ways till his tired legs brought him to a
+standstill under the vine-covered pergola of a gondolier's wine-shop at
+a landing close to the Piazzetta. There he could absorb cooling drinks
+until it was time to go to the station.
+
+It was after eleven, and he was beginning to look about for a boat, when
+a black prow pushed up to the steps, and with much chaff and laughter a
+party of young people in evening dress jumped out. Nick, from under the
+darkness of the vine, saw that there was only one lady among them, and
+it did not need the lamp above the landing to reveal her identity. Susy,
+bareheaded and laughing, a light scarf slipping from her bare shoulders,
+a cigarette between her fingers, took Strefford's arm and turned in the
+direction of Florian's, with Gillow, the Prince and young Breckenridge
+in her wake....
+
+Nick had relived this rapid scene hundreds of times during his hours
+in the train and his aimless trampings through the streets of Genoa. In
+that squirrel-wheel of a world of his and Susy's you had to keep going
+or drop out--and Susy, it was evident, had chosen to keep going. Under
+the lamp-flare on the landing he had had a good look at her face, and
+had seen that the mask of paint and powder was carefully enough adjusted
+to hide any ravages the scene between them might have left. He even
+fancied that she had dropped a little atropine into her eyes....
+
+There was no time to spare if he meant to catch the midnight train, and
+no gondola in sight but that which his wife had just left. He sprang
+into it, and bade the gondolier carry him to the station. The cushions,
+as he leaned back, gave out a breath of her scent; and in the glare of
+electric light at the station he saw at his feet a rose which had fallen
+from her dress. He ground his heel into it as he got out.
+
+There it was, then; that was the last picture he was to have of her. For
+he knew now that he was not going back; at least not to take up their
+life together. He supposed he should have to see her once, to talk
+things over, settle something for their future. He had been sincere in
+saying that he bore her no ill-will; only he could never go back into
+that slough again. If he did, he knew he would inevitably be drawn
+under, slipping downward from concession to concession....
+
+The noises of a hot summer night in the port of Genoa would have kept
+the most care-free from slumber; but though Nick lay awake he did
+not notice them, for the tumult in his brain was more deafening. Dawn
+brought a negative relief, and out of sheer weariness he dropped into a
+heavy sleep. When he woke it was nearly noon, and from his window he saw
+the well-known outline of the Ibis standing up dark against the glitter
+of the harbour. He had no fear of meeting her owners, who had doubtless
+long since landed and betaken themselves to cooler and more fashionable
+regions: oddly enough, the fact seemed to accentuate his loneliness, his
+sense of having no one on earth to turn to. He dressed, and wandered out
+disconsolately to pick up a cup of coffee in some shady corner.
+
+As he drank his coffee his thoughts gradually cleared. It became
+obvious to him that he had behaved like a madman or a petulant child--he
+preferred to think it was like a madman. If he and Susy were to separate
+there was no reason why it should not be done decently and quietly, as
+such transactions were habitually managed among people of their kind.
+It seemed grotesque to introduce melodrama into their little world
+of unruffled Sybarites, and he felt inclined, now, to smile at the
+incongruity of his gesture.... But suddenly his eyes filled with tears.
+The future without Susy was unbearable, inconceivable. Why, after all,
+should they separate? At the question, her soft face seemed close
+to his, and that slight lift of the upper lip that made her smile so
+exquisite. Well-he would go back. But not with any presence of going to
+talk things over, come to an agreement, wind up their joint life like
+a business association. No--if he went back he would go without
+conditions, for good, forever....
+
+Only, what about the future? What about the not far-distant day when
+the wedding cheques would have been spent, and Granny's pearls sold,
+and nothing left except unconcealed and unconditional dependence on rich
+friends, the role of the acknowledged hangers-on? Was there no other
+possible solution, no new way of ordering their lives? No--there
+was none: he could not picture Susy out of her setting of luxury and
+leisure, could not picture either of them living such a life as the Nat
+Fulmers, for instance! He remembered the shabby untidy bungalow in
+New Hampshire, the slatternly servants, uneatable food and ubiquitous
+children. How could he ask Susy to share such a life with him? If he
+did, she would probably have the sense to refuse. Their alliance had
+been based on a moment's midsummer madness; now the score must be
+paid....
+
+He decided to write. If they were to part he could not trust himself to
+see her. He called a waiter, asked for pen and paper, and pushed aside
+a pile of unread newspapers on the corner of the table where his coffee
+had been served. As he did so, his eye lit on a Daily Mail of two days
+before. As a pretext for postponing his letter, he took up the paper and
+glanced down the first page. He read:
+
+"Tragic Yachting Accident in the Solent. The Earl of Altringham and
+his son Viscount d'Amblay drowned in midnight collision. Both bodies
+recovered."
+
+He read on. He grasped the fact that the disaster had happened the
+night before he had left Venice and that, as the result of a fog in
+the Solent, their old friend Strefford was now Earl of Altringham, and
+possessor of one of the largest private fortunes in England. It was
+vertiginous to think of their old impecunious Streff as the hero of such
+an adventure. And what irony in that double turn of the wheel which, in
+one day, had plunged him, Nick Lansing, into nethermost misery, while it
+tossed the other to the stars!
+
+With an intenser precision he saw again Susy's descent from the gondola
+at the calle steps, the sound of her laughter and of Strefford's chaff,
+the way she had caught his arm and clung to it, sweeping the other men
+on in her train. Strefford--Susy and Strefford!... More than once, Nick
+had noticed the softer inflections of his friend's voice when he spoke
+to Susy, the brooding look in his lazy eyes when they rested on her. In
+the security of his wedded bliss Nick had made light of those signs. The
+only real jealousy he had felt had been of Fred Gillow, because of his
+unlimited power to satisfy a woman's whims. Yet Nick knew that such
+material advantages would never again suffice for Susy. With Strefford
+it was different. She had delighted in his society while he was
+notoriously ineligible; might not she find him irresistible now?
+
+The forgotten terms of their bridal compact came back to Nick: the
+absurd agreement on which he and Susy had solemnly pledged their faith.
+But was it so absurd, after all? It had been Susy's suggestion (not his,
+thank God!); and perhaps in making it she had been more serious than he
+imagined. Perhaps, even if their rupture had not occurred, Strefford's
+sudden honours might have caused her to ask for her freedom....
+
+Money, luxury, fashion, pleasure: those were the four cornerstones
+of her existence. He had always known it--she herself had always
+acknowledged it, even in their last dreadful talk together; and once he
+had gloried in her frankness. How could he ever have imagined that, to
+have her fill of these things, she would not in time stoop lower than
+she had yet stooped? Perhaps in giving her up to Strefford he might be
+saving her. At any rate, the taste of the past was now so bitter to him
+that he was moved to thank whatever gods there were for pushing that
+mortuary paragraph under his eye....
+
+"Susy, dear [he wrote], the fates seem to have taken our future in hand,
+and spared us the trouble of unravelling it. If I have sometimes been
+selfish enough to forget the conditions on which you agreed to marry
+me, they have come back to me during these two days of solitude. You've
+given me the best a man can have, and nothing else will ever be worth
+much to me. But since I haven't the ability to provide you with what you
+want, I recognize that I've no right to stand in your way. We must owe
+no more Venetian palaces to underhand services. I see by the newspapers
+that Streff can now give you as many palaces as you want. Let him have
+the chance--I fancy he'll jump at it, and he's the best man in sight. I
+wish I were in his shoes.
+
+"I'll write again in a day or two, when I've collected my wits, and can
+give you an address. NICK."
+
+He added a line on the subject of their modest funds, put the letter
+into an envelope, and addressed it to Mrs. Nicholas Lansing. As he did
+so, he reflected that it was the first time he had ever written his
+wife's married name.
+
+"Well--by God, no other woman shall have it after her," he vowed, as he
+groped in his pocketbook for a stamp.
+
+He stood up with a stretch of weariness--the heat was stifling!--and put
+the letter in his pocket.
+
+"I'll post it myself, it's safer," he thought; "and then what in the
+name of goodness shall I do next, I wonder?" He jammed his hat down on
+his head and walked out into the sun-blaze.
+
+As he was turning away from the square by the general Post Office, a
+white parasol waved from a passing cab, and Coral Hicks leaned forward
+with outstretched hand. "I knew I'd find you," she triumphed. "I've
+been driving up and down in this broiling sun for hours, shopping and
+watching for you at the same time."
+
+He stared at her blankly, too bewildered even to wonder how she knew he
+was in Genoa; and she continued, with the kind of shy imperiousness that
+always made him feel, in her presence, like a member of an orchestra
+under a masterful baton; "Now please get right into this carriage, and
+don't keep me roasting here another minute." To the cabdriver she called
+out: "Al porto."
+
+Nick Lansing sank down beside her. As he did so he noticed a heap of
+bundles at her feet, and felt that he had simply added one more to the
+number. He supposed that she was taking her spoils to the Ibis, and
+that he would be carried up to the deck-house to be displayed with the
+others. Well, it would all help to pass the day--and by night he would
+have reached some kind of a decision about his future.
+
+On the third day after Nick's departure the post brought to the Palazzo
+Vanderlyn three letters for Mrs. Lansing.
+
+The first to arrive was a word from Strefford, scribbled in the train
+and posted at Turin. In it he briefly said that he had been called home
+by the dreadful accident of which Susy had probably read in the daily
+papers. He added that he would write again from England, and then--in
+a blotted postscript--: "I wanted uncommonly badly to see you for
+good-bye, but the hour was impossible. Regards to Nick. Do write me just
+a word to Altringham."
+
+The other two letters, which came together in the afternoon, were both
+from Genoa. Susy scanned the addresses and fell upon the one in her
+husband's writing. Her hand trembled so much that for a moment she could
+not open the envelope. When she had done so, she devoured the letter in
+a flash, and then sat and brooded over the outspread page as it lay on
+her knee. It might mean so many things--she could read into it so
+many harrowing alternatives of indifference and despair, of irony and
+tenderness! Was he suffering tortures when he wrote it, or seeking
+only to inflict them upon her? Or did the words represent his actual
+feelings, no more and no less, and did he really intend her to
+understand that he considered it his duty to abide by the letter of
+their preposterous compact? He had left her in wrath and indignation,
+yet, as a closer scrutiny revealed, there was not a word of reproach in
+his brief lines. Perhaps that was why, in the last issue, they seemed so
+cold to her.... She shivered and turned to the other envelope.
+
+The large stilted characters, though half-familiar, called up no
+definite image. She opened the envelope and discovered a post-card of
+the Ibis, canvas spread, bounding over a rippled sea. On the back was
+written:
+
+"So awfully dear of you to lend us Mr. Lansing for a little cruise. You
+may count on our taking the best of care of him.
+
+"CORAL"
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+XIII
+
+WHEN Violet Melrose had said to Susy Branch, the winter before in New
+York: "But why on earth don't you and Nick go to my little place at
+Versailles for the honeymoon? I'm off to China, and you could have it to
+yourselves all summer," the offer had been tempting enough to make the
+lovers waver.
+
+It was such an artless ingenuous little house, so full of the
+demoralizing simplicity of great wealth, that it seemed to Susy just the
+kind of place in which to take the first steps in renunciation. But Nick
+had objected that Paris, at that time of year, would be swarming with
+acquaintances who would hunt them down at all hours; and Susy's own
+experience had led her to remark that there was nothing the very rich
+enjoyed more than taking pot-luck with the very poor. They therefore
+gave Strefford's villa the preference, with an inward proviso (on Susy's
+part) that Violet's house might very conveniently serve their purpose at
+another season.
+
+These thoughts were in her mind as she drove up to Mrs. Melrose's door
+on a rainy afternoon late in August, her boxes piled high on the roof of
+the cab she had taken at the station. She had travelled straight through
+from Venice, stopping in Milan just long enough to pick up a reply
+to the telegram she had despatched to the perfect housekeeper whose
+permanent presence enabled Mrs. Melrose to say: "Oh, when I'm sick
+of everything I just rush off without warning to my little shanty at
+Versailles, and live there all alone on scrambled eggs."
+
+The perfect house-keeper had replied to Susy's enquiry: "Am sure Mrs.
+Melrose most happy"; and Susy, without further thought, had jumped
+into a Versailles train, and now stood in the thin rain before the
+sphinx-guarded threshold of the pavilion.
+
+The revolving year had brought around the season at which Mrs. Melrose's
+house might be convenient: no visitors were to be feared at Versailles
+at the end of August, and though Susy's reasons for seeking solitude
+were so remote from those she had once prefigured, they were none the
+less cogent. To be alone--alone! After those first exposed days when,
+in the persistent presence of Fred Gillow and his satellites, and in the
+mocking radiance of late summer on the lagoons, she had fumed and turned
+about in her agony like a trapped animal in a cramping cage, to be alone
+had seemed the only respite, the one craving: to be alone somewhere in a
+setting as unlike as possible to the sensual splendours of Venice, under
+skies as unlike its azure roof. If she could have chosen she would have
+crawled away into a dingy inn in a rainy northern town, where she had
+never been and no one knew her. Failing that unobtainable luxury, here
+she was on the threshold of an empty house, in a deserted place, under
+lowering skies. She had shaken off Fred Gillow, sulkily departing for
+his moor (where she had half-promised to join him in September); the
+Prince, young Breckenridge, and the few remaining survivors of the
+Venetian group, had dispersed in the direction of the Engadine or
+Biarritz; and now she could at least collect her wits, take stock of
+herself, and prepare the countenance with which she was to face the next
+stage in her career. Thank God it was raining at Versailles!
+
+The door opened, she heard voices in the drawing-room, and a slender
+languishing figure appeared on the threshold.
+
+"Darling!" Violet Melrose cried in an embrace, drawing her into the
+dusky perfumed room.
+
+"But I thought you were in China!" Susy stammered.
+
+"In China... in China," Mrs. Melrose stared with dreamy eyes, and Susy
+remembered her drifting disorganised life, a life more planless, more
+inexplicable than that of any of the other ephemeral beings blown about
+upon the same winds of pleasure.
+
+"Well, Madam, I thought so myself till I got a wire from Mrs. Melrose
+last evening," remarked the perfect house-keeper, following with Susy's
+handbag.
+
+Mrs. Melrose clutched her cavernous temples in her attenuated hands. "Of
+course, of course! I had meant to go to China--no, India.... But I've
+discovered a genius... and Genius, you know...." Unable to complete
+her thought, she sank down upon a pillowy divan, stretched out an arm,
+cried: "Fulmer! Fulmer!" and, while Susy Lansing stood in the middle
+of the room with widening eyes, a man emerged from the more deeply
+cushioned and scented twilight of some inner apartment, and she saw with
+surprise Nat Fulmer, the good Nat Fulmer of the New Hampshire bungalow
+and the ubiquitous progeny, standing before her in lordly ease, his
+hands in his pockets, a cigarette between his lips, his feet solidly
+planted in the insidious depths of one of Violet Melrose's white leopard
+skins.
+
+"Susy!" he shouted with open arms; and Mrs. Melrose murmured: "You
+didn't know, then? You hadn't heard of his masterpieces?"
+
+In spite of herself, Susy burst into a laugh. "Is Nat your genius?"
+
+Mrs. Melrose looked at her reproachfully.
+
+Fulmer laughed. "No; I'm Grace's. But Mrs. Melrose has been our
+Providence, and...."
+
+"Providence?" his hostess interrupted. "Don't talk as if you were at
+a prayer-meeting! He had an exhibition in New York... it was the most
+fabulous success. He's come abroad to make studies for the decoration of
+my music-room in New York. Ursula Gillow has given him her garden-house
+at Roslyn to do. And Mrs. Bockheimer's ball-room--oh, Fulmer, where are
+the cartoons?" She sprang up, tossed about some fashion-papers heaped on
+a lacquer table, and sank back exhausted by the effort. "I'd got as far
+as Brindisi. I've travelled day and night to be here to meet him," she
+declared. "But, you darling," and she held out a caressing hand to Susy,
+"I'm forgetting to ask if you've had tea?"
+
+An hour later, over the tea-table, Susy already felt herself
+mysteriously reabsorbed into what had so long been her native element.
+Ellie Vanderlyn had brought a breath of it to Venice; but Susy was then
+nourished on another air, the air of Nick's presence and personality;
+now that she was abandoned, left again to her own devices, she felt
+herself suddenly at the mercy of the influences from which she thought
+she had escaped.
+
+In the queer social whirligig from which she had so lately fled, it
+seemed natural enough that a shake of the box should have tossed Nat
+Fulmer into celebrity, and sent Violet Melrose chasing back from the
+ends of the earth to bask in his success. Susy knew that Mrs. Melrose
+belonged to the class of moral parasites; for in that strange world the
+parts were sometimes reversed, and the wealthy preyed upon the pauper.
+Wherever there was a reputation to batten on, there poor Violet
+appeared, a harmless vampire in pearls who sought only to feed on the
+notoriety which all her millions could not create for her. Any one less
+versed than Susy in the shallow mysteries of her little world would have
+seen in Violet Melrose a baleful enchantress, in Nat Fulmer her helpless
+victim. Susy knew better. Violet, poor Violet, was not even that. The
+insignificant Ellie Vanderlyn, with her brief trivial passions, her
+artless mixture of amorous and social interests, was a woman with
+a purpose, a creature who fulfilled herself; but Violet was only a
+drifting interrogation.
+
+And what of Fulmer? Mustering with new eyes his short sturdily-built
+figure, his nondescript bearded face, and the eyes that dreamed and
+wandered, and then suddenly sank into you like claws, Susy seemed to
+have found the key to all his years of dogged toil, his indifference
+to neglect, indifference to poverty, indifference to the needs of
+his growing family.... Yes: for the first time she saw that he looked
+commonplace enough to be a genius--was a genius, perhaps, even though
+it was Violet Melrose who affirmed it! Susy looked steadily at Fulmer,
+their eyes met, and he smiled at her faintly through his beard.
+
+"Yes, I did discover him--I did," Mrs. Melrose was insisting, from the
+depths of the black velvet divan in which she lay sunk like a wan Nereid
+in a midnight sea. "You mustn't believe a word that Ursula Gillow tells
+you about having pounced on his 'Spring Snow Storm' in a dark corner of
+the American Artists' exhibition--skied, if you please! They skied him
+less than a year ago! And naturally Ursula never in her life looked
+higher than the first line at a picture-show. And now she actually
+pretends... oh, for pity's sake don't say it doesn't matter, Fulmer!
+Your saying that just encourages her, and makes people think she
+did. When, in reality, any one who saw me at the exhibition on
+varnishing-day.... Who? Well, Eddy Breckenridge, for instance. He was
+in Egypt, you say? Perhaps he was! As if one could remember the people
+about one, when suddenly one comes upon a great work of art, as St.
+Paul did--didn't he?--and the scales fell from his eyes. Well... that's
+exactly what happened to me that day... and Ursula, everybody knows, was
+down at Roslyn at the time, and didn't come up for the opening of the
+exhibition at all. And Fulmer sits there and laughs, and says it
+doesn't matter, and that he'll paint another picture any day for me to
+discover!"
+
+Susy had rung the door-bell with a hand trembling with
+eagerness--eagerness to be alone, to be quiet, to stare her situation in
+the face, and collect herself before she came out again among her kind.
+She had stood on the door-step, cowering among her bags, counting the
+instants till a step sounded and the door-knob turned, letting her in
+from the searching glare of the outer world.... And now she had sat for
+an hour in Violet's drawing-room, in the very house where her honey-moon
+might have been spent; and no one had asked her where she had come from,
+or why she was alone, or what was the key to the tragedy written on her
+shrinking face....
+
+That was the way of the world they lived in. Nobody questioned, nobody
+wondered any more-because nobody had time to remember. The old risk of
+prying curiosity, of malicious gossip, was virtually over: one was left
+with one's drama, one's disaster, on one's hands, because there was
+nobody to stop and notice the little shrouded object one was carrying.
+As Susy watched the two people before her, each so frankly unaffected
+by her presence, Violet Melrose so engrossed in her feverish pursuit of
+notoriety, Fulmer so plunged in the golden sea of his success, she felt
+like a ghost making inaudible and imperceptible appeals to the grosser
+senses of the living.
+
+"If I wanted to be alone," she thought, "I'm alone enough, in all
+conscience." There was a deathly chill in such security. She turned to
+Fulmer.
+
+"And Grace?"
+
+He beamed back without sign of embarrassment. "Oh, she's here,
+naturally--we're in Paris, kids and all. In a pension, where we can
+polish up the lingo. But I hardly ever lay eyes on her, because she's
+as deep in music as I am in paint; it was as big a chance for her as for
+me, you see, and she's making the most of it, fiddling and listening to
+the fiddlers. Well, it's a considerable change from New Hampshire." He
+looked at her dreamily, as if making an intense effort to detach himself
+from his dream, and situate her in the fading past. "Remember the
+bungalow? And Nick--ah, how's Nick?" he brought out triumphantly.
+
+"Oh, yes--darling Nick?" Mrs. Melrose chimed in; and Susy, her head
+erect, her cheeks aflame, declared with resonance: "Most awfully
+well--splendidly!"
+
+"He's not here, though?" from Fulmer.
+
+"No. He's off travelling--cruising."
+
+Mrs. Melrose's attention was faintly roused. "With anybody interesting?"
+
+"No; you wouldn't know them. People we met...." She did not have to
+continue, for her hostess's gaze had again strayed.
+
+"And you've come for your clothes, I suppose, darling? Don't listen
+to people who say that skirts are to be wider. I've discovered a new
+woman--a Genius--and she absolutely swathes you.... Her name's my
+secret; but we'll go to her together."
+
+Susy rose from her engulphing armchair. "Do you mind if I go up to my
+room? I'm rather tired--coming straight through."
+
+"Of course, dear. I think there are some people coming to dinner... Mrs.
+Match will tell you. She has such a memory.... Fulmer, where on earth
+are those cartoons of the music-room?"
+
+Their voices pursued Susy upstairs, as, in Mrs. Match's perpendicular
+wake, she mounted to the white-panelled room with its gay linen hangings
+and the low bed heaped with more cushions.
+
+"If we'd come here," she thought, "everything might have been
+different." And she shuddered at the sumptuous memories of the Palazzo
+Vanderlyn, and the great painted bedroom where she had met her doom.
+
+Mrs. Match, hoping she would find everything, and mentioning that dinner
+was not till nine, shut her softly in among her terrors.
+
+"Find everything?" Susy echoed the phrase. Oh, yes, she would always
+find everything: every time the door shut on her now, and the sound of
+voices ceased, her memories would be there waiting for her, every one
+of them, waiting quietly, patiently, obstinately, like poor people in a
+doctor's office, the people who are always last to be attended to,
+but whom nothing will discourage or drive away, people to whom time is
+nothing, fatigue nothing, hunger nothing, other engagements nothing: who
+just wait.... Thank heaven, after all, that she had not found the
+house empty, if, whenever she returned to her room, she was to meet her
+memories there!
+
+It was just a week since Nick had left her. During that week, crammed
+with people, questions, packing, explaining, evading, she had believed
+that in solitude lay her salvation. Now she understood that there was
+nothing she was so unprepared for, so unfitted for. When, in all her
+life, had she ever been alone? And how was she to bear it now, with all
+these ravening memories besetting her!
+
+Dinner not till nine? What on earth was she to do till nine o'clock? She
+knelt before her boxes, and feverishly began to unpack.
+
+Gradually, imperceptibly, the subtle influences of her old life were
+stealing into her. As she pulled out her tossed and crumpled dresses she
+remembered Violet's emphatic warning: "Don't believe the people who tell
+you that skirts are going to be wider." Were hers, perhaps, too wide
+as it was? She looked at her limp raiment, piling itself up on bed and
+sofa, and understood that, according to Violet's standards, and that
+of all her set, those dresses, which Nick had thought so original and
+exquisite, were already commonplace and dowdy, fit only to be passed on
+to poor relations or given to one's maid. And Susy would have to go on
+wearing them till they fell to bits-or else.... Well, or else begin the
+old life again in some new form....
+
+She laughed aloud at the turn of her thoughts. Dresses? How little they
+had mattered a few short weeks ago! And now, perhaps, they would again
+be one of the foremost considerations in her life. How could it be
+otherwise, if she were to return again to her old dependence on Ellie
+Vanderlyn, Ursula Gillow, Violet Melrose? And beyond that, only the
+Bockheimers and their kind awaited her....
+
+A knock on the door--what a relief! It was Mrs. Match again, with a
+telegram. To whom had Susy given her new address? With a throbbing heart
+she tore open the envelope and read:
+
+"Shall be in Paris Friday for twenty-four hours where can I see you
+write Nouveau Luxe."
+
+Ah, yes--she remembered now: she had written to Strefford! And this was
+his answer: he was coming. She dropped into a chair, and tried to think.
+What on earth had she said in her letter? It had been mainly, of course,
+one of condolence; but now she remembered having added, in a precipitate
+postscript: "I can't give your message to Nick, for he's gone off with
+the Hickses-I don't know where, or for how long. It's all right, of
+course: it was in our bargain."
+
+She had not meant to put in that last phrase; but as she sealed her
+letter to Strefford her eye had fallen on Nick's missive, which lay
+beside it. Nothing in her husband's brief lines had embittered her as
+much as the allusion to Strefford. It seemed to imply that Nick's own
+plans were made, that his own future was secure, and that he could
+therefore freely and handsomely take thought for hers, and give her a
+pointer in the right direction. Sudden rage had possessed her at the
+thought: where she had at first read jealousy she now saw only a cold
+providence, and in a blur of tears she had scrawled her postscript to
+Strefford. She remembered that she had not even asked him to keep her
+secret. Well--after all, what would it matter if people should already
+know that Nick had left her? Their parting could not long remain a
+mystery, and the fact that it was known might help her to keep up a
+presence of indifference.
+
+"It was in the bargain--in the bargain," rang through her brain as she
+re-read Strefford's telegram. She understood that he had snatched the
+time for this hasty trip solely in the hope of seeing her, and her eyes
+filled. The more bitterly she thought of Nick the more this proof of
+Strefford's friendship moved her.
+
+The clock, to her relief, reminded her that it was time to dress for
+dinner. She would go down presently, chat with Violet and Fulmer, and
+with Violet's other guests, who would probably be odd and amusing, and
+too much out of her world to embarrass her by awkward questions. She
+would sit at a softly-lit table, breathe delicate scents, eat exquisite
+food (trust Mrs. Match!), and be gradually drawn again under the spell
+of her old associations. Anything, anything but to be alone....
+
+She dressed with even more than her habitual care, reddened her lips
+attentively, brushed the faintest bloom of pink over her drawn cheeks,
+and went down--to meet Mrs. Match coming up with a tray.
+
+"Oh, Madam, I thought you were too tired.... I was bringing it up to you
+myself--just a little morsel of chicken."
+
+Susy, glancing past her, saw, through the open door, that the lamps were
+not lit in the drawing-room.
+
+"Oh, no, I'm not tired, thank you. I thought Mrs. Melrose expected
+friends at dinner!"
+
+"Friends at dinner-to-night?" Mrs. Match heaved a despairing sigh.
+Sometimes, the sigh seemed to say, her mistress put too great a strain
+upon her. "Why, Mrs. Melrose and Mr. Fulmer were engaged to dine in
+Paris. They left an hour ago. Mrs. Melrose told me she'd told you," the
+house-keeper wailed.
+
+Susy kept her little fixed smile. "I must have misunderstood. In that
+case... well, yes, if it's no trouble, I believe I will have my tray
+upstairs."
+
+Slowly she turned, and followed the housekeeper up into the dread
+solitude she had just left.
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+THE next day a lot of people turned up unannounced for luncheon. They
+were not of the far-fetched and the exotic, in whom Mrs. Melrose now
+specialized, but merely commonplace fashionable people belonging to
+Susy's own group, people familiar with the amusing romance of her
+penniless marriage, and to whom she had to explain (though none of them
+really listened to the explanation) that Nick was not with her just
+now but had gone off cruising... cruising in the AEgean with friends...
+getting up material for his book (this detail had occurred to her in the
+night).
+
+It was the kind of encounter she had most dreaded; but it proved, after
+all, easy enough to go through compared with those endless hours of
+turning to and fro, the night before, in the cage of her lonely room.
+Anything, anything, but to be alone....
+
+Gradually, from the force of habit, she found herself actually in tune
+with the talk of the luncheon table, interested in the references to
+absent friends, the light allusions to last year's loves and quarrels,
+scandals and absurdities. The women, in their pale summer dresses,
+were so graceful, indolent and sure of themselves, the men so easy and
+good-humoured! Perhaps, after all, Susy reflected, it was the world she
+was meant for, since the other, the brief Paradise of her dreams, had
+already shut its golden doors upon her. And then, as they sat on the
+terrace after luncheon, looking across at the yellow tree-tops of the
+park, one of the women said something--made just an allusion--that Susy
+would have let pass unnoticed in the old days, but that now filled her
+with a sudden deep disgust.... She stood up and wandered away, away from
+them all through the fading garden.
+
+Two days later Susy and Strefford sat on the terrace of the Tuileries
+above the Seine. She had asked him to meet her there, with the desire to
+avoid the crowded halls and drawing-room of the Nouveau Luxe where, even
+at that supposedly "dead" season, people one knew were always
+drifting to and fro; and they sat on a bench in the pale sunlight,
+the discoloured leaves heaped at their feet, and no one to share their
+solitude but a lame working-man and a haggard woman who were lunching
+together mournfully at the other end of the majestic vista.
+
+Strefford, in his new mourning, looked unnaturally prosperous and
+well-valeted; but his ugly untidy features remained as undisciplined,
+his smile as whimsical, as of old. He had been on cool though friendly
+terms with the pompous uncle and the poor sickly cousin whose joint
+disappearance had so abruptly transformed his future; and it was his
+way to understate his feelings rather than to pretend more than he
+felt. Nevertheless, beneath his habitual bantering tone Susy discerned
+a change. The disaster had shocked him profoundly; already, in his brief
+sojourn among his people and among the great possessions so tragically
+acquired, old instincts had awakened, forgotten associations had spoken
+in him. Susy listened to him wistfully, silenced by her imaginative
+perception of the distance that these things had put between them.
+
+"It was horrible... seeing them both there together, laid out in that
+hideous Pugin chapel at Altringham... the poor boy especially. I
+suppose that's really what's cutting me up now," he murmured, almost
+apologetically.
+
+"Oh, it's more than that--more than you know," she insisted; but he
+jerked back: "Now, my dear, don't be edifying, please," and fumbled for
+a cigarette in the pocket which was already beginning to bulge with his
+miscellaneous properties.
+
+"And now about you--for that's what I came for," he continued, turning
+to her with one of his sudden movements. "I couldn't make head or tail
+of your letter."
+
+She paused a moment to steady her voice. "Couldn't you? I suppose you'd
+forgotten my bargain with Nick. He hadn't-and he's asked me to fulfil
+it."
+
+Strefford stared. "What--that nonsense about your setting each other
+free if either of you had the chance to make a good match?"
+
+She signed "Yes."
+
+"And he's actually asked you--?"
+
+"Well: practically. He's gone off with the Hickses. Before going he
+wrote me that we'd better both consider ourselves free. And Coral sent
+me a postcard to say that she would take the best of care of him."
+
+Strefford mused, his eyes upon his cigarette. "But what the deuce led up
+to all this? It can't have happened like that, out of a clear sky."
+
+Susy flushed, hesitated, looked away. She had meant to tell Strefford
+the whole story; it had been one of her chief reasons for wishing to see
+him again, and half-unconsciously, perhaps, she had hoped, in his laxer
+atmosphere, to recover something of her shattered self-esteem. But now
+she suddenly felt the impossibility of confessing to anyone the depths
+to which Nick's wife had stooped. She fancied that her companion guessed
+the nature of her hesitation.
+
+"Don't tell me anything you don't want to, you know, my dear."
+
+"No; I do want to; only it's difficult. You see--we had so very little
+money...."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"And Nick--who was thinking of his book, and of all sorts of big things,
+fine things--didn't realise... left it all to me... to manage...."
+
+She stumbled over the word, remembering how Nick had always winced
+at it. But Strefford did not seem to notice her, and she hurried on,
+unfolding in short awkward sentences the avowal of their pecuniary
+difficulties, and of Nick's inability to understand that, to keep
+on with the kind of life they were leading, one had to put up with
+things... accept favours....
+
+"Borrow money, you mean?"
+
+"Well--yes; and all the rest." No--decidedly she could not reveal
+to Strefford the episode of Ellie's letters. "Nick suddenly felt, I
+suppose, that he couldn't stand it," she continued; "and instead of
+asking me to try--to try to live differently, go off somewhere with him
+and live, like work-people, in two rooms, without a servant, as I was
+ready to do; well, instead he wrote me that it had all been a mistake
+from the beginning, that we couldn't keep it up, and had better
+recognize the fact; and he went off on the Hickses' yacht. The last
+evening that you were in Venice--the day he didn't come back to
+dinner--he had gone off to Genoa to meet them. I suppose he intends to
+marry Coral."
+
+Strefford received this in silence. "Well--it was your bargain, wasn't
+it?" he said at length.
+
+"Yes; but--"
+
+"Exactly: I always told you so. You weren't ready to have him go
+yet--that's all."
+
+She flushed to the forehead. "Oh, Streff--is it really all?"
+
+"A question of time? If you doubt it, I'd like to see you try, for a
+while, in those two rooms without a servant; and then let me hear from
+you. Why, my dear, it's only a question of time in a palace, with
+a steam yacht lying off the door-step, and a flock of motors in the
+garage; look around you and see. And did you ever imagine that you and
+Nick, of all people, were going to escape the common doom, and survive
+like Mr. and Mrs. Tithonus, while all about you the eternal passions
+were crumbling to pieces, and your native Divorce-states piling up their
+revenues?"
+
+She sat with bent head, the weight of the long years to come pressing
+like a leaden load on her shoulders.
+
+"But I'm so young... life's so long. What does last, then?"
+
+"Ah, you're too young to believe me, if I were to tell you; though
+you're intelligent enough to understand."
+
+"What does, then?"
+
+"Why, the hold of the things we all think we could do without.
+Habits--they outstand the Pyramids. Comforts, luxuries, the atmosphere
+of ease... above all, the power to get away from dulness and monotony,
+from constraints and uglinesses. You chose that power, instinctively,
+before you were even grown up; and so did Nick. And the only difference
+between you is that he's had the sense to see sooner than you that those
+are the things that last, the prime necessities."
+
+"I don't believe it!"
+
+"Of course you don't: at your age one doesn't reason one's materialism.
+And besides you're mortally hurt that Nick has found out sooner than
+you, and hasn't disguised his discovery under any hypocritical phrases."
+
+"But surely there are people--"
+
+"Yes--saints and geniuses and heroes: all the fanatics! To which of
+their categories do you suppose we soft people belong? And the heroes
+and the geniuses--haven't they their enormous frailties and their giant
+appetites? And how should we escape being the victims of our little
+ones?"
+
+She sat for a while without speaking. "But, Streff, how can you say such
+things, when I know you care: care for me, for instance!"
+
+"Care?" He put his hand on hers. "But, my dear, it's just the
+fugitiveness of mortal caring that makes it so exquisite! It's because
+we know we can't hold fast to it, or to each other, or to anything...."
+
+"Yes... yes... but hush, please! Oh, don't say it!" She stood up, the
+tears in her throat, and he rose also.
+
+"Come along, then; where do we lunch?" he said with a smile, slipping
+his hand through her arm.
+
+"Oh, I don't know. Nowhere. I think I'm going back to Versailles."
+
+"Because I've disgusted you so deeply? Just my luck--when I came over to
+ask you to marry me!"
+
+She laughed, but he had become suddenly grave. "Upon my soul, I did."
+
+"Dear Streff! As if--now--"
+
+"Oh, not now--I know. I'm aware that even with your accelerated divorce
+methods--"
+
+"It's not that. I told you it was no use, Streff--I told you long ago,
+in Venice."
+
+He shrugged ironically. "It's not Streff who's asking you now. Streff
+was not a marrying man: he was only trifling with you. The present offer
+comes from an elderly peer of independent means. Think it over, my dear:
+as many days out as you like, and five footmen kept. There's not the
+least hurry, of course; but I rather think Nick himself would advise
+it."
+
+She flushed to the temples, remembering that Nick had; and the
+remembrance made Strefford's sneering philosophy seem less unbearable.
+Why should she not lunch with him, after all? In the first days of his
+mourning he had come to Paris expressly to see her, and to offer her
+one of the oldest names and one of the greatest fortunes in England.
+She thought of Ursula Gillow, Ellie Vanderlyn, Violet Melrose, of their
+condescending kindnesses, their last year's dresses, their Christmas
+cheques, and all the careless bounties that were so easy to bestow and
+so hard to accept. "I should rather enjoy paying them back," something
+in her maliciously murmured.
+
+She did not mean to marry Strefford--she had not even got as far as
+contemplating the possibility of a divorce but it was undeniable that
+this sudden prospect of wealth and freedom was like fresh air in her
+lungs. She laughed again, but now without bitterness.
+
+"Very good, then; we'll lunch together. But it's Streff I want to lunch
+with to-day."
+
+"Ah, well," her companion agreed, "I rather think that for a tete-a-tete
+he's better company."
+
+During their repast in a little restaurant over the Seine, where she
+insisted on the cheapest dishes because she was lunching with "Streff,"
+he became again his old whimsical companionable self. Once or twice she
+tried to turn the talk to his altered future, and the obligations and
+interests that lay before him; but he shrugged away from the subject,
+questioning her instead about the motley company at Violet Melrose's,
+and fitting a droll or malicious anecdote to each of the people she
+named.
+
+It was not till they had finished their coffee, and she was glancing at
+her watch with a vague notion of taking the next train, that he asked
+abruptly: "But what are you going to do? You can't stay forever at
+Violet's."
+
+"Oh, no!" she cried with a shiver.
+
+"Well, then--you've got some plan, I suppose?"
+
+"Have I?" she wondered, jerked back into grim reality from the soothing
+interlude of their hour together.
+
+"You can't drift indefinitely, can you? Unless you mean to go back to
+the old sort of life once for all."
+
+She reddened and her eyes filled. "I can't do that, Streff--I know I
+can't!"
+
+"Then what--?"
+
+She hesitated, and brought out with lowered head: "Nick said he would
+write again--in a few days. I must wait--"
+
+"Oh, naturally. Don't do anything in a hurry." Strefford also glanced at
+his watch. "Garcon, l'addition! I'm taking the train back to-night, and
+I've a lot of things left to do. But look here, my dear--when you come
+to a decision one way or the other let me know, will you? Oh, I don't
+mean in the matter I've most at heart; we'll consider that closed for
+the present. But at least I can be of use in other ways--hang it, you
+know, I can even lend you money. There's a new sensation for our jaded
+palates!"
+
+"Oh, Streff... Streff!" she could only falter; and he pressed on gaily:
+"Try it, now do try it--I assure you there'll be no interest to pay, and
+no conditions attached. And promise to let me know when you've decided
+anything."
+
+She looked into his humorously puckered eyes, answering. Their friendly
+smile with hers.
+
+"I promise!" she said.
+
+
+
+XV
+
+THAT hour with Strefford had altered her whole perspective. Instead of
+possible dependence, an enforced return to the old life of connivances
+and concessions, she saw before her--whenever she chose to take
+them--freedom, power and dignity. Dignity! It was odd what weight that
+word had come to have for her. She had dimly felt its significance,
+felt the need of its presence in her inmost soul, even in the young
+thoughtless days when she had seemed to sacrifice so little to the
+austere divinities. And since she had been Nick Lansing's wife she had
+consciously acknowledged it, had suffered and agonized when she fell
+beneath its standard. Yes: to marry Strefford would give her that
+sense of self-respect which, in such a world as theirs, only wealth and
+position could ensure. If she had not the mental or moral training to
+attain independence in any other way, was she to blame for seeking it on
+such terms?
+
+Of course there was always the chance that Nick would come back, would
+find life without her as intolerable as she was finding it without him.
+If that happened--ah, if that happened! Then she would cease to strain
+her eyes into the future, would seize upon the present moment and plunge
+into it to the very bottom of oblivion. Nothing on earth would matter
+then--money or freedom or pride, or her precious moral dignity, if only
+she were in Nick's arms again!
+
+But there was Nick's icy letter, there was Coral Hicks's insolent
+post-card, to show how little chance there was of such a solution. Susy
+understood that, even before the discovery of her transaction with Ellie
+Vanderlyn, Nick had secretly wearied, if not of his wife, at least of
+the life that their marriage compelled him to lead. His passion was not
+strong enough-had never been strong enough--to outweigh his prejudices,
+scruples, principles, or whatever one chose to call them. Susy's dignity
+might go up like tinder in the blaze of her love; but his was made of a
+less combustible substance. She had felt, in their last talk together,
+that she had forever destroyed the inner harmony between them.
+
+Well--there it was, and the fault was doubtless neither hers nor his,
+but that of the world they had grown up in, of their own moral contempt
+for it and physical dependence on it, of his half-talents and her
+half-principles, of the something in them both that was not stout enough
+to resist nor yet pliant enough to yield. She stared at the fact on the
+journey back to Versailles, and all that sleepless night in her room;
+and the next morning, when the housemaid came in with her breakfast
+tray, she felt the factitious energy that comes from having decided,
+however half-heartedly, on a definite course.
+
+She had said to herself: "If there's no letter from Nick this time next
+week I'll write to Streff--" and the week had passed, and there was no
+letter.
+
+It was now three weeks since he had left her, and she had had no
+word but his note from Genoa. She had concluded that, foreseeing the
+probability of her leaving Venice, he would write to her in care of
+their Paris bank. But though she had immediately notified the bank of
+her change of address no communication from Nick had reached her; and
+she smiled with a touch of bitterness at the difficulty he was doubtless
+finding in the composition of the promised letter. Her own scrap-basket,
+for the first days, had been heaped with the fragments of the letters
+she had begun; and she told herself that, since they both found it so
+hard to write, it was probably because they had nothing left to say to
+each other.
+
+Meanwhile the days at Mrs. Melrose's drifted by as they had been wont
+to drift when, under the roofs of the rich, Susy Branch had marked
+time between one episode and the next of her precarious existence.
+Her experience of such sojourns was varied enough to make her acutely
+conscious of their effect on her temporary hosts; and in the present
+case she knew that Violet was hardly aware of her presence. But if no
+more than tolerated she was at least not felt to be an inconvenience;
+when your hostess forgot about you it proved that at least you were not
+in her way.
+
+Violet, as usual, was perpetually on the wing, for her profound
+indolence expressed itself in a disordered activity. Nat Fulmer had
+returned to Paris; but Susy guessed that his benefactress was still
+constantly in his company, and that when Mrs. Melrose was whirled away
+in her noiseless motor it was generally toward the scene of some new
+encounter between Fulmer and the arts. On these occasions she sometimes
+offered to carry Susy to Paris, and they devoted several long and
+hectic mornings to the dress-makers, where Susy felt herself gradually
+succumbing to the familiar spell of heaped-up finery. It seemed
+impossible, as furs and laces and brocades were tossed aside, brought
+back, and at last carelessly selected from, that anything but the whim
+of the moment need count in deciding whether one should take all or
+none, or that any woman could be worth looking at who did not possess
+the means to make her choice regardless of cost.
+
+Once alone, and in the street again, the evil fumes would evaporate,
+and daylight re-enter Susy's soul; yet she felt that the old poison was
+slowly insinuating itself into her system. To dispel it she decided
+one day to look up Grace Fulmer. She was curious to know how the
+happy-go-lucky companion of Fulmer's evil days was bearing the weight of
+his prosperity, and she vaguely felt that it would be refreshing to see
+some one who had never been afraid of poverty.
+
+The airless pension sitting-room, where she waited while a reluctant
+maid-servant screamed about the house for Mrs. Fulmer, did not have
+the hoped-for effect. It was one thing for Grace to put up with such
+quarters when she shared them with Fulmer; but to live there while he
+basked in the lingering radiance of Versailles, or rolled from chateau
+to picture gallery in Mrs. Melrose's motor, showed a courage that Susy
+felt unable to emulate.
+
+"My dear! I knew you'd look me up," Grace's joyous voice ran down the
+stairway; and in another moment she was clasping Susy to her tumbled
+person.
+
+"Nat couldn't remember if he'd given you our address, though he promised
+me he would, the last time he was here." She held Susy at arms'
+length, beaming upon her with blinking short-sighted eyes: the same
+old dishevelled Grace, so careless of her neglected beauty and her
+squandered youth, so amused and absent-minded and improvident, that the
+boisterous air of the New Hampshire bungalow seemed to enter with her
+into the little air-tight salon.
+
+While she poured out the tale of Nat's sudden celebrity, and its
+unexpected consequences, Susy marvelled and dreamed. Was the secret
+of his triumph perhaps due to those long hard unrewarded years, the
+steadfast scorn of popularity, the indifference to every kind of
+material ease in which his wife had so gaily abetted him? Had it been
+bought at the cost of her own freshness and her own talent, of the
+children's "advantages," of everything except the closeness of the tie
+between husband and wife? Well--it was worth the price, no doubt; but
+what if, now that honours and prosperity had come, the tie were snapped,
+and Grace were left alone among the ruins?
+
+There was nothing in her tone or words to suggest such a possibility.
+Susy noticed that her ill-assorted raiment was costlier in quality and
+more professional in cut than the home-made garments which had draped
+her growing bulk at the bungalow: it was clear that she was trying to
+dress up to Nat's new situation. But, above all, she was rejoicing in
+it, filling her hungry lungs with the strong air of his success. It had
+evidently not occurred to her as yet that those who consent to share the
+bread of adversity may want the whole cake of prosperity for themselves.
+
+"My dear, it's too wonderful! He's told me to take as many concert and
+opera tickets as I like; he lets me take all the children with me. The
+big concerts don't begin till later; but of course the Opera is always
+going. And there are little things--there's music in Paris at all
+seasons. And later it's just possible we may get to Munich for a
+week--oh, Susy!" Her hands clasped, her eyes brimming, she drank the new
+wine of life almost sacramentally.
+
+"Do you remember, Susy, when you and Nick came to stay at the bungalow?
+Nat said you'd be horrified by our primitiveness-but I knew better! And
+I was right, wasn't I? Seeing us so happy made you and Nick decide to
+follow our example, didn't it?" She glowed with the remembrance. "And
+now, what are your plans? Is Nick's book nearly done? I suppose you'll
+have to live very economically till he finds a publisher. And the baby,
+darling-when is that to be? If you're coming home soon I could let you
+have a lot of the children's little old things."
+
+"You're always so dear, Grace. But we haven't any special plans
+as yet--not even for a baby. And I wish you'd tell me all of yours
+instead."
+
+Mrs. Fulmer asked nothing better: Susy perceived that, so far, the
+greater part of her European experience had consisted in talking about
+what it was to be. "Well, you see, Nat is so taken up all day with
+sight-seeing and galleries and meeting important people that he hasn't
+had time to go about with us; and as so few theatres are open, and
+there's so little music, I've taken the opportunity to catch up with
+my mending. Junie helps me with it now--she's our eldest, you remember?
+She's grown into a big girl since you saw her. And later, perhaps,
+we're to travel. And the most wonderful thing of all--next to Nat's
+recognition, I mean--is not having to contrive and skimp, and give up
+something every single minute. Just think--Nat has even made special
+arrangements here in the pension, so that the children all have second
+helpings to everything. And when I go up to bed I can think of my music,
+instead of lying awake calculating and wondering how I can make things
+come out at the end of the month. Oh, Susy, that's simply heaven!"
+
+Susy's heart contracted. She had come to her friend to be taught again
+the lesson of indifference to material things, and instead she was
+hearing from Grace Fulmer's lips the long-repressed avowal of their
+tyranny. After all, that battle with poverty on the New Hampshire
+hillside had not been the easy smiling business that Grace and Nat had
+made it appear. And yet ... and yet....
+
+Susy stood up abruptly, and straightened the expensive hat which hung
+irresponsibly over Grace's left ear.
+
+"What's wrong with it? Junie helped me choose it, and she generally
+knows," Mrs. Fulmer wailed with helpless hands.
+
+"It's the way you wear it, dearest--and the bow is rather top-heavy. Let
+me have it a minute, please." Susy lifted the hat from her friend's
+head and began to manipulate its trimming. "This is the way Maria Guy or
+Suzanne would do it.... And now go on about Nat...."
+
+She listened musingly while Grace poured forth the tale of her husband's
+triumph, of the notices in the papers, the demand for his work, the
+fine ladies' battles over their priority in discovering him, and the
+multiplied orders that had resulted from their rivalry.
+
+"Of course they're simply furious with each other-Mrs. Melrose and Mrs.
+Gillow especially--because each one pretends to have been the first to
+notice his 'Spring Snow-Storm,' and in reality it wasn't either of them,
+but only poor Bill Haslett, an art-critic we've known for years, who
+chanced on the picture, and rushed off to tell a dealer who was looking
+for a new painter to push." Grace suddenly raised her soft myopic eyes
+to Susy's face. "But, do you know, the funny thing is that I believe Nat
+is beginning to forget this, and to believe that it was Mrs. Melrose who
+stopped short in front of his picture on the opening day, and screamed
+out: 'This is genius!' It seems funny he should care so much, when I've
+always known he had genius-and he has known it too. But they're all so
+kind to him; and Mrs. Melrose especially. And I suppose it makes a thing
+sound new to hear it said in a new voice."
+
+Susy looked at her meditatively. "And how should you feel if Nat liked
+too much to hear Mrs. Melrose say it? Too much, I mean, to care any
+longer what you felt or thought?"
+
+Her friend's worn face flushed quickly, and then paled: Susy almost
+repented the question. But Mrs. Fulmer met it with a tranquil dignity.
+"You haven't been married long enough, dear, to understand... how people
+like Nat and me feel about such things... or how trifling they seem, in
+the balance... the balance of one's memories."
+
+Susy stood up again, and flung her arms about her friend. "Oh, Grace,"
+she laughed with wet eyes, "how can you be as wise as that, and yet not
+have sense enough to buy a decent hat?" She gave Mrs. Fulmer a quick
+embrace and hurried away. She had learned her lesson after all; but it
+was not exactly the one she had come to seek.
+
+The week she had allowed herself had passed, and still there was no word
+from Nick. She allowed herself yet another day, and that too went by
+without a letter. She then decided on a step from which her pride
+had hitherto recoiled; she would call at the bank and ask for Nick's
+address. She called, embarrassed and hesitating; and was told, after
+enquiries in the post-office department, that Mr. Nicholas Lansing
+had given no address since that of the Palazzo Vanderlyn, three months
+previously. She went back to Versailles that afternoon with the definite
+intention of writing to Strefford unless the next morning's post brought
+a letter.
+
+The next morning brought nothing from Nick, but a scribbled message from
+Mrs. Melrose: would Susy, as soon as possible, come into her room for
+a word, Susy jumped up, hurried through her bath, and knocked at her
+hostess's door. In the immense low bed that faced the rich umbrage
+of the park Mrs. Melrose lay smoking cigarettes and glancing over her
+letters. She looked up with her vague smile, and said dreamily: "Susy
+darling, have you any particular plans--for the next few months, I
+mean?"
+
+Susy coloured: she knew the intonation of old, and fancied she
+understood what it implied.
+
+"Plans, dearest? Any number... I'm tearing myself away the day after
+to-morrow... to the Gillows' moor, very probably," she hastened to
+announce.
+
+Instead of the relief she had expected to read on Mrs. Melrose's
+dramatic countenance she discovered there the blankest disappointment.
+
+"Oh, really? That's too bad. Is it absolutely settled--?"
+
+"As far as I'm concerned," said Susy crisply.
+
+The other sighed. "I'm too sorry. You see, dear, I'd meant to ask you
+to stay on here quietly and look after the Fulmer children. Fulmer and
+I are going to Spain next week--I want to be with him when he makes his
+studies, receives his first impressions; such a marvellous experience,
+to be there when he and Velasquez meet!" She broke off, lost in
+prospective ecstasy. "And, you see, as Grace Fulmer insists on coming
+with us--"
+
+"Ah, I see."
+
+"Well, there are the five children--such a problem," sighed the
+benefactress. "If you were at a loose end, you know, dear, while Nick's
+away with his friends, I could really make it worth your while...."
+
+"So awfully good of you, Violet; only I'm not, as it happens."
+
+Oh the relief of being able to say that, gaily, firmly and even
+truthfully! Take charge of the Fulmer children, indeed! Susy remembered
+how Nick and she had fled from them that autumn afternoon in New
+Hampshire. The offer gave her a salutary glimpse of the way in which, as
+the years passed, and she lost her freshness and novelty, she would more
+and more be used as a convenience, a stop-gap, writer of notes, runner
+of errands, nursery governess or companion. She called to mind several
+elderly women of her acquaintance, pensioners of her own group, who
+still wore its livery, struck its attitudes and chattered its jargon,
+but had long since been ruthlessly relegated to these slave-ant offices.
+Never in the world would she join their numbers.
+
+Mrs. Melrose's face fell, and she looked at Susy with the plaintive
+bewilderment of the wielder of millions to whom everything that cannot
+be bought is imperceptible.
+
+"But I can't see why you can't change your plans," she murmured with a
+soft persistency.
+
+"Ah, well, you know"--Susy paused on a slow inward smile--"they're not
+mine only, as it happens."
+
+Mrs. Melrose's brow clouded. The unforeseen complication of Mrs.
+Fulmer's presence on the journey had evidently tried her nerves, and
+this new obstacle to her arrangements shook her faith in the divine
+order of things.
+
+"Your plans are not yours only? But surely you won't let Ursula Gillow
+dictate to you?... There's my jade pendant; the one you said you liked
+the other day.... The Fulmers won't go with me, you understand, unless
+they're satisfied about the children; the whole plan will fall
+through. Susy darling, you were always too unselfish; I hate to see you
+sacrificed to Ursula."
+
+Susy's smile lingered. Time was when she might have been glad to add
+the jade pendant to the collection already enriched by Ellie Vanderlyn's
+sapphires; more recently, she would have resented the offer as an insult
+to her newly-found principles. But already the mere fact that she
+might henceforth, if she chose, be utterly out of reach of such bribes,
+enabled her to look down on them with tolerance. Oh, the blessed moral
+freedom that wealth conferred! She recalled Mrs. Fulmer's uncontrollable
+cry: "The most wonderful thing of all is not having to contrive and
+skimp, and give up something every single minute!" Yes; it was only on
+such terms that one could call one's soul one's own. The sense of it
+gave Susy the grace to answer amicably: "If I could possibly help you
+out, Violet, I shouldn't want a present to persuade me. And, as you say,
+there's no reason why I should sacrifice myself to Ursula--or to anybody
+else. Only, as it happens"--she paused and took the plunge--"I'm going
+to England because I've promised to see a friend." That night she wrote
+to Strefford.
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+STRETCHED out under an awning on the deck of the Ibis, Nick Lansing
+looked up for a moment at the vanishing cliffs of Malta and then plunged
+again into his book.
+
+He had had nearly three weeks of drug-taking on the Ibis. The drugs he
+had absorbed were of two kinds: visions of fleeing landscapes, looming
+up from the blue sea to vanish into it again, and visions of study
+absorbed from the volumes piled up day and night at his elbow. For the
+first time in months he was in reach of a real library, just the kind
+of scholarly yet miscellaneous library, that his restless and impatient
+spirit craved. He was aware that the books he read, like the fugitive
+scenes on which he gazed, were merely a form of anesthetic: he swallowed
+them with the careless greed of the sufferer who seeks only to still
+pain and deaden memory. But they were beginning to produce in him a
+moral languor that was not disagreeable, that, indeed, compared with the
+fierce pain of the first days, was almost pleasurable. It was exactly
+the kind of drug that he needed.
+
+There is probably no point on which the average man has more definite
+views than on the uselessness of writing a letter that is hard to write.
+In the line he had sent to Susy from Genoa Nick had told her that she
+would hear from him again in a few days; but when the few days had
+passed, and he began to consider setting himself to the task, he found
+fifty reasons for postponing it.
+
+Had there been any practical questions to write about it would have been
+different; he could not have borne for twenty-four hours the idea that
+she was in uncertainty as to money. But that had all been settled
+long ago. From the first she had had the administering of their modest
+fortune. On their marriage Nick's own meagre income, paid in, none too
+regularly, by the agent who had managed for years the dwindling family
+properties, had been transferred to her: it was the only wedding present
+he could make. And the wedding cheques had of course all been
+deposited in her name. There were therefore no "business" reasons for
+communicating with her; and when it came to reasons of another order the
+mere thought of them benumbed him.
+
+For the first few days he reproached himself for his inertia; then he
+began to seek reasons for justifying it. After all, for both their sakes
+a waiting policy might be the wisest he could pursue. He had left Susy
+because he could not tolerate the conditions on which he had discovered
+their life together to be based; and he had told her so. What more was
+there to say?
+
+Nothing was changed in their respective situations; if they came
+together it could be only to resume the same life; and that, as the days
+went by, seemed to him more and more impossible. He had not yet reached
+the point of facing a definite separation; but whenever his thoughts
+travelled back over their past life he recoiled from any attempt to
+return to it. As long as this state of mind continued there seemed
+nothing to add to the letter he had already written, except indeed the
+statement that he was cruising with the Hickses. And he saw no pressing
+reason for communicating that.
+
+To the Hickses he had given no hint of his situation. When Coral Hicks,
+a fortnight earlier, had picked him up in the broiling streets of Genoa,
+and carried him off to the Ibis, he had thought only of a cool dinner
+and perhaps a moonlight sail. Then, in reply to their friendly urging,
+he had confessed that he had not been well--had indeed gone off
+hurriedly for a few days' change of air--and that left him without
+defence against the immediate proposal that he should take his change
+of air on the Ibis. They were just off to Corsica and Sardinia, and from
+there to Sicily: he could rejoin the railway at Naples, and be back at
+Venice in ten days.
+
+Ten days of respite--the temptation was irresistible. And he really
+liked the kind uncomplicated Hickses. A wholesome honesty and simplicity
+breathed through all their opulence, as if the rich trappings of their
+present life still exhaled the fragrance of their native prairies. The
+mere fact of being with such people was like a purifying bath. When the
+yacht touched at Naples he agreed since they were so awfully kind--to go
+on to Sicily. And when the chief steward, going ashore at Naples for
+the last time before they got up steam, said: "Any letters for the post,
+sir?" he answered, as he had answered at each previous halt: "No, thank
+you: none."
+
+Now they were heading for Rhodes and Crete--Crete, where he had never
+been, where he had so often longed to go. In spite of the lateness of
+the season the weather was still miraculously fine: the short waves
+danced ahead under a sky without a cloud, and the strong bows of the
+Ibis hardly swayed as she flew forward over the flying crests.
+
+Only his hosts and their daughter were on the yacht-of course with
+Eldorada Tooker and Mr. Beck in attendance. An eminent archaeologist,
+who was to have joined them at Naples, had telegraphed an excuse at the
+last moment; and Nick noticed that, while Mrs. Hicks was perpetually
+apologizing for the great man's absence, Coral merely smiled and said
+nothing.
+
+As a matter of fact, Mr. and Mrs. Hicks were never as pleasant as
+when one had them to one's self. In company, Mr. Hicks ran the risk of
+appearing over-hospitable, and Mrs. Hicks confused dates and names in
+the desire to embrace all culture in her conversation. But alone with
+Nick, their old travelling-companion, they shone out in their native
+simplicity, and Mr. Hicks talked soundly of investments, and Mrs. Hicks
+recalled her early married days in Apex City, when, on being brought
+home to her new house in Aeschylus Avenue, her first thought had been:
+"How on earth shall I get all those windows washed?"
+
+The loss of Mr. Buttles had been as serious to them as Nick had
+supposed: Mr. Beck could never hope to replace him. Apart from his
+mysterious gift of languages, and his almost superhuman faculty for
+knowing how to address letters to eminent people, and in what terms to
+conclude them, he had a smattering of archaeology and general culture on
+which Mrs. Hicks had learned to depend--her own memory being, alas, so
+inadequate to the range of her interests.
+
+Her daughter might perhaps have helped her; but it was not Miss Hicks's
+way to mother her parents. She was exceedingly kind to them, but left
+them, as it were, to bring themselves up as best they could, while she
+pursued her own course of self-development. A sombre zeal for knowledge
+filled the mind of this strange girl: she appeared interested only
+in fresh opportunities of adding to her store of facts. They were
+illuminated by little imagination and less poetry; but, carefully
+catalogued and neatly sorted in her large cool brain, they were always
+as accessible as the volumes in an up-to-date public library.
+
+To Nick there was something reposeful in this lucid intellectual
+curiosity. He wanted above all things to get away from sentiment, from
+seduction, from the moods and impulses and flashing contradictions that
+were Susy. Susy was not a great reader: her store of facts was small,
+and she had grown up among people who dreaded ideas as much as if they
+had been a contagious disease. But, in the early days especially,
+when Nick had put a book in her hand, or read a poem to her, her
+swift intelligence had instantly shed a new light on the subject, and,
+penetrating to its depths, had extracted from them whatever belonged
+to her. What a pity that this exquisite insight, this intuitive
+discrimination, should for the most part have been spent upon reading
+the thoughts of vulgar people, and extracting a profit from them--should
+have been wasted, since her childhood, on all the hideous intricacies of
+"managing"!
+
+And visible beauty--how she cared for that too! He had not guessed it,
+or rather he had not been sure of it, till the day when, on their way
+through Paris, he had taken her to the Louvre, and they had stood before
+the little Crucifixion of Mantegna. He had not been looking at the
+picture, or watching to see what impression it produced on Susy. His
+own momentary mood was for Correggio and Fragonard, the laughter of the
+Music Lesson and the bold pagan joys of the Antiope; and then he
+had missed her from his side, and when he came to where she stood,
+forgetting him, forgetting everything, had seen the glare of that tragic
+sky in her face, her trembling lip, the tears on her lashes. That was
+Susy....
+
+Closing his book he stole a glance at Coral Hicks's profile, thrown back
+against the cushions of the deck-chair at his side. There was something
+harsh and bracing in her blunt primitive build, in the projection of
+the black eyebrows that nearly met over her thick straight nose, and
+the faint barely visible black down on her upper lip. Some miracle of
+will-power, combined with all the artifices that wealth can buy, had
+turned the fat sallow girl he remembered into this commanding young
+woman, almost handsome at times indisputably handsome--in her big
+authoritative way. Watching the arrogant lines of her profile against
+the blue sea, he remembered, with a thrill that was sweet to his vanity,
+how twice--under the dome of the Scalzi and in the streets of Genoa--he
+had seen those same lines soften at his approach, turn womanly, pleading
+and almost humble. That was Coral....
+
+Suddenly she said, without turning toward him: "You've had no letters
+since you've been on board."
+
+He looked at her, surprised. "No--thank the Lord!" he laughed.
+
+"And you haven't written one either," she continued in her hard
+statistical tone.
+
+"No," he again agreed, with the same laugh.
+
+"That means that you really are free--"
+
+"Free?"
+
+He saw the cheek nearest him redden. "Really off on a holiday, I mean;
+not tied down." After a pause he rejoined: "No, I'm not particularly
+tied down."
+
+"And your book?"
+
+"Oh, my book--" He stopped and considered. He had thrust The Pageant of
+Alexander into his handbag on the night of his Bight from Venice; but
+since then he had never looked at it. Too many memories and illusions
+were pressed between its pages; and he knew just at what page he had
+felt Ellie Vanderlyn bending over him from behind, caught a whiff of her
+scent, and heard her breathless "I had to thank you!"
+
+"My book's hung up," he said impatiently, annoyed with Miss Hicks's lack
+of tact. There was a girl who never put out feelers....
+
+"Yes; I thought it was," she went on quietly, and he gave her a startled
+glance. What the devil else did she think, he wondered? He had never
+supposed her capable of getting far enough out of her own thick carapace
+of self-sufficiency to penetrate into any one else's feelings.
+
+"The truth is," he continued, embarrassed, "I suppose I dug away at
+it rather too continuously; that's probably why I felt the need of a
+change. You see I'm only a beginner."
+
+She still continued her relentless questioning. "But later--you'll go on
+with it, of course?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know." He paused, glanced down the glittering deck, and
+then out across the glittering water. "I've been dreaming dreams, you
+see. I rather think I shall have to drop the book altogether, and try
+to look out for a job that will pay. To indulge in my kind of literature
+one must first have an assured income."
+
+He was instantly annoyed with himself for having spoken. Hitherto in his
+relations with the Hickses he had carefully avoided the least allusion
+that might make him feel the heavy hand of their beneficence. But the
+idle procrastinating weeks had weakened him and he had yielded to the
+need of putting into words his vague intentions. To do so would perhaps
+help to make them more definite.
+
+To his relief Miss Hicks made no immediate reply; and when she spoke it
+was in a softer voice and with an unwonted hesitation.
+
+"It seems a shame that with gifts like yours you shouldn't find some
+kind of employment that would leave you leisure enough to do your real
+work...."
+
+He shrugged ironically. "Yes--there are a goodish number of us hunting
+for that particular kind of employment."
+
+Her tone became more business-like. "I know it's hard to find--almost
+impossible. But would you take it, I wonder, if it were offered to
+you--?"
+
+She turned her head slightly, and their eyes met. For an instant blank
+terror loomed upon him; but before he had time to face it she continued,
+in the same untroubled voice: "Mr. Buttles's place, I mean. My parents
+must absolutely have some one they can count on. You know what an easy
+place it is.... I think you would find the salary satisfactory."
+
+Nick drew a deep breath of relief. For a moment her eyes had looked as
+they had in the Scalzi--and he liked the girl too much not to shrink
+from reawakening that look. But Mr. Buttles's place: why not?
+
+"Poor Buttles!" he murmured, to gain time.
+
+"Oh," she said, "you won't find the same reasons as he did for throwing
+up the job. He was the martyr of his artistic convictions."
+
+He glanced at her sideways, wondering. After all she did not know of
+his meeting with Mr. Buttles in Genoa, nor of the latter's confidences;
+perhaps she did not even know of Mr. Buttles's hopeless passion. At any
+rate her face remained calm.
+
+"Why not consider it--at least just for a few months? Till after our
+expedition to Mesopotamia?" she pressed on, a little breathlessly.
+
+"You're awfully kind: but I don't know--"
+
+She stood up with one of her abrupt movements. "You needn't, all
+at once. Take time think it over. Father wanted me to ask you," she
+appended.
+
+He felt the inadequacy of his response. "It tempts me awfully, of
+course. But I must wait, at any rate--wait for letters. The fact is
+I shall have to wire from Rhodes to have them sent. I had chucked
+everything, even letters, for a few weeks."
+
+"Ah, you are tired," she murmured, giving him a last downward glance as
+she turned away.
+
+From Rhodes Nick Lansing telegraphed to his Paris bank to send his
+letters to Candia; but when the Ibis reached Candia, and the mail was
+brought on board, the thick envelope handed to him contained no letter
+from Susy.
+
+Why should it, since he had not yet written to her?
+
+He had not written, no: but in sending his address to the bank he knew
+he had given her the opportunity of reaching him if she wished to. And
+she had made no sign.
+
+Late that afternoon, when they returned to the yacht from their first
+expedition, a packet of newspapers lay on the deck-house table. Nick
+picked up one of the London journals, and his eye ran absently down the
+list of social events.
+
+He read:
+
+"Among the visitors expected next week at Ruan Castle (let for the
+season to Mr. Frederick J. Gillow of New York) are Prince Altineri of
+Rome, the Earl of Altringham and Mrs. Nicholas Lansing, who arrived in
+London last week from Paris." Nick threw down the paper. It was just a
+month since he had left the Palazzo Vanderlyn and flung himself into the
+night express for Milan. A whole month--and Susy had not written. Only a
+month--and Susy and Strefford were already together!
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+SUSY had decided to wait for Strefford in London.
+
+The new Lord Altringham was with his family in the north, and though she
+found a telegram on arriving, saying that he would join her in town the
+following week, she had still an interval of several days to fill.
+
+London was a desert; the rain fell without ceasing, and alone in the
+shabby family hotel which, even out of season, was the best she could
+afford, she sat at last face to face with herself.
+
+From the moment when Violet Melrose had failed to carry out her plan
+for the Fulmer children her interest in Susy had visibly waned. Often
+before, in the old days, Susy Branch had felt the same abrupt change of
+temperature in the manner of the hostess of the moment; and often--how
+often--had yielded, and performed the required service, rather than risk
+the consequences of estrangement. To that, at least, thank heaven, she
+need never stoop again.
+
+But as she hurriedly packed her trunks at Versailles, scraped together
+an adequate tip for Mrs. Match, and bade good-bye to Violet (grown
+suddenly fond and demonstrative as she saw her visitor safely headed
+for the station)--as Susy went through the old familiar mummery of the
+enforced leave-taking, there rose in her so deep a disgust for the
+life of makeshifts and accommodations, that if at that moment Nick had
+reappeared and held out his arms to her, she was not sure she would have
+had the courage to return to them.
+
+In her London solitude the thirst for independence grew fiercer.
+Independence with ease, of course. Oh, her hateful useless love of
+beauty... the curse it had always been to her, the blessing it might
+have been if only she had had the material means to gratify and to
+express it! And instead, it only gave her a morbid loathing of that
+hideous hotel bedroom drowned in yellow rain-light, of the smell of soot
+and cabbage through the window, the blistered wall-paper, the dusty wax
+bouquets under glass globes, and the electric lighting so contrived that
+as you turned on the feeble globe hanging from the middle of the ceiling
+the feebler one beside the bed went out!
+
+What a sham world she and Nick had lived in during their few months
+together! What right had either of them to those exquisite settings
+of the life of leisure: the long white house hidden in camellias and
+cypresses above the lake, or the great rooms on the Giudecca with the
+shimmer of the canal always playing over their frescoed ceilings! Yet
+she had come to imagine that these places really belonged to them, that
+they would always go on living, fondly and irreproachably, in the frame
+of other people's wealth.... That, again, was the curse of her love of
+beauty, the way she always took to it as if it belonged to her!
+
+Well, the awakening was bound to come, and it was perhaps better that
+it should have come so soon. At any rate there was no use in letting her
+thoughts wander back to that shattered fool's paradise of theirs. Only,
+as she sat there and reckoned up the days till Strefford arrived, what
+else in the world was there to think of?
+
+Her future and his?
+
+But she knew that future by heart already! She had not spent her life
+among the rich and fashionable without having learned every detail of
+the trappings of a rich and fashionable marriage. She had calculated
+long ago just how many dinner-dresses, how many tea-gowns and how much
+lacy lingerie would go to make up the outfit of the future Countess of
+Altringham. She had even decided to which dressmaker she would go for
+her chinchilla cloak-for she meant to have one, and down to her feet,
+and softer and more voluminous and more extravagantly sumptuous than
+Violet's or Ursula's... not to speak of silver foxes and sables... nor
+yet of the Altringham jewels.
+
+She knew all this by heart; had always known it. It all belonged to the
+make-up of the life of elegance: there was nothing new about it. What
+had been new to her was just that short interval with Nick--a life
+unreal indeed in its setting, but so real in its essentials: the one
+reality she had ever known. As she looked back on it she saw how much
+it had given her besides the golden flush of her happiness, the sudden
+flowering of sensuous joy in heart and body. Yes--there had been the
+flowering too, in pain like birth-pangs, of something graver, stronger,
+fuller of future power, something she had hardly heeded in her first
+light rapture, but that always came back and possessed her stilled soul
+when the rapture sank: the deep disquieting sense of something that
+Nick and love had taught her, but that reached out even beyond love and
+beyond Nick.
+
+Her nerves were racked by the ceaseless swish, swish of the rain on the
+dirty panes and the smell of cabbage and coal that came in under the
+door when she shut the window. This nauseating foretaste of the luncheon
+she must presently go down to was more than she could bear. It brought
+with it a vision of the dank coffee-room below, the sooty Smyrna rug,
+the rain on the sky-light, the listless waitresses handing about food
+that tasted as if it had been rained on too. There was really no reason
+why she should let such material miseries add to her depression....
+
+She sprang up, put on her hat and jacket, and calling for a taxi drove
+to the London branch of the Nouveau Luxe hotel. It was just one o'clock
+and she was sure to pick up a luncheon, for though London was empty
+that great establishment was not. It never was. Along those sultry
+velvet-carpeted halls, in that great flowered and scented dining-room,
+there was always a come-and-go of rich aimless people, the busy people
+who, having nothing to do, perpetually pursue their inexorable task from
+one end of the earth to the other.
+
+Oh, the monotony of those faces--the faces one always knew, whether one
+knew the people they belonged to or not! A fresh disgust seized her at
+the sight of them: she wavered, and then turned and fled. But on the
+threshold a still more familiar figure met her: that of a lady in
+exaggerated pearls and sables, descending from an exaggerated motor,
+like the motors in magazine advertisements, the huge arks in which
+jewelled beauties and slender youths pause to gaze at snowpeaks from an
+Alpine summit.
+
+It was Ursula Gillow--dear old Ursula, on her way to Scotland--and she
+and Susy fell on each other's necks. It appeared that Ursula, detained
+till the next evening by a dress-maker's delay, was also out of a job
+and killing time, and the two were soon smiling at each other over
+the exquisite preliminaries of a luncheon which the head-waiter had
+authoritatively asked Mrs. Gillow to "leave to him, as usual."
+
+Ursula was in a good humour. It did not often happen; but when it did
+her benevolence knew no bounds.
+
+Like Mrs. Melrose, like all her tribe in fact, she was too much absorbed
+in her own affairs to give more than a passing thought to any one
+else's; but she was delighted at the meeting with Susy, as her wandering
+kind always were when they ran across fellow-wanderers, unless the
+meeting happened to interfere with choicer pleasures. Not to be alone
+was the urgent thing; and Ursula, who had been forty-eight hours alone
+in London, at once exacted from her friend a promise that they should
+spend the rest of the day together. But once the bargain struck her mind
+turned again to her own affairs, and she poured out her confidences
+to Susy over a succession of dishes that manifested the head-waiter's
+understanding of the case.
+
+Ursula's confidences were always the same, though they were usually
+about a different person. She demolished and rebuilt her sentimental
+life with the same frequency and impetuosity as that with which she
+changed her dress-makers, did over her drawing-rooms, ordered new
+motors, altered the mounting of her jewels, and generally renewed the
+setting of her life. Susy knew in advance what the tale would be; but
+to listen to it over perfect coffee, an amber-scented cigarette at
+her lips, was pleasanter than consuming cold mutton alone in a mouldy
+coffee-room. The contrast was so soothing that she even began to take a
+languid interest in her friend's narrative.
+
+After luncheon they got into the motor together and began a systematic
+round of the West End shops: furriers, jewellers and dealers in old
+furniture. Nothing could be more unlike Violet Melrose's long hesitating
+sessions before the things she thought she wanted till the moment came
+to decide. Ursula pounced on silver foxes and old lacquer as promptly
+and decisively as on the objects of her surplus sentimentality: she knew
+at once what she wanted, and valued it more after it was hers.
+
+"And now--I wonder if you couldn't help me choose a grand piano?" she
+suggested, as the last antiquarian bowed them out.
+
+"A piano?"
+
+"Yes: for Ruan. I'm sending one down for Grace Fulmer. She's coming to
+stay... did I tell you? I want people to hear her. I want her to get
+engagements in London. My dear, she's a Genius."
+
+"A Genius--Grace!" Susy gasped. "I thought it was Nat...."
+
+"Nat--Nat Fulmer?" Ursula laughed derisively. "Ah, of course--you've been
+staying with that silly Violet! The poor thing is off her head about
+Nat--it's really pitiful. Of course he has talent: I saw that long
+before Violet had ever heard of him. Why, on the opening day of the
+American Artists' exhibition, last winter, I stopped short before his
+'Spring Snow-Storm' (which nobody else had noticed till that moment),
+and said to the Prince, who was with me: 'The man has talent.' But
+genius--why, it's his wife who has genius! Have you never heard Grace
+play the violin? Poor Violet, as usual, is off on the wrong tack. I've
+given Fulmer my garden-house to do--no doubt Violet told you--because
+I wanted to help him. But Grace is my discovery, and I'm determined to
+make her known, and to have every one understand that she is the genius
+of the two. I've told her she simply must come to Ruan, and bring the
+best accompanyist she can find. You know poor Nerone is dreadfully bored
+by sport, though of course he goes out with the guns. And if one didn't
+have a little art in the evening.... Oh, Susy, do you mean to tell me
+you don't know how to choose a piano? I thought you were so fond of
+music!"
+
+"I am fond of it; but without knowing anything about it--in the way
+we're all of us fond of the worthwhile things in our stupid set,"
+she added to herself--since it was obviously useless to impart such
+reflections to Ursula.
+
+"But are you sure Grace is coming?" she questioned aloud.
+
+"Quite sure. Why shouldn't she? I wired to her yesterday. I'm giving her
+a thousand dollars and all her expenses."
+
+It was not till they were having tea in a Piccadilly tea-room that Mrs.
+Gillow began to manifest some interest in her companion's plans. The
+thought of losing Susy became suddenly intolerable to her. The Prince,
+who did not see why he should be expected to linger in London out of
+season, was already at Ruan, and Ursula could not face the evening and
+the whole of the next day by herself.
+
+"But what are you doing in town, darling, I don't remember if I've asked
+you," she said, resting her firm elbows on the tea-table while she took
+a light from Susy's cigarette.
+
+Susy hesitated. She had foreseen that the time must soon come when she
+should have to give some account of herself; and why should she not
+begin by telling Ursula?
+
+But telling her what?
+
+Her silence appeared to strike Mrs. Gillow as a reproach, and she
+continued with compunction: "And Nick? Nick's with you? How is he, I
+thought you and he still were in Venice with Ellie Vanderlyn."
+
+"We were, for a few weeks." She steadied her voice. "It was delightful.
+But now we're both on our own again--for a while."
+
+Mrs. Gillow scrutinized her more searchingly. "Oh, you're alone here,
+then; quite alone?"
+
+"Yes: Nick's cruising with some friends in the Mediterranean."
+
+Ursula's shallow gaze deepened singularly. "But, Susy darling, then if
+you're alone--and out of a job, just for the moment?"
+
+Susy smiled. "Well, I'm not sure."
+
+"Oh, but if you are, darling, and you would come to Ruan! I know Fred
+asked you didn't he? And he told me that both you and Nick had refused.
+He was awfully huffed at your not coming; but I suppose that was because
+Nick had other plans. We couldn't have him now, because there's no room
+for another gun; but since he's not here, and you're free, why you
+know, dearest, don't you, how we'd love to have you? Fred would be too
+glad--too outrageously glad--but you don't much mind Fred's love-making,
+do you? And you'd be such a help to me--if that's any argument! With
+that big house full of men, and people flocking over every night to
+dine, and Fred caring only for sport, and Nerone simply loathing it and
+ridiculing it, and not a minute to myself to try to keep him in a good
+humour.... Oh, Susy darling, don't say no, but let me telephone at once
+for a place in the train to morrow night!"
+
+Susy leaned back, letting the ash lengthen on her cigarette. How
+familiar, how hatefully familiar, was that old appeal! Ursula felt the
+pressing need of someone to flirt with Fred for a few weeks... and here
+was the very person she needed. Susy shivered at the thought. She had
+never really meant to go to Ruan. She had simply used the moor as a
+pretext when Violet Melrose had gently put her out of doors. Rather than
+do what Ursula asked she would borrow a few hundred pounds of Strefford,
+as he had suggested, and then look about for some temporary occupation
+until--
+
+Until she became Lady Altringham? Well, perhaps. At any rate, she was
+not going back to slave for Ursula.
+
+She shook her head with a faint smile. "I'm so sorry, Ursula: of course
+I want awfully to oblige you--"
+
+Mrs. Gillow's gaze grew reproachful. "I should have supposed you would,"
+she murmured. Susy, meeting her eyes, looked into them down a long vista
+of favours bestowed, and perceived that Ursula was not the woman to
+forget on which side the obligation lay between them.
+
+Susy hesitated: she remembered the weeks of ecstasy she had owed to the
+Gillows' wedding cheque, and it hurt her to appear ungrateful.
+
+"If I could, Ursula... but really... I'm not free at the moment." She
+paused, and then took an abrupt decision. "The fact is, I'm waiting here
+to see Strefford."
+
+"Strefford' Lord Altringham?" Ursula stared. "Ah, yes-I remember. You
+and he used to be great friends, didn't you?" Her roving attention
+deepened.... But if Susy were waiting to see Lord Altringham--one of the
+richest men in England! Suddenly Ursula opened her gold-meshed bag and
+snatched a miniature diary from it.
+
+"But wait a moment--yes, it is next week! I knew it was next week he's
+coming to Ruan! But, you darling, that makes everything all right.
+You'll send him a wire at once, and come with me tomorrow, and meet him
+there instead of in this nasty sloppy desert.... Oh, Susy, if you knew
+how hard life is for me in Scotland between the Prince and Fred you
+couldn't possibly say no!"
+
+Susy still wavered; but, after all, if Strefford were really bound
+for Ruan, why not see him there, agreeably and at leisure, instead of
+spending a dreary day with him in roaming the wet London streets, or
+screaming at him through the rattle of a restaurant orchestra? She knew
+he would not be likely to postpone his visit to Ruan in order to linger
+in London with her: such concessions had never been his way, and were
+less than ever likely to be, now that he could do so thoroughly and
+completely as he pleased.
+
+For the first time she fully understood how different his destiny had
+become. Now of course all his days and hours were mapped out in advance:
+invitations assailed him, opportunities pressed on him, he had only to
+choose.... And the women! She had never before thought of the women. All
+the girls in England would be wanting to marry him, not to mention her
+own enterprising compatriots. And there were the married women, who were
+even more to be feared. Streff might, for the time, escape marriage;
+though she could guess the power of persuasion, family pressure, all the
+converging traditional influences he had so often ridiculed, yet, as
+she knew, had never completely thrown off.... Yes, those quiet invisible
+women at Altringham-his uncle's widow, his mother, the spinster
+sisters--it was not impossible that, with tact and patience--and the
+stupidest women could be tactful and patient on such occasions--they
+might eventually persuade him that it was his duty, they might put just
+the right young loveliness in his way.... But meanwhile, now, at
+once, there were the married women. Ah, they wouldn't wait, they were
+doubtless laying their traps already! Susy shivered at the thought. She
+knew too much about the way the trick was done, had followed, too often,
+all the sinuosities of such approaches. Not that they were very sinuous
+nowadays: more often there was just a swoop and a pounce when the time
+came; but she knew all the arts and the wiles that led up to it. She
+knew them, oh, how she knew them--though with Streff, thank heaven, she
+had never been called upon to exercise them! His love was there for the
+asking: would she not be a fool to refuse it?
+
+Perhaps; though on that point her mind still wavered. But at any
+rate she saw that, decidedly, it would be better to yield to Ursula's
+pressure; better to meet him at Ruan, in a congenial setting, where she
+would have time to get her bearings, observe what dangers threatened
+him, and make up her mind whether, after all, it was to be her mission
+to save him from the other women.
+
+"Well, if you like, then, Ursula...."
+
+"Oh, you angel, you! I'm so glad! We'll go to the nearest post office,
+and send off the wire ourselves."
+
+As they got into the motor Mrs. Gillow seized Susy's arm with a pleading
+pressure. "And you will let Fred make love to you a little, won't you,
+darling?"
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+"BUT I can't think," said Ellie Vanderlyn earnestly, "why you don't
+announce your engagement before waiting for your divorce. People are
+beginning to do it, I assure you--it's so much safer!"
+
+Mrs. Vanderlyn, on the way back from St. Moritz to England, had paused
+in Paris to renew the depleted wardrobe which, only two months earlier,
+had filled so many trunks to bursting. Other ladies, flocking there
+from all points of the globe for the same purpose, disputed with her
+the Louis XVI suites of the Nouveau Luxe, the pink-candled tables in
+the restaurant, the hours for trying-on at the dressmakers'; and just
+because they were so many, and all feverishly fighting to get the same
+things at the same time, they were all excited, happy and at ease. It
+was the most momentous period of the year: the height of the "dress
+makers' season."
+
+Mrs. Vanderlyn had run across Susy Lansing at one of the Rue de la Paix
+openings, where rows of ladies wan with heat and emotion sat for hours
+in rapt attention while spectral apparitions in incredible raiment
+tottered endlessly past them on aching feet.
+
+Distracted from the regal splendours of a chinchilla cloak by the
+sense that another lady was also examining it, Mrs. Vanderlyn turned in
+surprise at sight of Susy, whose head was critically bent above the fur.
+
+"Susy! I'd no idea you were here! I saw in the papers that you were with
+the Gillows." The customary embraces followed; then Mrs. Vanderlyn,
+her eyes pursuing the matchless cloak as it disappeared down a vista of
+receding mannequins, interrogated sharply: "Are you shopping for Ursula?
+If you mean to order that cloak for her I'd rather know."
+
+Susy smiled, and paused a moment before answering. During the pause
+she took in all the exquisite details of Ellie Vanderlyn's perpetually
+youthful person, from the plumed crown of her head to the perfect arch
+of her patent-leather shoes. At last she said quietly: "No--to-day I'm
+shopping for myself."
+
+"Yourself? Yourself?" Mrs. Vanderlyn echoed with a stare of incredulity.
+
+"Yes; just for a change," Susy serenely acknowledged.
+
+"But the cloak--I meant the chinchilla cloak... the one with the ermine
+lining...."
+
+"Yes; it is awfully good, isn't it? But I mean to look elsewhere before
+I decide."
+
+Ah, how often she had heard her friends use that phrase; and how amusing
+it was, now, to see Ellie's amazement as she heard it tossed off in
+her own tone of contemptuous satiety! Susy was becoming more and more
+dependent on such diversions; without them her days, crowded as they
+were, would nevertheless have dragged by heavily. But it still amused
+her to go to the big dressmakers', watch the mannequins sweep by, and
+be seen by her friends superciliously examining all the most expensive
+dresses in the procession. She knew the rumour was abroad that she and
+Nick were to be divorced, and that Lord Altringham was "devoted" to her.
+She neither confirmed nor denied the report: she just let herself be
+luxuriously carried forward on its easy tide. But although it was now
+three months since Nick had left the Palazzo Vanderlyn she had not yet
+written to him--nor he to her.
+
+Meanwhile, in spite of all that she packed into them, the days passed
+more and more slowly, and the excitements she had counted on no longer
+excited her. Strefford was hers: she knew that he would marry her as
+soon as she was free. They had been together at Ruan for ten days, and
+after that she had motored south with him, stopping on the way to see
+Altringham, from which, at the moment, his mourning relatives were
+absent.
+
+At Altringham they had parted; and after one or two more visits in
+England she had come back to Paris, where he was now about to join her.
+After her few hours at Altringham she had understood that he would wait
+for her as long as was necessary: the fear of the "other women" had
+ceased to trouble her. But, perhaps for that very reason, the future
+seemed less exciting than she had expected. Sometimes she thought it
+was the sight of that great house which had overwhelmed her: it was
+too vast, too venerable, too like a huge monument built of ancient
+territorial traditions and obligations. Perhaps it had been lived in for
+too long by too many serious-minded and conscientious women: somehow she
+could not picture it invaded by bridge and debts and adultery. And yet
+that was what would have to be, of course... she could hardly picture
+either Strefford or herself continuing there the life of heavy county
+responsibilities, dull parties, laborious duties, weekly church-going,
+and presiding over local committees.... What a pity they couldn't sell
+it and have a little house on the Thames!
+
+Nevertheless she was not sorry to let it be known that Altringham was
+hers when she chose to take it. At times she wondered whether Nick
+knew... whether rumours had reached him. If they had, he had only his
+own letter to thank for it. He had told her what course to pursue; and
+she was pursuing it.
+
+For a moment the meeting with Ellie Vanderlyn had been a shock to her;
+she had hoped never to see Ellie again. But now that they were actually
+face to face Susy perceived how dulled her sensibilities were. In a
+few moments she had grown used to Ellie, as she was growing used to
+everybody and to everything in the old life she had returned to. What
+was the use of making such a fuss about things? She and Mrs. Vanderlyn
+left the dress-maker's together, and after an absorbing session at a new
+milliner's were now taking tea in Ellie's drawing-room at the Nouveau
+Luxe.
+
+Ellie, with her spoiled child's persistency, had come back to the
+question of the chinchilla cloak. It was the only one she had seen that
+she fancied in the very least, and as she hadn't a decent fur garment
+left to her name she was naturally in somewhat of a hurry... but, of
+course, if Susy had been choosing that model for a friend....
+
+Susy, leaning back against her cushions, examined through half-closed
+lids Mrs. Vanderlyn's small delicately-restored countenance, which wore
+the same expression of childish eagerness as when she discoursed of the
+young Davenant of the moment. Once again Susy remarked that, in Ellie's
+agitated existence, every interest appeared to be on exactly the same
+plane.
+
+"The poor shivering dear," she answered laughing, "of course it shall
+have its nice warm winter cloak, and I'll choose another one instead."
+
+"Oh, you darling, you! If you would! Of course, whoever you were
+ordering it for need never know...."
+
+"Ah, you can't comfort yourself with that, I'm afraid. I've already told
+you that I was ordering it for myself." Susy paused to savour to the
+full Ellie's look of blank bewilderment; then her amusement was checked
+by an indefinable change in her friend's expression.
+
+"Oh, dearest--seriously? I didn't know there was someone...."
+
+Susy flushed to the forehead. A horror of humiliation overwhelmed her.
+That Ellie should dare to think that of her--that anyone should dare to!
+
+"Someone buying chinchilla cloaks for me? Thanks!" she flared out. "I
+suppose I ought to be glad that the idea didn't immediately occur to
+you. At least there was a decent interval of doubt...." She stood up,
+laughing again, and began to wander about the room. In the mirror above
+the mantel she caught sight of her flushed angry face, and of Mrs.
+Vanderlyn's disconcerted stare. She turned toward her friend.
+
+"I suppose everybody else will think it if you do; so perhaps I'd better
+explain." She paused, and drew a quick breath. "Nick and I mean to
+part--have parted, in fact. He's decided that the whole thing was a
+mistake. He will probably; marry again soon--and so shall I."
+
+She flung the avowal out breathlessly, in her nervous dread of letting
+Ellie Vanderlyn think for an instant longer that any other explanation
+was conceivable. She had not meant to be so explicit; but once the words
+were spoken she was not altogether sorry. Of course people would soon
+begin to wonder why she was again straying about the world alone; and
+since it was by Nick's choice, why should she not say so? Remembering
+the burning anguish of those last hours in Venice she asked herself what
+possible consideration she owed to the man who had so humbled her.
+
+Ellie Vanderlyn glanced at her in astonishment. "You? You and Nick--are
+going to part?" A light appeared to dawn on her. "Ah--then that's why he
+sent me back my pin, I suppose?"
+
+"Your pin?" Susy wondered, not at once remembering.
+
+"The poor little scarf-pin I gave him before I left Venice. He sent it
+back almost at once, with the oddest note--just: 'I haven't earned it,
+really.' I couldn't think why he didn't care for the pin. But, now I
+suppose it was because you and he had quarrelled; though really, even
+so, I can't see why he should bear me a grudge...."
+
+Susy's quick blood surged up. Nick had sent back the pin-the fatal pin!
+And she, Susy, had kept the bracelet--locked it up out of sight, shrunk
+away from the little packet whenever her hand touched it in packing or
+unpacking--but never thought of returning it, no, not once! Which of the
+two, she wondered, had been right? Was it not an indirect slight to her
+that Nick should fling back the gift to poor uncomprehending Ellie? Or
+was it not rather another proof of his finer moral sensitiveness!...
+And how could one tell, in their bewildering world, "It was not because
+we've quarrelled; we haven't quarrelled," she said slowly, moved by the
+sudden desire to defend her privacy and Nick's, to screen from every
+eye their last bitter hour together. "We've simply decided that our
+experiment was impossible-for two paupers."
+
+"Ah, well--of course we all felt that at the time. And now somebody else
+wants to marry you! And it's your trousseau you were choosing that cloak
+for?" Ellie cried in incredulous rapture; then she flung her arms about
+Susy's shrinking shoulders. "You lucky lucky girl! You clever clever
+darling! But who on earth can he be?"
+
+And it was then that Susy, for the first time, had pronounced the name
+of Lord Altringham.
+
+"Streff--Streff? Our dear old Streff, You mean to say he wants to marry
+you?" As the news took possession of her mind Ellie became dithyrambic.
+"But, my dearest, what a miracle of luck! Of course I always knew he
+was awfully gone on you: Fred Davenant used to say so, I remember... and
+even Nelson, who's so stupid about such things, noticed it in Venice....
+But then it was so different. No one could possibly have thought of
+marrying him then; whereas now of course every woman is trying for him.
+Oh, Susy, whatever you do, don't miss your chance! You can't conceive
+of the wicked plotting and intriguing there will be to get him--on all
+sides, and even where one least suspects it. You don't know what horrors
+women will do-and even girls!" A shudder ran through her at the thought,
+and she caught Susy's wrists in vehement fingers. "But I can't think,
+my dear, why you don't announce your engagement at once. People are
+beginning to do it, I assure you--it's so much safer!"
+
+Susy looked at her, wondering. Not a word of sympathy for the ruin of
+her brief bliss, not even a gleam of curiosity as to its cause! No
+doubt Ellie Vanderlyn, like all Susy's other friends, had long since
+"discounted" the brevity of her dream, and perhaps planned a sequel to
+it before she herself had seen the glory fading. She and Nick had spent
+the greater part of their few weeks together under Ellie Vanderlyn's
+roof; but to Ellie, obviously, the fact meant no more than her own
+escapade, at the same moment, with young Davenant's supplanter--the
+"bounder" whom Strefford had never named. Her one thought for her friend
+was that Susy should at last secure her prize--her incredible prize. And
+therein at any rate Ellie showed the kind of cold disinterestedness that
+raised her above the smiling perfidy of the majority of her kind. At
+least her advice was sincere; and perhaps it was wise. Why should Susy
+not let every one know that she meant to marry Strefford as soon as the
+"formalities" were fulfilled?
+
+She did not immediately answer Mrs. Vanderlyn's question; and the
+latter, repeating it, added impatiently: "I don't understand you; if
+Nick agrees-"
+
+"Oh, he agrees," said Susy.
+
+"Then what more do you want! Oh, Susy, if you'd only follow my example!"
+
+"Your example?" Susy paused, weighed the word, was struck by something
+embarrassed, arch yet half-apologetic in her friend's expression. "Your
+example?" she repeated. "Why, Ellie, what on earth do you mean? Not that
+you're going to part from poor Nelson?"
+
+Mrs. Vanderlyn met her reproachful gaze with a crystalline glance. "I
+don't want to, heaven knows--poor dear Nelson! I assure you I simply
+hate it. He's always such an angel to Clarissa... and then we're used
+to each other. But what in the world am I to do? Algie's so rich, so
+appallingly rich, that I have to be perpetually on the watch to keep
+other women away from him--and it's too exhausting...."
+
+"Algie?"
+
+Mrs. Vanderlyn's lovely eyebrows rose. "Algie: Algie Bockheimer. Didn't
+you know, I think he said you've dined with his parents. Nobody else in
+the world is as rich as the Bockheimers; and Algie's their only
+child. Yes, it was with him... with him I was so dreadfully happy last
+spring... and now I'm in mortal terror of losing him. And I do assure
+you there's no other way of keeping them, when they're as hideously rich
+as that!"
+
+Susy rose to her feet. A little shudder ran over her. She remembered,
+now, having seen Algie Bockheimer at one of his parents' first
+entertainments, in their newly-inaugurated marble halls in Fifth Avenue.
+She recalled his too faultless clothes and his small glossy furtive
+countenance. She looked at Ellie Vanderlyn with sudden scorn.
+
+"I think you're abominable," she exclaimed.
+
+The other's perfect little face collapsed. "A-bo-minable? A-bo-mi-nable?
+Susy!"
+
+"Yes... with Nelson... and Clarissa... and your past together... and all
+the money you can possibly want... and that man! Abominable."
+
+Ellie stood up trembling: she was not used to scenes, and they
+disarranged her thoughts as much as her complexion.
+
+"You're very cruel, Susy--so cruel and dreadful that I hardly know how
+to answer you," she stammered. "But you simply don't know what you're
+talking about. As if anybody ever had all the money they wanted!" She
+wiped her dark-rimmed eyes with a cautious handkerchief, glanced at
+herself in the mirror, and added magnanimously: "But I shall try to
+forget what you've said."
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+JUST such a revolt as she had felt as a girl, such a disgusted recoil
+from the standards and ideals of everybody about her as had flung her
+into her mad marriage with Nick, now flamed in Susy Lansing's bosom.
+
+How could she ever go back into that world again? How echo its
+appraisals of life and bow down to its judgments? Alas, it was only
+by marrying according to its standards that she could escape such
+subjection. Perhaps the same thought had actuated Nick: perhaps he had
+understood sooner than she that to attain moral freedom they must both
+be above material cares. Perhaps...
+
+Her talk with Ellie Vanderlyn had left Susy so oppressed and humiliated
+that she almost shrank from her meeting with Altringham the next day.
+She knew that he was coming to Paris for his final answer; he would wait
+as long as was necessary if only she would consent to take immediate
+steps for a divorce. She was staying at a modest hotel in the Faubourg
+St. Germain, and had once more refused his suggestion that they should
+lunch at the Nouveau Luxe, or at some fashionable restaurant of the
+Boulevards. As before, she insisted on going to an out-of-the-way place
+near the Luxembourg, where the prices were moderate enough for her own
+purse.
+
+"I can't understand," Strefford objected, as they turned from her hotel
+door toward this obscure retreat, "why you insist on giving me bad food,
+and depriving me of the satisfaction of being seen with you. Why must we
+be so dreadfully clandestine? Don't people know by this time that we're
+to be married?"
+
+Susy winced a little: she wondered if the word would always sound so
+unnatural on his lips.
+
+"No," she said, with a laugh, "they simply think, for the present, that
+you're giving me pearls and chinchilla cloaks."
+
+He wrinkled his brows good-humouredly. "Well, so I would, with joy--at
+this particular minute. Don't you think perhaps you'd better take
+advantage of it? I don't wish to insist--but I foresee that I'm much too
+rich not to become stingy."
+
+She gave a slight shrug. "At present there's nothing I loathe more than
+pearls and chinchilla, or anything else in the world that's expensive
+and enviable...."
+
+Suddenly she broke off, colouring with the consciousness that she had
+said exactly the kind of thing that all the women who were trying for
+him (except the very cleverest) would be sure to say; and that he
+would certainly suspect her of attempting the conventional comedy of
+disinterestedness, than which nothing was less likely to deceive or to
+flatter him.
+
+His twinkling eyes played curiously over her face, and she went on,
+meeting them with a smile: "But don't imagine, all the same, that if I
+should... decide... it would be altogether for your beaux yeux...."
+
+He laughed, she thought, rather drily. "No," he said, "I don't suppose
+that's ever likely to happen to me again."
+
+"Oh, Streff--" she faltered with compunction. It was odd-once upon a
+time she had known exactly what to say to the man of the moment, whoever
+he was, and whatever kind of talk he required; she had even, in the
+difficult days before her marriage, reeled off glibly enough the sort
+of lime-light sentimentality that plunged poor Fred Gillow into such
+speechless beatitude. But since then she had spoken the language of real
+love, looked with its eyes, embraced with its hands; and now the other
+trumpery art had failed her, and she was conscious of bungling and
+groping like a beginner under Strefford's ironic scrutiny.
+
+They had reached their obscure destination and he opened the door and
+glanced in.
+
+"It's jammed--not a table. And stifling! Where shall we go? Perhaps they
+could give us a room to ourselves--" he suggested.
+
+She assented, and they were led up a cork-screw staircase to a
+squat-ceilinged closet lit by the arched top of a high window, the lower
+panes of which served for the floor below. Strefford opened the window,
+and Susy, throwing her cloak on the divan, leaned on the balcony while
+he ordered luncheon.
+
+On the whole she was glad they were to be alone. Just because she
+felt so sure of Strefford it seemed ungenerous to keep him longer in
+suspense. The moment had come when they must have a decisive talk, and
+in the crowded rooms below it would have been impossible.
+
+Strefford, when the waiter had brought the first course and left them
+to themselves, made no effort to revert to personal matters. He turned
+instead to the topic always most congenial to him: the humours and
+ironies of the human comedy, as presented by his own particular group.
+His malicious commentary on life had always amused Susy because of the
+shrewd flashes of philosophy he shed on the social antics they had
+so often watched together. He was in fact the one person she knew
+(excepting Nick) who was in the show and yet outside of it; and she was
+surprised, as the talk proceeded, to find herself so little interested
+in his scraps of gossip, and so little amused by his comments on them.
+
+With an inward shrug of discouragement she said to herself that probably
+nothing would ever really amuse her again; then, as she listened, she
+began to understand that her disappointment arose from the fact that
+Strefford, in reality, could not live without these people whom he
+saw through and satirized, and that the rather commonplace scandals he
+narrated interested him as much as his own racy considerations on them;
+and she was filled with terror at the thought that the inmost core of
+the richly-decorated life of the Countess of Altringham would be just
+as poor and low-ceilinged a place as the little room in which he and she
+now sat, elbow to elbow yet so unapproachably apart.
+
+If Strefford could not live without these people, neither could she and
+Nick; but for reasons how different! And if his opportunities had
+been theirs, what a world they would have created for themselves! Such
+imaginings were vain, and she shrank back from them into the present.
+After all, as Lady Altringham she would have the power to create that
+world which she and Nick had dreamed... only she must create it alone.
+Well, that was probably the law of things. All human happiness was thus
+conditioned and circumscribed, and hers, no doubt, must always be of the
+lonely kind, since material things did not suffice for it, even though
+it depended on them as Grace Fulmer's, for instance, never had. Yet even
+Grace Fulmer had succumbed to Ursula's offer, and had arrived at Ruan
+the day before Susy left, instead of going to Spain with her husband
+and Violet Melrose. But then Grace was making the sacrifice for her
+children, and somehow one had the feeling that in giving up her liberty
+she was not surrendering a tittle of herself. All the difference was
+there....
+
+"How I do bore you!" Susy heard Strefford exclaim. She became aware
+that she had not been listening: stray echoes of names of places and
+people--Violet Melrose, Ursula, Prince Altineri, others of their group
+and persuasion--had vainly knocked at her barricaded brain; what had he
+been telling her about them? She turned to him and their eyes met; his
+were full of a melancholy irony.
+
+"Susy, old girl, what's wrong?"
+
+She pulled herself together. "I was thinking, Streff, just now--when I
+said I hated the very sound of pearls and chinchilla--how impossible
+it was that you should believe me; in fact, what a blunder I'd made in
+saying it."
+
+He smiled. "Because it was what so many other women might be likely to
+say so awfully unoriginal, in fact?"
+
+She laughed for sheer joy at his insight. "It's going to be easier than
+I imagined," she thought. Aloud she rejoined: "Oh, Streff--how you're
+always going to find me out! Where on earth shall I ever hide from you?"
+
+"Where?" He echoed her laugh, laying his hand lightly on hers. "In my
+heart, I'm afraid."
+
+In spite of the laugh his accent shook her: something about it took
+all the mockery from his retort, checked on her lips the: "What? A
+valentine!" and made her suddenly feel that, if he were afraid, so was
+she. Yet she was touched also, and wondered half exultingly if any
+other woman had ever caught that particular deep inflexion of his shrill
+voice. She had never liked him as much as at that moment; and she said
+to herself, with an odd sense of detachment, as if she had been rather
+breathlessly observing the vacillations of someone whom she longed to
+persuade but dared not: "Now--NOW, if he speaks, I shall say yes!"
+
+He did not speak; but abruptly, and as startlingly to her as if she
+had just dropped from a sphere whose inhabitants had other methods of
+expressing their sympathy, he slipped his arm around her and bent his
+keen ugly melting face to hers....
+
+It was the lightest touch--in an instant she was free again. But
+something within her gasped and resisted long after his arm and his lips
+were gone, and he was proceeding, with a too-studied ease, to light a
+cigarette and sweeten his coffee.
+
+He had kissed her.... Well, naturally: why not? It was not the first
+time she had been kissed. It was true that one didn't habitually
+associate Streff with such demonstrations; but she had not that excuse
+for surprise, for even in Venice she had begun to notice that he looked
+at her differently, and avoided her hand when he used to seek it.
+
+No--she ought not to have been surprised; nor ought a kiss to have been
+so disturbing. Such incidents had punctuated the career of Susy Branch:
+there had been, in particular, in far-off discarded times, Fred Gillow's
+large but artless embraces. Well--nothing of that kind had seemed of
+any more account than the click of a leaf in a woodland walk. It had
+all been merely epidermal, ephemeral, part of the trivial accepted
+"business" of the social comedy. But this kiss of Strefford's was what
+Nick's had been, under the New Hampshire pines, on the day that had
+decided their fate. It was a kiss with a future in it: like a
+ring slipped upon her soul. And now, in the dreadful pause that
+followed--while Strefford fidgeted with his cigarette-case and rattled
+the spoon in his cup, Susy remembered what she had seen through the
+circle of Nick's kiss: that blue illimitable distance which was at once
+the landscape at their feet and the future in their souls....
+
+Perhaps that was what Strefford's sharply narrowed eyes were seeing now,
+that same illimitable distance that she had lost forever--perhaps he was
+saying to himself, as she had said to herself when her lips left Nick's:
+"Each time we kiss we shall see it all again...." Whereas all she
+herself had felt was the gasping recoil from Strefford's touch, and an
+intenser vision of the sordid room in which he and she sat, and of their
+two selves, more distant from each other than if their embrace had been
+a sudden thrusting apart....
+
+The moment prolonged itself, and they sat numb. How long had it lasted?
+How long ago was it that she had thought: "It's going to be easier than
+I imagined"? Suddenly she felt Strefford's queer smile upon her, and saw
+in his eyes a look, not of reproach or disappointment, but of deep and
+anxious comprehension. Instead of being angry or hurt, he had seen, he
+had understood, he was sorry for her!
+
+Impulsively she slipped her hand into his, and they sat silent for
+another moment. Then he stood up and took her cloak from the divan.
+"Shall we go now! I've got cards for the private view of the Reynolds
+exhibition at the Petit Palais. There are some portraits from
+Altringham. It might amuse you."
+
+In the taxi she had time, through their light rattle of talk, to
+readjust herself and drop back into her usual feeling of friendly ease
+with him. He had been extraordinarily considerate, for anyone who always
+so undisguisedly sought his own satisfaction above all things; and
+if his considerateness were just an indirect way of seeking that
+satisfaction now, well, that proved how much he cared for her, how
+necessary to his happiness she had become. The sense of power was
+undeniably pleasant; pleasanter still was the feeling that someone
+really needed her, that the happiness of the man at her side depended
+on her yes or no. She abandoned herself to the feeling, forgetting the
+abysmal interval of his caress, or at least saying to herself that in
+time she would forget it, that really there was nothing to make a fuss
+about in being kissed by anyone she liked as much as Streff....
+
+She had guessed at once why he was taking her to see the Reynoldses.
+Fashionable and artistic Paris had recently discovered English
+eighteenth century art. The principal collections of England had yielded
+up their best examples of the great portrait painter's work, and the
+private view at the Petit Palais was to be the social event of the
+afternoon. Everybody--Strefford's everybody and Susy's--was sure to
+be there; and these, as she knew, were the occasions that revived
+Strefford's intermittent interest in art. He really liked picture shows
+as much as the races, if one could be sure of seeing as many people
+there. With Nick how different it would have been! Nick hated openings
+and varnishing days, and worldly aesthetics in general; he would have
+waited till the tide of fashion had ebbed, and slipped off with Susy to
+see the pictures some morning when they were sure to have the place to
+themselves.
+
+But Susy divined that there was another reason for Strefford's
+suggestion. She had never yet shown herself with him publicly, among
+their own group of people: now he had determined that she should do
+so, and she knew why. She had humbled his pride; he had understood, and
+forgiven her. But she still continued to treat him as she had always
+treated the Strefford of old, Charlie Strefford, dear old negligible
+impecunious Streff; and he wanted to show her, ever so casually and
+adroitly, that the man who had asked her to marry him was no longer
+Strefford, but Lord Altringham.
+
+At the very threshold, his Ambassador's greeting marked the difference:
+it was followed, wherever they turned, by ejaculations of welcome from
+the rulers of the world they moved in. Everybody rich enough or titled
+enough, or clever enough or stupid enough, to have forced a way into the
+social citadel, was there, waving and flag-flying from the battlements;
+and to all of them Lord Altringham had become a marked figure. During
+their slow progress through the dense mass of important people who made
+the approach to the pictures so well worth fighting for, he never left
+Susy's side, or failed to make her feel herself a part of his triumphal
+advance. She heard her name mentioned: "Lansing--a Mrs. Lansing--an
+American... Susy Lansing? Yes, of course.... You remember her? At
+Newport, At St. Moritz? Exactly.... Divorced already? They say so...
+Susy darling! I'd no idea you were here... and Lord Altringham! You've
+forgotten me, I know, Lord Altringham.... Yes, last year, in Cairo... or
+at Newport... or in Scotland ... Susy, dearest, when will you bring Lord
+Altringham to dine? Any night that you and he are free I'll arrange to
+be...."
+
+"You and he": they were "you and he" already!
+
+"Ah, there's one of them--of my great-grandmothers," Strefford
+explained, giving a last push that drew him and Susy to the front rank,
+before a tall isolated portrait which, by sheer majesty of presentment,
+sat in its great carved golden frame as on a throne above the other
+pictures.
+
+Susy read on the scroll beneath it: "The Hon'ble Diana Lefanu, fifteenth
+Countess of Altringham"--and heard Strefford say: "Do you remember? It
+hangs where you noticed the empty space above the mantel-piece, in the
+Vandyke room. They say Reynolds stipulated that it should be put with
+the Vandykes."
+
+She had never before heard him speak of his possessions, whether
+ancestral or merely material, in just that full and satisfied tone of
+voice: the rich man's voice. She saw that he was already feeling the
+influence of his surroundings, that he was glad the portrait of a
+Countess of Altringham should occupy the central place in the principal
+room of the exhibition, that the crowd about it should be denser there
+than before any of the other pictures, and that he should be standing
+there with Susy, letting her feel, and letting all the people about
+them guess, that the day she chose she could wear the same name as his
+pictured ancestress.
+
+On the way back to her hotel, Strefford made no farther allusion to
+their future; they chatted like old comrades in their respective corners
+of the taxi. But as the carriage stopped at her door he said: "I must go
+back to England the day after to-morrow, worse luck! Why not dine with
+me to-night at the Nouveau Luxe? I've got to have the Ambassador and
+Lady Ascot, with their youngest girl and my old Dunes aunt, the Dowager
+Duchess, who's over here hiding from her creditors; but I'll try to get
+two or three amusing men to leaven the lump. We might go on to a boite
+afterward, if you're bored. Unless the dancing amuses you more...."
+
+She understood that he had decided to hasten his departure rather than
+linger on in uncertainty; she also remembered having heard the Ascots'
+youngest daughter, Lady Joan Senechal, spoken of as one of the prettiest
+girls of the season; and she recalled the almost exaggerated warmth of
+the Ambassador's greeting at the private view.
+
+"Of course I'll come, Streff dear!" she cried, with an effort at gaiety
+that sounded successful to her own strained ears, and reflected itself
+in the sudden lighting up of his face.
+
+She waved a good-bye from the step, saying to herself, as she looked
+after him: "He'll drive me home to-night, and I shall say 'yes'; and
+then he'll kiss me again. But the next time it won't be nearly as
+disagreeable."
+
+She turned into the hotel, glanced automatically at the empty
+pigeon-hole for letters under her key-hook, and mounted the stairs
+following the same train of images. "Yes, I shall say 'yes' to-night,"
+she repeated firmly, her hand on the door of her room. "That is, unless,
+they've brought up a letter...." She never re-entered the hotel without
+imagining that the letter she had not found below had already been
+brought up.
+
+Opening the door, she turned on the light and sprang to the table on
+which her correspondence sometimes awaited her.
+
+There was no letter; but the morning papers, still unread, lay at hand,
+and glancing listlessly down the column which chronicles the doings of
+society, she read:
+
+"After an extended cruise in the AEgean and the Black Sea on their
+steam-yacht Ibis, Mr. and Mrs. Mortimer Hicks and their daughter are
+established at the Nouveau Luxe in Rome. They have lately had the honour
+of entertaining at dinner the Reigning Prince of Teutoburger-Waldhain
+and his mother the Princess Dowager, with their suite. Among those
+invited to meet their Serene Highnesses were the French and Spanish
+Ambassadors, the Duchesse de Vichy, Prince and Princess Bagnidilucca,
+Lady Penelope Pantiles--" Susy's eye flew impatiently on over the long
+list of titles--"and Mr. Nicholas Lansing of New York, who has been
+cruising with Mr. and Mrs. Hicks on the Ibis for the last few months."
+
+
+
+XX
+
+THE Mortimer Hickses were in Rome; not, as they would in former times
+have been, in one of the antiquated hostelries of the Piazza di Spagna
+or the Porta del Popolo, where of old they had so gaily defied fever
+and nourished themselves on local colour; but spread out, with all the
+ostentation of philistine millionaires, under the piano nobile ceilings
+of one of the high-perched "Palaces," where, as Mrs. Hicks shamelessly
+declared, they could "rely on the plumbing," and "have the privilege of
+over-looking the Queen Mother's Gardens."
+
+It was that speech, uttered with beaming aplomb at a dinner-table
+surrounded by the cosmopolitan nobility of the Eternal City, that had
+suddenly revealed to Lansing the profound change in the Hicks point of
+view.
+
+As he looked back over the four months since he had so unexpectedly
+joined the Ibis at Genoa, he saw that the change, at first insidious
+and unperceived, dated from the ill-fated day when the Hickses had run
+across a Reigning Prince on his travels.
+
+Hitherto they had been proof against such perils: both Mr. and Mrs.
+Hicks had often declared that the aristocracy of the intellect was the
+only one which attracted them. But in this case the Prince possessed an
+intellect, in addition to his few square miles of territory, and to one
+of the most beautiful Field Marshal's uniforms that had ever encased a
+royal warrior. The Prince was not a warrior, however; he was stooping,
+pacific and spectacled, and his possession of the uniform had been
+revealed to Mrs. Hicks only by the gift of a full-length photograph in
+a Bond Street frame, with Anastasius written slantingly across its
+legs. The Prince--and herein lay the Hickses' undoing--the Prince was
+an archaeologist: an earnest anxious enquiring and scrupulous
+archaeologist. Delicate health (so his suite hinted) banished him for
+a part of each year from his cold and foggy principality; and in the
+company of his mother, the active and enthusiastic Dowager Princess, he
+wandered from one Mediterranean shore to another, now assisting at
+the exhumation of Ptolemaic mummies, now at the excavation of Delphic
+temples or of North African basilicas. The beginning of winter usually
+brought the Prince and his mother to Rome or Nice, unless indeed they
+were summoned by family duties to Berlin, Vienna or Madrid; for an
+extended connection with the principal royal houses of Europe compelled
+them, as the Princess Mother said, to be always burying or marrying a
+cousin. At other moments they were seldom seen in the glacial atmosphere
+of courts, preferring to royal palaces those of the other, and more
+modern type, in one of which the Hickses were now lodged.
+
+Yes: the Prince and his mother (they gaily avowed it) revelled in Palace
+Hotels; and, being unable to afford the luxury of inhabiting them,
+they liked, as often as possible, to be invited to dine there by their
+friends--"or even to tea, my dear," the Princess laughingly avowed,
+"for I'm so awfully fond of buttered scones; and Anastasius gives me so
+little to eat in the desert."
+
+The encounter with these ambulant Highnesses had been fatal--Lansing
+now perceived it--to Mrs. Hicks's principles. She had known a great many
+archaeologists, but never one as agreeable as the Prince, and above
+all never one who had left a throne to camp in the desert and delve in
+Libyan tombs. And it seemed to her infinitely pathetic that these two
+gifted beings, who grumbled when they had to go to "marry a cousin" at
+the Palace of St. James or of Madrid, and hastened back breathlessly to
+the far-off point where, metaphorically speaking, pick-axe and spade had
+dropped from their royal hands--that these heirs of the ages should be
+unable to offer themselves the comforts of up-to-date hotel life, and
+should enjoy themselves "like babies" when they were invited to the
+other kind of "Palace," to feast on buttered scones and watch the tango.
+
+She simply could not bear the thought of their privations; and neither,
+after a time, could Mr. Hicks, who found the Prince more democratic than
+anyone he had ever known at Apex City, and was immensely interested by
+the fact that their spectacles came from the same optician.
+
+But it was, above all, the artistic tendencies of the Prince and his
+mother which had conquered the Hickses. There was fascination in the
+thought that, among the rabble of vulgar uneducated royalties who
+overran Europe from Biarritz to the Engadine, gambling, tangoing,
+and sponging on no less vulgar plebeians, they, the unobtrusive
+and self-respecting Hickses, should have had the luck to meet this
+cultivated pair, who joined them in gentle ridicule of their own
+frivolous kinsfolk, and whose tastes were exactly those of the
+eccentric, unreliable and sometimes money-borrowing persons who had
+hitherto represented the higher life to the Hickses.
+
+Now at last Mrs. Hicks saw the possibility of being at once artistic and
+luxurious, of surrendering herself to the joys of modern plumbing and
+yet keeping the talk on the highest level. "If the poor dear Princess
+wants to dine at the Nouveau Luxe why shouldn't we give her that
+pleasure?" Mrs. Hicks smilingly enquired; "and as for enjoying her
+buttered scones like a baby, as she says, I think it's the sweetest
+thing about her."
+
+Coral Hicks did not join in this chorus; but she accepted, with her
+curious air of impartiality, the change in her parents' manner of life,
+and for the first time (as Nick observed) occupied herself with her
+mother's toilet, with the result that Mrs. Hicks's outline became
+firmer, her garments soberer in hue and finer in material; so that,
+should anyone chance to detect the daughter's likeness to her mother,
+the result was less likely to be disturbing.
+
+Such precautions were the more needful--Lansing could not but note
+because of the different standards of the society in which the Hickses
+now moved. For it was a curious fact that admission to the intimacy of
+the Prince and his mother--who continually declared themselves to be
+the pariahs, the outlaws, the Bohemians among crowned heads nevertheless
+involved not only living in Palace Hotels but mixing with those who
+frequented them. The Prince's aide-de-camp--an agreeable young man of
+easy manners--had smilingly hinted that their Serene Highnesses, though
+so thoroughly democratic and unceremonious, were yet accustomed to
+inspecting in advance the names of the persons whom their hosts wished
+to invite with them; and Lansing noticed that Mrs. Hicks's lists,
+having been "submitted," usually came back lengthened by the addition of
+numerous wealthy and titled guests. Their Highnesses never struck out
+a name; they welcomed with enthusiasm and curiosity the Hickses' oddest
+and most inexplicable friends, at most putting off some of them to a
+later day on the plea that it would be "cosier" to meet them on a more
+private occasion; but they invariably added to the list any friends of
+their own, with the gracious hint that they wished these latter (though
+socially so well-provided for) to have the "immense privilege" of
+knowing the Hickses. And thus it happened that when October gales
+necessitated laying up the Ibis, the Hickses, finding again in Rome
+the august travellers from whom they had parted the previous month in
+Athens, also found their visiting-list enlarged by all that the capital
+contained of fashion.
+
+It was true enough, as Lansing had not failed to note, that the Princess
+Mother adored prehistoric art, and Russian music, and the paintings of
+Gauguin and Matisse; but she also, and with a beaming unconsciousness
+of perspective, adored large pearls and powerful motors, caravan tea and
+modern plumbing, perfumed cigarettes and society scandals; and her son,
+while apparently less sensible to these forms of luxury, adored his
+mother, and was charmed to gratify her inclinations without cost to
+himself--"Since poor Mamma," as he observed, "is so courageous when we
+are roughing it in the desert."
+
+The smiling aide-de-camp, who explained these things to Lansing,
+added with an intenser smile that the Prince and his mother were under
+obligations, either social or cousinly, to most of the titled persons
+whom they begged Mrs. Hicks to invite; "and it seems to their Serene
+Highnesses," he added, "the most flattering return they can make for
+the hospitality of their friends to give them such an intellectual
+opportunity."
+
+The dinner-table at which their Highnesses' friends were seated on
+the evening in question represented, numerically, one of the greatest
+intellectual opportunities yet afforded them. Thirty guests were grouped
+about the flower-wreathed board, from which Eldorada and Mr. Beck had
+been excluded on the plea that the Princess Mother liked cosy parties
+and begged her hosts that there should never be more than thirty
+at table. Such, at least, was the reason given by Mrs. Hicks to her
+faithful followers; but Lansing had observed that, of late, the same
+skilled hand which had refashioned the Hickses' social circle usually
+managed to exclude from it the timid presences of the two secretaries.
+Their banishment was the more displeasing to Lansing from the fact that,
+for the last three months, he had filled Mr. Buttles's place, and was
+himself their salaried companion. But since he had accepted the post,
+his obvious duty was to fill it in accordance with his employers'
+requirements; and it was clear even to Eldorada and Mr. Beck that
+he had, as Eldorada ungrudgingly said, "Something of Mr. Buttles's
+marvellous social gifts."
+
+During the cruise his task had not been distasteful to him. He was glad
+of any definite duties, however trivial, he felt more independent as the
+Hickses' secretary than as their pampered guest, and the large cheque
+which Mr. Hicks handed over to him on the first of each month refreshed
+his languishing sense of self-respect.
+
+He considered himself absurdly over-paid, but that was the Hickses'
+affair; and he saw nothing humiliating in being in the employ of people
+he liked and respected. But from the moment of the ill-fated encounter
+with the wandering Princes, his position had changed as much as that
+of his employers. He was no longer, to Mr. and Mrs. Hicks, a useful and
+estimable assistant, on the same level as Eldorada and Mr. Beck; he had
+become a social asset of unsuspected value, equalling Mr. Buttles in
+his capacity for dealing with the mysteries of foreign etiquette, and
+surpassing him in the art of personal attraction. Nick Lansing, the
+Hickses found, already knew most of the Princess Mother's rich and
+aristocratic friends. Many of them hailed him with enthusiastic "Old
+Nicks", and he was almost as familiar as His Highness's own aide-de-camp
+with all those secret ramifications of love and hate that made
+dinner-giving so much more of a science in Rome than at Apex City.
+
+Mrs. Hicks, at first, had hopelessly lost her way in this labyrinth of
+subterranean scandals, rivalries and jealousies; and finding Lansing's
+hand within reach she clung to it with pathetic tenacity. But if
+the young man's value had risen in the eyes of his employers it had
+deteriorated in his own. He was condemned to play a part he had
+not bargained for, and it seemed to him more degrading when paid in
+bank-notes than if his retribution had consisted merely in good dinners
+and luxurious lodgings. The first time the smiling aide-de-camp had
+caught his eye over a verbal slip of Mrs. Hicks's, Nick had flushed to
+the forehead and gone to bed swearing that he would chuck his job the
+next day.
+
+Two months had passed since then, and he was still the paid secretary.
+He had contrived to let the aide-de-camp feel that he was too deficient
+in humour to be worth exchanging glances with; but even this had not
+restored his self-respect, and on the evening in question, as he looked
+about the long table, he said to himself for the hundredth time that he
+would give up his position on the morrow.
+
+Only--what was the alternative? The alternative, apparently, was Coral
+Hicks. He glanced down the line of diners, beginning with the tall lean
+countenance of the Princess Mother, with its small inquisitive eyes
+perched as high as attic windows under a frizzled thatch of hair and a
+pediment of uncleaned diamonds; passed on to the vacuous and overfed
+or fashionably haggard masks of the ladies next in rank; and finally
+caught, between branching orchids, a distant glimpse of Miss Hicks.
+
+In contrast with the others, he thought, she looked surprisingly noble.
+Her large grave features made her appear like an old monument in a
+street of Palace Hotels; and he marvelled at the mysterious law which
+had brought this archaic face out of Apex City, and given to the oldest
+society of Europe a look of such mixed modernity.
+
+Lansing perceived that the aide-de-camp, who was his neighbour, was also
+looking at Miss Hicks. His expression was serious, and even thoughtful;
+but as his eyes met Lansing's he readjusted his official smile.
+
+"I was admiring our hostess's daughter. Her absence of jewels is--er--an
+inspiration," he remarked in the confidential tone which Lansing had
+come to dread.
+
+"Oh, Miss Hicks is full of inspirations," he returned curtly, and the
+aide-de-camp bowed with an admiring air, as if inspirations were rarer
+than pearls, as in his milieu they undoubtedly were. "She is the equal
+of any situation, I am sure," he replied; and then abandoned the subject
+with one of his automatic transitions.
+
+After dinner, in the embrasure of a drawing-room window, he surprised
+Nick by returning to the same topic, and this time without thinking it
+needful to readjust his smile. His face remained serious, though his
+manner was studiously informal.
+
+"I was admiring, at dinner, Miss Hicks's invariable sense of
+appropriateness. It must permit her friends to foresee for her almost
+any future, however exalted."
+
+Lansing hesitated, and controlled his annoyance. Decidedly he wanted to
+know what was in his companion's mind.
+
+"What do you mean by exalted?" he asked, with a smile of faint
+amusement.
+
+"Well--equal to her marvellous capacity for shining in the public eye."
+
+Lansing still smiled. "The question is, I suppose, whether her desire to
+shine equals her capacity."
+
+The aide-de-camp stared. "You mean, she's not ambitious?"
+
+"On the contrary; I believe her to be immeasurably ambitious."
+
+"Immeasurably?" The aide-de-camp seemed to try to measure it. "But not,
+surely, beyond--beyond what we can offer," his eyes completed the
+sentence; and it was Lansing's turn to stare. The aide-de-camp faced the
+stare. "Yes," his eyes concluded in a flash, while his lips let fall:
+"The Princess Mother admires her immensely." But at that moment a wave
+of Mrs. Hicks's fan drew them hurriedly from their embrasure.
+
+"Professor Darchivio had promised to explain to us the difference
+between the Sassanian and Byzantine motives in Carolingian art; but the
+Manager has sent up word that the two new Creole dancers from Paris have
+arrived, and her Serene Highness wants to pop down to the ball-room and
+take a peep at them.... She's sure the Professor will understand...."
+
+"And accompany us, of course," the Princess irresistibly added.
+
+Lansing's brief colloquy in the Nouveau Luxe window had lifted the
+scales from his eyes. Innumerable dim corners of memory had been flooded
+with light by that one quick glance of the aide-de-camp's: things he
+had heard, hints he had let pass, smiles, insinuations, cordialities,
+rumours of the improbability of the Prince's founding a family,
+suggestions as to the urgent need of replenishing the Teutoburger
+treasury....
+
+Miss Hicks, perforce, had accompanied her parents and their princely
+guests to the ballroom; but as she did not dance, and took little
+interest in the sight of others so engaged, she remained aloof from the
+party, absorbed in an archaeological discussion with the baffled but
+smiling savant who was to have enlightened the party on the difference
+between Sassanian and Byzantine ornament.
+
+Lansing, also aloof, had picked out a post from which he could observe
+the girl: she wore a new look to him since he had seen her as the centre
+of all these scattered threads of intrigue. Yes; decidedly she was
+growing handsomer; or else she had learned how to set off her massive
+lines instead of trying to disguise them. As she held up her long
+eye-glass to glance absently at the dancers he was struck by the large
+beauty of her arm and the careless assurance of the gesture. There was
+nothing nervous or fussy about Coral Hicks; and he was not surprised
+that, plastically at least, the Princess Mother had discerned her
+possibilities.
+
+Nick Lansing, all that night, sat up and stared at his future. He knew
+enough of the society into which the Hickses had drifted to guess that,
+within a very short time, the hint of the Prince's aide-de-camp would
+reappear in the form of a direct proposal. Lansing himself would
+probably--as the one person in the Hicks entourage with whom one
+could intelligibly commune-be entrusted with the next step in the
+negotiations: he would be asked, as the aide-de-camp would have said,
+"to feel the ground." It was clearly part of the state policy of
+Teutoburg to offer Miss Hicks, with the hand of its sovereign, an
+opportunity to replenish its treasury.
+
+What would the girl do? Lansing could not guess; yet he dimly felt that
+her attitude would depend in a great degree upon his own. And he knew
+no more what his own was going to be than on the night, four months
+earlier, when he had flung out of his wife's room in Venice to take the
+midnight express for Genoa.
+
+The whole of his past, and above all the tendency, on which he had once
+prided himself, to live in the present and take whatever chances it
+offered, now made it harder for him to act. He began to see that he
+had never, even in the closest relations of life, looked ahead of his
+immediate satisfaction. He had thought it rather fine to be able to give
+himself so intensely to the fullness of each moment instead of hurrying
+past it in pursuit of something more, or something else, in the manner
+of the over-scrupulous or the under-imaginative, whom he had always
+grouped together and equally pitied. It was not till he had linked his
+life with Susy's that he had begun to feel it reaching forward into a
+future he longed to make sure of, to fasten upon and shape to his own
+wants and purposes, till, by an imperceptible substitution, that future
+had become his real present, his all-absorbing moment of time.
+
+Now the moment was shattered, and the power to rebuild it failed him.
+He had never before thought about putting together broken bits: he felt
+like a man whose house has been wrecked by an earthquake, and who, for
+lack of skilled labour, is called upon for the first time to wield a
+trowel and carry bricks. He simply did not know how.
+
+Will-power, he saw, was not a thing one could suddenly decree oneself
+to possess. It must be built up imperceptibly and laboriously out of a
+succession of small efforts to meet definite objects, out of the facing
+of daily difficulties instead of cleverly eluding them, or shifting
+their burden on others. The making of the substance called character was
+a process about as slow and arduous as the building of the Pyramids; and
+the thing itself, like those awful edifices, was mainly useful to lodge
+one's descendants in, after they too were dust. Yet the Pyramid-instinct
+was the one which had made the world, made man, and caused his fugitive
+joys to linger like fading frescoes on imperishable walls....
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+ON the drive back from her dinner at the Nouveau Luxe, events had
+followed the course foreseen by Susy.
+
+She had promised Strefford to seek legal advice about her divorce, and
+he had kissed her; and the promise had been easier to make than she had
+expected, the kiss less difficult to receive.
+
+She had gone to the dinner a-quiver with the mortification of learning
+that her husband was still with the Hickses. Morally sure of it though
+she had been, the discovery was a shock, and she measured for the
+first time the abyss between fearing and knowing. No wonder he had not
+written--the modern husband did not have to: he had only to leave it to
+time and the newspapers to make known his intentions. Susy could imagine
+Nick's saying to himself, as he sometimes used to say when she reminded
+him of an unanswered letter: "But there are lots of ways of answering a
+letter--and writing doesn't happen to be mine."
+
+Well--he had done it in his way, and she was answered. For a minute, as
+she laid aside the paper, darkness submerged her, and she felt herself
+dropping down into the bottomless anguish of her dreadful vigil in the
+Palazzo Vanderlyn. But she was weary of anguish: her healthy body and
+nerves instinctively rejected it. The wave was spent, and she felt
+herself irresistibly struggling back to light and life and youth. He
+didn't want her! Well, she would try not to want him! There lay all the
+old expedients at her hand--the rouge for her white lips, the atropine
+for her blurred eyes, the new dress on her bed, the thought of Strefford
+and his guests awaiting her, and of the conclusions that the diners of
+the Nouveau Luxe would draw from seeing them together. Thank heaven no
+one would say: "Poor old Susy--did you know Nick had chucked her?" They
+would all say: "Poor old Nick! Yes, I daresay she was sorry to chuck
+him; but Altringham's mad to marry her, and what could she do?"
+
+And once again events had followed the course she had foreseen. Seeing
+her at Lord Altringham's table, with the Ascots and the old Duchess
+of Dunes, the interested spectators could not but regard the dinner as
+confirming the rumour of her marriage. As Ellie said, people didn't
+wait nowadays to announce their "engagements" till the tiresome divorce
+proceedings were over. Ellie herself, prodigally pearled and ermined,
+had floated in late with Algie Bockheimer in her wake, and sat, in
+conspicuous tete-a-tete, nodding and signalling her sympathy to Susy.
+Approval beamed from every eye: it was awfully exciting, they all seemed
+to say, seeing Susy Lansing pull it off! As the party, after dinner,
+drifted from the restaurant back into the hall, she caught, in the
+smiles and hand-pressures crowding about her, the scarcely-repressed
+hint of official congratulations; and Violet Melrose, seated in a corner
+with Fulmer, drew her down with a wan jade-circled arm, to whisper
+tenderly: "It's most awfully clever of you, darling, not to be wearing
+any jewels."
+
+In all the women's eyes she read the reflected lustre of the jewels she
+could wear when she chose: it was as though their glitter reached
+her from the far-off bank where they lay sealed up in the Altringham
+strong-box. What a fool she had been to think that Strefford would ever
+believe she didn't care for them!
+
+The Ambassadress, a blank perpendicular person, had been a shade less
+affable than Susy could have wished; but then there was Lady Joan--and
+the girl was handsome, alarmingly handsome to account for that: probably
+every one in the room had guessed it. And the old Duchess of Dunes was
+delightful. She looked rather like Strefford in a wig and false pearls
+(Susy was sure they were as false as her teeth); and her cordiality
+was so demonstrative that the future bride found it more difficult to
+account for than Lady Ascot's coldness, till she heard the old lady, as
+they passed into the hall, breathe in a hissing whisper to her nephew:
+"Streff, dearest, when you have a minute's time, and can drop in at
+my wretched little pension, I know you can explain in two words what
+I ought to do to pacify those awful money-lenders.... And you'll bring
+your exquisite American to see me, won't you!... No, Joan Senechal's too
+fair for my taste.... Insipid...."
+
+Yes: the taste of it all was again sweet on her lips. A few days later
+she began to wonder how the thought of Strefford's endearments could
+have been so alarming. To be sure he was not lavish of them; but when he
+did touch her, even when he kissed her, it no longer seemed to matter.
+An almost complete absence of sensation had mercifully succeeded to the
+first wild flurry of her nerves.
+
+And so it would be, no doubt, with everything else in her new life. If
+it failed to provoke any acute reactions, whether of pain or pleasure,
+the very absence of sensation would make for peace. And in the meanwhile
+she was tasting what, she had begun to suspect, was the maximum of
+bliss to most of the women she knew: days packed with engagements, the
+exhilaration of fashionable crowds, the thrill of snapping up a jewel
+or a bibelot or a new "model" that one's best friend wanted, or of being
+invited to some private show, or some exclusive entertainment, that
+one's best friend couldn't get to. There was nothing, now, that she
+couldn't buy, nowhere that she couldn't go: she had only to choose and
+to triumph. And for a while the surface-excitement of her life gave her
+the illusion of enjoyment.
+
+Strefford, as she had expected, had postponed his return to England,
+and they had now been for nearly three weeks together in their new, and
+virtually avowed, relation. She had fancied that, after all, the easiest
+part of it would be just the being with Strefford--the falling back
+on their old tried friendship to efface the sense of strangeness. But,
+though she had so soon grown used to his caresses, he himself remained
+curiously unfamiliar: she was hardly sure, at times, that it was the
+old Strefford she was talking to. It was not that his point of view had
+changed, but that new things occupied and absorbed him. In all the small
+sides of his great situation he took an almost childish satisfaction;
+and though he still laughed at both its privileges and its obligations,
+it was now with a jealous laughter.
+
+It amused him inexhaustibly, for instance, to be made up to by all the
+people who had always disapproved of him, and to unite at the same table
+persons who had to dissemble their annoyance at being invited together
+lest they should not be invited at all. Equally exhilarating was
+the capricious favouring of the dull and dowdy on occasions when the
+brilliant and disreputable expected his notice. It enchanted him, for
+example, to ask the old Duchess of Dunes and Violet Melrose to dine
+with the Vicar of Altringham, on his way to Switzerland for a month's
+holiday, and to watch the face of the Vicar's wife while the Duchess
+narrated her last difficulties with book-makers and money-lenders, and
+Violet proclaimed the rights of Love and Genius to all that had once
+been supposed to belong exclusively to Respectability and Dulness.
+
+Susy had to confess that her own amusements were hardly of a higher
+order; but then she put up with them for lack of better, whereas
+Strefford, who might have had what he pleased, was completely satisfied
+with such triumphs.
+
+Somehow, in spite of his honours and his opportunities, he seemed to
+have shrunk. The old Strefford had certainly been a larger person,
+and she wondered if material prosperity were always a beginning of
+ossification. Strefford had been much more fun when he lived by his
+wits. Sometimes, now, when he tried to talk of politics, or assert
+himself on some question of public interest, she was startled by his
+limitations. Formerly, when he was not sure of his ground, it had been
+his way to turn the difficulty by glib nonsense or easy irony; now he
+was actually dull, at times almost pompous. She noticed too, for the
+first time, that he did not always hear clearly when several people were
+talking at once, or when he was at the theatre; and he developed a habit
+of saying over and over again: "Does so-and-so speak indistinctly? Or am
+I getting deaf, I wonder?" which wore on her nerves by its suggestion of
+a corresponding mental infirmity.
+
+These thoughts did not always trouble her. The current of idle activity
+on which they were both gliding was her native element as well as his;
+and never had its tide been as swift, its waves as buoyant. In his
+relation to her, too, he was full of tact and consideration. She saw
+that he still remembered their frightened exchange of glances after
+their first kiss; and the sense of this little hidden spring of
+imagination in him was sometimes enough for her thirst.
+
+She had always had a rather masculine punctuality in keeping her word,
+and after she had promised Strefford to take steps toward a divorce
+she had promptly set about doing it. A sudden reluctance prevented her
+asking the advice of friends like Ellie Vanderlyn, whom she knew to be
+in the thick of the same negotiations, and all she could think of was to
+consult a young American lawyer practicing in Paris, with whom she felt
+she could talk the more easily because he was not from New York, and
+probably unacquainted with her history.
+
+She was so ignorant of the procedure in such matters that she was
+surprised and relieved at his asking few personal questions; but it was
+a shock to learn that a divorce could not be obtained, either in New
+York or Paris, merely on the ground of desertion or incompatibility.
+
+"I thought nowadays... if people preferred to live apart... it could
+always be managed," she stammered, wondering at her own ignorance, after
+the many conjugal ruptures she had assisted at.
+
+The young lawyer smiled, and coloured slightly. His lovely client
+evidently intimidated him by her grace, and still more by her
+inexperience.
+
+"It can be--generally," he admitted; "and especially so if... as I
+gather is the case... your husband is equally anxious...."
+
+"Oh, quite!" she exclaimed, suddenly humiliated by having to admit it.
+
+"Well, then--may I suggest that, to bring matters to a point, the best
+way would be for you to write to him?"
+
+She recoiled slightly. It had never occurred to her that the lawyers
+would not "manage it" without her intervention.
+
+"Write to him... but what about?"
+
+"Well, expressing your wish... to recover your freedom.... The rest, I
+assume," said the young lawyer, "may be left to Mr. Lansing."
+
+She did not know exactly what he meant, and was too much perturbed by
+the idea of having to communicate with Nick to follow any other train
+of thought. How could she write such a letter? And yet how could she
+confess to the lawyer that she had not the courage to do so? He
+would, of course, tell her to go home and be reconciled. She hesitated
+perplexedly.
+
+"Wouldn't it be better," she suggested, "if the letter were to come
+from--from your office?"
+
+He considered this politely. "On the whole: no. If, as I take it, an
+amicable arrangement is necessary--to secure the requisite evidence then
+a line from you, suggesting an interview, seems to me more advisable."
+
+"An interview? Is an interview necessary?" She was ashamed to show her
+agitation to this cautiously smiling young man, who must wonder at
+her childish lack of understanding; but the break in her voice was
+uncontrollable.
+
+"Oh, please write to him--I can't! And I can't see him! Oh, can't you
+arrange it for me?" she pleaded.
+
+She saw now that her idea of a divorce had been that it was something
+one went out--or sent out--to buy in a shop: something concrete and
+portable, that Strefford's money could pay for, and that it required no
+personal participation to obtain. What a fool the lawyer must think her!
+Stiffening herself, she rose from her seat.
+
+"My husband and I don't wish to see each other again.... I'm sure it
+would be useless... and very painful."
+
+"You are the best judge, of course. But in any case, a letter from
+you, a friendly letter, seems wiser... considering the apparent lack of
+evidence...."
+
+"Very well, then; I'll write," she agreed, and hurried away, scarcely
+hearing his parting injunction that she should take a copy of her
+letter.
+
+That night she wrote. At the last moment it might have been impossible,
+if at the theatre little Breckenridge had not bobbed into her box. He
+was just back from Rome, where he had dined with the Hickses ("a bang-up
+show--they're really lances-you wouldn't know them!"), and had met there
+Lansing, whom he reported as intending to marry Coral "as soon as things
+were settled". "You were dead right, weren't you, Susy," he snickered,
+"that night in Venice last summer, when we all thought you were joking
+about their engagement? Pity now you chucked our surprise visit to the
+Hickses, and sent Streff up to drag us back just as we were breaking in!
+You remember?"
+
+He flung off the "Streff" airily, in the old way, but with a tentative
+side-glance at his host; and Lord Altringham, leaning toward Susy, said
+coldly: "Was Breckenridge speaking about me? I didn't catch what he
+said. Does he speak indistinctly--or am I getting deaf, I wonder?"
+
+After that it seemed comparatively easy, when Strefford had dropped her
+at her hotel, to go upstairs and write. She dashed off the date and her
+address, and then stopped; but suddenly she remembered Breckenridge's
+snicker, and the words rushed from her. "Nick dear, it was July when you
+left Venice, and I have had no word from you since the note in which you
+said you had gone for a few days, and that I should hear soon again.
+
+"You haven't written yet, and it is five months since you left me. That
+means, I suppose, that you want to take back your freedom and give me
+mine. Wouldn't it be kinder, in that case, to tell me so? It is worse
+than anything to go on as we are now. I don't know how to put these
+things but since you seem unwilling to write to me perhaps you would
+prefer to send your answer to Mr. Frederic Spearman, the American lawyer
+here. His address is 100, Boulevard Haussmann. I hope--"
+
+She broke off on the last word. Hope? What did she hope, either for him
+or for herself? Wishes for his welfare would sound like a mockery--and
+she would rather her letter should seem bitter than unfeeling. Above
+all, she wanted to get it done. To have to re-write even those few
+lines would be torture. So she left "I hope," and simply added: "to hear
+before long what you have decided."
+
+She read it over, and shivered. Not one word of the past-not one
+allusion to that mysterious interweaving of their lives which had
+enclosed them one in the other like the flower in its sheath! What place
+had such memories in such a letter? She had the feeling that she wanted
+to hide that other Nick away in her own bosom, and with him the other
+Susy, the Susy he had once imagined her to be.... Neither of them seemed
+concerned with the present business.
+
+The letter done, she stared at the sealed envelope till its presence
+in the room became intolerable, and she understood that she must either
+tear it up or post it immediately. She went down to the hall of the
+sleeping hotel, and bribed the night-porter to carry the letter to the
+nearest post office, though he objected that, at that hour, no time
+would be gained. "I want it out of the house," she insisted: and waited
+sternly by the desk, in her dressing-gown, till he had performed the
+errand.
+
+As she re-entered her room, the disordered writing-table struck her; and
+she remembered the lawyer's injunction to take a copy of her letter. A
+copy to be filed away with the documents in "Lansing versus Lansing!"
+She burst out laughing at the idea. What were lawyers made of, she
+wondered? Didn't the man guess, by the mere look in her eyes and the
+sound of her voice, that she would never, as long as she lived, forget
+a word of that letter--that night after night she would lie down, as she
+was lying down to-night, to stare wide-eyed for hours into the darkness,
+while a voice in her brain monotonously hammered out: "Nick dear, it was
+July when you left me..." and so on, word after word, down to the last
+fatal syllable?
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+STREFFORD was leaving for England.
+
+Once assured that Susy had taken the first step toward freeing herself,
+he frankly regarded her as his affianced wife, and could see no reason
+for further mystery. She understood his impatience to have their
+plans settled; it would protect him from the formidable menace of the
+marriageable, and cause people, as he said, to stop meddling. Now that
+the novelty of his situation was wearing off, his natural indolence
+reasserted itself, and there was nothing he dreaded more than having to
+be on his guard against the innumerable plans that his well-wishers were
+perpetually making for him. Sometimes Susy fancied he was marrying her
+because to do so was to follow the line of least resistance.
+
+"To marry me is the easiest way of not marrying all the others," she
+laughed, as he stood before her one day in a quiet alley of the Bois
+de Boulogne, insisting on the settlement of various preliminaries. "I
+believe I'm only a protection to you."
+
+An odd gleam passed behind his eyes, and she instantly guessed that he
+was thinking: "And what else am I to you?"
+
+She changed colour, and he rejoined, laughing also: "Well, you're that
+at any rate, thank the Lord!"
+
+She pondered, and then questioned: "But in the interval-how are you
+going to defend yourself for another year?"
+
+"Ah, you've got to see to that; you've got to take a little house in
+London. You've got to look after me, you know."
+
+It was on the tip of her tongue to flash back: "Oh, if that's all
+you care--!" But caring was exactly the factor she wanted, as much as
+possible, to keep out of their talk and their thoughts. She could
+not ask him how much he cared without laying herself open to the same
+question; and that way terror lay. As a matter of fact, though Strefford
+was not an ardent wooer--perhaps from tact, perhaps from temperament,
+perhaps merely from the long habit of belittling and disintegrating
+every sentiment and every conviction--yet she knew he did care for her
+as much as he was capable of caring for anyone. If the element of habit
+entered largely into the feeling--if he liked her, above all, because he
+was used to her, knew her views, her indulgences, her allowances, knew
+he was never likely to be bored, and almost certain to be amused, by
+her; why, such ingredients though not of the fieriest, were perhaps
+those most likely to keep his feeling for her at a pleasant temperature.
+She had had a taste of the tropics, and wanted more equable weather; but
+the idea of having to fan his flame gently for a year was unspeakably
+depressing to her. Yet all this was precisely what she could not say.
+The long period of probation, during which, as she knew, she would
+have to amuse him, to guard him, to hold him, and to keep off the other
+women, was a necessary part of their situation. She was sure that, as
+little Breckenridge would have said, she could "pull it off"; but she
+did not want to think about it. What she would have preferred would have
+been to go away--no matter where and not see Strefford again till they
+were married. But she dared not tell him that either.
+
+"A little house in London--?" She wondered.
+
+"Well, I suppose you've got to have some sort of a roof over your head."
+
+"I suppose so."
+
+He sat down beside her. "If you like me well enough to live at
+Altringham some day, won't you, in the meantime, let me provide you with
+a smaller and more convenient establishment?"
+
+Still she hesitated. The alternative, she knew, would be to live on
+Ursula Gillow, Violet Melrose, or some other of her rich friends, any
+one of whom would be ready to lavish the largest hospitality on the
+prospective Lady Altringham. Such an arrangement, in the long run,
+would be no less humiliating to her pride, no less destructive to
+her independence, than Altringham's little establishment. But she
+temporized. "I shall go over to London in December, and stay for a while
+with various people--then we can look about."
+
+"All right; as you like." He obviously considered her hesitation
+ridiculous, but was too full of satisfaction at her having started
+divorce proceedings to be chilled by her reply.
+
+"And now, look here, my dear; couldn't I give you some sort of a ring?"
+
+"A ring?" She flushed at the suggestion. "What's the use, Streff, dear?
+With all those jewels locked away in London--"
+
+"Oh, I daresay you'll think them old-fashioned. And, hang it, why
+shouldn't I give you something new, I ran across Ellie and Bockheimer
+yesterday, in the rue de la Paix, picking out sapphires. Do you like
+sapphires, or emeralds? Or just a diamond? I've seen a thumping one....
+I'd like you to have it."
+
+Ellie and Bockheimer! How she hated the conjunction of the names! Their
+case always seemed to her like a caricature of her own, and she felt an
+unreasoning resentment against Ellie for having selected the same season
+for her unmating and re-mating.
+
+"I wish you wouldn't speak of them, Streff... as if they were like us! I
+can hardly bear to sit in the same room with Ellie Vanderlyn."
+
+"Hullo? What's wrong? You mean because of her giving up Clarissa?"
+
+"Not that only.... You don't know.... I can't tell you...." She shivered
+at the memory, and rose restlessly from the bench where they had been
+sitting.
+
+Strefford gave his careless shrug. "Well, my dear, you can hardly expect
+me to agree, for after all it was to Ellie I owed the luck of being so
+long alone with you in Venice. If she and Algie hadn't prolonged their
+honeymoon at the villa--"
+
+He stopped abruptly, and looked at Susy. She was conscious that every
+drop of blood had left her face. She felt it ebbing away from her heart,
+flowing out of her as if from all her severed arteries, till it seemed
+as though nothing were left of life in her but one point of irreducible
+pain.
+
+"Ellie--at your villa? What do you mean? Was it Ellie and Bockheimer
+who--?"
+
+Strefford still stared. "You mean to say you didn't know?"
+
+"Who came after Nick and me...?" she insisted.
+
+"Why, do you suppose I'd have turned you out otherwise? That beastly
+Bockheimer simply smothered me with gold. Ah, well, there's one good
+thing: I shall never have to let the villa again! I rather like the
+little place myself, and I daresay once in a while we might go there for
+a day or two.... Susy, what's the matter?" he exclaimed.
+
+She returned his stare, but without seeing him. Everything swam and
+danced before her eyes.
+
+"Then she was there while I was posting all those letters for her--?"
+
+"Letters--what letters? What makes you look so frightfully upset?"
+
+She pursued her thought as if he had not spoken. "She and Algie
+Bockheimer arrived there the very day that Nick and I left?"
+
+"I suppose so. I thought she'd told you. Ellie always tells everybody
+everything."
+
+"She would have told me, I daresay--but I wouldn't let her."
+
+"Well, my dear, that was hardly my fault, was it? Though I really don't
+see--"
+
+But Susy, still blind to everything but the dance of dizzy sparks before
+her eyes, pressed on as if she had not heard him. "It was their motor,
+then, that took us to Milan! It was Algie Bockheimer's motor!" She did
+not know why, but this seemed to her the most humiliating incident in
+the whole hateful business. She remembered Nick's reluctance to use the
+motor-she remembered his look when she had boasted of her "managing."
+The nausea mounted to her throat.
+
+Strefford burst out laughing. "I say--you borrowed their motor? And you
+didn't know whose it was?"
+
+"How could I know? I persuaded the chauffeur... for a little tip....
+It was to save our railway fares to Milan... extra luggage costs so
+frightfully in Italy...."
+
+"Good old Susy! Well done! I can see you doing it--"
+
+"Oh, how horrible--how horrible!" she groaned.
+
+"Horrible? What's horrible?"
+
+"Why, your not seeing... not feeling..." she began impetuously; and then
+stopped. How could she explain to him that what revolted her was not so
+much the fact of his having given the little house, as soon as she and
+Nick had left it, to those two people of all others--though the vision
+of them in the sweet secret house, and under the plane-trees of the
+terrace, drew such a trail of slime across her golden hours? No, it was
+not that from which she most recoiled, but from the fact that Strefford,
+living in luxury in Nelson Vanderlyn's house, should at the same time
+have secretly abetted Ellie Vanderlyn's love-affairs, and allowed
+her--for a handsome price--to shelter them under his own roof. The
+reproach trembled on her lip--but she remembered her own part in the
+wretched business, and the impossibility of avowing it to Strefford, and
+of revealing to him that Nick had left her for that very reason. She was
+not afraid that the discovery would diminish her in Strefford's eyes: he
+was untroubled by moral problems, and would laugh away her avowal, with
+a sneer at Nick in his new part of moralist. But that was just what she
+could not bear: that anyone should cast a doubt on the genuineness of
+Nick's standards, or should know how far below them she had fallen.
+
+She remained silent, and Strefford, after a moment, drew her gently down
+to the seat beside him. "Susy, upon my soul I don't know what you're
+driving at. Is it me you're angry with-or yourself? And what's it all
+about! Are you disgusted because I let the villa to a couple who weren't
+married! But, hang it, they're the kind that pay the highest price and
+I had to earn my living somehow! One doesn't run across a bridal pair
+every day...."
+
+She lifted her eyes to his puzzled incredulous face. Poor Streff! No,
+it was not with him that she was angry. Why should she be? Even that
+ill-advised disclosure had told her nothing she had not already known
+about him. It had simply revealed to her once more the real point of
+view of the people he and she lived among had shown her that, in spite
+of the superficial difference, he felt as they felt, judged as they
+judged, was blind as they were-and as she would be expected to be,
+should she once again become one of them. What was the use of being
+placed by fortune above such shifts and compromises, if in one's heart
+one still condoned them? And she would have to--she would catch the
+general note, grow blunted as those other people were blunted, and
+gradually come to wonder at her own revolt, as Strefford now honestly
+wondered at it. She felt as though she were on the point of losing some
+new-found treasure, a treasure precious only to herself, but beside
+which all he offered her was nothing, the triumph of her wounded pride
+nothing, the security of her future nothing.
+
+"What is it, Susy?" he asked, with the same puzzled gentleness.
+
+Ah, the loneliness of never being able to make him understand! She had
+felt lonely enough when the flaming sword of Nick's indignation had shut
+her out from their Paradise; but there had been a cruel bliss in the
+pain. Nick had not opened her eyes to new truths, but had waked in her
+again something which had lain unconscious under years of accumulated
+indifference. And that re-awakened sense had never left her since,
+and had somehow kept her from utter loneliness because it was a secret
+shared with Nick, a gift she owed to Nick, and which, in leaving her, he
+could not take from her. It was almost, she suddenly felt, as if he had
+left her with a child.
+
+"My dear girl," Strefford said, with a resigned glance at his watch,
+"you know we're dining at the Embassy...."
+
+At the Embassy? She looked at him vaguely: then she remembered. Yes,
+they were dining that night at the Ascots', with Strefford's cousin, the
+Duke of Dunes, and his wife, the handsome irreproachable young Duchess;
+with the old gambling Dowager Duchess, whom her son and daughter-in-law
+had come over from England to see; and with other English and French
+guests of a rank and standing worthy of the Duneses. Susy knew that her
+inclusion in such a dinner could mean but one thing: it was her definite
+recognition as Altringham's future wife. She was "the little American"
+whom one had to ask when one invited him, even on ceremonial occasions.
+The family had accepted her; the Embassy could but follow suit.
+
+"It's late, dear; and I've got to see someone on business first,"
+Strefford reminded her patiently.
+
+"Oh, Streff--I can't, I can't!" The words broke from her without her
+knowing what she was saying. "I can't go with you--I can't go to the
+Embassy. I can't go on any longer like this...." She lifted her eyes
+to his in desperate appeal. "Oh, understand-do please understand!" she
+wailed, knowing, while she spoke, the utter impossibility of what she
+asked.
+
+Strefford's face had gradually paled and hardened. From sallow it turned
+to a dusky white, and lines of obstinacy deepened between the ironic
+eyebrows and about the weak amused mouth.
+
+"Understand? What do you want me to understand," He laughed. "That
+you're trying to chuck me already?"
+
+She shrank at the sneer of the "already," but instantly remembered that
+it was the only thing he could be expected to say, since it was just
+because he couldn't understand that she was flying from him.
+
+"Oh, Streff--if I knew how to tell you!"
+
+"It doesn't so much matter about the how. Is that what you're trying to
+say?"
+
+Her head drooped, and she saw the dead leaves whirling across the path
+at her feet, lifted on a sudden wintry gust.
+
+"The reason," he continued, clearing his throat with a stiff smile, "is
+not quite as important to me as the fact."
+
+She stood speechless, agonized by his pain. But still, she thought, he
+had remembered the dinner at the Embassy. The thought gave her courage
+to go on.
+
+"It wouldn't do, Streff. I'm not a bit the kind of person to make you
+happy."
+
+"Oh, leave that to me, please, won't you?"
+
+"No, I can't. Because I should be unhappy too."
+
+He clicked at the leaves as they whirled past. "You've taken a rather
+long time to find it out." She saw that his new-born sense of his own
+consequence was making him suffer even more than his wounded affection;
+and that again gave her courage.
+
+"If I've taken long it's all the more reason why I shouldn't take
+longer. If I've made a mistake it's you who would have suffered from
+it...."
+
+"Thanks," he said, "for your extreme solicitude."
+
+She looked at him helplessly, penetrated by the despairing sense of
+their inaccessibility to each other. Then she remembered that Nick,
+during their last talk together, had seemed as inaccessible, and
+wondered if, when human souls try to get too near each other, they do
+not inevitably become mere blurs to each other's vision. She would have
+liked to say this to Streff-but he would not have understood it either.
+The sense of loneliness once more enveloped her, and she groped in vain
+for a word that should reach him.
+
+"Let me go home alone, won't you?" she appealed to him.
+
+"Alone?"
+
+She nodded. "To-morrow--to-morrow...."
+
+He tried, rather valiantly, to smile. "Hang tomorrow! Whatever is wrong,
+it needn't prevent my seeing you home." He glanced toward the taxi that
+awaited them at the end of the deserted drive.
+
+"No, please. You're in a hurry; take the taxi. I want immensely a long
+long walk by myself... through the streets, with the lights coming
+out...."
+
+He laid his hand on her arm. "I say, my dear, you're not ill?"
+
+"No; I'm not ill. But you may say I am, to-night at the Embassy."
+
+He released her and drew back. "Oh, very well," he answered coldly;
+and she understood by his tone that the knot was cut, and that at that
+moment he almost hated her. She turned away, hastening down the deserted
+alley, flying from him, and knowing, as she fled, that he was still
+standing there motionless, staring after her, wounded, humiliated,
+uncomprehending. It was neither her fault nor his....
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+AS she fled on toward the lights of the streets a breath of freedom
+seemed to blow into her face.
+
+Like a weary load the accumulated hypocrisies of the last months had
+dropped from her: she was herself again, Nick's Susy, and no one else's.
+She sped on, staring with bright bewildered eyes at the stately facades
+of the La Muette quarter, the perspectives of bare trees, the awakening
+glitter of shop-windows holding out to her all the things she would
+never again be able to buy....
+
+In an avenue of shops she paused before a milliner's window, and said
+to herself: "Why shouldn't I earn my living by trimming hats?" She met
+work-girls streaming out under a doorway, and scattering to catch trams
+and omnibuses; and she looked with newly-wakened interest at their tired
+independent faces. "Why shouldn't I earn my living as well as they do?"
+she thought. A little farther on she passed a Sister of Charity with
+softly trotting feet, a calm anonymous glance, and hands hidden in her
+capacious sleeves. Susy looked at her and thought: "Why shouldn't I be
+a Sister, and have no money to worry about, and trot about under a white
+coif helping poor people?"
+
+All these strangers on whom she smiled in passing, and glanced back at
+enviously, were free from the necessities that enslaved her, and would
+not have known what she meant if she had told them that she must have
+so much money for her dresses, so much for her cigarettes, so much for
+bridge and cabs and tips, and all kinds of extras, and that at that
+moment she ought to be hurrying back to a dinner at the British Embassy,
+where her permanent right to such luxuries was to be solemnly recognized
+and ratified.
+
+The artificiality and unreality of her life overcame her as with
+stifling fumes. She stopped at a street-corner, drawing long panting
+breaths as if she had been running a race. Then, slowly and aimlessly,
+she began to saunter along a street of small private houses in damp
+gardens that led to the Avenue du Bois. She sat down on a bench. Not far
+off, the Arc de Triomphe raised its august bulk, and beyond it a
+river of lights streamed down toward Paris, and the stir of the city's
+heart-beats troubled the quiet in her bosom. But not for long. She
+seemed to be looking at it all from the other side of the grave; and
+as she got up and wandered down the Champs Elysees, half empty in the
+evening lull between dusk and dinner, she felt as if the glittering
+avenue were really changed into the Field of Shadows from which it takes
+its name, and as if she were a ghost among ghosts.
+
+Halfway home, a weakness of loneliness overcame her, and she seated
+herself under the trees near the Rond Point. Lines of motors and
+carriages were beginning to animate the converging thoroughfares,
+streaming abreast, crossing, winding in and out of each other in a
+tangle of hurried pleasure-seeking. She caught the light on jewels and
+shirt-fronts and hard bored eyes emerging from dim billows of fur and
+velvet. She seemed to hear what the couples were saying to each other,
+she pictured the drawing-rooms, restaurants, dance-halls they were
+hastening to, the breathless routine that was hurrying them along, as
+Time, the old vacuum-cleaner, swept them away with the dust of their
+carriage-wheels. And again the loneliness vanished in a sense of
+release....
+
+At the corner of the Place de la Concorde she stopped, recognizing a
+man in evening dress who was hailing a taxi. Their eyes met, and Nelson
+Vanderlyn came forward. He was the last person she cared to run across,
+and she shrank back involuntarily. What did he know, what had he
+guessed, of her complicity in his wife's affairs? No doubt Ellie had
+blabbed it all out by this time; she was just as likely to confide her
+love-affairs to Nelson as to anyone else, now that the Bockheimer prize
+was landed.
+
+"Well--well--well--so I've caught you at it! Glad to see you, Susy,
+my dear." She found her hand cordially clasped in Vanderlyn's, and
+his round pink face bent on her with all its old urbanity. Did nothing
+matter, then, in this world she was fleeing from, did no one love or
+hate or remember?
+
+"No idea you were in Paris--just got here myself," Vanderlyn continued,
+visibly delighted at the meeting. "Look here, don't suppose you're out
+of a job this evening by any chance, and would come and cheer up a lone
+bachelor, eh? No? You are? Well, that's luck for once! I say, where
+shall we go? One of the places where they dance, I suppose? Yes, I twirl
+the light fantastic once in a while myself. Got to keep up with the
+times! Hold on, taxi! Here--I'll drive you home first, and wait while
+you jump into your toggery. Lots of time." As he steered her toward the
+carriage she noticed that he had a gouty limp, and pulled himself in
+after her with difficulty.
+
+"Mayn't I come as I am, Nelson, I don't feel like dancing. Let's go and
+dine in one of those nice smoky little restaurants by the Place de la
+Bourse."
+
+He seemed surprised but relieved at the suggestion, and they rolled off
+together. In a corner at Bauge's they found a quiet table, screened from
+the other diners, and while Vanderlyn adjusted his eyeglasses to study
+the carte Susy stole a long look at him. He was dressed with even more
+than his usual formal trimness, and she detected, in an ultra-flat
+wrist-watch and discreetly expensive waistcoat buttons, an attempt at
+smartness altogether new. His face had undergone the same change: its
+familiar look of worn optimism had been, as it were, done up to match
+his clothes, as though a sort of moral cosmetic had made him pinker,
+shinier and sprightlier without really rejuvenating him. A thin veil of
+high spirits had merely been drawn over his face, as the shining strands
+of hair were skilfully brushed over his baldness.
+
+"Here! Carte des vins, waiter! What champagne, Susy?" He chose,
+fastidiously, the best the cellar could produce, grumbling a little at
+the bourgeois character of the dishes. "Capital food of its kind, no
+doubt, but coarsish, don't you think? Well, I don't mind... it's rather
+a jolly change from the Luxe cooking. A new sensation--I'm all for new
+sensations, ain't you, my dear?" He re-filled their champagne glasses,
+flung an arm sideways over his chair, and smiled at her with a foggy
+benevolence.
+
+As the champagne flowed his confidences flowed with it.
+
+"Suppose you know what I'm here for--this divorce business? We wanted to
+settle it quietly without a fuss, and of course Paris is the best place
+for that sort of job. Live and let live; no questions asked. None
+of your dirty newspapers. Great country, this. No hypocrisy... they
+understand Life over here!"
+
+Susy gazed and listened. She remembered that people had thought Nelson
+would make a row when he found out. He had always been addicted to
+truculent anecdotes about unfaithful wives, and the very formula of
+his perpetual ejaculation--"Caught you at it, eh?"--seemed to hint at a
+constant preoccupation with such ideas. But now it was evident that,
+as the saying was, he had "swallowed his dose" like all the others. No
+strong blast of indignation had momentarily lifted him above his normal
+stature: he remained a little man among little men, and his eagerness to
+rebuild his life with all the old smiling optimism reminded Susy of the
+patient industry of an ant remaking its ruined ant-heap.
+
+"Tell you what, great thing, this liberty! Everything's changed
+nowadays; why shouldn't marriage be too? A man can get out of a business
+partnership when he wants to; but the parsons want to keep us noosed up
+to each other for life because we've blundered into a church one day and
+said 'Yes' before one of 'em. No, no--that's too easy. We've got
+beyond that. Science, and all these new discoveries.... I say the Ten
+Commandments were made for man, and not man for the Commandments; and
+there ain't a word against divorce in 'em, anyhow! That's what I tell my
+poor old mother, who builds everything on her Bible. Find me the place
+where it says: 'Thou shalt not sue for divorce.' It makes her wild, poor
+old lady, because she can't; and she doesn't know how they happen to
+have left it out.... I rather think Moses left it out because he knew
+more about human nature than these snivelling modern parsons do. Not
+that they'll always bear investigating either; but I don't care about
+that. Live and let live, eh, Susy? Haven't we all got a right to our
+Affinities? I hear you're following our example yourself. First-rate
+idea: I don't mind telling you I saw it coming on last summer at Venice.
+Caught you at it, so to speak! Old Nelson ain't as blind as people
+think. Here, let's open another bottle to the health of Streff and Mrs.
+Streff!"
+
+She caught the hand with which he was signalling to the sommelier.
+This flushed and garrulous Nelson moved her more poignantly than a
+more heroic figure. "No more champagne, please, Nelson. Besides," she
+suddenly added, "it's not true."
+
+He stared. "Not true that you're going to marry Altringham?"
+
+"No."
+
+"By George then what on earth did you chuck Nick for? Ain't you got an
+Affinity, my dear?"
+
+She laughed and shook her head.
+
+"Do you mean to tell me it's all Nick's doing, then?"
+
+"I don't know. Let's talk of you instead, Nelson. I'm glad you're in
+such good spirits. I rather thought--"
+
+He interrupted her quickly. "Thought I'd cut up a rumpus-do some
+shooting? I know--people did." He twisted his moustache, evidently proud
+of his reputation. "Well, maybe I did see red for a day or two--but I'm
+a philosopher, first and last. Before I went into banking I'd made and
+lost two fortunes out West. Well, how did I build 'em up again? Not by
+shooting anybody even myself. By just buckling to, and beginning all
+over again. That's how... and that's what I am doing now. Beginning all
+over again." His voice dropped from boastfulness to a note of wistful
+melancholy, the look of strained jauntiness fell from his face like a
+mask, and for an instant she saw the real man, old, ruined, lonely. Yes,
+that was it: he was lonely, desperately lonely, foundering in such deep
+seas of solitude that any presence out of the past was like a spar to
+which he clung. Whatever he knew or guessed of the part she had played
+in his disaster, it was not callousness that had made him greet her with
+such forgiving warmth, but the same sense of smallness, insignificance
+and isolation which perpetually hung like a cold fog on her own horizon.
+Suddenly she too felt old--old and unspeakably tired.
+
+"It's been nice seeing you, Nelson. But now I must be getting home."
+
+He offered no objection, but asked for the bill, resumed his jaunty air
+while he scattered largesse among the waiters, and sauntered out behind
+her after calling for a taxi.
+
+They drove off in silence. Susy was thinking: "And Clarissa?" but dared
+not ask. Vanderlyn lit a cigarette, hummed a dance-tune, and stared out
+of the window. Suddenly she felt his hand on hers.
+
+"Susy--do you ever see her?"
+
+"See--Ellie?"
+
+He nodded, without turning toward her.
+
+"Not often... sometimes...."
+
+"If you do, for God's sake tell her I'm happy... happy as a king...
+tell her you could see for yourself that I was...." His voice broke in
+a little gasp. "I... I'll be damned if... if she shall ever be unhappy
+about me... if I can help it...." The cigarette dropped from his
+fingers, and with a sob he covered his face.
+
+"Oh, poor Nelson--poor Nelson," Susy breathed. While their cab rattled
+across the Place du Carrousel, and over the bridge, he continued to
+sit beside her with hidden face. At last he pulled out a scented
+handkerchief, rubbed his eyes with it, and groped for another cigarette.
+
+"I'm all right! Tell her that, will you, Susy? There are some of our old
+times I don't suppose I shall ever forget; but they make me feel kindly
+to her, and not angry. I didn't know it would be so, beforehand--but it
+is.... And now the thing's settled I'm as right as a trivet, and you can
+tell her so.... Look here, Susy..." he caught her by the arm as the taxi
+drew up at her hotel.... "Tell her I understand, will you? I'd rather
+like her to know that...."
+
+"I'll tell her, Nelson," she promised; and climbed the stairs alone to
+her dreary room.
+
+Susy's one fear was that Strefford, when he returned the next day,
+should treat their talk of the previous evening as a fit of "nerves"
+to be jested away. He might, indeed, resent her behaviour too deeply
+to seek to see her at once; but his easygoing modern attitude toward
+conduct and convictions made that improbable. She had an idea that
+what he had most minded was her dropping so unceremoniously out of the
+Embassy Dinner.
+
+But, after all, why should she see him again? She had had enough of
+explanations during the last months to have learned how seldom they
+explain anything. If the other person did not understand at the first
+word, at the first glance even, subsequent elucidations served only to
+deepen the obscurity. And she wanted above all--and especially since her
+hour with Nelson Vanderlyn--to keep herself free, aloof, to retain
+her hold on her precariously recovered self. She sat down and wrote to
+Strefford--and the letter was only a little less painful to write than
+the one she had despatched to Nick. It was not that her own feelings
+were in any like measure engaged; but because, as the decision to give
+up Strefford affirmed itself, she remembered only his kindness, his
+forbearance, his good humour, and all the other qualities she had always
+liked in him; and because she felt ashamed of the hesitations which must
+cause him so much pain and humiliation. Yes: humiliation chiefly. She
+knew that what she had to say would hurt his pride, in whatever way she
+framed her renunciation; and her pen wavered, hating its task. Then she
+remembered Vanderlyn's words about his wife: "There are some of our
+old times I don't suppose I shall ever forget--" and a phrase of Grace
+Fulmer's that she had but half grasped at the time: "You haven't been
+married long enough to understand how trifling such things seem in the
+balance of one's memories."
+
+Here were two people who had penetrated farther than she into the
+labyrinth of the wedded state, and struggled through some of
+its thorniest passages; and yet both, one consciously, the other
+half-unaware, testified to the mysterious fact which was already dawning
+on her: that the influence of a marriage begun in mutual understanding
+is too deep not to reassert itself even in the moment of flight and
+denial.
+
+"The real reason is that you're not Nick" was what she would have said
+to Strefford if she had dared to set down the bare truth; and she knew
+that, whatever she wrote, he was too acute not to read that into it.
+
+"He'll think it's because I'm still in love with Nick... and perhaps I
+am. But even if I were, the difference doesn't seem to lie there, after
+all, but deeper, in things we've shared that seem to be meant to outlast
+love, or to change it into something different." If she could have
+hoped to make Strefford understand that, the letter would have been easy
+enough to write--but she knew just at what point his imagination would
+fail, in what obvious and superficial inferences it would rest.
+
+
+"Poor Streff--poor me!" she thought as she sealed the letter.
+
+After she had despatched it a sense of blankness descended on her. She
+had succeeded in driving from her mind all vain hesitations, doubts,
+returns upon herself: her healthy system naturally rejected them. But
+they left a queer emptiness in which her thoughts rattled about as
+thoughts might, she supposed, in the first moments after death--before
+one got used to it. To get used to being dead: that seemed to be her
+immediate business. And she felt such a novice at it--felt so horribly
+alive! How had those others learned to do without living? Nelson--well,
+he was still in the throes; and probably never would understand, or
+be able to communicate, the lesson when he had mastered it. But Grace
+Fulmer--she suddenly remembered that Grace was in Paris, and set forth
+to find her.
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+NICK LANSING had walked out a long way into the Campagna. His hours were
+seldom his own, for both Mr. and Mrs. Hicks were becoming more and more
+addicted to sudden and somewhat imperious demands upon his time; but on
+this occasion he had simply slipped away after luncheon, and taking the
+tram to the Porta Salaria, had wandered on thence in the direction of
+the Ponte Nomentano.
+
+He wanted to get away and think; but now that he had done it the
+business proved as unfruitful as everything he had put his hand to since
+he had left Venice. Think--think about what? His future seemed to him
+a negligible matter since he had received, two months earlier, the few
+lines in which Susy had asked him for her freedom.
+
+The letter had been a shock--though he had fancied himself so prepared
+for it--yet it had also, in another sense, been a relief, since, now
+that at last circumstances compelled him to write to her, they also told
+him what to say. And he had said it as briefly and simply as possible,
+telling her that he would put no obstacle in the way of her release,
+that he held himself at her lawyer's disposal to answer any further
+communication--and that he would never forget their days together, or
+cease to bless her for them.
+
+That was all. He gave his Roman banker's address, and waited for another
+letter; but none came. Probably the "formalities," whatever they were,
+took longer than he had supposed; and being in no haste to recover his
+own liberty, he did not try to learn the cause of the delay. From that
+moment, however, he considered himself virtually free, and ceased, by
+the same token, to take any interest in his own future. His life seemed
+as flat as a convalescent's first days after the fever has dropped.
+
+The only thing he was sure of was that he was not going to remain in
+the Hickses' employ: when they left Rome for Central Asia he had no
+intention of accompanying them. The part of Mr. Buttles' successor was
+becoming daily more intolerable to him, for the very reasons that had
+probably made it most gratifying to Mr. Buttles. To be treated by Mr.
+and Mrs. Hicks as a paid oracle, a paraded and petted piece of property,
+was a good deal more distasteful than he could have imagined any
+relation with these kindly people could be. And since their aspirations
+had become frankly social he found his task, if easier, yet far less
+congenial than during his first months with them. He preferred patiently
+explaining to Mrs. Hicks, for the hundredth time, that Sassanian and
+Saracenic were not interchangeable terms, to unravelling for her the
+genealogies of her titled guests, and reminding her, when she "seated"
+her dinner-parties, that Dukes ranked higher than Princes. No--the job
+was decidedly intolerable; and he would have to look out for another
+means of earning his living. But that was not what he had really got
+away to think about. He knew he should never starve; he had even begun
+to believe again in his book. What he wanted to think of was Susy--or
+rather, it was Susy that he could not help thinking of, on whatever
+train of thought he set out.
+
+Again and again he fancied he had established a truce with the past: had
+come to terms--the terms of defeat and failure with that bright enemy
+called happiness. And, in truth, he had reached the point of definitely
+knowing that he could never return to the kind of life that he and Susy
+had embarked on. It had been the tragedy, of their relation that loving
+her roused in him ideals she could never satisfy. He had fallen in
+love with her because she was, like himself, amused, unprejudiced and
+disenchanted; and he could not go on loving her unless she ceased to
+be all these things. From that circle there was no issue, and in it he
+desperately revolved.
+
+If he had not heard such persistent rumours of her re-marriage to Lord
+Altringham he might have tried to see her again; but, aware of the
+danger and the hopelessness of a meeting, he was, on the whole, glad to
+have a reason for avoiding it. Such, at least, he honestly supposed to
+be his state of mind until he found himself, as on this occasion, free
+to follow out his thought to its end. That end, invariably, was Susy;
+not the bundle of qualities and defects into which his critical
+spirit had tried to sort her out, but the soft blur of identity, of
+personality, of eyes, hair, mouth, laugh, tricks of speech and gesture,
+that were all so solely and profoundly her own, and yet so mysteriously
+independent of what she might do, say, think, in crucial circumstances.
+He remembered her once saying to him: "After all, you were right
+when you wanted me to be your mistress," and the indignant stare of
+incredulity with which he had answered her. Yet in these hours it
+was the palpable image of her that clung closest, till, as invariably
+happened, his vision came full circle, and feeling her on his breast he
+wanted her also in his soul.
+
+Well--such all-encompassing loves were the rarest of human experiences;
+he smiled at his presumption in wanting no other. Wearily he turned, and
+tramped homeward through the winter twilight....
+
+At the door of the hotel he ran across the Prince of Teutoburg's
+aide-de-camp. They had not met for some days, and Nick had a vague
+feeling that if the Prince's matrimonial designs took definite shape he
+himself was not likely, after all, to be their chosen exponent. He
+had surprised, now and then, a certain distrustful coldness under the
+Princess Mother's cordial glance, and had concluded that she perhaps
+suspected him of being an obstacle to her son's aspirations. He had no
+idea of playing that part, but was not sorry to appear to; for he was
+sincerely attached to Coral Hicks, and hoped for her a more human fate
+than that of becoming Prince Anastasius's consort.
+
+This evening, however, he was struck by the beaming alacrity of the
+aide-de-camp's greeting. Whatever cloud had hung between them had
+lifted: the Teutoburg clan, for one reason or another, no longer feared
+or distrusted him. The change was conveyed in a mere hand-pressure,
+a brief exchange of words, for the aide-de-camp was hastening after a
+well-known dowager of the old Roman world, whom he helped into a large
+coronetted brougham which looked as if it had been extracted, for
+some ceremonial purpose, from a museum of historic vehicles. And in an
+instant it flashed on Lansing that this lady had been the person chosen
+to lay the Prince's offer at Miss Hicks's feet.
+
+The discovery piqued him; and instead of making straight for his own
+room he went up to Mrs. Hicks's drawing-room.
+
+The room was empty, but traces of elaborate tea pervaded it, and an
+immense bouquet of stiff roses lay on the centre table. As he turned
+away, Eldorada Tooker, flushed and tear-stained, abruptly entered.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Lansing--we were looking everywhere for you."
+
+"Looking for me?"
+
+"Yes. Coral especially... she wants to see you. She wants you to come to
+her own sitting-room."
+
+She led him across the ante-chamber and down the passage to the separate
+suite which Miss Hicks inhabited. On the threshold Eldorada gasped out
+emotionally: "You'll find her looking lovely--" and jerked away with a
+sob as he entered.
+
+Coral Hicks was never lovely: but she certainly looked unusually
+handsome. Perhaps it was the long dress of black velvet which, outlined
+against a shaded lamp, made her strong build seem slenderer, or perhaps
+the slight flush on her dusky cheek: a bloom of womanhood hung upon
+her which she made no effort to dissemble. Indeed, it was one of her
+originalities that she always gravely and courageously revealed the
+utmost of whatever mood possessed her.
+
+"How splendid you look!" he said, smiling at her.
+
+She threw her head back and gazed him straight in the eyes. "That's
+going to be my future job."
+
+"To look splendid?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And wear a crown?"
+
+"And wear a crown...."
+
+They continued to consider each other without speaking. Nick's heart
+contracted with pity and perplexity.
+
+"Oh, Coral--it's not decided?"
+
+She scrutinized him for a last penetrating moment; then she looked away.
+"I'm never long deciding."
+
+He hesitated, choking with contradictory impulses, and afraid to
+formulate any, lest they should either mislead or pain her.
+
+"Why didn't you tell me?" he questioned lamely; and instantly perceived
+his blunder.
+
+She sat down, and looked up at him under brooding lashes--had he ever
+noticed the thickness of her lashes before?
+
+"Would it have made any difference if I had told you?"
+
+"Any difference--?"
+
+"Sit down by me," she commanded. "I want to talk to you. You can say
+now whatever you might have said sooner. I'm not married yet: I'm still
+free."
+
+"You haven't given your answer?"
+
+"It doesn't matter if I have."
+
+The retort frightened him with the glimpse of what she still expected of
+him, and what he was still so unable to give.
+
+"That means you've said yes?" he pursued, to gain time.
+
+"Yes or no--it doesn't matter. I had to say something. What I want is
+your advice."
+
+"At the eleventh hour?"
+
+"Or the twelfth." She paused. "What shall I do?" she questioned, with a
+sudden accent of helplessness.
+
+He looked at her as helplessly. He could not say: "Ask yourself--ask
+your parents." Her next word would sweep away such frail hypocrisies.
+Her "What shall I do?" meant "What are you going to do?" and he knew it,
+and knew that she knew it.
+
+"I'm a bad person to give any one matrimonial advice," he began, with a
+strained smile; "but I had such a different vision for you."
+
+"What kind of a vision?" She was merciless.
+
+"Merely what people call happiness, dear."
+
+"'People call'--you see you don't believe in it yourself! Well, neither
+do I--in that form, at any rate."
+
+He considered. "I believe in trying for it--even if the trying's the
+best of it."
+
+"Well, I've tried, and failed. And I'm twenty-two, and I never was
+young. I suppose I haven't enough imagination." She drew a deep breath.
+"Now I want something different." She appeared to search for the word.
+"I want to be--prominent," she declared.
+
+"Prominent?"
+
+She reddened swarthily. "Oh, you smile--you think it's ridiculous: it
+doesn't seem worth while to you. That's because you've always had all
+those things. But I haven't. I know what father pushed up from, and
+I want to push up as high again--higher. No, I haven't got much
+imagination. I've always liked Facts. And I find I shall like the fact
+of being a Princess--choosing the people I associate with, and being up
+above all these European grandees that father and mother bow down to,
+though they think they despise them. You can be up above these people by
+just being yourself; you know how. But I need a platform--a sky-scraper.
+Father and mother slaved to give me my education. They thought education
+was the important thing; but, since we've all three of us got mediocre
+minds, it has just landed us among mediocre people. Don't you suppose I
+see through all the sham science and sham art and sham everything we're
+surrounded with? That's why I want to buy a place at the very top, where
+I shall be powerful enough to get about me the people I want, the big
+people, the right people, and to help them I want to promote culture,
+like those Renaissance women you're always talking about. I want to do
+it for Apex City; do you understand? And for father and mother too. I
+want all those titles carved on my tombstone. They're facts, anyhow!
+Don't laugh at me...." She broke off with one of her clumsy smiles, and
+moved away from him to the other end of the room.
+
+He sat looking at her with a curious feeling of admiration. Her harsh
+positivism was like a tonic to his disenchanted mood, and he thought:
+"What a pity!"
+
+Aloud he said: "I don't feel like laughing at you. You're a great
+woman."
+
+"Then I shall be a great Princess."
+
+"Oh--but you might have been something so much greater!"
+
+Her face flamed again. "Don't say that!"
+
+He stood up involuntarily, and drew near her.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because you're the only man with whom I can imagine the other kind of
+greatness."
+
+It moved him--moved him unexpectedly. He got as far as saying to
+himself: "Good God, if she were not so hideously rich--" and then of
+yielding for a moment to the persuasive vision of all that he and she
+might do with those very riches which he dreaded. After all, there was
+nothing mean in her ideals they were hard and material, in keeping with
+her primitive and massive person; but they had a certain grim nobility.
+And when she spoke of "the other kind of greatness" he knew that she
+understood what she was talking of, and was not merely saying something
+to draw him on, to get him to commit himself. There was not a drop of
+guile in her, except that which her very honesty distilled.
+
+"The other kind of greatness?" he repeated.
+
+"Well, isn't that what you said happiness was? I wanted to be happy...
+but one can't choose."
+
+He went up to her. "No, one can't choose. And how can anyone give you
+happiness who hasn't got it himself?" He took her hands, feeling how
+large, muscular and voluntary they were, even as they melted in his
+palms.
+
+"My poor Coral, of what use can I ever be to you? What you need is to be
+loved."
+
+She drew back and gave him one of her straight strong glances: "No," she
+said gallantly, "but just to love."
+
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+XXV
+
+IN the persistent drizzle of a Paris winter morning Susy Lansing walked
+back alone from the school at which she had just deposited the four
+eldest Fulmers to the little house in Passy where, for the last two
+months, she had been living with them.
+
+She had on ready-made boots, an old waterproof and a last year's hat;
+but none of these facts disturbed her, though she took no particular
+pride in them. The truth was that she was too busy to think much about
+them. Since she had assumed the charge of the Fulmer children, in the
+absence of both their parents in Italy, she had had to pass through such
+an arduous apprenticeship of motherhood that every moment of her waking
+hours was packed with things to do at once, and other things to remember
+to do later. There were only five Fulmers; but at times they were
+like an army with banners, and their power of self-multiplication was
+equalled only by the manner in which they could dwindle, vanish, grow
+mute, and become as it were a single tumbled brown head bent over a book
+in some corner of the house in which nobody would ever have thought of
+hunting for them--and which, of course, were it the bonne's room in the
+attic, or the subterranean closet where the trunks were kept, had been
+singled out by them for that very reason.
+
+These changes from ubiquity to invisibility would have seemed to Susy,
+a few months earlier, one of the most maddening of many characteristics
+not calculated to promote repose. But now she felt differently. She
+had grown interested in her charges, and the search for a clue to their
+methods, whether tribal or individual, was as exciting to her as the
+development of a detective story.
+
+What interested her most in the whole stirring business was the
+discovery that they had a method. These little creatures, pitched upward
+into experience on the tossing waves of their parents' agitated lives,
+had managed to establish a rough-and-ready system of self-government.
+Junie, the eldest (the one who already chose her mother's hats, and
+tried to put order in her wardrobe) was the recognized head of the
+state. At twelve she knew lots of things which her mother had never
+thoroughly learned, and Susy, her temporary mother, had never even
+guessed at: she spoke with authority on all vital subjects, from
+castor-oil to flannel under-clothes, from the fair sharing of stamps
+or marbles to the number of helpings of rice-pudding or jam which each
+child was entitled to.
+
+There was hardly any appeal from her verdict; yet each of her subjects
+revolved in his or her own orbit of independence, according to laws
+which Junie acknowledged and respected; and the interpreting of this
+mysterious charter of rights and privileges had not been without
+difficulty for Susy.
+
+Besides this, there were material difficulties to deal with. The six of
+them, and the breathless bonne who cooked and slaved for them all, had
+but a slim budget to live on; and, as Junie remarked, you'd have thought
+the boys ate their shoes, the way they vanished. They ate, certainly, a
+great deal else, and mostly of a nourishing and expensive kind. They
+had definite views about the amount and quality of their food, and were
+capable of concerted rebellion when Susy's catering fell beneath their
+standard. All this made her life a hurried and harassing business, but
+never--what she had most feared it would be a dull or depressing one.
+
+It was not, she owned to herself, that the society of the Fulmer
+children had roused in her any abstract passion for the human young. She
+knew--had known since Nick's first kiss--how she would love any child of
+his and hers; and she had cherished poor little Clarissa Vanderlyn with
+a shrinking and wistful solicitude. But in these rough young Fulmers she
+took a positive delight, and for reasons that were increasingly clear to
+her. It was because, in the first place, they were all intelligent; and
+because their intelligence had been fed only on things worth caring for.
+However inadequate Grace Fulmer's bringing-up of her increasing tribe
+had been, they had heard in her company nothing trivial or dull: good
+music, good books and good talk had been their daily food, and if at
+times they stamped and roared and crashed about like children unblessed
+by such privileges, at others they shone with the light of poetry and
+spoke with the voice of wisdom.
+
+That had been Susy's discovery: for the first time she was among
+awakening minds which had been wakened only to beauty. From their
+cramped and uncomfortable household Grace and Nat Fulmer had managed to
+keep out mean envies, vulgar admirations, shabby discontents; above all
+the din and confusion the great images of beauty had brooded, like those
+ancestral figures that stood apart on their shelf in the poorest Roman
+households.
+
+No, the task she had undertaken for want of a better gave Susy no sense
+of a missed vocation: "mothering" on a large scale would never, she
+perceived, be her job. Rather it gave her, in odd ways, the sense
+of being herself mothered, of taking her first steps in the life of
+immaterial values which had begun to seem so much more substantial than
+any she had known.
+
+On the day when she had gone to Grace Fulmer for counsel and comfort
+she had little guessed that they would come to her in this form. She had
+found her friend, more than ever distracted and yet buoyant, riding the
+large untidy waves of her life with the splashed ease of an amphibian.
+Grace was probably the only person among Susy's friends who could have
+understood why she could not make up her mind to marry Altringham; but
+at the moment Grace was too much absorbed in her own problems to
+pay much attention to her friend's, and, according to her wont, she
+immediately "unpacked" her difficulties.
+
+Nat was not getting what she had hoped out of his European opportunity.
+Oh, she was enough of an artist herself to know that there must be
+fallow periods--that the impact of new impressions seldom produced
+immediate results. She had allowed for all that. But her past experience
+of Nat's moods had taught her to know just when he was assimilating,
+when impressions were fructifying in him. And now they were not, and he
+knew it as well as she did. There had been too much rushing about, too
+much excitement and sterile flattery... Mrs. Melrose? Well, yes, for
+a while... the trip to Spain had been a love-journey, no doubt. Grace
+spoke calmly, but the lines of her face sharpened: she had suffered, oh
+horribly, at his going to Spain without her. Yet she couldn't, for the
+children's sake, afford to miss the big sum that Ursula Gillow had given
+her for her fortnight at Ruan. And her playing had struck people, and
+led, on the way back, to two or three profitable engagements in private
+houses in London. Fashionable society had made "a little fuss"
+about her, and it had surprised and pleased Nat, and given her a new
+importance in his eyes. "He was beginning to forget that I wasn't only
+a nursery-maid, and it's been a good thing for him to be reminded...
+but the great thing is that with what I've earned he and I can go off
+to southern Italy and Sicily for three months. You know I know how
+to manage... and, alone with me, Nat will settle down to work: to
+observing, feeling, soaking things in. It's the only way. Mrs. Melrose
+wants to take him, to pay all the expenses again-well she shan't. I'll
+pay them." Her worn cheek flushed with triumph. "And you'll see what
+wonders will come of it.... Only there's the problem of the children.
+Junie quite agrees that we can't take them...."
+
+Thereupon she had unfolded her idea. If Susy was at a loose end, and
+hard up, why shouldn't she take charge of the children while their
+parents were in Italy? For three months at most-Grace could promise it
+shouldn't be longer. They couldn't pay her much, of course, but at least
+she would be lodged and fed. "And, you know, it will end by interesting
+you--I'm sure it will," the mother concluded, her irrepressible
+hopefulness rising even to this height, while Susy stood before her with
+a hesitating smile.
+
+Take care of five Fulmers for three months! The prospect cowed her. If
+there had been only Junie and Geordie, the oldest and youngest of the
+band, she might have felt less hesitation. But there was Nat, the second
+in age, whose motor-horn had driven her and Nick out to the hill-side
+on their fatal day at the Fulmers' and there were the twins, Jack and
+Peggy, of whom she had kept memories almost equally disquieting. To rule
+this uproarious tribe would be a sterner business than trying to beguile
+Clarissa Vanderlyn's ladylike leisure; and she would have refused on the
+spot, as she had refused once before, if the only possible alternatives
+had not come to seem so much less bearable, and if Junie, called in for
+advice, and standing there, small, plain and competent, had not said
+in her quiet grown-up voice: "Oh, yes, I'm sure Mrs. Lansing and I can
+manage while you're away--especially if she reads aloud well."
+
+Reads aloud well! The stipulation had enchanted Susy. She had never
+before known children who cared to be read aloud to; she remembered with
+a shiver her attempts to interest Clarissa in anything but gossip
+and the fashions, and the tone in which the child had said, showing
+Strefford's trinket to her father: "Because I said I'd rather have it
+than a book."
+
+And here were children who consented to be left for three months by
+their parents, but on condition that a good reader was provided for
+them!
+
+"Very well--I will! But what shall I be expected to read to you?" she
+had gaily questioned; and Junie had answered, after one of her sober
+pauses of reflection: "The little ones like nearly everything; but Nat
+and I want poetry particularly, because if we read it to ourselves we so
+often pronounce the puzzling words wrong, and then it sounds so horrid."
+
+"Oh, I hope I shall pronounce them right," Susy murmured, stricken with
+self-distrust and humility.
+
+Apparently she did; for her reading was a success, and even the twins
+and Geordie, once they had grown used to her, seemed to prefer a ringing
+page of Henry V, or the fairy scenes from the Midsummer Night's Dream,
+to their own more specialized literature, though that had also at times
+to be provided.
+
+There were, in fact, no lulls in her life with the Fulmers; but
+its commotions seemed to Susy less meaningless, and therefore less
+fatiguing, than those that punctuated the existence of people like
+Altringham, Ursula Gillow, Ellie Vanderlyn and their train; and the
+noisy uncomfortable little house at Passy was beginning to greet her
+with the eyes of home when she returned there after her tramps to and
+from the children's classes. At any rate she had the sense of doing
+something useful and even necessary, and of earning her own keep, though
+on so modest a scale; and when the children were in their quiet
+mood, and demanded books or music (or, even, on one occasion, at the
+surprising Junie's instigation, a collective visit to the Louvre, where
+they recognized the most unlikely pictures, and the two elders emitted
+startling technical judgments, and called their companion's attention to
+details she had not observed); on these occasions, Susy had a surprised
+sense of being drawn back into her brief life with Nick, or even still
+farther and deeper, into those visions of Nick's own childhood on which
+the trivial later years had heaped their dust.
+
+It was curious to think that if he and she had remained together, and
+she had had a child--the vision used to come to her, in her sleepless
+hours, when she looked at little Geordie, in his cot by her bed--their
+life together might have been very much like the life she was now
+leading, a small obscure business to the outer world, but to themselves
+how wide and deep and crowded!
+
+She could not bear, at that moment, the thought of giving up this mystic
+relation to the life she had missed. In spite of the hurry and fatigue
+of her days, the shabbiness and discomfort of everything, and the hours
+when the children were as "horrid" as any other children, and turned a
+conspiracy of hostile faces to all her appeals; in spite of all this
+she did not want to give them up, and had decided, when their parents
+returned, to ask to go back to America with them. Perhaps, if Nat's
+success continued, and Grace was able to work at her music, they would
+need a kind of governess-companion. At any rate, she could picture no
+future less distasteful.
+
+She had not sent to Mr. Spearman Nick's answer to her letter. In the
+interval between writing to him and receiving his reply she had broken
+with Strefford; she had therefore no object in seeking her freedom. If
+Nick wanted his, he knew he had only to ask for it; and his silence, as
+the weeks passed, woke a faint hope in her. The hope flamed high when
+she read one day in the newspapers a vague but evidently "inspired"
+allusion to the possibility of an alliance between his Serene Highness
+the reigning Prince of Teutoburg-Waldhain and Miss Coral Hicks of
+Apex City; it sank to ashes when, a few days later, her eye lit on a
+paragraph wherein Mr. and Mrs. Mortimer Hicks "requested to state" that
+there was no truth in the report.
+
+On the foundation of these two statements Susy raised one watch-tower
+of hope after another, feverish edifices demolished or rebuilt by every
+chance hint from the outer world wherein Nick's name figured with the
+Hickses'. And still, as the days passed and she heard nothing, either
+from him or from her lawyer, her flag continued to fly from the quaking
+structures.
+
+Apart from the custody of the children there was indeed little to
+distract her mind from these persistent broodings. She winced sometimes
+at the thought of the ease with which her fashionable friends had let
+her drop out of sight. In the perpetual purposeless rush of their days,
+the feverish making of winter plans, hurrying off to the Riviera or St.
+Moritz, Egypt or New York, there was no time to hunt up the vanished
+or to wait for the laggard. Had they learned that she had broken her
+"engagement" (how she hated the word!) to Strefford, and had the fact
+gone about that she was once more only a poor hanger-on, to be taken up
+when it was convenient, and ignored in the intervals? She did not know;
+though she fancied Strefford's newly-developed pride would prevent his
+revealing to any one what had passed between them. For several days
+after her abrupt flight he had made no sign; and though she longed to
+write and ask his forgiveness she could not find the words. Finally it
+was he who wrote: a short note, from Altringham, typical of all that was
+best in the old Strefford. He had gone down to Altringham, he told her,
+to think quietly over their last talk, and try to understand what
+she had been driving at. He had to own that he couldn't; but that, he
+supposed, was the very head and front of his offending. Whatever he had
+done to displease her, he was sorry for; but he asked, in view of his
+invincible ignorance, to be allowed not to regard his offence as a cause
+for a final break. The possibility of that, he found, would make him
+even more unhappy than he had foreseen; as she knew, his own happiness
+had always been his first object in life, and he therefore begged her to
+suspend her decision a little longer. He expected to be in Paris within
+another two months, and before arriving he would write again, and ask
+her to see him.
+
+The letter moved her but did not make her waver. She simply wrote that
+she was touched by his kindness, and would willingly see him if he came
+to Paris later; though she was bound to tell him that she had not yet
+changed her mind, and did not believe it would promote his happiness to
+have her try to do so.
+
+He did not reply to this, and there was nothing further to keep her
+thoughts from revolving endlessly about her inmost hopes and fears.
+
+On the rainy afternoon in question, tramping home from the "cours" (to
+which she was to return at six), she had said to herself that it was
+two months that very day since Nick had known she was ready to release
+him--and that after such a delay he was not likely to take any further
+steps. The thought filled her with a vague ecstasy. She had had to fix
+an arbitrary date as the term of her anguish, and she had fixed that
+one; and behold she was justified. For what could his silence mean but
+that he too....
+
+On the hall-table lay a typed envelope with the Paris postage-mark. She
+opened it carelessly, and saw that the letter-head bore Mr. Spearman's
+office address. The words beneath spun round before her eyes.... "Has
+notified us that he is at your disposal... carry out your wishes...
+arriving in Paris... fix an appointment with his lawyers...."
+
+Nick--it was Nick the words were talking of! It was the fact of Nick's
+return to Paris that was being described in those preposterous terms!
+She sank down on the bench beside the dripping umbrella-stand and stared
+vacantly before her. It had fallen at last--this blow in which she now
+saw that she had never really believed! And yet she had imagined she was
+prepared for it, had expected it, was already planning her future life
+in view of it--an effaced impersonal life in the service of somebody
+else's children--when, in reality, under that thin surface of abnegation
+and acceptance, all the old hopes had been smouldering red-hot in their
+ashes! What was the use of any self-discipline, any philosophy, any
+experience, if the lawless self underneath could in an instant consume
+them like tinder?
+
+She tried to collect herself--to understand what had happened. Nick was
+coming to Paris--coming not to see her but to consult his lawyer! It
+meant, of course, that he had definitely resolved to claim his freedom;
+and that, if he had made up his mind to this final step, after more
+than six months of inaction and seeming indifference, it could be
+only because something unforeseen and decisive had happened to him.
+Feverishly, she put together again the stray scraps of gossip and the
+newspaper paragraphs that had reached her in the last months. It
+was evident that Miss Hicks's projected marriage with the Prince of
+Teutoburg-Waldhain had been broken off at the last moment; and broken
+off because she intended to marry Nick. The announcement of his arrival
+in Paris and the publication of Mr. and Mrs. Hicks's formal denial of
+their daughter's betrothal coincided too closely to admit of any other
+inference. Susy tried to grasp the reality of these assembled facts, to
+picture to herself their actual tangible results. She thought of Coral
+Hicks bearing the name of Mrs. Nick Lansing--her name, Susy's own!--and
+entering drawing-rooms with Nick in her wake, gaily welcomed by the very
+people who, a few months before, had welcomed Susy with the same warmth.
+In spite of Nick's growing dislike of society, and Coral's attitude of
+intellectual superiority, their wealth would fatally draw them back into
+the world to which Nick was attached by all his habits and associations.
+And no doubt it would amuse him to re-enter that world as a dispenser of
+hospitality, to play the part of host where he had so long been a guest;
+just as Susy had once fancied it would amuse her to re-enter it as Lady
+Altringham.... But, try as she would, now that the reality was so close
+on her, she could not visualize it or relate it to herself. The mere
+juxtaposition of the two names--Coral, Nick--which in old times she had
+so often laughingly coupled, now produced a blur in her brain.
+
+She continued to sit helplessly beside the hall-table, the tears running
+down her cheeks. The appearance of the bonne aroused her. Her youngest
+charge, Geordie, had been feverish for a day or two; he was better,
+but still confined to the nursery, and he had heard Susy unlock the
+house-door, and could not imagine why she had not come straight up to
+him. He now began to manifest his indignation in a series of racking
+howls, and Susy, shaken out of her trance, dropped her cloak and
+umbrella and hurried up.
+
+"Oh, that child!" she groaned.
+
+Under the Fulmer roof there was little time or space for the indulgence
+of private sorrows. From morning till night there was always some
+immediate practical demand on one's attention; and Susy was beginning
+to see how, in contracted households, children may play a part less
+romantic but not less useful than that assigned to them in fiction,
+through the mere fact of giving their parents no leisure to dwell on
+irremediable grievances. Though her own apprenticeship to family life
+had been so short, she had already acquired the knack of rapid mental
+readjustment, and as she hurried up to the nursery her private cares
+were dispelled by a dozen problems of temperature, diet and medicine.
+
+Such readjustment was of course only momentary; yet each time it
+happened it seemed to give her more firmness and flexibility of temper.
+"What a child I was myself six months ago!" she thought, wondering that
+Nick's influence, and the tragedy of their parting, should have done
+less to mature and steady her than these few weeks in a house full of
+children.
+
+Pacifying Geordie was not easy, for he had long since learned to use
+his grievances as a pretext for keeping the offender at his beck with a
+continuous supply of stories, songs and games. "You'd better be careful
+never to put yourself in the wrong with Geordie," the astute Junie had
+warned Susy at the outset, "because he's got such a memory, and he won't
+make it up with you till you've told him every fairy-tale he's ever
+heard before."
+
+But on this occasion, as soon as he saw her, Geordie's indignation
+melted. She was still in the doorway, compunctious, abject and racking
+her dazed brain for his favourite stories, when she saw, by the
+smoothing out of his mouth and the sudden serenity of his eyes, that he
+was going to give her the delicious but not wholly reassuring shock of
+being a good boy.
+
+Thoughtfully he examined her face as she knelt down beside the cot; then
+he poked out a finger and pressed it on her tearful cheek.
+
+"Poor Susy got a pain too," he said, putting his arms about her; and
+as she hugged him close, he added philosophically: "Tell Geordie a new
+story, darling, and you'll forget all about it."
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+NICK Lansing arrived in Paris two days after his lawyer had announced
+his coming to Mr. Spearman.
+
+He had left Rome with the definite purpose of freeing himself and Susy;
+and though he was not pledged to Coral Hicks he had not concealed from
+her the object of his journey. In vain had he tried to rouse in himself
+any sense of interest in his own future. Beyond the need of reaching a
+definite point in his relation to Susy his imagination could not travel.
+But he had been moved by Coral's confession, and his reason told him
+that he and she would probably be happy together, with the temperate
+happiness based on a community of tastes and an enlargement of
+opportunities. He meant, on his return to Rome, to ask her to marry
+him; and he knew that she knew it. Indeed, if he had not spoken before
+leaving it was with no idea of evading his fate, or keeping her longer
+in suspense, but simply because of the strange apathy that had fallen
+on him since he had received Susy's letter. In his incessant
+self-communings he dressed up this apathy as a discretion which forbade
+his engaging Coral's future till his own was assured. But in truth he
+knew that Coral's future was already engaged, and his with it: in Rome
+the fact had seemed natural and even inevitable.
+
+In Paris, it instantly became the thinnest of unrealities. Not because
+Paris was not Rome, nor because it was Paris; but because hidden away
+somewhere in that vast unheeding labyrinth was the half-forgotten part
+of himself that was Susy.... For weeks, for months past, his mind had
+been saturated with Susy: she had never seemed more insistently near him
+than as their separation lengthened, and the chance of reunion became
+less probable. It was as if a sickness long smouldering in him had
+broken out and become acute, enveloping him in the Nessus-shirt of his
+memories. There were moments when, to his memory, their actual embraces
+seemed perfunctory, accidental, compared with this deep deliberate
+imprint of her soul on his.
+
+Yet now it had become suddenly different. Now that he was in the same
+place with her, and might at any moment run across her, meet her eyes,
+hear her voice, avoid her hand--now that penetrating ghost of her
+with which he had been living was sucked back into the shadows, and
+he seemed, for the first time since their parting, to be again in her
+actual presence. He woke to the fact on the morning of his arrival,
+staring down from his hotel window on a street she would perhaps walk
+through that very day, and over a limitless huddle of roofs, one
+of which covered her at that hour. The abruptness of the transition
+startled him; he had not known that her mere geographical nearness would
+take him by the throat in that way. What would it be, then, if she were
+to walk into the room?
+
+Thank heaven that need never happen! He was sufficiently informed as
+to French divorce proceedings to know that they would not necessitate
+a confrontation with his wife; and with ordinary luck, and some
+precautions, he might escape even a distant glimpse of her. He did not
+mean to remain in Paris more than a few days; and during that time it
+would be easy--knowing, as he did, her tastes and Altringham's--to avoid
+the places where she was likely to be met. He did not know where she was
+living, but imagined her to be staying with Mrs. Melrose, or some other
+rich friend, or else lodged, in prospective affluence, at the Nouveau
+Luxe, or in a pretty flat of her own. Trust Susy--ah, the pang of it--to
+"manage"!
+
+His first visit was to his lawyer's; and as he walked through the
+familiar streets each approaching face, each distant figure seemed
+hers. The obsession was intolerable. It would not last, of course; but
+meanwhile he had the exposed sense of a fugitive in a nightmare, who
+feels himself the only creature visible in a ghostly and besetting
+multitude. The eye of the metropolis seemed fixed on him in an immense
+unblinking stare.
+
+At the lawyer's he was told that, as a first step to freedom, he must
+secure a domicile in Paris. He had of course known of this necessity: he
+had seen too many friends through the Divorce Court, in one country
+or another, not to be fairly familiar with the procedure. But the fact
+presented a different aspect as soon as he tried to relate it to himself
+and Susy: it was as though Susy's personality were a medium through
+which events still took on a transfiguring colour. He found the
+"domicile" that very day: a tawdrily furnished rez-de-chaussee,
+obviously destined to far different uses. And as he sat there, after the
+concierge had discreetly withdrawn with the first quarter's payment in
+her pocket, and stared about him at the vulgar plushy place, he burst
+out laughing at what it was about to figure in the eyes of the law: a
+Home, and a Home desecrated by his own act! The Home in which he and
+Susy had reared their precarious bliss, and seen it crumble at the
+brutal touch of his unfaithfulness and his cruelty--for he had been told
+that he must be cruel to her as well as unfaithful! He looked at the
+walls hung with sentimental photogravures, at the shiny bronze "nudes,"
+the moth-eaten animal-skins and the bedizened bed-and once more the
+unreality, the impossibility, of all that was happening to him entered
+like a drug into his veins.
+
+To rouse himself he stood up, turned the key on the hideous place, and
+returned to his lawyer's. He knew that in the hard dry atmosphere of the
+office the act of giving the address of the flat would restore some kind
+of reality to the phantasmal transaction. And with wonder he watched the
+lawyer, as a matter of course, pencil the street and the number on one
+of the papers enclosed in a folder on which his own name was elaborately
+engrossed.
+
+As he took leave it occurred to him to ask where Susy was living. At
+least he imagined that it had just occurred to him, and that he was
+making the enquiry merely as a measure of precaution, in order to know
+what quarter of Paris to avoid; but in reality the question had been on
+his lips since he had first entered the office, and lurking in his mind
+since he had emerged from the railway station that morning. The fact
+of not knowing where she lived made the whole of Paris a meaningless
+unintelligible place, as useless to him as the face of a huge clock that
+has lost its hour hand.
+
+The address in Passy surprised him: he had imagined that she would be
+somewhere in the neighborhood of the Champs Elysees or the Place de
+l'Etoile. But probably either Mrs. Melrose or Ellie Vanderlyn had taken
+a house at Passy. Well--it was something of a relief to know that she
+was so far off. No business called him to that almost suburban region
+beyond the Trocadero, and there was much less chance of meeting her than
+if she had been in the centre of Paris.
+
+All day he wandered, avoiding the fashionable quarters, the streets
+in which private motors glittered five deep, and furred and feathered
+silhouettes glided from them into tea-rooms, picture-galleries and
+jewellers' shops. In some such scenes Susy was no doubt figuring:
+slenderer, finer, vivider, than the other images of clay, but imitating
+their gestures, chattering their jargon, winding her hand among the same
+pearls and sables. He struck away across the Seine, along the quays
+to the Cite, the net-work of old Paris, the great grey vaults of St.
+Eustache, the swarming streets of the Marais. He gazed at monuments
+dawdled before shop-windows, sat in squares and on quays, watching
+people bargain, argue, philander, quarrel, work-girls stroll past in
+linked bands, beggars whine on the bridges, derelicts doze in the pale
+winter sun, mothers in mourning hasten by taking children to school, and
+street-walkers beat their weary rounds before the cafes.
+
+The day drifted on. Toward evening he began to grow afraid of his
+solitude, and to think of dining at the Nouveau Luxe, or some
+other fashionable restaurant where he would be fairly sure to
+meet acquaintances, and be carried off to a theatre, a boite or a
+dancing-hall. Anything, anything now, to get away from the maddening
+round of his thoughts. He felt the same blank fear of solitude as months
+ago in Genoa.... Even if he were to run across Susy and Altringham, what
+of it? Better get the job over. People had long since ceased to take on
+tragedy airs about divorce: dividing couples dined together to the last,
+and met afterward in each other's houses, happy in the consciousness
+that their respective remarriages had provided two new centres of
+entertainment. Yet most of the couples who took their re-matings so
+philosophically had doubtless had their hour of enchantment, of belief
+in the immortality of loving; whereas he and Susy had simply and frankly
+entered into a business contract for their mutual advantage. The fact
+gave the last touch of incongruity to his agonies and exaltations, and
+made him appear to himself as grotesque and superannuated as the hero of
+a romantic novel.
+
+He stood up from a bench on which he had been lounging in the Luxembourg
+gardens, and hailed a taxi. Dusk had fallen, and he meant to go back to
+his hotel, take a rest, and then go out to dine. But instead, he threw
+Susy's address to the driver, and settled down in the cab, resting both
+hands on the knob of his umbrella and staring straight ahead of him as
+if he were accomplishing some tiresome duty that had to be got through
+with before he could turn his mind to more important things.
+
+"It's the easiest way," he heard himself say.
+
+At the street-corner--her street-corner--he stopped the cab, and stood
+motionless while it rattled away. It was a short vague street, much
+farther off than he had expected, and fading away at the farther end in
+a dusky blur of hoardings overhung by trees. A thin rain was beginning
+to fall, and it was already night in this inadequately lit suburban
+quarter. Lansing walked down the empty street. The houses stood a few
+yards apart, with bare-twigged shrubs between, and gates and railings
+dividing them from the pavement. He could not, at first, distinguish
+their numbers; but presently, coming abreast of a street-lamp, he
+discovered that the small shabby facade it illuminated was precisely
+the one he sought. The discovery surprised him. He had imagined that, as
+frequently happened in the outlying quarters of Passy and La Muette,
+the mean street would lead to a stately private hotel, built upon some
+bowery fragment of an old country-place. It was the latest whim of the
+wealthy to establish themselves on these outskirts of Paris, where
+there was still space for verdure; and he had pictured Susy behind
+some pillared house-front, with lights pouring across glossy turf to
+sculptured gateposts. Instead, he saw a six-windowed house, huddled
+among neighbours of its kind, with the family wash fluttering between
+meagre bushes. The arc-light beat ironically on its front, which had
+the worn look of a tired work-woman's face; and Lansing, as he leaned
+against the opposite railing, vainly tried to fit his vision of Susy
+into so humble a setting.
+
+The probable explanation was that his lawyer had given him the wrong
+address; not only the wrong number but the wrong street. He pulled out
+the slip of paper, and was crossing over to decipher it under the lamp,
+when an errand-boy appeared out of the obscurity, and approached the
+house. Nick drew back, and the boy, unlatching the gate, ran up the
+steps and gave the bell a pull.
+
+Almost immediately the door opened; and there stood Susy, the light full
+upon her, and upon a red-checked child against her shoulder. The space
+behind them was dark, or so dimly lit that it formed a black background
+to her vivid figure. She looked at the errand-boy without surprise, took
+his parcel, and after he had turned away, lingered a moment in the door,
+glancing down the empty street.
+
+That moment, to her watcher, seemed quicker than a flash yet as long
+as a life-time. There she was, a stone's throw away, but utterly
+unconscious of his presence: his Susy, the old Susy, and yet a new Susy,
+curiously transformed, transfigured almost, by the new attitude in which
+he beheld her.
+
+In the first shock of the vision he forgot his surprise at her being in
+such a place, forgot to wonder whose house she was in, or whose was
+the sleepy child in her arms. For an instant she stood out from the
+blackness behind her, and through the veil of the winter night, a thing
+apart, an unconditioned vision, the eternal image of the woman and
+the child; and in that instant everything within him was changed and
+renewed. His eyes were still absorbing her, finding again the familiar
+curves of her light body, noting the thinness of the lifted arm that
+upheld the little boy, the droop of the shoulder he weighed on, the
+brooding way in which her cheek leaned to his even while she looked
+away; then she drew back, the door closed, and the street-lamp again
+shone on blankness.
+
+"But she's mine!" Nick cried, in a fierce triumph of recovery...
+
+His eyes were so full of her that he shut them to hold in the crowding
+vision.
+
+It remained with him, at first, as a complete picture; then gradually it
+broke up into its component parts, the child vanished, the strange house
+vanished, and Susy alone stood before him, his own Susy, only his Susy,
+yet changed, worn, tempered--older, even--with sharper shadows under
+the cheek-bones, the brows drawn, the joint of the slim wrist more
+prominent. It was not thus that his memory had evoked her, and he
+recalled, with a remorseful pang, the fact that something in her
+look, her dress, her tired and drooping attitude, suggested poverty,
+dependence, seemed to make her after all a part of the shabby house in
+which, at first sight, her presence had seemed so incongruous.
+
+"But she looks poor!" he thought, his heart tightening. And instantly
+it occurred to him that these must be the Fulmer children whom she
+was living with while their parents travelled in Italy. Rumours of Nat
+Fulmer's sudden ascension had reached him, and he had heard that the
+couple had lately been seen in Naples and Palermo. No one had mentioned
+Susy's name in connection with them, and he could hardly tell why he
+had arrived at this conclusion, except perhaps because it seemed natural
+that, if Susy were in trouble, she should turn to her old friend Grace.
+
+But why in trouble? What trouble? What could have happened to check her
+triumphant career?
+
+"That's what I mean to find out!" he exclaimed.
+
+His heart was beating with a tumult of new hopes and old memories. The
+sight of his wife, so remote in mien and manner from the world in
+which he had imagined her to be re-absorbed, changed in a flash his own
+relation to life, and flung a mist of unreality over all that he
+had been trying to think most solid and tangible. Nothing now was
+substantial to him but the stones of the street in which he stood, the
+front of the house which hid her, the bell-handle he already felt in
+his grasp. He started forward, and was halfway to the threshold when a
+private motor turned the corner, the twin glitter of its lamps carpeting
+the wet street with gold to Susy's door.
+
+Lansing drew back into the shadow as the motor swept up to the house. A
+man jumped out, and the light fell on Strefford's shambling figure, its
+lazy disjointed movements so unmistakably the same under his fur coat,
+and in the new setting of prosperity.
+
+Lansing stood motionless, staring at the door. Strefford rang, and
+waited. Would Susy appear again? Perhaps she had done so before only
+because she had been on the watch....
+
+But no: after a slight delay a bonne appeared--the breathless
+maid-of-all-work of a busy household--and at once effaced herself,
+letting the visitor in. Lansing was sure that not a word passed between
+the two, of enquiry on Lord Altringham's part, or of acquiescence on the
+servant's. There could be no doubt that he was expected.
+
+The door closed on him, and a light appeared behind the blind of the
+adjoining window. The maid had shown the visitor into the sitting-room
+and lit the lamp. Upstairs, meanwhile, Susy was no doubt running skilful
+fingers through her tumbled hair and daubing her pale lips with red.
+Ah, how Lansing knew every movement of that familiar rite, even to the
+pucker of the brow and the pouting thrust-out of the lower lip! He was
+seized with a sense of physical sickness as the succession of remembered
+gestures pressed upon his eyes.... And the other man? The other man,
+inside the house, was perhaps at that very instant smiling over the
+remembrance of the same scene!
+
+At the thought, Lansing plunged away into the night.
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+SUSY and Lord Altringham sat in the little drawing-room, divided from
+each other by a table carrying a smoky lamp and heaped with tattered
+school-books.
+
+In another half hour the bonne, despatched to fetch the children from
+their classes, would be back with her flock; and at any moment Geordie's
+imperious cries might summon his slave up to the nursery. In the scant
+time allotted them, the two sat, and visibly wondered what to say.
+
+Strefford, on entering, had glanced about the dreary room, with its
+piano laden with tattered music, the children's toys littering the lame
+sofa, the bunches of dyed grass and impaled butterflies flanking the
+cast-bronze clock. Then he had turned to Susy and asked simply: "Why on
+earth are you here?"
+
+She had not tried to explain; from the first, she had understood the
+impossibility of doing so. And she would not betray her secret longing
+to return to Nick, now that she knew that Nick had taken definite steps
+for his release. In dread lest Strefford should have heard of this, and
+should announce it to her, coupling it with the news of Nick's projected
+marriage, and lest, hearing her fears thus substantiated, she should
+lose her self-control, she had preferred to say, in a voice that she
+tried to make indifferent: "The 'proceedings,' or whatever the lawyers
+call them, have begun. While they're going on I like to stay quite by
+myself.... I don't know why...."
+
+Strefford, at that, had looked at her keenly. "Ah," he murmured; and
+his lips were twisted into their old mocking smile. "Speaking of
+proceedings," he went on carelessly, "what stage have Ellie's reached,
+I wonder? I saw her and Vanderlyn and Bockheimer all lunching cheerfully
+together to-day at Larue's."
+
+The blood rushed to Susy's forehead. She remembered her tragic evening
+with Nelson Vanderlyn, only two months earlier, and thought to herself.
+"In time, then, I suppose, Nick and I...."
+
+Aloud she said: "I can't imagine how Nelson and Ellie can ever want to
+see each other again. And in a restaurant, of all places!"
+
+Strefford continued to smile. "My dear, you're incorrigibly
+old-fashioned. Why should two people who've done each other the best
+turn they could by getting out of each other's way at the right moment
+behave like sworn enemies ever afterward? It's too absurd; the humbug's
+too flagrant. Whatever our generation has failed to do, it's got rid of
+humbug; and that's enough to immortalize it. I daresay Nelson and Ellie
+never liked each other better than they do to-day. Twenty years ago,
+they'd have been afraid to confess it; but why shouldn't they now?"
+
+Susy looked at Strefford, conscious that under his words was the ache of
+the disappointment she had caused him; and yet conscious also that that
+very ache was not the overwhelming penetrating emotion he perhaps wished
+it to be, but a pang on a par with a dozen others; and that even while
+he felt it he foresaw the day when he should cease to feel it. And she
+thought to herself that this certainty of oblivion must be bitterer than
+any certainty of pain.
+
+A silence had fallen between them. He broke it by rising from his
+seat, and saying with a shrug: "You'll end by driving me to marry Joan
+Senechal."
+
+Susy smiled. "Well, why not? She's lovely."
+
+"Yes; but she'll bore me."
+
+"Poor Streff! So should I--"
+
+"Perhaps. But nothing like as soon--" He grinned sardonically. "There'd
+be more margin." He appeared to wait for her to speak. "And what else on
+earth are you going to do?" he concluded, as she still remained silent.
+
+"Oh, Streff, I couldn't marry you for a reason like that!" she murmured
+at length.
+
+"Then marry me, and find your reason afterward."
+
+Her lips made a movement of denial, and still in silence she held out
+her hand for good-bye. He clasped it, and then turned away; but on the
+threshold he paused, his screwed-up eyes fixed on her wistfully.
+
+The look moved her, and she added hurriedly: "The only reason I can find
+is one for not marrying you. It's because I can't yet feel unmarried
+enough."
+
+"Unmarried enough? But I thought Nick was doing his best to make you
+feel that."
+
+"Yes. But even when he has--sometimes I think even that won't make any
+difference."
+
+He still scrutinized her hesitatingly, with the gravest eyes she had
+ever seen in his careless face.
+
+"My dear, that's rather the way I feel about you," he said simply as he
+turned to go.
+
+That evening after the children had gone to bed Susy sat up late in the
+cheerless sitting-room. She was not thinking of Strefford but of Nick.
+He was coming to Paris--perhaps he had already arrived. The idea that he
+might be in the same place with her at that very moment, and without her
+knowing it, was so strange and painful that she felt a violent revolt of
+all her strong and joy-loving youth. Why should she go on suffering so
+unbearably, so abjectly, so miserably? If only she could see him, hear
+his voice, even hear him say again such cruel and humiliating words as
+he had spoken on that dreadful day in Venice when that would be better
+than this blankness, this utter and final exclusion from his life! He
+had been cruel to her, unimaginably cruel: hard, arrogant, unjust; and
+had been so, perhaps, deliberately, because he already wanted to be
+free. But she was ready to face even that possibility, to humble herself
+still farther than he had humbled her--she was ready to do anything, if
+only she might see him once again.
+
+She leaned her aching head on her hands and pondered. Do anything? But
+what could she do? Nothing that should hurt him, interfere with his
+liberty, be false to the spirit of their pact: on that she was more than
+ever resolved. She had made a bargain, and she meant to stick to it, not
+for any abstract reason, but simply because she happened to love him in
+that way. Yes--but to see him again, only once!
+
+Suddenly she remembered what Strefford had said about Nelson Vanderlyn
+and his wife. "Why should two people who've just done each other the
+best turn they could behave like sworn enemies ever after?" If in
+offering Nick his freedom she had indeed done him such a service as
+that, perhaps he no longer hated her, would no longer be unwilling
+to see her.... At any rate, why should she not write to him on that
+assumption, write in a spirit of simple friendliness, suggesting that
+they should meet and "settle things"? The business-like word "settle"
+(how she hated it) would prove to him that she had no secret designs
+upon his liberty; and besides he was too unprejudiced, too modern, too
+free from what Strefford called humbug, not to understand and accept
+such a suggestion. After all, perhaps Strefford was right; it was
+something to have rid human relations of hypocrisy, even if, in the
+process, so many exquisite things seemed somehow to have been torn away
+with it....
+
+She ran up to her room, scribbled a note, and hurried with it through
+the rain and darkness to the post-box at the corner. As she returned
+through the empty street she had an odd feeling that it was not
+empty--that perhaps Nick was already there, somewhere near her in the
+night, about to follow her to the door, enter the house, go up with
+her to her bedroom in the old way. It was strange how close he had been
+brought by the mere fact of her having written that little note to him!
+
+In the bedroom, Geordie lay in his crib in ruddy slumber, and she blew
+out the candle and undressed softly for fear of waking him.
+
+Nick Lansing, the next day, received Susy's letter, transmitted to his
+hotel from the lawyer's office.
+
+He read it carefully, two or three times over, weighing and scrutinizing
+the guarded words. She proposed that they should meet to "settle
+things." What things? And why should he accede to such a request? What
+secret purpose had prompted her? It was horrible that nowadays, in
+thinking of Susy, he should always suspect ulterior motives, be meanly
+on the watch for some hidden tortuousness. What on earth was she trying
+to "manage" now, he wondered.
+
+A few hours ago, at the sight of her, all his hardness had melted, and
+he had charged himself with cruelty, with injustice, with every sin of
+pride against himself and her; but the appearance of Strefford, arriving
+at that late hour, and so evidently expected and welcomed, had driven
+back the rising tide of tenderness.
+
+Yet, after all, what was there to wonder at? Nothing was changed in
+their respective situations. He had left his wife, deliberately, and for
+reasons which no subsequent experience had caused him to modify. She had
+apparently acquiesced in his decision, and had utilized it, as she was
+justified in doing, to assure her own future.
+
+In all this, what was there to wail or knock the breast between two
+people who prided themselves on looking facts in the face, and making
+their grim best of them, without vain repinings? He had been right in
+thinking their marriage an act of madness. Her charms had overruled his
+judgment, and they had had their year... their mad year... or at least
+all but two or three months of it. But his first intuition had been
+right; and now they must both pay for their madness. The Fates seldom
+forget the bargains made with them, or fail to ask for compound
+interest. Why not, then, now that the time had come, pay up gallantly,
+and remember of the episode only what had made it seem so supremely
+worth the cost?
+
+He sent a pneumatic telegram to Mrs. Nicholas Lansing to say that he
+would call on her that afternoon at four. "That ought to give us time,"
+he reflected drily, "to 'settle things,' as she calls it, without
+interfering with Strefford's afternoon visit."
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+HER husband's note had briefly said:
+
+"To-day at four o'clock. N.L."
+
+All day she pored over the words in an agony of longing, trying to read
+into them regret, emotion, memories, some echo of the tumult in her own
+bosom. But she had signed "Susy," and he signed "N.L." That seemed
+to put an abyss between them. After all, she was free and he was not.
+Perhaps, in view of his situation, she had only increased the distance
+between them by her unconventional request for a meeting.
+
+She sat in the little drawing-room, and the cast-bronze clock ticked out
+the minutes. She would not look out of the window: it might bring bad
+luck to watch for him. And it seemed to her that a thousand invisible
+spirits, hidden demons of good and evil, pressed about her, spying out
+her thoughts, counting her heart-beats, ready to pounce upon the least
+symptom of over-confidence and turn it deftly to derision. Oh, for an
+altar on which to pour out propitiatory offerings! But what sweeter
+could they have than her smothered heart-beats, her choked-back tears?
+
+The bell rang, and she stood up as if a spring had jerked her to her
+feet. In the mirror between the dried grasses her face looked long pale
+inanimate. Ah, if he should find her too changed--! If there were but
+time to dash upstairs and put on a touch of red....
+
+The door opened; it shut on him; he was there.
+
+He said: "You wanted to see me?"
+
+She answered: "Yes." And her heart seemed to stop beating.
+
+At first she could not make out what mysterious change had come over
+him, and why it was that in looking at him she seemed to be looking at a
+stranger; then she perceived that his voice sounded as it used to sound
+when he was talking to other people; and she said to herself, with a
+sick shiver of understanding, that she had become an "other person" to
+him.
+
+There was a deathly pause; then she faltered out, not knowing what she
+said: "Nick--you'll sit down?"
+
+He said: "Thanks," but did not seem to have heard her, for he continued
+to stand motionless, half the room between them. And slowly the
+uselessness, the hopelessness of his being there overcame her. A wall of
+granite seemed to have built itself up between them. She felt as if
+it hid her from him, as if with those remote new eyes of his he were
+staring into the wall and not at her. Suddenly she said to herself:
+"He's suffering more than I am, because he pities me, and is afraid to
+tell me that he is going to be married."
+
+The thought stung her pride, and she lifted her head and met his eyes
+with a smile.
+
+"Don't you think," she said, "it's more sensible-with everything so
+changed in our lives--that we should meet as friends, in this way? I
+wanted to tell you that you needn't feel--feel in the least unhappy
+about me."
+
+A deep flush rose to his forehead. "Oh, I know--I know that--" he
+declared hastily; and added, with a factitious animation: "But thank you
+for telling me."
+
+"There's nothing, is there," she continued, "to make our meeting in this
+way in the least embarrassing or painful to either of us, when both
+have found...." She broke off, and held her hand out to him. "I've heard
+about you and Coral," she ended.
+
+He just touched her hand with cold fingers, and let it drop. "Thank
+you," he said for the third time.
+
+"You won't sit down?"
+
+He sat down.
+
+"Don't you think," she continued, "that the new way of... of meeting
+as friends... and talking things over without ill-will... is much
+pleasanter and more sensible, after all?"
+
+He smiled. "It's immensely kind of you to feel that."
+
+"Oh, I do feel it!" She stopped short, and wondered what on earth she
+had meant to say next, and why she had so abruptly lost the thread of
+her discourse.
+
+In the pause she heard him cough slightly and clear his throat. "Let me
+say, then," he began, "that I'm glad too--immensely glad that your own
+future is so satisfactorily settled."
+
+She lifted her glance again to his walled face, in which not a muscle
+stirred.
+
+"Yes: it--it makes everything easier for you, doesn't it?"
+
+"For you too, I hope." He paused, and then went on: "I want also to tell
+you that I perfectly understand--"
+
+"Oh," she interrupted, "so do I; your point of view, I mean."
+
+They were again silent.
+
+"Nick, why can't we be friends real friends? Won't it be easier?" she
+broke out at last with twitching lips.
+
+"Easier--?"
+
+"I mean, about talking things over--arrangements. There are arrangements
+to be made, I suppose?"
+
+"I suppose so." He hesitated. "I'm doing what I'm told-simply following
+out instructions. The business is easy enough, apparently. I'm taking
+the necessary steps--"
+
+She reddened a little, and drew a gasping breath. "The necessary steps:
+what are they? Everything the lawyers tell one is so confusing.... I
+don't yet understand--how it's done."
+
+"My share, you mean? Oh, it's very simple." He paused, and added in a
+tone of laboured ease: "I'm going down to Fontainebleau to-morrow--"
+
+She stared, not understanding. "To Fontainebleau--?"
+
+Her bewilderment drew from him his first frank smile. "Well--I chose
+Fontainebleau--I don't know why... except that we've never been there
+together."
+
+At that she suddenly understood, and the blood rushed to her forehead.
+She stood up without knowing what she was doing, her heart in her
+throat. "How grotesque--how utterly disgusting!"
+
+He gave a slight shrug. "I didn't make the laws...."
+
+"But isn't it too stupid and degrading that such things should be
+necessary when two people want to part--?" She broke off again, silenced
+by the echo of that fatal "want to part."...
+
+He seemed to prefer not to dwell farther on the legal obligations
+involved.
+
+"You haven't yet told me," he suggested, "how you happen to be living
+here."
+
+"Here--with the Fulmer children?" She roused herself, trying to catch
+his easier note. "Oh, I've simply been governessing them for a few
+weeks, while Nat and Grace are in Sicily." She did not say: "It's
+because I've parted with Strefford." Somehow it helped her wounded pride
+a little to keep from him the secret of her precarious independence.
+
+He looked his wonder. "All alone with that bewildered bonne? But how
+many of them are there? Five? Good Lord!" He contemplated the clock with
+unseeing eyes, and then turned them again on her face.
+
+"I should have thought a lot of children would rather get on your
+nerves."
+
+"Oh, not these children. They're so good to me."
+
+"Ah, well, I suppose it won't be for long."
+
+He sent his eyes again about the room, which his absent-minded gaze
+seemed to reduce to its dismal constituent elements, and added, with an
+obvious effort at small talk: "I hear the Fulmers are not hitting it off
+very well since his success. Is it true that he's going to marry Violet
+Melrose?"
+
+The blood rose to Susy's face. "Oh, never, never! He and Grace are
+travelling together now."
+
+"Oh, I didn't know. People say things...." He was visibly embarrassed
+with the subject, and sorry that he had broached it.
+
+"Some of the things that people say are true. But Grace doesn't mind.
+She says she and Nat belong to each other. They can't help it, she
+thinks, after having been through such a lot together."
+
+"Dear old Grace!"
+
+He had risen from his chair, and this time she made no effort to detain
+him. He seemed to have recovered his self-composure, and it struck her
+painfully, humiliatingly almost, that he should have spoken in that
+light way of the expedition to Fontainebleau on the morrow.... Well,
+men were different, she supposed; she remembered having felt that once
+before about Nick.
+
+It was on the tip of her tongue to cry out: "But wait--wait! I'm not
+going to marry Strefford after all!"--but to do so would seem like an
+appeal to his compassion, to his indulgence; and that was not what she
+wanted. She could never forget that he had left her because he had not
+been able to forgive her for "managing"--and not for the world would she
+have him think that this meeting had been planned for such a purpose.
+
+"If he doesn't see that I am different, in spite of appearances... and
+that I never was what he said I was that day--if in all these months it
+hasn't come over him, what's the use of trying to make him see it now?"
+she mused. And then, her thoughts hurrying on: "Perhaps he's suffering
+too--I believe he is suffering-at any rate, he's suffering for me, if
+not for himself. But if he's pledged to Coral, what can he do? What
+would he think of me if I tried to make him break his word to her?"
+
+There he stood--the man who was "going to Fontainebleau to-morrow"; who
+called it "taking the necessary steps!" Who could smile as he made the
+careless statement! A world seemed to divide them already: it was as if
+their parting were already over. All the words, cries, arguments beating
+loud wings in her dropped back into silence. The only thought left was:
+"How much longer does he mean to go on standing there?"
+
+He may have read the question in her face, for turning back from an
+absorbed contemplation of the window curtains he said: "There's nothing
+else?"
+
+"Nothing else?"
+
+"I mean: you spoke of things to be settled--"
+
+She flushed, suddenly remembering the pretext she had used to summon
+him.
+
+"Oh," she faltered, "I didn't know... I thought there might be.... But
+the lawyers, I suppose...."
+
+She saw the relief on his contracted face. "Exactly. I've always thought
+it was best to leave it to them. I assure you"--again for a moment the
+smile strained his lips--"I shall do nothing to interfere with a quick
+settlement."
+
+She stood motionless, feeling herself turn to stone. He appeared already
+a long way off, like a figure vanishing down a remote perspective.
+
+"Then--good-bye," she heard him say from its farther end.
+
+"Oh,--good-bye," she faltered, as if she had not had the word ready, and
+was relieved to have him supply it.
+
+He stopped again on the threshold, looked back at her, began to speak.
+"I've--" he said; then he repeated "Good-bye," as though to make sure he
+had not forgotten to say it; and the door closed on him.
+
+It was over; she had had her last chance and missed it. Now, whatever
+happened, the one thing she had lived and longed for would never be. He
+had come, and she had let him go again....
+
+How had it come about? Would she ever be able to explain it to herself?
+How was it that she, so fertile in strategy, so practiced in feminine
+arts, had stood there before him, helpless, inarticulate, like a
+school-girl a-choke with her first love-longing? If he was gone, and
+gone never to return, it was her own fault, and none but hers. What had
+she done to move him, detain him, make his heart beat and his head
+swim as hers were beating and swimming? She stood aghast at her own
+inadequacy, her stony inexpressiveness....
+
+And suddenly she lifted her hands to her throbbing forehead and cried
+out: "But this is love! This must be love!"
+
+She had loved him before, she supposed; for what else was she to call
+the impulse that had drawn her to him, taught her how to overcome his
+scruples, and whirled him away with her on their mad adventure? Well,
+if that was love, this was something so much larger and deeper that the
+other feeling seemed the mere dancing of her blood in tune with his....
+
+But, no! Real love, great love, the love that poets sang, and privileged
+and tortured beings lived and died of, that love had its own superior
+expressiveness, and the sure command of its means. The petty arts of
+coquetry were no farther from it than the numbness of the untaught
+girl. Great love was wise, strong, powerful, like genius, like any other
+dominant form of human power. It knew itself, and what it wanted, and
+how to attain its ends.
+
+Not great love, then... but just the common humble average of human love
+was hers. And it had come to her so newly, so overwhelmingly, with a
+face so grave, a touch so startling, that she had stood there petrified,
+humbled at the first look of its eyes, recognizing that what she had
+once taken for love was merely pleasure and spring-time, and the flavour
+of youth.
+
+"But how was I to know? And now it's too late!" she wailed.
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+THE inhabitants of the little house in Passy were of necessity early
+risers; but when Susy jumped out of bed the next morning no one else
+was astir, and it lacked nearly an hour of the call of the bonne's
+alarm-clock.
+
+For a moment Susy leaned out of her dark room into the darker night.
+A cold drizzle fell on her face, and she shivered and drew back. Then,
+lighting a candle, and shading it, as her habit was, from the sleeping
+child, she slipped on her dressing-gown and opened the door. On the
+threshold she paused to look at her watch. Only half-past five! She
+thought with compunction of the unkindness of breaking in on Junie
+Fulmer's slumbers; but such scruples did not weigh an ounce in the
+balance of her purpose. Poor Junie would have to oversleep herself on
+Sunday, that was all.
+
+Susy stole into the passage, opened a door, and cast her light on the
+girl's face.
+
+"Junie! Dearest Junie, you must wake up!"
+
+Junie lay in the abandonment of youthful sleep; but at the sound of her
+name she sat up with the promptness of a grown person on whom domestic
+burdens have long weighed.
+
+"Which one of them is it?" she asked, one foot already out of bed.
+
+"Oh, Junie dear, no... it's nothing wrong with the children... or with
+anybody," Susy stammered, on her knees by the bed.
+
+In the candlelight, she saw Junie's anxious brow darken reproachfully.
+
+"Oh, Susy, then why--? I was just dreaming we were all driving about
+Rome in a great big motor-car with father and mother!"
+
+"I'm so sorry, dear. What a lovely dream! I'm a brute to have
+interrupted it--"
+
+She felt the little girl's awakening scrutiny. "If there's nothing wrong
+with anybody, why are you crying, Susy? Is it you there's something
+wrong with? What has happened?"
+
+"Am I crying?" Susy rose from her knees and sat down on the counterpane.
+"Yes, it is me. And I had to disturb you."
+
+"Oh, Susy, darling, what is it?" Junie's arms were about her in a flash,
+and Susy grasped them in burning fingers.
+
+"Junie, listen! I've got to go away at once--to leave you all for the
+whole day. I may not be back till late this evening; late to-night; I
+can't tell. I promised your mother I'd never leave you; but I've got
+to--I've got to."
+
+Junie considered her agitated face with fully awakened eyes. "Oh, I
+won't tell, you know, you old brick," she said with simplicity.
+
+Susy hugged her. "Junie, Junie, you darling! But that wasn't what I
+meant. Of course you may tell--you must tell. I shall write to
+your mother myself. But what worries me is the idea of having to go
+away--away from Paris--for the whole day, with Geordie still coughing a
+little, and no one but that silly Angele to stay with him while you're
+out--and no one but you to take yourself and the others to school. But
+Junie, Junie, I've got to do it!" she sobbed out, clutching the child
+tighter.
+
+Junie Fulmer, with her strangely mature perception of the case, and
+seemingly of every case that fate might call on her to deal with, sat
+for a moment motionless in Susy's hold. Then she freed her wrists with
+an adroit twist, and leaning back against the pillows said judiciously:
+"You'll never in the world bring up a family of your own if you take on
+like this over other people's children."
+
+Through all her turmoil of spirit the observation drew a laugh from
+Susy. "Oh, a family of my own--I don't deserve one, the way I'm behaving
+to your--"
+
+Junie still considered her. "My dear, a change will do you good: you
+need it," she pronounced.
+
+Susy rose with a laughing sigh. "I'm not at all sure it will! But I've
+got to have it, all the same. Only I do feel anxious--and I can't even
+leave you my address!"
+
+Junie still seemed to examine the case.
+
+"Can't you even tell me where you're going?" she ventured, as if not
+quite sure of the delicacy of asking.
+
+"Well--no, I don't think I can; not till I get back. Besides, even if
+I could it wouldn't be much use, because I couldn't give you my address
+there. I don't know what it will be."
+
+"But what does it matter, if you're coming back to-night?"
+
+"Of course I'm coming back! How could you possibly imagine I should
+think of leaving you for more than a day?"
+
+"Oh, I shouldn't be afraid--not much, that is, with the poker, and Nat's
+water-pistol," emended Junie, still judicious.
+
+Susy again enfolded her vehemently, and then turned to more practical
+matters. She explained that she wished if possible to catch an
+eight-thirty train from the Gare de Lyon, and that there was not a
+moment to lose if the children were to be dressed and fed, and full
+instructions written out for Junie and Angele, before she rushed for the
+underground.
+
+While she bathed Geordie, and then hurried into her own clothes, she
+could not help wondering at her own extreme solicitude for her charges.
+She remembered, with a pang, how often she had deserted Clarissa
+Vanderlyn for the whole day, and even for two or three in
+succession--poor little Clarissa, whom she knew to be so unprotected,
+so exposed to evil influences. She had been too much absorbed in her own
+greedy bliss to be more than intermittently aware of the child; but now,
+she felt, no sorrow however ravaging, no happiness however absorbing,
+would ever again isolate her from her kind.
+
+And then these children were so different! The exquisite Clarissa was
+already the predestined victim of her surroundings: her budding soul
+was divided from Susy's by the same barrier of incomprehension that
+separated the latter from Mrs. Vanderlyn. Clarissa had nothing to
+teach Susy but the horror of her own hard little appetites; whereas the
+company of the noisy argumentative Fulmers had been a school of wisdom
+and abnegation.
+
+As she applied the brush to Geordie's shining head and the handkerchief
+to his snuffling nose, the sense of what she owed him was so borne in on
+Susy that she interrupted the process to catch him to her bosom.
+
+"I'll have such a story to tell you when I get back to-night, if you'll
+promise me to be good all day," she bargained with him; and Geordie,
+always astute, bargained back: "Before I promise, I'd like to know what
+story."
+
+At length all was in order. Junie had been enlightened, and Angele
+stunned, by the minuteness of Susy's instructions; and the latter,
+waterproofed and stoutly shod, descended the doorstep, and paused to
+wave at the pyramid of heads yearning to her from an upper window.
+
+It was hardly light, and still raining, when she turned into the dismal
+street. As usual, it was empty; but at the corner she perceived a
+hesitating taxi, with luggage piled beside the driver. Perhaps it was
+some early traveller, just arriving, who would release the carriage in
+time for her to catch it, and thus avoid the walk to the metro, and the
+subsequent strap-hanging; for it was the work-people's hour. Susy raced
+toward the vehicle, which, overcoming its hesitation, was beginning to
+move in her direction. Observing this, she stopped to see where it
+would discharge its load. Thereupon the taxi stopped also, and the load
+discharged itself in front of her in the shape of Nick Lansing.
+
+The two stood staring at each other through the rain till Nick broke
+out: "Where are you going? I came to get you."
+
+"To get me? To get me?" she repeated. Beside the driver she had suddenly
+remarked the old suit-case from which her husband had obliged her to
+extract Strefford's cigars as they were leaving Como; and everything
+that had happened since seemed to fall away and vanish in the pang and
+rapture of that memory.
+
+"To get you; yes. Of course." He spoke the words peremptorily, almost as
+if they were an order. "Where were you going?" he repeated.
+
+Without answering, she turned toward the house. He followed her, and the
+laden taxi closed the procession.
+
+"Why are you out in such weather without an umbrella?" he continued, in
+the same severe tone, drawing her under the shelter of his.
+
+"Oh, because Junie's umbrella is in tatters, and I had to leave her
+mine, as I was going away for the whole day." She spoke the words like a
+person in a trance.
+
+"For the whole day? At this hour? Where?"
+
+They were on the doorstep, and she fumbled automatically for her key,
+let herself in, and led the way to the sitting-room. It had not been
+tidied up since the night before. The children's school books lay
+scattered on the table and sofa, and the empty fireplace was grey with
+ashes. She turned to Nick in the pallid light.
+
+"I was going to see you," she stammered, "I was going to follow you to
+Fontainebleau, if necessary, to tell you... to prevent you...."
+
+He repeated in the same aggressive tone: "Tell me what? Prevent what?"
+
+"Tell you that there must be some other way... some decent way... of our
+separating... without that horror, that horror of your going off with a
+woman...."
+
+He stared, and then burst into a laugh. The blood rushed to her face.
+She had caught a familiar ring in his laugh, and it wounded her. What
+business had he, at such a time, to laugh in the old way?
+
+"I'm sorry; but there is no other way, I'm afraid. No other way but
+one," he corrected himself.
+
+She raised her head sharply. "Well?"
+
+"That you should be the woman.--Oh, my dear!" He had dropped his mocking
+smile, and was at her side, her hands in his. "Oh, my dear, don't you
+see that we've both been feeling the same thing, and at the same hour?
+You lay awake thinking of it all night, didn't you? So did I. Whenever
+the clock struck, I said to myself: 'She's hearing it too.' And I was up
+before daylight, and packed my traps--for I never want to set foot again
+in that awful hotel where I've lived in hell for the last three days.
+And I swore to myself that I'd go off with a woman by the first train I
+could catch--and so I mean to, my dear."
+
+She stood before him numb. Yes, numb: that was the worst of it! The
+violence of the reaction had been too great, and she could hardly
+understand what he was saying. Instead, she noticed that the tassel of
+the window-blind was torn off again (oh, those children!), and vaguely
+wondered if his luggage were safe on the waiting taxi. One heard such
+stories....
+
+His voice came back to her. "Susy! Listen!" he was entreating. "You
+must see yourself that it can't be. We're married--isn't that all that
+matters? Oh, I know--I've behaved like a brute: a cursed arrogant ass!
+You couldn't wish that ass a worse kicking than I've given him! But
+that's not the point, you see. The point is that we're married....
+Married.... Doesn't it mean something to you, something--inexorable? It
+does to me. I didn't dream it would--in just that way. But all I can say
+is that I suppose the people who don't feel it aren't really married-and
+they'd better separate; much better. As for us--"
+
+Through her tears she gasped out: "That's what I felt... that's what I
+said to Streff...."
+
+He was upon her with a great embrace. "My darling! My darling! You have
+told him?"
+
+"Yes," she panted. "That's why I'm living here." She paused. "And you've
+told Coral?"
+
+She felt his embrace relax. He drew away a little, still holding her,
+but with lowered head.
+
+
+"No... I... haven't."
+
+"Oh, Nick! But then--?"
+
+He caught her to him again, resentfully. "Well--then what? What do you
+mean? What earthly difference does it make?"
+
+"But if you've told her you were going to marry her--" (Try as she
+would, her voice was full of silver chimes.)
+
+"Marry her? Marry her?" he echoed. "But how could I? What does marriage
+mean anyhow? If it means anything at all it means--you! And I can't ask
+Coral Hicks just to come and live with me, can I?"
+
+Between crying and laughing she lay on his breast, and his hand passed
+over her hair.
+
+They were silent for a while; then he began again: "You said it yourself
+yesterday, you know."
+
+She strayed back from sunlit distances. "Yesterday?"
+
+"Yes: that Grace Fulmer says you can't separate two people who've been
+through a lot of things--"
+
+"Ah, been through them together--it's not the things, you see, it's the
+togetherness," she interrupted.
+
+"The togetherness--that's it!" He seized on the word as if it had just
+been coined to express their case, and his mind could rest in it without
+farther labour.
+
+The door-bell rang, and they started. Through the window they saw the
+taxi-driver gesticulating enquiries as to the fate of the luggage.
+
+"He wants to know if he's to leave it here," Susy laughed.
+
+"No--no! You're to come with me," her husband declared.
+
+"Come with you?" She laughed again at the absurdity of the suggestion.
+
+"Of course: this very instant. What did you suppose? That I was going
+away without you? Run up and pack your things," he commanded.
+
+"My things? My things? But I can't leave the children!"
+
+He stared, between indignation and amusement. "Can't leave the children?
+Nonsense! Why, you said yourself you were going to follow me to
+Fontainebleau--"
+
+She reddened again, this time a little painfully "I didn't know what
+I was doing.... I had to find you... but I should have come back this
+evening, no matter what happened."
+
+"No matter what?"
+
+She nodded, and met his gaze resolutely.
+
+"No; but really--"
+
+"Really, I can't leave the children till Nat and Grace come back. I
+promised I wouldn't."
+
+"Yes; but you didn't know then.... Why on earth can't their nurse look
+after them?"
+
+"There isn't any nurse but me."
+
+"Good Lord!"
+
+"But it's only for two weeks more," she pleaded. "Two weeks! Do you know
+how long I've been without you!" He seized her by both wrists, and drew
+them against his breast. "Come with me at least for two days--Susy!" he
+entreated her.
+
+"Oh," she cried, "that's the very first time you've said my name!"
+
+"Susy, Susy, then--my Susy--Susy! And you've only said mine once, you
+know."
+
+"Nick!" she sighed, at peace, as if the one syllable were a magic seed
+that hung out great branches to envelop them.
+
+"Well, then, Susy, be reasonable. Come!"
+
+"Reasonable--oh, reasonable!" she sobbed through laughter.
+
+"Unreasonable, then! That's even better."
+
+She freed herself, and drew back gently. "Nick, I swore I wouldn't leave
+them; and I can't. It's not only my promise to their mother--it's what
+they've been to me themselves. You don't, know... You can't imagine
+the things they've taught me. They're awfully naughty at times, because
+they're so clever; but when they're good they're the wisest people I
+know." She paused, and a sudden inspiration illuminated her. "But why
+shouldn't we take them with us?" she exclaimed.
+
+Her husband's arms fell away from her, and he stood dumfounded.
+
+"Take them with us?"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"All five of them?"
+
+"Of course--I couldn't possibly separate them. And Junie and Nat will
+help us to look after the young ones."
+
+"Help us!" he groaned.
+
+"Oh, you'll see; they won't bother you. Just leave it to me; I'll
+manage--" The word stopped her short, and an agony of crimson suffused
+her from brow to throat. Their eyes met; and without a word he stooped
+and laid his lips gently on the stain of red on her neck.
+
+"Nick," she breathed, her hands in his.
+
+"But those children--"
+
+Instead of answering, she questioned: "Where are we going?"
+
+His face lit up.
+
+"Anywhere, dearest, that you choose."
+
+"Well--I choose Fontainebleau!" she exulted.
+
+"So do I! But we can't take all those children to an hotel at
+Fontainebleau, can we?" he questioned weakly. "You see, dear, there's
+the mere expense of it--"
+
+Her eyes were already travelling far ahead of him. "The expense won't
+amount to much. I've just remembered that Angele, the bonne, has a
+sister who is cook there in a nice old-fashioned pension which must be
+almost empty at this time of year. I'm sure I can ma--arrange easily,"
+she hurried on, nearly tripping again over the fatal word. "And just
+think of the treat it will be to them! This is Friday, and I can get
+them let off from their afternoon classes, and keep them in the country
+till Monday. Poor darlings, they haven't been out of Paris for months!
+And I daresay the change will cure Geordie's cough--Geordie's the
+youngest," she explained, surprised to find herself, even in the rapture
+of reunion, so absorbed in the welfare of the Fulmers.
+
+She was conscious that her husband was surprised also; but instead of
+prolonging the argument he simply questioned: "Was Geordie the chap you
+had in your arms when you opened the front door the night before last?"
+
+She echoed: "I opened the front door the night before last?"
+
+"To a boy with a parcel."
+
+"Oh," she sobbed, "you were there? You were watching?"
+
+He held her to him, and the currents flowed between them warm and full
+as on the night of their moon over Como.
+
+In a trice, after that, she had the matter in hand and her forces
+marshalled. The taxi was paid, Nick's luggage deposited in the
+vestibule, and the children, just piling down to breakfast, were
+summoned in to hear the news.
+
+It was apparent that, seasoned to surprises as they were, Nick's
+presence took them aback. But when, between laughter and embraces, his
+identity, and his right to be where he was, had been made clear to them,
+Junie dismissed the matter by asking him in her practical way: "Then
+I suppose we may talk about you to Susy now?"--and thereafter all five
+addressed themselves to the vision of their imminent holiday.
+
+From that moment the little house became the centre of a whirlwind.
+Treats so unforeseen, and of such magnitude, were rare in the young
+Fulmers' experience, and had it not been for Junie's steadying influence
+Susy's charges would have got out of hand. But young Nat, appealed to
+by Nick on the ground of their common manhood, was induced to forego
+celebrating the event on his motor horn (the very same which had
+tortured the New Hampshire echoes), and to assert his authority over
+his juniors; and finally a plan began to emerge from the chaos, and each
+child to fit into it like a bit of a picture puzzle.
+
+Susy, riding the whirlwind with her usual firmness, nevertheless felt an
+undercurrent of anxiety. There had been no time as yet, between her and
+Nick, to revert to money matters; and where there was so little money
+it could not, obviously, much matter. But that was the more reason for
+being secretly aghast at her intrepid resolve not to separate herself
+from her charges. A three days' honey-moon with five children in the
+party-and children with the Fulmer appetite--could not but be a costly
+business; and while she settled details, packed them off to school, and
+routed out such nondescript receptacles as the house contained in the
+way of luggage, her thoughts remained fixed on the familiar financial
+problem.
+
+Yes--it was cruel to have it rear its hated head, even through the
+bursting boughs of her new spring; but there it was, the perpetual
+serpent in her Eden, to be bribed, fed, sent to sleep with such scraps
+as she could beg, borrow or steal for it. And she supposed it was the
+price that fate meant her to pay for her blessedness, and was surer than
+ever that the blessedness was worth it. Only, how was she to compound
+the business with her new principles?
+
+With the children's things to pack, luncheon to be got ready, and the
+Fontainebleau pension to be telephoned to, there was little time to
+waste on moral casuistry; and Susy asked herself with a certain irony
+if the chronic lack of time to deal with money difficulties had not been
+the chief cause of her previous lapses. There was no time to deal with
+this question either; no time, in short, to do anything but rush forward
+on a great gale of plans and preparations, in the course of which she
+whirled Nick forth to buy some charcuterie for luncheon, and telephone
+to Fontainebleau.
+
+Once he was gone--and after watching him safely round the corner--she
+too got into her wraps, and transferring a small packet from her
+dressing-case to her pocket, hastened out in a different direction.
+
+
+
+XXX
+
+IT took two brimming taxi-cabs to carry the Nicholas Lansings to the
+station on their second honey-moon. In the first were Nick, Susy and the
+luggage of the whole party (little Nat's motor horn included, as a last
+concession, and because he had hitherto forborne to play on it); and in
+the second, the five Fulmers, the bonne, who at the eleventh hour had
+refused to be left, a cage-full of canaries, and a foundling kitten who
+had murderous designs on them; all of which had to be taken because, if
+the bonne came, there would be nobody left to look after them.
+
+At the corner Susy tore herself from Nick's arms and held up the
+procession while she ran back to the second taxi to make sure that the
+bonne had brought the house-key. It was found of course that she hadn't
+but that Junie had; whereupon the caravan got under way again, and
+reached the station just as the train was starting; and there, by some
+miracle of good nature on the part of the guard, they were all packed
+together into an empty compartment--no doubt, as Susy remarked, because
+train officials never failed to spot a newly-married couple, and treat
+them kindly.
+
+The children, sentinelled by Junie, at first gave promise of superhuman
+goodness; but presently their feelings overflowed, and they were not to
+be quieted till it had been agreed that Nat should blow his motor-horn
+at each halt, while the twins called out the names of the stations, and
+Geordie, with the canaries and kitten, affected to change trains.
+
+Luckily the halts were few; but the excitement of travel, combined
+with over-indulgence in the chocolates imprudently provided by Nick,
+overwhelmed Geordie with a sudden melancholy that could be appeased only
+by Susy's telling him stories till they arrived at Fontainebleau.
+
+The day was soft, with mild gleams of sunlight on decaying foliage;
+and after luggage and livestock had been dropped at the pension Susy
+confessed that she had promised the children a scamper in the forest,
+and buns in a tea-shop afterward. Nick placidly agreed, and darkness
+had long fallen, and a great many buns been consumed, when at length
+the procession turned down the street toward the pension, headed by Nick
+with the sleeping Geordie on his shoulder, while the others, speechless
+with fatigue and food, hung heavily on Susy.
+
+It had been decided that, as the bonne was of the party, the children
+might be entrusted to her for the night, and Nick and Susy establish
+themselves in an adjacent hotel. Nick had flattered himself that
+they might remove their possessions there when they returned from the
+tea-room; but Susy, manifestly surprised at the idea, reminded him
+that her charges must first be given their supper and put to bed. She
+suggested that he should meanwhile take the bags to the hotel, and
+promised to join him as soon as Geordie was asleep.
+
+She was a long time coming, but waiting for her was sweet, even in a
+deserted hotel reading-room insufficiently heated by a sulky stove; and
+after he had glanced through his morning's mail, hurriedly thrust into
+his pocket as he left Paris, he sank into a state of drowsy beatitude.
+It was all the maddest business in the world, yet it did not give him
+the sense of unreality that had made their first adventure a mere golden
+dream; and he sat and waited with the security of one in whom dear
+habits have struck deep roots. In this mood of acquiescence even the
+presence of the five Fulmers seemed a natural and necessary consequence
+of all the rest; and when Susy at length appeared, a little pale and
+tired, with the brooding inward look that busy mothers bring from the
+nursery, that too seemed natural and necessary, and part of the new
+order of things.
+
+They had wandered out to a cheap restaurant for dinner; now, in the damp
+December night, they were walking back to the hotel under a sky full of
+rain-clouds. They seemed to have said everything to each other, and yet
+barely to have begun what they had to tell; and at each step they took,
+their heavy feet dragged a great load of bliss.
+
+In the hotel almost all the lights were already out; and they groped
+their way to the third floor room which was the only one that Susy
+had found cheap enough. A ray from a street-lamp struck up through the
+unshuttered windows; and after Nick had revived the fire they drew their
+chairs close to it, and sat quietly for a while in the dark.
+
+Their silence was so sweet that Nick could not make up his mind to break
+it; not to do so gave his tossing spirit such a sense of permanence, of
+having at last unlimited time before him in which to taste his joy and
+let its sweetness stream through him. But at length he roused himself to
+say: "It's queer how things coincide. I've had a little bit of good news
+in one of the letters I got this morning."
+
+Susy took the announcement serenely. "Well, you would, you know," she
+commented, as if the day had been too obviously designed for bliss to
+escape the notice of its dispensers.
+
+"Yes," he continued with a thrill of pardonable pride. "During the
+cruise I did a couple of articles on Crete--oh, just travel-impressions,
+of course; they couldn't be more. But the editor of the New Review
+has accepted them, and asks for others. And here's his cheque, if you
+please! So you see you might have let me take the jolly room downstairs
+with the pink curtains. And it makes me awfully hopeful about my book."
+
+He had expected a rapturous outburst, and perhaps some reassertion
+of wifely faith in the glorious future that awaited The Pageant of
+Alexander; and deep down under the lover's well-being the author felt a
+faint twinge of mortified vanity when Susy, leaping to her feet, cried
+out, ravenously and without preamble: "Oh, Nick, Nick--let me see how
+much they've given you!"
+
+He flourished the cheque before her in the firelight. "A couple of
+hundred, you mercenary wretch!"
+
+"Oh, oh--" she gasped, as if the good news had been almost too much for
+her tense nerves; and then surprised him by dropping to the ground, and
+burying her face against his knees.
+
+"Susy, my Susy," he whispered, his hand on her shaking shoulder. "Why,
+dear, what is it? You're not crying?"
+
+"Oh, Nick, Nick--two hundred? Two hundred dollars? Then I've got to tell
+you--oh now, at once!"
+
+A faint chill ran over him, and involuntarily his hand drew back from
+her bowed figure.
+
+"Now? Oh, why now?" he protested. "What on earth does it matter
+now--whatever it is?"
+
+"But it does matter--it matters more than you can think!"
+
+She straightened herself, still kneeling before him, and lifted her head
+so that the firelight behind her turned her hair into a ruddy halo. "Oh,
+Nick, the bracelet--Ellie's bracelet.... I've never returned it to her,"
+she faltered out.
+
+He felt himself recoiling under the hands with which she clutched his
+knees. For an instant he did not remember what she alluded to; it was
+the mere mention of Ellie Vanderlyn's name that had fallen between them
+like an icy shadow. What an incorrigible fool he had been to think they
+could ever shake off such memories, or cease to be the slaves of such a
+past!
+
+"The bracelet?--Oh, yes," he said, suddenly understanding, and feeling
+the chill mount slowly to his lips.
+
+"Yes, the bracelet... Oh, Nick, I meant to give it back at once; I
+did--I did; but the day you went away I forgot everything else. And when
+I found the thing, in the bottom of my bag, weeks afterward, I thought
+everything was over between you and me, and I had begun to see Ellie
+again, and she was kind to me and how could I?" To save his life he
+could have found no answer, and she pressed on: "And so this morning,
+when I saw you were frightened by the expense of bringing all the
+children with us, and when I felt I couldn't leave them, and couldn't
+leave you either, I remembered the bracelet; and I sent you off to
+telephone while I rushed round the corner to a little jeweller's where
+I'd been before, and pawned it so that you shouldn't have to pay for the
+children.... But now, darling, you see, if you've got all that money, I
+can get it out of pawn at once, can't I, and send it back to her?"
+
+She flung her arms about him, and he held her fast, wondering if the
+tears he felt were hers or his. Still he did not speak; but as he
+clasped her close she added, with an irrepressible flash of her old
+irony: "Not that Ellie will understand why I've done it. She's never yet
+been able to make out why you returned her scarf-pin."
+
+For a long time she continued to lean against him, her head on his
+knees, as she had done on the terrace of Como on the last night of their
+honeymoon. She had ceased to talk, and he sat silent also, passing
+his hand quietly to and fro over her hair. The first rapture had been
+succeeded by soberer feelings. Her confession had broken up the frozen
+pride about his heart, and humbled him to the earth; but it had also
+roused forgotten things, memories and scruples swept aside in the first
+rush of their reunion. He and she belonged to each other for always:
+he understood that now. The impulse which had first drawn them
+together again, in spite of reason, in spite of themselves almost, that
+deep-seated instinctive need that each had of the other, would never
+again wholly let them go. Yet as he sat there he thought of Strefford,
+he thought of Coral Hicks. He had been a coward in regard to Coral, and
+Susy had been sincere and courageous in regard to Strefford. Yet his
+mind dwelt on Coral with tenderness, with compunction, with remorse; and
+he was almost sure that Susy had already put Strefford utterly out of
+her mind.
+
+It was the old contrast between the two ways of loving, the man's way
+and the woman's; and after a moment it seemed to Nick natural enough
+that Susy, from the very moment of finding him again, should feel
+neither pity nor regret, and that Strefford should already be to her
+as if he had never been. After all, there was something Providential in
+such arrangements.
+
+He stooped closer, pressed her dreaming head between his hands, and
+whispered: "Wake up; it's bedtime."
+
+She rose; but as she moved away to turn on the light he caught her hand
+and drew her to the window. They leaned on the sill in the darkness,
+and through the clouds, from which a few drops were already falling,
+the moon, labouring upward, swam into a space of sky, cast her troubled
+glory on them, and was again hidden.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Glimpses of the Moon, by Edith Wharton
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+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
+
+<!DOCTYPE html
+   PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      The Glimpses of the Moon, by Edith Wharton
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+.smcap {font-variant:small-caps;}
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Glimpses of the Moon, by Edith Wharton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Glimpses of the Moon
+
+Author: Edith Wharton
+
+Release Date: September 15, 2008 [EBook #1263]
+[Last Updated: August 7, 2017]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GLIMPSES OF THE MOON ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Dean Gilley, and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      THE GLIMPSES OF THE MOON
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      By Edith Wharton
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      Contents
+    </h2>
+    <table summary="" style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto">
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_PART1"> PART I </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_PART2"> PART II </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_PART3"> PART III </a>
+          </p>
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+    </table>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_PART1" id="link2H_PART1">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      PART I
+    </h2>
+
+<h3>I.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">It</span> rose for them&mdash;their honey-moon&mdash;over the waters of a lake so
+      famed as the scene of romantic raptures that they were rather proud of not
+      having been afraid to choose it as the setting of their own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It required a total lack of humour, or as great a gift for it as ours, to
+      risk the experiment,&rdquo; Susy Lansing opined, as they hung over the
+      inevitable marble balustrade and watched their tutelary orb roll its magic
+      carpet across the waters to their feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;or the loan of Strefford&rsquo;s villa,&rdquo; her husband emended,
+      glancing upward through the branches at a long low patch of paleness to
+      which the moonlight was beginning to give the form of a white house-front.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, come when we&rsquo;d five to choose from. At least if you count the Chicago
+      flat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So we had&mdash;you wonder!&rdquo; He laid his hand on hers, and his touch
+      renewed the sense of marvelling exultation which the deliberate survey of
+      their adventure always roused in her.... It was characteristic that she
+      merely added, in her steady laughing tone: &ldquo;Or, not counting the flat&mdash;for
+      I hate to brag&mdash;just consider the others: Violet Melrose&rsquo;s place at
+      Versailles, your aunt&rsquo;s villa at Monte Carlo&mdash;and a moor!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was conscious of throwing in the moor tentatively, and yet with a
+      somewhat exaggerated emphasis, as if to make sure that he shouldn&rsquo;t accuse
+      her of slurring it over. But he seemed to have no desire to do so. &ldquo;Poor
+      old Fred!&rdquo; he merely remarked; and she breathed out carelessly: &ldquo;Oh, well&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His hand still lay on hers, and for a long interval, while they stood
+      silent in the enveloping loveliness of the night, she was aware only of
+      the warm current running from palm to palm, as the moonlight below them
+      drew its line of magic from shore to shore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nick Lansing spoke at last. &ldquo;Versailles in May would have been impossible:
+      all our Paris crowd would have run us down within twenty-four hours. And
+      Monte Carlo is ruled out because it&rsquo;s exactly the kind of place everybody
+      expected us to go. So&mdash;with all respect to you&mdash;it wasn&rsquo;t much
+      of a mental strain to decide on Como.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His wife instantly challenged this belittling of her capacity. &ldquo;It took a
+      good deal of argument to convince you that we could face the ridicule of
+      Como!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I should have preferred something in a lower key; at least I
+      thought I should till we got here. Now I see that this place is idiotic
+      unless one is perfectly happy; and that then it&rsquo;s&mdash;as good as any other.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She sighed out a blissful assent. &ldquo;And I must say that Streffy has done
+      things to a turn. Even the cigars&mdash;who do you suppose gave him those
+      cigars?&rdquo; She added thoughtfully: &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll miss them when we have to go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I say, don&rsquo;t let&rsquo;s talk to-night about going. Aren&rsquo;t we outside of
+      time and space...? Smell that guinea-a-bottle stuff over there: what is
+      it? Stephanotis?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Y&mdash;yes.... I suppose so. Or gardenias.... Oh, the fire-flies! Look...
+      there, against that splash of moonlight on the water. Apples of silver in
+      a net-work of gold....&rdquo; They leaned together, one flesh from shoulder to
+      finger-tips, their eyes held by the snared glitter of the ripples.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I could bear,&rdquo; Lansing remarked, &ldquo;even a nightingale at this moment....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A faint gurgle shook the magnolias behind them, and a long liquid whisper
+      answered it from the thicket of laurel above their heads.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a little late in the year for them: they&rsquo;re ending just as we
+      begin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy laughed. &ldquo;I hope when our turn comes we shall say good-bye to each
+      other as sweetly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was in her husband&rsquo;s mind to answer: &ldquo;They&rsquo;re not saying good-bye, but
+      only settling down to family cares.&rdquo; But as this did not happen to be in
+      his plan, or in Susy&rsquo;s, he merely echoed her laugh and pressed her closer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The spring night drew them into its deepening embrace. The ripples of the
+      lake had gradually widened and faded into a silken smoothness, and high
+      above the mountains the moon was turning from gold to white in a sky
+      powdered with vanishing stars. Across the lake the lights of a little town
+      went out, one after another, and the distant shore became a floating
+      blackness. A breeze that rose and sank brushed their faces with the scents
+      of the garden; once it blew out over the water a great white moth like a
+      drifting magnolia petal. The nightingales had paused and the trickle of
+      the fountain behind the house grew suddenly insistent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Susy spoke it was in a voice languid with visions. &ldquo;I have been
+      thinking,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;that we ought to be able to make it last at least a
+      year longer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her husband received the remark without any sign of surprise or
+      disapprobation; his answer showed that he not only understood her, but had
+      been inwardly following the same train of thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean,&rdquo; he enquired after a pause, &ldquo;without counting your
+      grandmother&rsquo;s pearls?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;without the pearls.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He pondered a while, and then rejoined in a tender whisper: &ldquo;Tell me again
+      just how.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let&rsquo;s sit down, then. No, I like the cushions best.&rdquo; He stretched himself
+      in a long willow chair, and she curled up on a heap of boat-cushions and
+      leaned her head against his knee. Just above her, when she lifted her
+      lids, she saw bits of moon-flooded sky incrusted like silver in a sharp
+      black patterning of plane-boughs. All about them breathed of peace and
+      beauty and stability, and her happiness was so acute that it was almost a
+      relief to remember the stormy background of bills and borrowing against
+      which its frail structure had been reared. &ldquo;People with a balance can&rsquo;t be
+      as happy as all this,&rdquo; Susy mused, letting the moonlight filter through
+      her lazy lashes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      People with a balance had always been Susy Branch&rsquo;s bugbear; they were
+      still, and more dangerously, to be Susy Lansing&rsquo;s. She detested them,
+      detested them doubly, as the natural enemies of mankind and as the people
+      one always had to put one&rsquo;s self out for. The greater part of her life
+      having been passed among them, she knew nearly all that there was to know
+      about them, and judged them with the contemptuous lucidity of nearly
+      twenty years of dependence. But at the present moment her animosity was
+      diminished not only by the softening effect of love but by the fact that
+      she had got out of those very people more&mdash;yes, ever so much more&mdash;than
+      she and Nick, in their hours of most reckless planning, had ever dared to
+      hope for.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After all, we owe them this!&rdquo; she mused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her husband, lost in the drowsy beatitude of the hour, had not repeated
+      his question; but she was still on the trail of the thought he had
+      started. A year&mdash;yes, she was sure now that with a little management
+      they could have a whole year of it! &ldquo;It&rdquo; was their marriage, their being
+      together, and away from bores and bothers, in a comradeship of which both
+      of them had long ago guessed the immediate pleasure, but she at least had
+      never imagined the deeper harmony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was at one of their earliest meetings&mdash;at one of the heterogeneous
+      dinners that the Fred Gillows tried to think &ldquo;literary&rdquo;&mdash;that the
+      young man who chanced to sit next to her, and of whom it was vaguely
+      rumoured that he had &ldquo;written,&rdquo; had presented himself to her imagination
+      as the sort of luxury to which Susy Branch, heiress, might conceivably
+      have treated herself as a crowning folly. Susy Branch, pauper, was fond of
+      picturing how this fancied double would employ her millions: it was one of
+      her chief grievances against her rich friends that they disposed of theirs
+      so unimaginatively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;d rather have a husband like that than a steam-yacht!&rdquo; she had thought
+      at the end of her talk with the young man who had written, and as to whom
+      it had at once been clear to her that nothing his pen had produced, or
+      might hereafter set down, would put him in a position to offer his wife
+      anything more costly than a row-boat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His wife! As if he could ever have one! For he&rsquo;s not the kind to marry
+      for a yacht either.&rdquo; In spite of her past, Susy had preserved enough inner
+      independence to detect the latent signs of it in others, and also to
+      ascribe it impulsively to those of the opposite sex who happened to
+      interest her. She had a natural contempt for people who gloried in what
+      they need only have endured. She herself meant eventually to marry,
+      because one couldn&rsquo;t forever hang on to rich people; but she was going to
+      wait till she found some one who combined the maximum of wealth with at
+      least a minimum of companionableness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had at once perceived young Lansing&rsquo;s case to be exactly the opposite:
+      he was as poor as he could be, and as companionable as it was possible to
+      imagine. She therefore decided to see as much of him as her hurried and
+      entangled life permitted; and this, thanks to a series of adroit
+      adjustments, turned out to be a good deal. They met frequently all the
+      rest of that winter; so frequently that Mrs. Fred Gillow one day abruptly
+      and sharply gave Susy to understand that she was &ldquo;making herself
+      ridiculous.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah&mdash;&rdquo; said Susy with a long breath, looking her friend and patroness
+      straight in the painted eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; cried Ursula Gillow in a sob, &ldquo;before you interfered Nick liked me
+      awfully... and, of course, I don&rsquo;t want to reproach you... but when I
+      think....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy made no answer. How could she, when she thought? The dress she had on
+      had been given her by Ursula; Ursula&rsquo;s motor had carried her to the feast
+      from which they were both returning. She counted on spending the following
+      August with the Gillows at Newport... and the only alternative was to go
+      to California with the Bockheimers, whom she had hitherto refused even to
+      dine with.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course, what you fancy is perfect nonsense, Ursula; and as to my
+      interfering&mdash;&rdquo; Susy hesitated, and then murmured: &ldquo;But if it will
+      make you any happier I&rsquo;ll arrange to see him less often....&rdquo; She sounded
+      the lowest depths of subservience in returning Ursula&rsquo;s tearful kiss....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy Branch had a masculine respect for her word; and the next day she put
+      on her most becoming hat and sought out young Mr. Lansing in his lodgings.
+      She was determined to keep her promise to Ursula; but she meant to look
+      her best when she did it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She knew at what time the young man was likely to be found, for he was
+      doing a dreary job on a popular encyclopaedia (V to X), and had told her
+      what hours were dedicated to the hateful task. &ldquo;Oh, if only it were a
+      novel!&rdquo; she thought as she mounted his dingy stairs; but immediately
+      reflected that, if it were the kind that she could bear to read, it
+      probably wouldn&rsquo;t bring him in much more than his encyclopaedia. Miss
+      Branch had her standards in literature....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The apartment to which Mr. Lansing admitted her was a good deal cleaner,
+      but hardly less dingy, than his staircase. Susy, knowing him to be
+      addicted to Oriental archaeology, had pictured him in a bare room adorned
+      by a single Chinese bronze of flawless shape, or by some precious fragment
+      of Asiatic pottery. But such redeeming features were conspicuously absent,
+      and no attempt had been made to disguise the decent indigence of the
+      bed-sitting-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing welcomed his visitor with every sign of pleasure, and with
+      apparent indifference as to what she thought of his furniture. He seemed
+      to be conscious only of his luck in seeing her on a day when they had not
+      expected to meet. This made Susy all the sorrier to execute her promise,
+      and the gladder that she had put on her prettiest hat; and for a moment or
+      two she looked at him in silence from under its conniving brim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Warm as their mutual liking was, Lansing had never said a word of love to
+      her; but this was no deterrent to his visitor, whose habit it was to speak
+      her meaning clearly when there were no reasons, worldly or pecuniary, for
+      its concealment. After a moment, therefore, she told him why she had come;
+      it was a nuisance, of course, but he would understand. Ursula Gillow was
+      jealous, and they would have to give up seeing each other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young man&rsquo;s burst of laughter was music to her; for, after all, she
+      had been rather afraid that being devoted to Ursula might be as much in
+      his day&rsquo;s work as doing the encyclopaedia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I give you my word it&rsquo;s a raving-mad mistake! And I don&rsquo;t believe she
+      ever meant me, to begin with&mdash;&rdquo; he protested; but Susy, her
+      common-sense returning with her reassurance, promptly cut short his
+      denial.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can trust Ursula to make herself clear on such occasions. And it
+      doesn&rsquo;t make any difference what you think. All that matters is what she
+      believes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, come! I&rsquo;ve got a word to say about that too, haven&rsquo;t I?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy looked slowly and consideringly about the room. There was nothing in
+      it, absolutely nothing, to show that he had ever possessed a spare dollar&mdash;or
+      accepted a present.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not as far as I&rsquo;m concerned,&rdquo; she finally pronounced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you mean? If I&rsquo;m as free as air&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He grew thoughtful. &ldquo;Oh, then, of course&mdash;. It only seems a little
+      odd,&rdquo; he added drily, &ldquo;that in that case, the protest should have come
+      from Mrs. Gillow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Instead of coming from my millionaire bridegroom, Oh, I haven&rsquo;t any; in
+      that respect I&rsquo;m as free as you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then&mdash;? Haven&rsquo;t we only got to stay free?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy drew her brows together anxiously. It was going to be rather more
+      difficult than she had supposed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I said I was as free in that respect. I&rsquo;m not going to marry&mdash;and I
+      don&rsquo;t suppose you are?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God, no!&rdquo; he ejaculated fervently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But that doesn&rsquo;t always imply complete freedom....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood just above her, leaning his elbow against the hideous black
+      marble arch that framed his fireless grate. As she glanced up she saw his
+      face harden, and the colour flew to hers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was that what you came to tell me?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you don&rsquo;t understand&mdash;and I don&rsquo;t see why you don&rsquo;t, since we&rsquo;ve
+      knocked about so long among exactly the same kind of people.&rdquo; She stood up
+      impulsively and laid her hand on his arm. &ldquo;I do wish you&rsquo;d help me&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He remained motionless, letting the hand lie untouched.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Help you to tell me that poor Ursula was a pretext, but that there IS
+      someone who&mdash;for one reason or another&mdash;really has a right to
+      object to your seeing me too often?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy laughed impatiently. &ldquo;You talk like the hero of a novel&mdash;the
+      kind my governess used to read. In the first place I should never
+      recognize that kind of right, as you call it&mdash;never!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then what kind do you?&rdquo; he asked with a clearing brow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why&mdash;the kind I suppose you recognize on the part of your
+      publisher.&rdquo; This evoked a hollow laugh from him. &ldquo;A business claim, call
+      it,&rdquo; she pursued. &ldquo;Ursula does a lot for me: I live on her for half the
+      year. This dress I&rsquo;ve got on now is one she gave me. Her motor is going to
+      take me to a dinner to-night. I&rsquo;m going to spend next summer with her at
+      Newport.... If I don&rsquo;t, I&rsquo;ve got to go to California with the
+      Bockheimers&mdash;so good-bye.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly in tears, she was out of the door and down his steep three
+      flights before he could stop her&mdash;though, in thinking it over, she
+      didn&rsquo;t even remember if he had tried to. She only recalled having stood a
+      long time on the corner of Fifth Avenue, in the harsh winter radiance,
+      waiting till a break in the torrent of motors laden with fashionable women
+      should let her cross, and saying to herself: &ldquo;After all, I might have
+      promised Ursula... and kept on seeing him....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Instead of which, when Lansing wrote the next day entreating a word with
+      her, she had sent back a friendly but firm refusal; and had managed soon
+      afterward to get taken to Canada for a fortnight&rsquo;s ski-ing, and then to
+      Florida for six weeks in a house-boat....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As she reached this point in her retrospect the remembrance of Florida
+      called up a vision of moonlit waters, magnolia fragrance and balmy airs;
+      merging with the circumambient sweetness, it laid a drowsy spell upon her
+      lids. Yes, there had been a bad moment: but it was over; and she was here,
+      safe and blissful, and with Nick; and this was his knee her head rested
+      on, and they had a year ahead of them... a whole year.... &ldquo;Not counting
+      the pearls,&rdquo; she murmured, shutting her eyes....
+    </p>
+
+
+    <h3>II.</h3>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Lansing</span> threw the end of Strefford&rsquo;s expensive cigar into the lake, and
+      bent over his wife. Poor child! She had fallen asleep.... He leaned back
+      and stared up again at the silver-flooded sky. How queer&mdash;how
+      inexpressibly queer&mdash;it was to think that that light was shed by his
+      honey-moon! A year ago, if anyone had predicted his risking such an
+      adventure, he would have replied by asking to be locked up at the first
+      symptoms....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was still no doubt in his mind that the adventure was a mad one. It
+      was all very well for Susy to remind him twenty times a day that they had
+      pulled it off&mdash;and so why should he worry? Even in the light of her
+      far-seeing cleverness, and of his own present bliss, he knew the future
+      would not bear the examination of sober thought. And as he sat there in
+      the summer moonlight, with her head on his knee, he tried to recapitulate
+      the successive steps that had landed them on Streffy&rsquo;s lake-front.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On Lansing&rsquo;s side, no doubt, it dated back to his leaving Harvard with the
+      large resolve not to miss anything. There stood the evergreen Tree of
+      Life, the Four Rivers flowing from its foot; and on every one of the four
+      currents he meant to launch his little skiff. On two of them he had not
+      gone very far, on the third he had nearly stuck in the mud; but the fourth
+      had carried him to the very heart of wonder. It was the stream of his
+      lively imagination, of his inexhaustible interest in every form of beauty
+      and strangeness and folly. On this stream, sitting in the stout little
+      craft of his poverty, his insignificance and his independence, he had made
+      some notable voyages.... And so, when Susy Branch, whom he had sought out
+      through a New York season as the prettiest and most amusing girl in sight,
+      had surprised him with the contradictory revelation of her modern sense of
+      expediency and her old-fashioned standard of good faith, he had felt an
+      irresistible desire to put off on one more cruise into the unknown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was of the essence of the adventure that, after her one brief visit to
+      his lodgings, he should have kept his promise and not tried to see her
+      again. Even if her straightforwardness had not roused his emulation, his
+      understanding of her difficulties would have moved his pity. He knew on
+      how frail a thread the popularity of the penniless hangs, and how
+      miserably a girl like Susy was the sport of other people&rsquo;s moods and
+      whims. It was a part of his difficulty and of hers that to get what they
+      liked they so often had to do what they disliked. But the keeping of his
+      promise was a greater bore than he had expected. Susy Branch had become a
+      delightful habit in a life where most of the fixed things were dull, and
+      her disappearance had made it suddenly clear to him that his resources
+      were growing more and more limited. Much that had once amused him hugely
+      now amused him less, or not at all: a good part of his world of wonder had
+      shrunk to a village peep-show. And the things which had kept their
+      stimulating power&mdash;distant journeys, the enjoyment of art, the
+      contact with new scenes and strange societies&mdash;were becoming less and
+      less attainable. Lansing had never had more than a pittance; he had spent
+      rather too much of it in his first plunge into life, and the best he could
+      look forward to was a middle-age of poorly-paid hack-work, mitigated by
+      brief and frugal holidays. He knew that he was more intelligent than the
+      average, but he had long since concluded that his talents were not
+      marketable. Of the thin volume of sonnets which a friendly publisher had
+      launched for him, just seventy copies had been sold; and though his essay
+      on &ldquo;Chinese Influences in Greek Art&rdquo; had created a passing stir, it had
+      resulted in controversial correspondence and dinner invitations rather
+      than in more substantial benefits. There seemed, in short, no prospect of
+      his ever earning money, and his restricted future made him attach an
+      increasing value to the kind of friendship that Susy Branch had given him.
+      Apart from the pleasure of looking at her and listening to her&mdash;of
+      enjoying in her what others less discriminatingly but as liberally
+      appreciated&mdash;he had the sense, between himself and her, of a kind of
+      free-masonry of precocious tolerance and irony. They had both, in early
+      youth, taken the measure of the world they happened to live in: they knew
+      just what it was worth to them and for what reasons, and the community of
+      these reasons lent to their intimacy its last exquisite touch. And now,
+      because of some jealous whim of a dissatisfied fool of a woman, as to whom
+      he felt himself no more to blame than any young man who has paid for good
+      dinners by good manners, he was to be deprived of the one complete
+      companionship he had ever known....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His thoughts travelled on. He recalled the long dull spring in New York
+      after his break with Susy, the weary grind on his last articles, his
+      listless speculations as to the cheapest and least boring way of disposing
+      of the summer; and then the amazing luck of going, reluctantly and at the
+      last minute, to spend a Sunday with the poor Nat Fulmers, in the wilds of
+      New Hampshire, and of finding Susy there&mdash;Susy, whom he had never
+      even suspected of knowing anybody in the Fulmers&rsquo; set!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had behaved perfectly&mdash;and so had he&mdash;but they were
+      obviously much too glad to see each other. And then it was unsettling to
+      be with her in such a house as the Fulmers&rsquo;, away from the large setting
+      of luxury they were both used to, in the cramped cottage where their host
+      had his studio in the verandah, their hostess practiced her violin in the
+      dining-room, and five ubiquitous children sprawled and shouted and blew
+      trumpets and put tadpoles in the water-jugs, and the mid-day dinner was
+      two hours late&mdash;and proportionately bad&mdash;because the Italian cook was
+      posing for Fulmer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing&rsquo;s first thought had been that meeting Susy in such circumstances
+      would be the quickest way to cure them both of their regrets. The case of
+      the Fulmers was an awful object-lesson in what happened to young people
+      who lost their heads; poor Nat, whose pictures nobody bought, had gone to
+      seed so terribly&mdash;and Grace, at twenty-nine, would never again be anything
+      but the woman of whom people say, &ldquo;I can remember her when she was
+      lovely.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the devil of it was that Nat had never been such good company, or
+      Grace so free from care and so full of music; and that, in spite of their
+      disorder and dishevelment, and the bad food and general crazy discomfort,
+      there was more amusement to be got out of their society than out of the
+      most opulently staged house-party through which Susy and Lansing had ever
+      yawned their way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was almost a relief to the young man when, on the second afternoon,
+      Miss Branch drew him into the narrow hall to say: &ldquo;I really can&rsquo;t stand
+      the combination of Grace&rsquo;s violin and little Nat&rsquo;s motor-horn any longer.
+      Do let us slip out till the duet is over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do they stand it, I wonder?&rdquo; he basely echoed, as he followed her up
+      the wooded path behind the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It might be worth finding out,&rdquo; she rejoined with a musing smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he remained resolutely skeptical. &ldquo;Oh, give them a year or two more
+      and they&rsquo;ll collapse&mdash;! His pictures will never sell, you know. He&rsquo;ll
+      never even get them into a show.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose not. And she&rsquo;ll never have time to do anything worth while with
+      her music.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They had reached a piny knoll high above the ledge on which the house was
+      perched. All about them stretched an empty landscape of endless
+      featureless wooded hills. &ldquo;Think of sticking here all the year round!&rdquo;
+       Lansing groaned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know. But then think of wandering over the world with some people!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Lord, yes. For instance, my trip to India with the Mortimer Hickses.
+      But it was my only chance and what the deuce is one to do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish I knew!&rdquo; she sighed, thinking of the Bockheimers; and he turned
+      and looked at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Knew what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The answer to your question. What is one to do&mdash;when one sees both
+      sides of the problem? Or every possible side of it, indeed?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They had seated themselves on a commanding rock under the pines, but
+      Lansing could not see the view at their feet for the stir of the brown
+      lashes on her cheek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean: Nat and Grace may after all be having the best of it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can I say, when I&rsquo;ve told you I see all the sides? Of course,&rdquo; Susy
+      added hastily, &ldquo;I couldn&rsquo;t live as they do for a week. But it&rsquo;s wonderful
+      how little it&rsquo;s dimmed them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly Nat was never more coruscating. And she keeps it up even
+      better.&rdquo; He reflected. &ldquo;We do them good, I daresay.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;or they us. I wonder which?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After that, he seemed to remember that they sat a long time silent, and
+      that his next utterance was a boyish outburst against the tyranny of the
+      existing order of things, abruptly followed by the passionate query why,
+      since he and she couldn&rsquo;t alter it, and since they both had the habit of
+      looking at facts as they were, they wouldn&rsquo;t be utter fools not to take
+      their chance of being happy in the only way that was open to them, To this
+      challenge he did not recall Susy&rsquo;s making any definite answer; but after
+      another interval, in which all the world seemed framed in a sudden kiss,
+      he heard her murmur to herself in a brooding tone: &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t suppose it&rsquo;s
+      ever been tried before; but we might&mdash;.&rdquo; And then and there she had
+      laid before him the very experiment they had since hazarded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She would have none of surreptitious bliss, she began by declaring; and
+      she set forth her reasons with her usual lucid impartiality. In the first
+      place, she should have to marry some day, and when she made the bargain
+      she meant it to be an honest one; and secondly, in the matter of love, she
+      would never give herself to anyone she did not really care for, and if
+      such happiness ever came to her she did not want it shorn of half its
+      brightness by the need of fibbing and plotting and dodging.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve seen too much of that kind of thing. Half the women I know who&rsquo;ve
+      had lovers have had them for the fun of sneaking and lying about it; but
+      the other half have been miserable. And I should be miserable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was at this point that she unfolded her plan. Why shouldn&rsquo;t they marry;
+      belong to each other openly and honourably, if for ever so short a time,
+      and with the definite understanding that whenever either of them got the
+      chance to do better he or she should be immediately released? The law of
+      their country facilitated such exchanges, and society was beginning to
+      view them as indulgently as the law. As Susy talked, she warmed to her
+      theme and began to develop its endless possibilities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We should really, in a way, help more than we should hamper each other,&rdquo;
+       she ardently explained. &ldquo;We both know the ropes so well; what one of us
+      didn&rsquo;t see the other might&mdash;in the way of opportunities, I mean. And
+      then we should be a novelty as married people. We&rsquo;re both rather unusually
+      popular&mdash;why not be frank!&mdash;and it&rsquo;s such a blessing for
+      dinner-givers to be able to count on a couple of whom neither one is a
+      blank. Yes, I really believe we should be more than twice the success we
+      are now; at least,&rdquo; she added with a smile, &ldquo;if there&rsquo;s that amount of
+      room for improvement. I don&rsquo;t know how you feel; a man&rsquo;s popularity is so
+      much less precarious than a girl&rsquo;s&mdash;but I know it would furbish me up
+      tremendously to reappear as a married woman.&rdquo; She glanced away from him
+      down the long valley at their feet, and added in a lower tone: &ldquo;And I
+      should like, just for a little while, to feel I had something in life of
+      my very own&mdash;something that nobody had lent me, like a fancy-dress or
+      a motor or an opera cloak.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The suggestion, at first, had seemed to Lansing as mad as it was
+      enchanting: it had thoroughly frightened him. But Susy&rsquo;s arguments were
+      irrefutable, her ingenuities inexhaustible. Had he ever thought it all
+      out? She asked. No. Well, she had; and would he kindly not interrupt? In
+      the first place, there would be all the wedding-presents. Jewels, and a
+      motor, and a silver dinner service, did she mean? Not a bit of it! She
+      could see he&rsquo;d never given the question proper thought. Cheques, my dear,
+      nothing but cheques&mdash;she undertook to manage that on her side: she
+      really thought she could count on about fifty, and she supposed he could
+      rake up a few more? Well, all that would simply represent pocket-money!
+      For they would have plenty of houses to live in: he&rsquo;d see. People were
+      always glad to lend their house to a newly-married couple. It was such fun
+      to pop down and see them: it made one feel romantic and jolly. All they
+      need do was to accept the houses in turn: go on honey-mooning for a year!
+      What was he afraid of? Didn&rsquo;t he think they&rsquo;d be happy enough to want to
+      keep it up? And why not at least try&mdash;get engaged, and then see what
+      would happen? Even if she was all wrong, and her plan failed, wouldn&rsquo;t it
+      have been rather nice, just for a month or two, to fancy they were going
+      to be happy? &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve often fancied it all by myself,&rdquo; she concluded; &ldquo;but
+      fancying it with you would somehow be so awfully different....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That was how it began: and this lakeside dream was what it had led up to.
+      Fantastically improbable as they had seemed, all her previsions had come
+      true. If there were certain links in the chain that Lansing had never been
+      able to put his hand on, certain arrangements and contrivances that still
+      needed further elucidation, why, he was lazily resolved to clear them up
+      with her some day; and meanwhile it was worth all the past might have
+      cost, and every penalty the future might exact of him, just to be sitting
+      here in the silence and sweetness, her sleeping head on his knee, clasped
+      in his joy as the hushed world was clasped in moonlight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stooped down and kissed her. &ldquo;Wake up,&rdquo; he whispered, &ldquo;it&rsquo;s bed-time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+
+
+<h3>III.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">Their</span> month of Como was within a few hours of ending. Till the last moment
+      they had hoped for a reprieve; but the accommodating Streffy had been
+      unable to put the villa at their disposal for a longer time, since he had
+      had the luck to let it for a thumping price to some beastly bouncers who
+      insisted on taking possession at the date agreed on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing, leaving Susy&rsquo;s side at dawn, had gone down to the lake for a last
+      plunge; and swimming homeward through the crystal light he looked up at
+      the garden brimming with flowers, the long low house with the cypress wood
+      above it, and the window behind which his wife still slept. The month had
+      been exquisite, and their happiness as rare, as fantastically complete, as
+      the scene before him. He sank his chin into the sunlit ripples and sighed
+      for sheer content....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a bore to be leaving the scene of such complete well-being, but the
+      next stage in their progress promised to be hardly less delightful. Susy
+      was a magician: everything she predicted came true. Houses were being
+      showered on them; on all sides he seemed to see beneficent spirits winging
+      toward them, laden with everything from a piano nobile in Venice to a camp
+      in the Adirondacks. For the present, they had decided on the former. Other
+      considerations apart, they dared not risk the expense of a journey across
+      the Atlantic; so they were heading instead for the Nelson Vanderlyns&rsquo;
+      palace on the Giudecca. They were agreed that, for reasons of expediency,
+      it might be wise to return to New York for the coming winter. It would
+      keep them in view, and probably lead to fresh opportunities; indeed, Susy
+      already had in mind the convenient flat that she was sure a migratory
+      cousin (if tactfully handled, and assured that they would not overwork her
+      cook) could certainly be induced to lend them. Meanwhile the need of
+      making plans was still remote; and if there was one art in which young
+      Lansing&rsquo;s twenty-eight years of existence had perfected him it was that of
+      living completely and unconcernedly in the present....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If of late he had tried to look into the future more insistently than was
+      his habit, it was only because of Susy. He had meant, when they married,
+      to be as philosophic for her as for himself; and he knew she would have
+      resented above everything his regarding their partnership as a reason for
+      anxious thought. But since they had been together she had given him
+      glimpses of her past that made him angrily long to shelter and defend her
+      future. It was intolerable that a spirit as fine as hers should be ever so
+      little dulled or diminished by the kind of compromises out of which their
+      wretched lives were made. For himself, he didn&rsquo;t care a hang: he had
+      composed for his own guidance a rough-and-ready code, a short set of
+      &ldquo;mays&rdquo; and &ldquo;mustn&rsquo;ts&rdquo; which immensely simplified his course. There were
+      things a fellow put up with for the sake of certain definite and otherwise
+      unattainable advantages; there were other things he wouldn&rsquo;t traffic with
+      at any price. But for a woman, he began to see, it might be different. The
+      temptations might be greater, the cost considerably higher, the dividing
+      line between the &ldquo;mays&rdquo; and &ldquo;mustn&rsquo;ts&rdquo; more fluctuating and less sharply
+      drawn. Susy, thrown on the world at seventeen, with only a weak wastrel of
+      a father to define that treacherous line for her, and with every
+      circumstance soliciting her to overstep it, seemed to have been preserved
+      chiefly by an innate scorn of most of the objects of human folly. &ldquo;Such
+      trash as he went to pieces for,&rdquo; was her curt comment on her parent&rsquo;s
+      premature demise: as though she accepted in advance the necessity of
+      ruining one&rsquo;s self for something, but was resolved to discriminate firmly
+      between what was worth it and what wasn&rsquo;t.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This philosophy had at first enchanted Lansing; but now it began to rouse
+      vague fears. The fine armour of her fastidiousness had preserved her from
+      the kind of risks she had hitherto been exposed to; but what if others,
+      more subtle, found a joint in it? Was there, among her delicate
+      discriminations, any equivalent to his own rules? Might not her taste for
+      the best and rarest be the very instrument of her undoing; and if
+      something that wasn&rsquo;t &ldquo;trash&rdquo; came her way, would she hesitate a second to
+      go to pieces for it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was determined to stick to the compact that they should do nothing to
+      interfere with what each referred to as the other&rsquo;s &ldquo;chance&rdquo;; but what if,
+      when hers came, he couldn&rsquo;t agree with her in recognizing it? He wanted
+      for her, oh, so passionately, the best; but his conception of that best
+      had so insensibly, so subtly been transformed in the light of their first
+      month together!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His lazy strokes were carrying him slowly shoreward; but the hour was so
+      exquisite that a few yards from the landing he laid hold of the mooring
+      rope of Streffy&rsquo;s boat and floated there, following his dream.... It was a
+      bore to be leaving; no doubt that was what made him turn things inside-out
+      so uselessly. Venice would be delicious, of course; but nothing would ever
+      again be as sweet as this. And then they had only a year of security
+      before them; and of that year a month was gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Reluctantly he swam ashore, walked up to the house, and pushed open a
+      window of the cool painted drawing-room. Signs of departure were already
+      visible. There were trunks in the hall, tennis rackets on the stairs; on
+      the landing, the cook Giulietta had both arms around a slippery hold-all
+      that refused to let itself be strapped. It all gave him a chill sense of
+      unreality, as if the past month had been an act on the stage, and its
+      setting were being folded away and rolled into the wings to make room for
+      another play in which he and Susy had no part.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By the time he came down again, dressed and hungry, to the terrace where
+      coffee awaited him, he had recovered his usual pleasant sense of security.
+      Susy was there, fresh and gay, a rose in her breast and the sun in her
+      hair: her head was bowed over Bradshaw, but she waved a fond hand across
+      the breakfast things, and presently looked up to say: &ldquo;Yes, I believe we
+      can just manage it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Manage what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To catch the train at Milan&mdash;if we start in the motor at ten sharp.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stared. &ldquo;The motor? What motor?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, the new people&rsquo;s&mdash;Streffy&rsquo;s tenants. He&rsquo;s never told me their
+      name, and the chauffeur says he can&rsquo;t pronounce it. The chauffeur&rsquo;s is
+      Ottaviano, anyhow; I&rsquo;ve been making friends with him. He arrived last
+      night, and he says they&rsquo;re not due at Como till this evening. He simply
+      jumped at the idea of running us over to Milan.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good Lord&mdash;&rdquo; said Lansing, when she stopped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She sprang up from the table with a laugh. &ldquo;It will be a scramble; but
+      I&rsquo;ll manage it, if you&rsquo;ll go up at once and pitch the last things into
+      your trunk.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; but look here&mdash;have you any idea what it&rsquo;s going to cost?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She raised her eyebrows gaily. &ldquo;Why, a good deal less than our railway
+      tickets. Ottaviano&rsquo;s got a sweetheart in Milan, and hasn&rsquo;t seen her for
+      six months. When I found that out I knew he&rsquo;d be going there anyhow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was clever of her, and he laughed. But why was it that he had grown to
+      shrink from even such harmless evidence of her always knowing how to
+      &ldquo;manage&rdquo;? &ldquo;Oh, well,&rdquo; he said to himself, &ldquo;she&rsquo;s right: the fellow would
+      be sure to be going to Milan.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Upstairs, on the way to his dressing room, he found her in a cloud of
+      finery which her skilful hands were forcibly compressing into a last
+      portmanteau. He had never seen anyone pack as cleverly as Susy: the way
+      she coaxed reluctant things into a trunk was a symbol of the way she
+      fitted discordant facts into her life. &ldquo;When I&rsquo;m rich,&rdquo; she often said,
+      &ldquo;the thing I shall hate most will be to see an idiot maid at my trunks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As he passed, she glanced over her shoulder, her face pink with the
+      struggle, and drew a cigar-box from the depths. &ldquo;Dearest, do put a couple
+      of cigars into your pocket as a tip for Ottaviano.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing stared. &ldquo;Why, what on earth are you doing with Streffy&rsquo;s cigars?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Packing them, of course.... You don&rsquo;t suppose he meant them for those
+      other people?&rdquo; She gave him a look of honest wonder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know whom he meant them for&mdash;but they&rsquo;re not ours....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She continued to look at him wonderingly. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see what there is to be
+      solemn about. The cigars are not Streffy&rsquo;s either... you may be sure he
+      got them out of some bounder. And there&rsquo;s nothing he&rsquo;d hate more than to
+      have them passed on to another.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nonsense. If they&rsquo;re not Streffy&rsquo;s they&rsquo;re much less mine. Hand them
+      over, please, dear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just as you like. But it does seem a waste; and, of course, the other
+      people will never have one of them.... The gardener and Giulietta&rsquo;s lover
+      will see to that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing looked away from her at the waves of lace and muslin from which
+      she emerged like a rosy Nereid. &ldquo;How many boxes of them are left?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only four.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Unpack them, please.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Before she moved there was a pause so full of challenge that Lansing had
+      time for an exasperated sense of the disproportion between his anger and
+      its cause. And this made him still angrier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She held out a box. &ldquo;The others are in your suitcase downstairs. It&rsquo;s
+      locked and strapped.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give me the key, then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We might send them back from Venice, mightn&rsquo;t we? That lock is so nasty:
+      it will take you half an hour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give me the key, please.&rdquo; She gave it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He went downstairs and battled with the lock, for the allotted half-hour,
+      under the puzzled eyes of Giulietta and the sardonic grin of the
+      chauffeur, who now and then, from the threshold, politely reminded him how
+      long it would take to get to Milan. Finally the key turned, and Lansing,
+      broken-nailed and perspiring, extracted the cigars and stalked with them
+      into the deserted drawing room. The great bunches of golden roses that he
+      and Susy had gathered the day before were dropping their petals on the
+      marble embroidery of the floor, pale camellias floated in the alabaster
+      tazzas between the windows, haunting scents of the garden blew in on him
+      with the breeze from the lake. Never had Streffy&rsquo;s little house seemed so
+      like a nest of pleasures. Lansing laid the cigar boxes on a console and
+      ran upstairs to collect his last possessions. When he came down again, his
+      wife, her eyes brilliant with achievement, was seated in their borrowed
+      chariot, the luggage cleverly stowed away, and Giulietta and the gardener
+      kissing her hand and weeping out inconsolable farewells.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder what she&rsquo;s given them?&rdquo; he thought, as he jumped in beside her
+      and the motor whirled them through the nightingale-thickets to the gate.
+    </p>
+
+
+<h3>IV.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">Charlie Strefford&rsquo;s</span> villa was like a nest in a rose-bush; the Nelson
+      Vanderlyns&rsquo; palace called for loftier analogies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Its vastness and splendour seemed, in comparison, oppressive to Susy.
+      Their landing, after dark, at the foot of the great shadowy staircase,
+      their dinner at a dimly-lit table under a ceiling weighed down with
+      Olympians, their chilly evening in a corner of a drawing room where
+      minuets should have been danced before a throne, contrasted with the happy
+      intimacies of Como as their sudden sense of disaccord contrasted with the
+      mutual confidence of the day before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The journey had been particularly jolly: both Susy and Lansing had had too
+      long a discipline in the art of smoothing things over not to make a
+      special effort to hide from each other the ravages of their first
+      disagreement. But, deep down and invisible, the disagreement remained; and
+      compunction for having been its cause gnawed at Susy&rsquo;s bosom as she sat in
+      her tapestried and vaulted bedroom, brushing her hair before a tarnished
+      mirror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought I liked grandeur; but this place is really out of scale,&rdquo; she
+      mused, watching the reflection of a pale hand move back and forward in the
+      dim recesses of the mirror. &ldquo;And yet,&rdquo; she continued, &ldquo;Ellie Vanderlyn&rsquo;s
+      hardly half an inch taller than I am; and she certainly isn&rsquo;t a bit more
+      dignified.... I wonder if it&rsquo;s because I feel so horribly small to-night
+      that the place seems so horribly big.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She loved luxury: splendid things always made her feel handsome and high
+      ceilings arrogant; she did not remember having ever before been oppressed
+      by the evidences of wealth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She laid down the brush and leaned her chin on her clasped hands.... Even
+      now she could not understand what had made her take the cigars. She had
+      always been alive to the value of her inherited scruples: her reasoned
+      opinions were unusually free, but with regard to the things one couldn&rsquo;t
+      reason about she was oddly tenacious. And yet she had taken Streffy&rsquo;s
+      cigars! She had taken them&mdash;yes, that was the point&mdash;she had
+      taken them for Nick, because the desire to please him, to make the
+      smallest details of his life easy and agreeable and luxurious, had become
+      her absorbing preoccupation. She had committed, for him, precisely the
+      kind of little baseness she would most have scorned to commit for herself;
+      and, since he hadn&rsquo;t instantly felt the difference, she would never be
+      able to explain it to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She stood up with a sigh, shook out her loosened hair, and glanced around
+      the great frescoed room. The maid-servant had said something about the
+      Signora&rsquo;s having left a letter for her; and there it lay on the
+      writing-table, with her mail and Nick&rsquo;s; a thick envelope addressed in
+      Ellie&rsquo;s childish scrawl, with a glaring &ldquo;Private&rdquo; dashed across the
+      corner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What on earth can she have to say, when she hates writing so,&rdquo; Susy
+      mused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She broke open the envelope, and four or five stamped and sealed letters
+      fell from it. All were addressed, in Ellie&rsquo;s hand, to Nelson Vanderlyn
+      Esqre; and in the corner of each was faintly pencilled a number and a
+      date: one, two, three, four&mdash;with a week&rsquo;s interval between the
+      dates.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Goodness&mdash;&rdquo; gasped Susy, understanding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had dropped into an armchair near the table, and for a long time she
+      sat staring at the numbered letters. A sheet of paper covered with Ellie&rsquo;s
+      writing had fluttered out among them, but she let it lie; she knew so well
+      what it would say! She knew all about her friend, of course; except poor
+      old Nelson, who didn&rsquo;t, But she had never imagined that Ellie would dare
+      to use her in this way. It was unbelievable... she had never pictured
+      anything so vile.... The blood rushed to her face, and she sprang up
+      angrily, half minded to tear the letters in bits and throw them all into
+      the fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She heard her husband&rsquo;s knock on the door between their rooms, and swept
+      the dangerous packet under the blotting-book.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, go away, please, there&rsquo;s a dear,&rdquo; she called out; &ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t finished
+      unpacking, and everything&rsquo;s in such a mess.&rdquo; Gathering up Nick&rsquo;s papers
+      and letters, she ran across the room and thrust them through the door.
+      &ldquo;Here&rsquo;s something to keep you quiet,&rdquo; she laughed, shining in on him an
+      instant from the threshold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned back feeling weak with shame. Ellie&rsquo;s letter lay on the floor:
+      reluctantly she stooped to pick it up, and one by one the expected phrases
+      sprang out at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One good turn deserves another.... Of course you and Nick are welcome to
+      stay all summer.... There won&rsquo;t be a particle of expense for you&mdash;the
+      servants have orders.... If you&rsquo;ll just be an angel and post these letters
+      yourself.... It&rsquo;s been my only chance for such an age; when we meet I&rsquo;ll
+      explain everything. And in a month at latest I&rsquo;ll be back to fetch
+      Clarissa....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy lifted the letter to the lamp to be sure she had read aright. To
+      fetch Clarissa! Then Ellie&rsquo;s child was here? Here, under the roof with
+      them, left to their care? She read on, raging. &ldquo;She&rsquo;s so delighted, poor
+      darling, to know you&rsquo;re coming. I&rsquo;ve had to sack her beastly governess for
+      impertinence, and if it weren&rsquo;t for you she&rsquo;d be all alone with a lot of
+      servants I don&rsquo;t much trust. So for pity&rsquo;s sake be good to my child, and
+      forgive me for leaving her. She thinks I&rsquo;ve gone to take a cure; and she
+      knows she&rsquo;s not to tell her Daddy that I&rsquo;m away, because it would only
+      worry him if he thought I was ill. She&rsquo;s perfectly to be trusted; you&rsquo;ll
+      see what a clever angel she is....&rdquo; And then, at the bottom of the page,
+      in a last slanting postscript: &ldquo;Susy darling, if you&rsquo;ve ever owed me
+      anything in the way of kindness, you won&rsquo;t, on your sacred honour, say a
+      word of this to any one, even to Nick. And I know I can count on you to
+      rub out the numbers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy sprang up and tossed Mrs. Vanderlyn&rsquo;s letter into the fire: then she
+      came slowly back to the chair. There, at her elbow, lay the four fatal
+      envelopes; and her next affair was to make up her mind what to do with
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To destroy them on the spot had seemed, at first thought, inevitable: it
+      might be saving Ellie as well as herself. But such a step seemed to Susy
+      to involve departure on the morrow, and this in turn involved notifying
+      Ellie, whose letter she had vainly scanned for an address. Well&mdash;perhaps
+      Clarissa&rsquo;s nurse would know where one could write to her mother; it was
+      unlikely that even Ellie would go off without assuring some means of
+      communication with her child. At any rate, there was nothing to be done
+      that night: nothing but to work out the details of their flight on the
+      morrow, and rack her brains to find a substitute for the hospitality they
+      were rejecting. Susy did not disguise from herself how much she had
+      counted on the Vanderlyn apartment for the summer: to be able to do so had
+      singularly simplified the future. She knew Ellie&rsquo;s largeness of hand, and
+      had been sure in advance that as long as they were her guests their only
+      expense would be an occasional present to the servants. And what would the
+      alternative be? She and Lansing, in their endless talks, had so lived
+      themselves into the vision of indolent summer days on the lagoon, of
+      flaming hours on the beach of the Lido, and evenings of music and dreams
+      on their broad balcony above the Giudecca, that the idea of having to
+      renounce these joys, and deprive her Nick of them, filled Susy with a
+      wrath intensified by his having confided in her that when they were
+      quietly settled in Venice he &ldquo;meant to write.&rdquo; Already nascent in her
+      breast was the fierce resolve of the author&rsquo;s wife to defend her husband&rsquo;s
+      privacy and facilitate his encounters with the Muse. It was abominable,
+      simply abominable, that Ellie Vanderlyn should have drawn her into such a
+      trap!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well&mdash;there was nothing for it but to make a clean breast of the
+      whole thing to Nick. The trivial incident of the cigars&mdash;how trivial it now
+      seemed!&mdash;showed her the kind of stand he would take, and communicated
+      to her something of his own uncompromising energy. She would tell him the
+      whole story in the morning, and try to find a way out with him: Susy&rsquo;s
+      faith in her power of finding a way out was inexhaustible. But suddenly
+      she remembered the adjuration at the end of Mrs. Vanderlyn&rsquo;s letter: &ldquo;If
+      you&rsquo;re ever owed me anything in the way of kindness, you won&rsquo;t, on your
+      sacred honour, say a word to Nick....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was, of course, exactly what no one had the right to ask of her: if
+      indeed the word &ldquo;right&rdquo;, could be used in any conceivable relation to this
+      coil of wrongs. But the fact remained that, in the way of kindness, she
+      did owe much to Ellie; and that this was the first payment her friend had
+      ever exacted. She found herself, in fact, in exactly the same position as
+      when Ursula Gillow, using the same argument, had appealed to her to give
+      up Nick Lansing. Yes, Susy reflected; but then Nelson Vanderlyn had been
+      kind to her too; and the money Ellie had been so kind with was
+      Nelson&rsquo;s.... The queer edifice of Susy&rsquo;s standards tottered on its base
+      she honestly didn&rsquo;t know where fairness lay, as between so much that was
+      foul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The very depth of her perplexity puzzled her. She had been in &ldquo;tight
+      places&rdquo; before; had indeed been in so few that were not, in one way or
+      another, constricting! As she looked back on her past it lay before her as
+      a very network of perpetual concessions and contrivings. But never before
+      had she had such a sense of being tripped up, gagged and pinioned. The
+      little misery of the cigars still galled her, and now this big humiliation
+      superposed itself on the raw wound. Decidedly, the second month of their
+      honey-moon was beginning cloudily....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She glanced at the enamel led travelling-clock on her dressing table&mdash;one
+      of the few wedding-presents she had consented to accept in kind&mdash;and
+      was startled at the lateness of the hour. In a moment Nick would be
+      coming; and an uncomfortable sensation in her throat warned her that
+      through sheer nervousness and exasperation she might blurt out something
+      ill-advised. The old habit of being always on her guard made her turn once
+      more to the looking-glass. Her face was pale and haggard; and having, by a
+      swift and skilful application of cosmetics, increased its appearance of
+      fatigue, she crossed the room and softly opened her husband&rsquo;s door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He too sat by a lamp, reading a letter which he put aside as she entered.
+      His face was grave, and she said to herself that he was certainly still
+      thinking about the cigars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m very tired, dearest, and my head aches so horribly that I&rsquo;ve come to
+      bid you good-night.&rdquo; Bending over the back of his chair, she laid her arms
+      on his shoulders. He lifted his hands to clasp hers, but, as he threw his
+      head back to smile up at her she noticed that his look was still serious,
+      almost remote. It was as if, for the first time, a faint veil hung between
+      his eyes and hers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m so sorry: it&rsquo;s been a long day for you,&rdquo; he said absently, pressing
+      his lips to her hands
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She felt the dreaded twitch in her throat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nick!&rdquo; she burst out, tightening her embrace, &ldquo;before I go, you&rsquo;ve got to
+      swear to me on your honour that you know I should never have taken those
+      cigars for myself!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment he stared at her, and she stared back at him with equal
+      gravity; then the same irresistible mirth welled up in both, and Susy&rsquo;s
+      compunctions were swept away on a gale of laughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When she woke the next morning the sun was pouring in between her curtains
+      of old brocade, and its refraction from the ripples of the Canal was
+      drawing a network of golden scales across the vaulted ceiling. The maid
+      had just placed a tray on a slim marquetry table near the bed, and over
+      the edge of the tray Susy discovered the small serious face of Clarissa
+      Vanderlyn. At the sight of the little girl all her dormant qualms awoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Clarissa was just eight, and small for her age: her little round chin was
+      barely on a level with the tea-service, and her clear brown eyes gazed at
+      Susy between the ribs of the toast-rack and the single tea-rose in an old
+      Murano glass. Susy had not seen her for two years, and she seemed, in the
+      interval, to have passed from a thoughtful infancy to complete ripeness of
+      feminine experience. She was looking with approval at her mother&rsquo;s guest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m so glad you&rsquo;ve come,&rdquo; she said in a small sweet voice. &ldquo;I like you so
+      very much. I know I&rsquo;m not to be often with you; but at least you&rsquo;ll have
+      an eye on me, won&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An eye on you! I shall never want to have it off you, if you say such
+      nice things to me!&rdquo; Susy laughed, leaning from her pillows to draw the
+      little girl up to her side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Clarissa smiled and settled herself down comfortably on the silken
+      bedspread. &ldquo;Oh, I know I&rsquo;m not to be always about, because you&rsquo;re just
+      married; but could you see to it that I have my meals regularly?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, you poor darling! Don&rsquo;t you always?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not when mother&rsquo;s away on these cures. The servants don&rsquo;t always obey me:
+      you see I&rsquo;m so little for my age. In a few years, of course, they&rsquo;ll have
+      to&mdash;even if I don&rsquo;t grow much,&rdquo; she added judiciously. She put out
+      her hand and touched the string of pearls about Susy&rsquo;s throat. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re
+      small, but they&rsquo;re very good. I suppose you don&rsquo;t take the others when you
+      travel?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The others? Bless you! I haven&rsquo;t any others&mdash;and never shall have,
+      probably.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No other pearls?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No other jewels at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Clarissa stared. &ldquo;Is that really true?&rdquo; she asked, as if in the presence
+      of the unprecedented.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Awfully true,&rdquo; Susy confessed. &ldquo;But I think I can make the servants obey
+      me all the same.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This point seemed to have lost its interest for Clarissa, who was still
+      gravely scrutinizing her companion. After a while she brought forth
+      another question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you have to give up all your jewels when you were divorced?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Divorced&mdash;?&rdquo; Susy threw her head back against the pillows and
+      laughed. &ldquo;Why, what are you thinking of? Don&rsquo;t you remember that I wasn&rsquo;t
+      even married the last time you saw me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; I do. But that was two years ago.&rdquo; The little girl wound her arms
+      about Susy&rsquo;s neck and leaned against her caressingly. &ldquo;Are you going to be
+      soon, then? I&rsquo;ll promise not to tell if you don&rsquo;t want me to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Going to be divorced? Of course not! What in the world made you think so?
+      &rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because you look so awfully happy,&rdquo; said Clarissa Vanderlyn simply.
+    </p>
+
+
+<h3>V.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">It</span> was a trifling enough sign, but it had remained in Susy&rsquo;s mind: that
+      first morning in Venice Nick had gone out without first coming in to see
+      her. She had stayed in bed late, chatting with Clarissa, and expecting to
+      see the door open and her husband appear; and when the child left, and she
+      had jumped up and looked into Nick&rsquo;s room, she found it empty, and a line
+      on his dressing table informed her that he had gone out to send a
+      telegram.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was lover-like, and even boyish, of him to think it necessary to
+      explain his absence; but why had he not simply come in and told her! She
+      instinctively connected the little fact with the shade of preoccupation
+      she had noticed on his face the night before, when she had gone to his
+      room and found him absorbed in letter; and while she dressed she had
+      continued to wonder what was in the letter, and whether the telegram he
+      had hurried out to send was an answer to it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had never found out. When he reappeared, handsome and happy as the
+      morning, he proffered no explanation; and it was part of her life-long
+      policy not to put uncalled-for questions. It was not only that her jealous
+      regard for her own freedom was matched by an equal respect for that of
+      others; she had steered too long among the social reefs and shoals not to
+      know how narrow is the passage that leads to peace of mind, and she was
+      determined to keep her little craft in mid-channel. But the incident had
+      lodged itself in her memory, acquiring a sort of symbolic significance, as
+      of a turning-point in her relations with her husband. Not that these were
+      less happy, but that she now beheld them, as she had always formerly
+      beheld such joys, as an unstable islet in a sea of storms. Her present
+      bliss was as complete as ever, but it was ringed by the perpetual menace
+      of all she knew she was hiding from Nick, and of all she suspected him of
+      hiding from her....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was thinking of these things one afternoon about three weeks after
+      their arrival in Venice. It was near sunset, and she sat alone on the
+      balcony, watching the cross-lights on the water weave their pattern above
+      the flushed reflection of old palace-basements. She was almost always
+      alone at that hour. Nick had taken to writing in the afternoons&mdash;he
+      had been as good as his word, and so, apparently, had the Muse and it was
+      his habit to join his wife only at sunset, for a late row on the lagoon.
+      She had taken Clarissa, as usual, to the Giardino Pubblico, where that
+      obliging child had politely but indifferently &ldquo;played&rdquo;&mdash;Clarissa
+      joined in the diversions of her age as if conforming to an obsolete
+      tradition&mdash;and had brought her back for a music lesson, echoes of
+      which now drifted down from a distant window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy had come to be extremely thankful for Clarissa. But for the little
+      girl, her pride in her husband&rsquo;s industry might have been tinged with a
+      faint sense of being at times left out and forgotten; and as Nick&rsquo;s
+      industry was the completest justification for their being where they were,
+      and for her having done what she had, she was grateful to Clarissa for
+      helping her to feel less alone. Clarissa, indeed, represented the other
+      half of her justification: it was as much on the child&rsquo;s account as on
+      Nick&rsquo;s that Susy had held her tongue, remained in Venice, and slipped out
+      once a week to post one of Ellie&rsquo;s numbered letters. A day&rsquo;s experience of
+      the Palazzo Vanderlyn had convinced Susy of the impossibility of deserting
+      Clarissa. Long experience had shown her that the most crowded households
+      often contain the loneliest nurseries, and that the rich child is exposed
+      to evils unknown to less pampered infancy; but hitherto such things had
+      merely been to her one of the uglier bits in the big muddled pattern of
+      life. Now she found herself feeling where before she had only judged: her
+      precarious bliss came to her charged with a new weight of pity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was thinking of these things, and of the approaching date of Ellie
+      Vanderlyn&rsquo;s return, and of the searching truths she was storing up for
+      that lady&rsquo;s private ear, when she noticed a gondola turning its prow
+      toward the steps below the balcony. She leaned over, and a tall gentleman
+      in shabby clothes, glancing up at her as he jumped out, waved a mouldy
+      Panama in joyful greeting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Streffy!&rdquo; she exclaimed as joyfully; and she was half-way down the stairs
+      when he ran up them followed by his luggage-laden boatman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s all right, I suppose?&mdash;Ellie said I might come,&rdquo; he explained
+      in a shrill cheerful voice; &ldquo;and I&rsquo;m to have my same green room with the
+      parrot-panels, because its furniture is already so frightfully stained
+      with my hair-wash.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy was beaming on him with the deep sense of satisfaction which his
+      presence always produced in his friends. There was no one in the world,
+      they all agreed, half as ugly and untidy and delightful as Streffy; no one
+      who combined such outspoken selfishness with such imperturbable good
+      humour; no one who knew so well how to make you believe he was being
+      charming to you when it was you who were being charming to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In addition to these seductions, of which none estimated the value more
+      accurately than their possessor, Strefford had for Susy another attraction
+      of which he was probably unconscious. It was that of being the one rooted
+      and stable being among the fluid and shifting figures that composed her
+      world. Susy had always lived among people so denationalized that those one
+      took for Russians generally turned out to be American, and those one was
+      inclined to ascribe to New York proved to have originated in Rome or
+      Bucharest. These cosmopolitan people, who, in countries not their own,
+      lived in houses as big as hotels, or in hotels where the guests were as
+      international as the waiters, had inter-married, inter-loved and
+      inter-divorced each other over the whole face of Europe, and according to
+      every code that attempts to regulate human ties. Strefford, too, had his
+      home in this world, but only one of his homes. The other, the one he spoke
+      of, and probably thought of, least often, was a great dull English
+      country-house in a northern county, where a life as monotonous and
+      self-contained as his own was chequered and dispersed had gone on for
+      generation after generation; and it was the sense of that house, and of
+      all it typified even to his vagrancy and irreverence, which, coming out
+      now and then in his talk, or in his attitude toward something or somebody,
+      gave him a firmer outline and a steadier footing than the other
+      marionettes in the dance. Superficially so like them all, and so eager to
+      outdo them in detachment and adaptability, ridiculing the prejudices he
+      had shaken off, and the people to whom he belonged, he still kept, under
+      his easy pliancy, the skeleton of old faiths and old fashions. &ldquo;He talks
+      every language as well as the rest of us,&rdquo; Susy had once said of him, &ldquo;but
+      at least he talks one language better than the others&rdquo;; and Strefford,
+      told of the remark, had laughed, called her an idiot, and been pleased.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he shambled up the stairs with her, arm in arm, she was thinking of
+      this quality with a new appreciation of its value. Even she and Lansing,
+      in spite of their unmixed Americanism, their substantial background of
+      old-fashioned cousinships in New York and Philadelphia, were as mentally
+      detached, as universally at home, as touts at an International Exhibition.
+      If they were usually recognized as Americans it was only because they
+      spoke French so well, and because Nick was too fair to be &ldquo;foreign,&rdquo; and
+      too sharp-featured to be English. But Charlie Strefford was English with
+      all the strength of an inveterate habit; and something in Susy was slowly
+      waking to a sense of the beauty of habit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lounging on the balcony, whither he had followed her without pausing to
+      remove the stains of travel, Strefford showed himself immensely interested
+      in the last chapter of her history, greatly pleased at its having been
+      enacted under his roof, and hugely and flippantly amused at the firmness
+      with which she refused to let him see Nick till the latter&rsquo;s daily task
+      was over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Writing? Rot! What&rsquo;s he writing? He&rsquo;s breaking you in, my dear; that&rsquo;s
+      what he&rsquo;s doing: establishing an alibi. What&rsquo;ll you bet he&rsquo;s just sitting
+      there smoking and reading Le Rire? Let&rsquo;s go and see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Susy was firm. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s read me his first chapter: it&rsquo;s wonderful. It&rsquo;s a
+      philosophic romance&mdash;rather like Marius, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes&mdash;I do!&rdquo; said Strefford, with a laugh that she thought
+      idiotic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She flushed up like a child. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re stupid, Streffy. You forget that Nick
+      and I don&rsquo;t need alibis. We&rsquo;ve got rid of all that hyprocrisy by agreeing
+      that each will give the other a hand up when either of us wants a change.
+      We&rsquo;ve not married to spy and lie, and nag each other; we&rsquo;ve formed a
+      partnership for our mutual advantage.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see; that&rsquo;s capital. But how can you be sure that, when Nick wants a
+      change, you&rsquo;ll consider it for his advantage to have one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the point that had always secretly tormented Susy; she often
+      wondered if it equally tormented Nick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope I shall have enough common sense&mdash;&rdquo; she began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, of course: common sense is what you&rsquo;re both bound to base your
+      argument on, whichever way you argue.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This flash of insight disconcerted her, and she said, a little irritably:
+      &ldquo;What should you do then, if you married?&mdash;Hush, Streffy! I forbid
+      you to shout like that&mdash;all the gondolas are stopping to look!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can I help it?&rdquo; He rocked backward and forward in his chair. &ldquo;&lsquo;If you
+      marry,&rsquo; she says: &lsquo;Streffy, what have you decided to do if you suddenly
+      become a raving maniac?&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I said no such thing. If your uncle and your cousin died, you&rsquo;d marry
+      to-morrow; you know you would.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, now you&rsquo;re talking business.&rdquo; He folded his long arms and leaned over
+      the balcony, looking down at the dusky ripples streaked with fire. &ldquo;In
+      that case I should say: &lsquo;Susan, my dear&mdash;Susan&mdash;now that by the
+      merciful intervention of Providence you have become Countess of Altringham
+      in the peerage of Great Britain, and Baroness Dunsterville and d&rsquo;Amblay in
+      the peerages of Ireland and Scotland, I&rsquo;ll thank you to remember that you
+      are a member of one of the most ancient houses in the United Kingdom&mdash;and
+      not to get found out.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy laughed. &ldquo;We know what those warnings mean! I pity my namesake.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He swung about and gave her a quick look out of his small ugly twinkling
+      eyes. &ldquo;Is there any other woman in the world named Susan?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope so, if the name&rsquo;s an essential. Even if Nick chucks me, don&rsquo;t
+      count on me to carry out that programme. I&rsquo;ve seen it in practice too
+      often.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, well: as far as I know, everybody&rsquo;s in perfect health at Altringham.&rdquo;
+       He fumbled in his pocket and drew out a fountain pen, a handkerchief over
+      which it had leaked, and a packet of dishevelled cigarettes. Lighting one,
+      and restoring the other objects to his pocket, he continued calmly: &ldquo;Tell
+      me how did you manage to smooth things over with the Gillows? Ursula was
+      running amuck when I was in Newport last Summer; it was just when people
+      were beginning to say that you were going to marry Nick. I was afraid
+      she&rsquo;d put a spoke in your wheel; and I hear she put a big cheque in your
+      hand instead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy was silent. From the first moment of Strefford&rsquo;s appearance she had
+      known that in the course of time he would put that question. He was as
+      inquisitive as a monkey, and when he had made up his mind to find out
+      anything it was useless to try to divert his attention. After a moment&rsquo;s
+      hesitation she said: &ldquo;I flirted with Fred. It was a bore but he was very
+      decent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He would be&mdash;poor Fred. And you got Ursula thoroughly frightened!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;enough. And then luckily that young Nerone Altineri turned up
+      from Rome: he went over to New York to look for a job as an engineer, and
+      Ursula made Fred put him in their iron works.&rdquo; She paused again, and then
+      added abruptly: &ldquo;Streffy! If you knew how I hate that kind of thing. I&rsquo;d
+      rather have Nick come in now and tell me frankly, as I know he would, that
+      he&rsquo;s going off with&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With Coral Hicks?&rdquo; Strefford suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She laughed. &ldquo;Poor Coral Hicks! What on earth made you think of the
+      Hickses?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because I caught a glimpse of them the other day at Capri. They&rsquo;re
+      cruising about: they said they were coming in here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a nuisance! I do hope they won&rsquo;t find us out. They were awfully kind
+      to Nick when he went to India with them, and they&rsquo;re so simple-minded that
+      they would expect him to be glad to see them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford aimed his cigarette-end at a tourist on a puggaree who was
+      gazing up from his guidebook at the palace. &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; he murmured with
+      satisfaction, seeing the shot take effect; then he added: &ldquo;Coral Hicks is
+      growing up rather pretty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Streff&mdash;you&rsquo;re dreaming! That lump of a girl with spectacles and
+      thick ankles! Poor Mrs. Hicks used to say to Nick: &lsquo;When Mr. Hicks and I
+      had Coral educated we presumed culture was in greater demand in Europe
+      than it appears to be.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you&rsquo;ll see: that girl&rsquo;s education won&rsquo;t interfere with her, once
+      she&rsquo;s started. So then: if Nick came in and told you he was going off&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should be so thankful if it was with a fright like Coral! But you
+      know,&rdquo; she added with a smile, &ldquo;we&rsquo;ve agreed that it&rsquo;s not to happen for a
+      year.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+
+
+<h3>VI.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">Susy</span> found Strefford, after his first burst of nonsense, unusually kind
+      and responsive. The interest he showed in her future and Nick&rsquo;s seemed to
+      proceed not so much from his habitual spirit of scientific curiosity as
+      from simple friendliness. He was privileged to see Nick&rsquo;s first chapter,
+      of which he formed so favourable an impression that he spoke sternly to
+      Susy on the importance of respecting her husband&rsquo;s working hours; and he
+      even carried his general benevolence to the length of showing a fatherly
+      interest in Clarissa Vanderlyn. He was always charming to children, but
+      fitfully and warily, with an eye on his independence, and on the
+      possibility of being suddenly bored by them; Susy had never seen him
+      abandon these precautions so completely as he did with Clarissa.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor little devil! Who looks after her when you and Nick are off
+      together? Do you mean to tell me Ellie sacked the governess and went away
+      without having anyone to take her place?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think she expected me to do it,&rdquo; said Susy with a touch of asperity.
+      There were moments when her duty to Clarissa weighed on her somewhat
+      heavily; whenever she went off alone with Nick she was pursued by the
+      vision of a little figure waving wistful farewells from the balcony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, that&rsquo;s like Ellie: you might have known she&rsquo;d get an equivalent when
+      she lent you all this. But I don&rsquo;t believe she thought you&rsquo;d be so
+      conscientious about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy considered. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t suppose she did; and perhaps I shouldn&rsquo;t have
+      been, a year ago. But you see&rdquo;&mdash;she hesitated&mdash;&ldquo;Nick&rsquo;s so
+      awfully good: it&rsquo;s made me look; at a lot of things differently....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, hang Nick&rsquo;s goodness! It&rsquo;s happiness that&rsquo;s done it, my dear. You&rsquo;re
+      just one of the people with whom it happens to agree.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy, leaning back, scrutinized between her lashes his crooked ironic
+      face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it that&rsquo;s agreeing with you, Streffy? I&rsquo;ve never seen you so
+      human. You must be getting an outrageous price for the villa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford laughed and clapped his hand on his breast-pocket. &ldquo;I should be
+      an ass not to: I&rsquo;ve got a wire here saying they must have it for another
+      month at any price.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What luck! I&rsquo;m so glad. Who are they, by the way?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He drew himself up out of the long chair in which he was disjointedly
+      lounging, and looked down at her with a smile. &ldquo;Another couple of
+      love-sick idiots like you and Nick.... I say, before I spend it all let&rsquo;s
+      go out and buy something ripping for Clarissa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The days passed so quickly and radiantly that, but for her concern for
+      Clarissa, Susy would hardly have been conscious of her hostess&rsquo;s
+      protracted absence. Mrs. Vanderlyn had said: &ldquo;Four weeks at the latest,&rdquo;
+       and the four weeks were over, and she had neither arrived nor written to
+      explain her non-appearance. She had, in fact, given no sign of life since
+      her departure, save in the shape of a post-card which had reached Clarissa
+      the day after the Lansings&rsquo; arrival, and in which Mrs. Vanderlyn
+      instructed her child to be awfully good, and not to forget to feed the
+      mongoose. Susy noticed that this missive had been posted in Milan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She communicated her apprehensions to Strefford. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t trust that
+      green-eyed nurse. She&rsquo;s forever with the younger gondolier; and Clarissa&rsquo;s
+      so awfully sharp. I don&rsquo;t see why Ellie hasn&rsquo;t come: she was due last
+      Monday.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her companion laughed, and something in the sound of his laugh suggested
+      that he probably knew as much of Ellie&rsquo;s movements as she did, if not
+      more. The sense of disgust which the subject always roused in her made her
+      look away quickly from his tolerant smile. She would have given the world,
+      at that moment, to have been free to tell Nick what she had learned on the
+      night of their arrival, and then to have gone away with him, no matter
+      where. But there was Clarissa&mdash;!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To fortify herself against the temptation, she resolutely fixed her
+      thoughts on her husband. Of Nick&rsquo;s beatitude there could be no doubt. He
+      adored her, he revelled in Venice, he rejoiced in his work; and concerning
+      the quality of that work her judgment was as confident as her heart. She
+      still doubted if he would ever earn a living by what he wrote, but she no
+      longer doubted that he would write something remarkable. The mere fact
+      that he was engaged on a philosophic romance, and not a mere novel, seemed
+      the proof of an intrinsic superiority. And if she had mistrusted her
+      impartiality Strefford&rsquo;s approval would have reassured her. Among their
+      friends Strefford passed as an authority on such matters: in summing him
+      up his eulogists always added: &ldquo;And you know he writes.&rdquo; As a matter of
+      fact, the paying public had remained cold to his few published pages; but
+      he lived among the kind of people who confuse taste with talent, and are
+      impressed by the most artless attempts at literary expression; and though
+      he affected to disdain their judgment, and his own efforts, Susy knew he
+      was not sorry to have it said of him: &ldquo;Oh, if only Streffy had chosen&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford&rsquo;s approval of the philosophic romance convinced her that it had
+      been worth while staying in Venice for Nick&rsquo;s sake; and if only Ellie
+      would come back, and carry off Clarissa to St. Moritz or Deauville, the
+      disagreeable episode on which their happiness was based would vanish like
+      a cloud, and leave them to complete enjoyment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ellie did not come; but the Mortimer Hickses did, and Nick Lansing was
+      assailed by the scruples his wife had foreseen. Strefford, coming back one
+      evening from the Lido, reported having recognized the huge outline of the
+      Ibis among the pleasure craft of the outer harbour; and the very next
+      evening, as the guests of Palazzo Vanderlyn were sipping their ices at
+      Florian&rsquo;s, the Hickses loomed up across the Piazza.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy pleaded in vain with her husband in defence of his privacy. &ldquo;Remember
+      you&rsquo;re here to write, dearest; it&rsquo;s your duty not to let any one interfere
+      with that. Why shouldn&rsquo;t we tell them we&rsquo;re just leaving!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because it&rsquo;s no use: we&rsquo;re sure to be always meeting them. And besides,
+      I&rsquo;ll be hanged if I&rsquo;m going to shirk the Hickses. I spent five whole
+      months on the Ibis, and if they bored me occasionally, India didn&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll make them take us to Aquileia anyhow,&rdquo; said Strefford
+      philosophically; and the next moment the Hickses were bearing down on the
+      defenceless trio.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They presented a formidable front, not only because of their mere physical
+      bulk&mdash;Mr. and Mrs. Hicks were equally and majestically
+      three-dimensional&mdash;but because they never moved abroad without the
+      escort of two private secretaries (one for the foreign languages), Mr.
+      Hicks&rsquo;s doctor, a maiden lady known as Eldoradder Tooker, who was Mrs.
+      Hicks&rsquo;s cousin and stenographer, and finally their daughter, Coral Hicks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Coral Hicks, when Susy had last encountered the party, had been a fat
+      spectacled school-girl, always lagging behind her parents, with a
+      reluctant poodle in her wake. Now the poodle had gone, and his mistress
+      led the procession. The fat school-girl had changed into a young lady of
+      compact if not graceful outline; a long-handled eyeglass had replaced the
+      spectacles, and through it, instead of a sullen glare, Miss Coral Hicks
+      projected on the world a glance at once confident and critical. She looked
+      so strong and so assured that Susy, taking her measure in a flash, saw
+      that her position at the head of the procession was not fortuitous, and
+      murmured inwardly: &ldquo;Thank goodness she&rsquo;s not pretty too!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      If she was not pretty, she was well-dressed; and if she was overeducated,
+      she seemed capable, as Strefford had suggested, of carrying off even this
+      crowning disadvantage. At any rate, she was above disguising it; and
+      before the whole party had been seated five minutes in front of a fresh
+      supply of ices (with Eldorada and the secretaries at a table slightly in
+      the background) she had taken up with Nick the question of exploration in
+      Mesopotamia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Queer child, Coral,&rdquo; he said to Susy that night as they smoked a last
+      cigarette on their balcony. &ldquo;She told me this afternoon that she&rsquo;d
+      remembered lots of things she heard me say in India. I thought at the time
+      that she cared only for caramels and picture-puzzles, but it seems she was
+      listening to everything, and reading all the books she could lay her hands
+      on; and she got so bitten with Oriental archaeology that she took a course
+      last year at Bryn Mawr. She means to go to Bagdad next spring, and back by
+      the Persian plateau and Turkestan.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy laughed luxuriously: she was sitting with her hand in Nick&rsquo;s, while
+      the late moon&mdash;theirs again&mdash;rounded its orange-coloured glory
+      above the belfry of San Giorgio.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor Coral! How dreary&mdash;&rdquo; Susy murmured
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dreary? Why? A trip like that is about as well worth doing as anything I
+      know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I meant: dreary to do it without you or me,&rdquo; she laughed, getting up
+      lazily to go indoors. A broad band of moonlight, dividing her room onto
+      two shadowy halves, lay on the painted Venetian bed with its folded-back
+      sheet, its old damask coverlet and lace-edged pillows. She felt the warmth
+      of Nick&rsquo;s enfolding arm and lifted her face to his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Hickses retained the most tender memory of Nick&rsquo;s sojourn on the Ibis,
+      and Susy, moved by their artless pleasure in meeting him again, was glad
+      he had not followed her advice and tried to elude them. She had always
+      admired Strefford&rsquo;s ruthless talent for using and discarding the human
+      material in his path, but now she began to hope that Nick would not
+      remember her suggestion that he should mete out that measure to the
+      Hickses. Even if it had been less pleasant to have a big yacht at their
+      door during the long golden days and the nights of silver fire, the
+      Hickses&rsquo; admiration for Nick would have made Susy suffer them gladly. She
+      even began to be aware of a growing liking for them, a liking inspired by
+      the very characteristics that would once have provoked her disapproval.
+      Susy had had plenty of training in liking common people with big purses;
+      in such cases her stock of allowances and extenuations was inexhaustible.
+      But they had to be successful common people; and the trouble was that the
+      Hickses, judged by her standards, were failures. It was not only that they
+      were ridiculous; so, heaven knew, were many of their rivals. But the
+      Hickses were both ridiculous and unsuccessful. They had consistently
+      resisted the efforts of the experienced advisers who had first descried
+      them on the horizon and tried to help them upward. They were always taking
+      up the wrong people, giving the wrong kind of party, and spending millions
+      on things that nobody who mattered cared about. They all believed
+      passionately in &ldquo;movements&rdquo; and &ldquo;causes&rdquo; and &ldquo;ideals,&rdquo; and were always
+      attended by the exponents of their latest beliefs, always asking you to
+      hear lectures by haggard women in peplums, and having their portraits
+      painted by wild people who never turned out to be the fashion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All this would formerly have increased Susy&rsquo;s contempt; now she found
+      herself liking the Hickses most for their failings. She was touched by
+      their simple good faith, their isolation in the midst of all their queer
+      apostles and parasites, their way of drifting about an alien and
+      indifferent world in a compactly clinging group of which Eldorada Tooker,
+      the doctor and the two secretaries formed the outer fringe, and by their
+      view of themselves as a kind of collective re-incarnation of some past
+      state of princely culture, symbolised for Mrs. Hicks in what she called
+      &ldquo;the court of the Renaissance.&rdquo; Eldorada, of course, was their chief
+      prophetess; but even the intensely &ldquo;bright&rdquo; and modern young secretaries,
+      Mr. Beck and Mr. Buttles, showed a touching tendency to share her view,
+      and spoke of Mr. Hicks as &ldquo;promoting art,&rdquo; in the spirit of Pandolfino
+      celebrating the munificence of the Medicis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m getting really fond of the Hickses; I believe I should be nice to
+      them even if they were staying at Danieli&rsquo;s,&rdquo; Susy said to Strefford.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And even if you owned the yacht?&rdquo; he answered; and for once his banter
+      struck her as beside the point.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Ibis carried them, during the endless June days, far and wide along
+      the enchanted shores; they roamed among the Euganeans, they saw Aquileia
+      and Pomposa and Ravenna. Their hosts would gladly have taken them farther,
+      across the Adriatic and on into the golden network of the Aegean; but Susy
+      resisted this infraction of Nick&rsquo;s rules, and he himself preferred to
+      stick to his task. Only now he wrote in the early mornings, so that on
+      most days they could set out before noon and steam back late to the low
+      fringe of lights on the lagoon. His work continued to progress, and as
+      page was added to page Susy obscurely but surely perceived that each one
+      corresponded with a hidden secretion of energy, the gradual forming within
+      him of something that might eventually alter both their lives. In what
+      sense she could not conjecture: she merely felt that the fact of his
+      having chosen a job and stuck to it, if only through a few rosy summer
+      weeks, had already given him a new way of saying &ldquo;Yes&rdquo; and &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+
+
+<h3>VII.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">Of</span> some new ferment at work in him Nick Lansing himself was equally aware.
+      He was a better judge of the book he was trying to write than either Susy
+      or Strefford; he knew its weaknesses, its treacheries, its tendency to
+      slip through his fingers just as he thought his grasp tightest; but he
+      knew also that at the very moment when it seemed to have failed him it
+      would suddenly be back, beating its loud wings in his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had no delusions as to its commercial value, and had winced more than
+      he triumphed when Susy produced her allusion to Marius. His book was to be
+      called The Pageant of Alexander. His imagination had been enchanted by the
+      idea of picturing the young conqueror&rsquo;s advance through the fabulous
+      landscapes of Asia: he liked writing descriptions, and vaguely felt that
+      under the guise of fiction he could develop his theory of Oriental
+      influences in Western art at the expense of less learning than if he had
+      tried to put his ideas into an essay. He knew enough of his subject to
+      know that he did not know enough to write about it; but he consoled
+      himself by remembering that Wilhelm Meister has survived many weighty
+      volumes on aesthetics; and between his moments of self-disgust he took
+      himself at Susy&rsquo;s valuation, and found an unmixed joy in his task.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Never&mdash;no, never!&mdash;had he been so boundlessly, so confidently
+      happy. His hack-work had given him the habit of application, and now habit
+      wore the glow of inspiration. His previous literary ventures had been
+      timid and tentative: if this one was growing and strengthening on his
+      hands, it must be because the conditions were so different. He was at
+      ease, he was secure, he was satisfied; and he had also, for the first time
+      since his early youth, before his mother&rsquo;s death, the sense of having some
+      one to look after, some one who was his own particular care, and to whom
+      he was answerable for himself and his actions, as he had never felt
+      himself answerable to the hurried and indifferent people among whom he had
+      chosen to live.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy had the same standards as these people: she spoke their language,
+      though she understood others, she required their pleasures if she did not
+      revere their gods. But from the moment that she had become his property he
+      had built up in himself a conception of her answering to some deep-seated
+      need of veneration. She was his, he had chosen her, she had taken her
+      place in the long line of Lansing women who had been loved, honoured, and
+      probably deceived, by bygone Lansing men. He didn&rsquo;t pretend to understand
+      the logic of it; but the fact that she was his wife gave purpose and
+      continuity to his scattered impulses, and a mysterious glow of
+      consecration to his task.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once or twice, in the first days of his marriage, he had asked himself
+      with a slight shiver what would happen if Susy should begin to bore him.
+      The thing had happened to him with other women as to whom his first
+      emotions had not differed in intensity from those she inspired. The part
+      he had played in his previous love-affairs might indeed have been summed
+      up in the memorable line: &ldquo;I am the hunter and the prey,&rdquo; for he had
+      invariably ceased to be the first only to regard himself as the second.
+      This experience had never ceased to cause him the liveliest pain, since
+      his sympathy for his pursuer was only less keen than his commiseration for
+      himself; but as he was always a little sorrier for himself, he had always
+      ended by distancing the pursuer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All these pre-natal experiences now seemed utterly inapplicable to the new
+      man he had become. He could not imagine being bored by Susy&mdash;or
+      trying to escape from her if he were. He could not think of her as an
+      enemy, or even as an accomplice, since accomplices are potential enemies:
+      she was some one with whom, by some unheard-of miracle, joys above the
+      joys of friendship were to be tasted, but who, even through these fleeting
+      ecstasies, remained simply and securely his friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These new feelings did not affect his general attitude toward life: they
+      merely confirmed his faith in its ultimate &ldquo;jolliness.&rdquo; Never had he more
+      thoroughly enjoyed the things he had always enjoyed. A good dinner had
+      never been as good to him, a beautiful sunset as beautiful; he still
+      rejoiced in the fact that he appreciated both with an equal acuity. He was
+      as proud as ever of Susy&rsquo;s cleverness and freedom from prejudice: she
+      couldn&rsquo;t be too &ldquo;modern&rdquo; for him now that she was his. He shared to the
+      full her passionate enjoyment of the present, and all her feverish
+      eagerness to make it last. He knew when she was thinking of ways of
+      extending their golden opportunity, and he secretly thought with her,
+      wondering what new means they could devise. He was thankful that Ellie
+      Vanderlyn was still absent, and began to hope they might have the palace
+      to themselves for the remainder of the summer. If they did, he would have
+      time to finish his book, and Susy to lay up a little interest on their
+      wedding cheques; and thus their enchanted year might conceivably be
+      prolonged to two.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Late as the season was, their presence and Strefford&rsquo;s in Venice had
+      already drawn thither several wandering members of their set. It was
+      characteristic of these indifferent but agglutinative people that they
+      could never remain long parted from each other without a dim sense of
+      uneasiness. Lansing was familiar with the feeling. He had known slight
+      twinges of it himself, and had often ministered to its qualms in others.
+      It was hardly stronger than the faint gnawing which recalls the tea-hour
+      to one who has lunched well and is sure of dining as abundantly; but it
+      gave a purpose to the purposeless, and helped many hesitating spirits over
+      the annual difficulty of deciding between Deauville and St. Moritz,
+      Biarritz and Capri.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nick was not surprised to learn that it was becoming the fashion, that
+      summer, to pop down to Venice and take a look at the Lansings. Streffy had
+      set the example, and Streffy&rsquo;s example was always followed. And then
+      Susy&rsquo;s marriage was still a subject of sympathetic speculation. People
+      knew the story of the wedding cheques, and were interested in seeing how
+      long they could be made to last. It was going to be the thing, that year,
+      to help prolong the honey-moon by pressing houses on the adventurous
+      couple. Before June was over a band of friends were basking with the
+      Lansings on the Lido.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nick found himself unexpectedly disturbed by their arrival. To avoid
+      comment and banter he put his book aside and forbade Susy to speak of it,
+      explaining to her that he needed an interval of rest. His wife instantly
+      and exaggeratedly adopted this view, guarding him from the temptation to
+      work as jealously as she had discouraged him from idling; and he was
+      careful not to let her find out that the change in his habits coincided
+      with his having reached a difficult point in his book. But though he was
+      not sorry to stop writing he found himself unexpectedly oppressed by the
+      weight of his leisure. For the first time communal dawdling had lost its
+      charm for him; not because his fellow dawdlers were less congenial than of
+      old, but because in the interval he had known something so immeasurably
+      better. He had always felt himself to be the superior of his habitual
+      associates, but now the advantage was too great: really, in a sense, it
+      was hardly fair to them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had flattered himself that Susy would share this feeling; but he
+      perceived with annoyance that the arrival of their friends heightened her
+      animation. It was as if the inward glow which had given her a new beauty
+      were now refracted upon her by the presence of the very people they had
+      come to Venice to avoid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing was vaguely irritated; and when he asked her how she liked being
+      with their old crowd again his irritation was increased by her answering
+      with a laugh that she only hoped the poor dears didn&rsquo;t see too plainly how
+      they bored her. The patent insincerity of the reply was a shock to
+      Lansing. He knew that Susy was not really bored, and he understood that
+      she had simply guessed his feelings and instinctively adopted them: that
+      henceforth she was always going to think as he thought. To confirm this
+      fear he said carelessly: &ldquo;Oh, all the same, it&rsquo;s rather jolly knocking
+      about with them again for a bit;&rdquo; and she answered at once, and with equal
+      conviction: &ldquo;Yes, isn&rsquo;t it? The old darlings&mdash;all the same!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A fear of the future again laid its cold touch on Lansing. Susy&rsquo;s
+      independence and self-sufficiency had been among her chief attractions; if
+      she were to turn into an echo their delicious duet ran the risk of
+      becoming the dullest of monologues. He forgot that five minutes earlier he
+      had resented her being glad to see their friends, and for a moment he
+      found himself leaning dizzily over that insoluble riddle of the
+      sentimental life: that to be differed with is exasperating, and to be
+      agreed with monotonous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once more he began to wonder if he were not fundamentally unfitted for the
+      married state; and was saved from despair only by remembering that Susy&rsquo;s
+      subjection to his moods was not likely to last. But even then it never
+      occurred to him to reflect that his apprehensions were superfluous, since
+      their tie was avowedly a temporary one. Of the special understanding on
+      which their marriage had been based not a trace remained in his thoughts
+      of her; the idea that he or she might ever renounce each other for their
+      mutual good had long since dwindled to the ghost of an old joke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was borne in on him, after a week or two of unbroken sociability, that
+      of all his old friends it was the Mortimer Hickses who bored him the
+      least. The Hickses had left the Ibis for an apartment in a vast
+      dilapidated palace near the Canareggio. They had hired the apartment from
+      a painter (one of their newest discoveries), and they put up
+      philosophically with the absence of modern conveniences in order to secure
+      the inestimable advantage of &ldquo;atmosphere.&rdquo; In this privileged air they
+      gathered about them their usual mixed company of quiet studious people and
+      noisy exponents of new theories, themselves totally unconscious of the
+      disparity between their different guests, and beamingly convinced that at
+      last they were seated at the source of wisdom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In old days Lansing would have got half an hour&rsquo;s amusement, followed by a
+      long evening of boredom, from the sight of Mrs. Hicks, vast and jewelled,
+      seated between a quiet-looking professor of archaeology and a large-browed
+      composer, or the high priest of a new dance-step, while Mr. Hicks, beaming
+      above his vast white waistcoat, saw to it that the champagne flowed more
+      abundantly than the talk, and the bright young secretaries industriously
+      &ldquo;kept up&rdquo; with the dizzy cross-current of prophecy and erudition. But a
+      change had come over Lansing. Hitherto it was in contrast to his own
+      friends that the Hickses had seemed most insufferable; now it was as an
+      escape from these same friends that they had become not only sympathetic
+      but even interesting. It was something, after all, to be with people who
+      did not regard Venice simply as affording exceptional opportunities for
+      bathing and adultery, but who were reverently if confusedly aware that
+      they were in the presence of something unique and ineffable, and
+      determined to make the utmost of their privilege.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After all,&rdquo; he said to himself one evening, as his eyes wandered, with
+      somewhat of a convalescent&rsquo;s simple joy, from one to another of their
+      large confiding faces, &ldquo;after all, they&rsquo;ve got a religion....&rdquo; The phrase
+      struck him, in the moment of using it, as indicating a new element in his
+      own state of mind, and as being, in fact, the key to his new feeling about
+      the Hickses. Their muddled ardour for great things was related to his own
+      new view of the universe: the people who felt, however dimly, the wonder
+      and weight of life must ever after be nearer to him than those to whom it
+      was estimated solely by one&rsquo;s balance at the bank. He supposed, on
+      reflexion, that that was what he meant when he thought of the Hickses as
+      having &ldquo;a religion&rdquo;....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A few days later, his well-being was unexpectedly disturbed by the arrival
+      of Fred Gillow. Lansing had always felt a tolerant liking for Gillow, a
+      large smiling silent young man with an intense and serious desire to miss
+      nothing attainable by one of his fortune and standing. What use he made of
+      his experiences, Lansing, who had always gone into his own modest
+      adventures rather thoroughly, had never been able to guess; but he had
+      always suspected the prodigal Fred of being no more than a well-disguised
+      looker-on. Now for the first time he began to view him with another eye.
+      The Gillows were, in fact, the one uneasy point in Nick&rsquo;s conscience. He
+      and Susy from the first, had talked of them less than of any other members
+      of their group: they had tacitly avoided the name from the day on which
+      Susy had come to Lansing&rsquo;s lodgings to say that Ursula Gillow had asked
+      her to renounce him, till that other day, just before their marriage, when
+      she had met him with the rapturous cry: &ldquo;Here&rsquo;s our first wedding present!
+      Such a thumping big cheque from Fred and Ursula!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Plenty of sympathizing people were ready, Lansing knew, to tell him just
+      what had happened in the interval between those two dates; but he had
+      taken care not to ask. He had even affected an initiation so complete that
+      the friends who burned to enlighten him were discouraged by his so
+      obviously knowing more than they; and gradually he had worked himself
+      around to their view, and had taken it for granted that he really did.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now he perceived that he knew nothing at all, and that the &ldquo;Hullo, old
+      Fred!&rdquo; with which Susy hailed Gillow&rsquo;s arrival might be either the usual
+      tribal welcome&mdash;since they were all &ldquo;old,&rdquo; and all nicknamed, in
+      their private jargon&mdash;or a greeting that concealed inscrutable depths
+      of complicity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy was visibly glad to see Gillow; but she was glad of everything just
+      then, and so glad to show her gladness! The fact disarmed her husband and
+      made him ashamed of his uneasiness. &ldquo;You ought to have thought this all
+      out sooner, or else you ought to chuck thinking of it at all,&rdquo; was the
+      sound but ineffectual advice he gave himself on the day after Gillow&rsquo;s
+      arrival; and immediately set to work to rethink the whole matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fred Gillow showed no consciousness of disturbing any one&rsquo;s peace of mind.
+      Day after day he sprawled for hours on the Lido sands, his arms folded
+      under his head, listening to Streffy&rsquo;s nonsense and watching Susy between
+      sleepy lids; but he betrayed no desire to see her alone, or to draw her
+      into talk apart from the others. More than ever he seemed content to be
+      the gratified spectator of a costly show got up for his private
+      entertainment. It was not until he heard her, one morning, grumble a
+      little at the increasing heat and the menace of mosquitoes, that he said,
+      quite as if they had talked the matter over long before, and finally
+      settled it: &ldquo;The moor will be ready any time after the first of August.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nick fancied that Susy coloured a little, and drew herself up more
+      defiantly than usual as she sent a pebble skimming across the dying
+      ripples at their feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll be a lot cooler in Scotland,&rdquo; Fred added, with what, for him, was
+      an unusual effort at explicitness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, shall we?&rdquo; she retorted gaily; and added with an air of mystery and
+      importance, pivoting about on her high heels: &ldquo;Nick&rsquo;s got work to do here.
+      It will probably keep us all summer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Work? Rot! You&rsquo;ll die of the smells.&rdquo; Gillow stared perplexedly skyward
+      from under his tilted hat-brim; and then brought out, as from the depth of
+      a rankling grievance: &ldquo;I thought it was all understood.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why,&rdquo; Nick asked his wife that night, as they re-entered Ellie&rsquo;s cool
+      drawing-room after a late dinner at the Lido, &ldquo;did Gillow think it was
+      understood that we were going to his moor in August?&rdquo; He was conscious of
+      the oddness of speaking of their friend by his surname, and reddened at
+      his blunder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy had let her lace cloak slide to her feet, and stood before him in the
+      faintly-lit room, slim and shimmering-white through black transparencies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She raised her eyebrows carelessly. &ldquo;I told you long ago he&rsquo;d asked us
+      there for August.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You didn&rsquo;t tell me you&rsquo;d accepted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She smiled as if he had said something as simple as Fred. &ldquo;I accepted
+      everything&mdash;from everybody!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      What could he answer? It was the very principle on which their bargain had
+      been struck. And if he were to say: &ldquo;Ah, but this is different, because
+      I&rsquo;m jealous of Gillow,&rdquo; what light would such an answer shed on his past?
+      The time for being jealous&mdash;if so antiquated an attitude were on any ground
+      defensible&mdash;would have been before his marriage, and before the acceptance
+      of the bounties which had helped to make it possible. He wondered a little
+      now that in those days such scruples had not troubled him. His
+      inconsistency irritated him, and increased his irritation against Gillow.
+      &ldquo;I suppose he thinks he owns us!&rdquo; he grumbled inwardly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had thrown himself into an armchair, and Susy, advancing across the
+      shining arabesques of the floor, slid down at his feet, pressed her
+      slender length against him, and whispered with lifted face and lips close
+      to his: &ldquo;We needn&rsquo;t ever go anywhere you don&rsquo;t want to.&rdquo; For once her
+      submission was sweet, and folding her close he whispered back through his
+      kiss: &ldquo;Not there, then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In her response to his embrace he felt the acquiescence of her whole happy
+      self in whatever future he decided on, if only it gave them enough of such
+      moments as this; and as they held each other fast in silence his doubts
+      and distrust began to seem like a silly injustice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us stay here as long as ever Ellie will let us,&rdquo; he said, as if the
+      shadowy walls and shining floors were a magic boundary drawn about his
+      happiness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She murmured her assent and stood up, stretching her sleepy arm above her
+      shoulders. &ldquo;How dreadfully late it is.... Will you unhook me?... Oh,
+      there&rsquo;s a telegram.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She picked it up from the table, and tearing it open stared a moment at
+      the message. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s from Ellie. She&rsquo;s coming to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned to the window and strayed out onto the balcony. Nick followed
+      her with enlacing arm. The canal below them lay in moonless shadow, barred
+      with a few lingering lights. A last snatch of gondola-music came from far
+      off, carried upward on a sultry gust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear old Ellie. All the same... I wish all this belonged to you and me.&rdquo;
+       Susy sighed.
+    </p>
+
+
+<h3>VIII.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">It</span> was not Mrs. Vanderlyn&rsquo;s fault if, after her arrival, her palace seemed
+      to belong any less to the Lansings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She arrived in a mood of such general benevolence that it was impossible
+      for Susy, when they finally found themselves alone, to make her view even
+      her own recent conduct in any but the most benevolent light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew you&rsquo;d be the veriest angel about it all, darling, because I knew
+      you&rsquo;d understand me&mdash;especially now,&rdquo; she declared, her slim hands in
+      Susy&rsquo;s, her big eyes (so like Clarissa&rsquo;s) resplendent with past pleasures
+      and future plans.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The expression of her confidence was unexpectedly distasteful to Susy
+      Lansing, who had never lent so cold an ear to such warm avowals. She had
+      always imagined that being happy one&rsquo;s self made one&mdash;as Mrs.
+      Vanderlyn appeared to assume&mdash;more tolerant of the happiness of
+      others, of however doubtful elements composed; and she was almost ashamed
+      of responding so languidly to her friend&rsquo;s outpourings. But she herself
+      had no desire to confide her bliss to Ellie; and why should not Ellie
+      observe a similar reticence?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was all so perfect&mdash;you see, dearest, I was meant to be happy,&rdquo;
+       that lady continued, as if the possession of so unusual a characteristic
+      singled her out for special privileges.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy, with a certain sharpness, responded that she had always supposed we
+      all were.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no, dearest: not governesses and mothers-in-law and companions, and
+      that sort of people. They wouldn&rsquo;t know how if they tried. But you and I,
+      darling&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I don&rsquo;t consider myself in any way exceptional,&rdquo; Susy intervened. She
+      longed to add: &ldquo;Not in your way, at any rate&mdash;&rdquo; but a few minutes
+      earlier Mrs. Vanderlyn had told her that the palace was at her disposal
+      for the rest of the summer, and that she herself was only going to perch
+      there&mdash;if they&rsquo;d let her!&mdash;long enough to gather up her things
+      and start for St. Moritz. The memory of this announcement had the effect
+      of curbing Susy&rsquo;s irony, and of making her shift the conversation to the
+      safer if scarcely less absorbing topic of the number of day and evening
+      dresses required for a season at St. Moritz.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As she listened to Mrs. Vanderlyn&mdash;no less eloquent on this theme
+      than on the other&mdash;Susy began to measure the gulf between her past
+      and present. &ldquo;This is the life I used to lead; these are the things I used
+      to live for,&rdquo; she thought, as she stood before the outspread glories of
+      Mrs. Vanderlyn&rsquo;s wardrobe. Not that she did not still care: she could not
+      look at Ellie&rsquo;s laces and silks and furs without picturing herself in
+      them, and wondering by what new miracle of management she could give
+      herself the air of being dressed by the same consummate artists. But these
+      had become minor interests: the past few months had given her a new
+      perspective, and the thing that most puzzled and disconcerted her about
+      Ellie was the fact that love and finery and bridge and dining-out were
+      seemingly all on the same plane to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The inspection of the dresses lasted a long time, and was marked by many
+      fluctuations of mood on the part of Mrs. Vanderlyn, who passed from
+      comparative hopefulness to despair at the total inadequacy of her
+      wardrobe. It wouldn&rsquo;t do to go to St. Moritz looking like a frump, and yet
+      there was no time to get anything sent from Paris, and, whatever she did,
+      she wasn&rsquo;t going to show herself in any dowdy re-arrangements done at
+      home. But suddenly light broke on her, and she clasped her hands for joy.
+      &ldquo;Why, Nelson&rsquo;ll bring them&mdash;I&rsquo;d forgotten all about Nelson! There&rsquo;ll
+      be just time if I wire to him at once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is Nelson going to join you at St. Moritz?&rdquo; Susy asked, surprised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Heavens, no! He&rsquo;s coming here to pick up Clarissa and take her to some
+      stuffy cure in Austria with his mother. It&rsquo;s too lucky: there&rsquo;s just time
+      to telegraph him to bring my things. I didn&rsquo;t mean to wait for him; but it
+      won&rsquo;t delay me more than day or two.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy&rsquo;s heart sank. She was not much afraid of Ellie alone, but Ellie and
+      Nelson together formed an incalculable menace. No one could tell what
+      spark of truth might dash from their collision. Susy felt that she could
+      deal with the two dangers separately and successively, but not together
+      and simultaneously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, Ellie, why should you wait for Nelson? I&rsquo;m certain to find someone
+      here who&rsquo;s going to St. Moritz and will take your things if he brings
+      them. It&rsquo;s a pity to risk losing your rooms.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This argument appealed for a moment to Mrs. Vanderlyn. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s true; they
+      say all the hotels are jammed. You dear, you&rsquo;re always so practical!&rdquo; She
+      clasped Susy to her scented bosom. &ldquo;And you know, darling, I&rsquo;m sure you&rsquo;ll
+      be glad to get rid of me&mdash;you and Nick! Oh, don&rsquo;t be hypocritical and
+      say &lsquo;Nonsense!&rsquo; You see, I understand... I used to think of you so often,
+      you two... during those blessed weeks when we two were alone....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The sudden tears, brimming over Ellie&rsquo;s lovely eyes, and threatening to
+      make the blue circles below them run into the adjoining carmine, filled
+      Susy with compunction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor thing&mdash;oh, poor thing!&rdquo; she thought; and hearing herself called
+      by Nick, who was waiting to take her out for their usual sunset on the
+      lagoon, she felt a wave of pity for the deluded creature who would never
+      taste that highest of imaginable joys. &ldquo;But all the same,&rdquo; Susy reflected,
+      as she hurried down to her husband, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad I persuaded her not to wait
+      for Nelson.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Some days had elapsed since Susy and Nick had had a sunset to themselves,
+      and in the interval Susy had once again learned the superior quality of
+      the sympathy that held them together. She now viewed all the rest of life
+      as no more than a show: a jolly show which it would have been a thousand
+      pities to miss, but which, if the need arose, they could get up and leave
+      at any moment&mdash;provided that they left it together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the dusk, while their prow slid over inverted palaces, and through the
+      scent of hidden gardens, she leaned against him and murmured, her mind
+      returning to the recent scene with Ellie: &ldquo;Nick, should you hate me
+      dreadfully if I had no clothes?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her husband was kindling a cigarette, and the match lit up the grin with
+      which he answered: &ldquo;But, my dear, have I ever shown the slightest symptom&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, rubbish! When a woman says: &lsquo;No clothes,&rsquo; she means: &lsquo;Not the right
+      clothes.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He took a meditative puff. &ldquo;Ah, you&rsquo;ve been going over Ellie&rsquo;s finery with
+      her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes: all those trunks and trunks full. And she finds she&rsquo;s got nothing
+      for St. Moritz!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; he murmured, drowsy with content, and manifesting but a
+      languid interest in the subject of Mrs. Vanderlyn&rsquo;s wardrobe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only fancy&mdash;she very nearly decided to stop over for Nelson&rsquo;s
+      arrival next week, so that he might bring her two or three more trunkfuls
+      from Paris. But mercifully I&rsquo;ve managed to persuade her that it would be
+      foolish to wait.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy felt a hardly perceptible shifting of her husband&rsquo;s lounging body,
+      and was aware, through all her watchful tentacles, of a widening of his
+      half-closed lids.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You &lsquo;managed&rsquo;&mdash;?&rdquo; She fancied he paused on the word ironically. &ldquo;But
+      why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why&mdash;what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why on earth should you try to prevent Ellie&rsquo;s waiting for Nelson, if for
+      once in her life she wants to?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy, conscious of reddening suddenly, drew back as though the leap of her
+      tell-tale heart might have penetrated the blue flannel shoulder against
+      which she leaned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Really, dearest&mdash;!&rdquo; she murmured; but with a sudden doggedness he
+      renewed his &ldquo;Why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because she&rsquo;s in such a fever to get to St. Moritz&mdash;and in such a
+      funk lest the hotel shouldn&rsquo;t keep her rooms,&rdquo; Susy somewhat breathlessly
+      produced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah&mdash;I see.&rdquo; Nick paused again. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re a devoted friend, aren&rsquo;t
+      you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What an odd question! There&rsquo;s hardly anyone I&rsquo;ve reason to be more
+      devoted to than Ellie,&rdquo; his wife answered; and she felt his contrite clasp
+      on her hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Darling! No; nor I&mdash;. Or more grateful to for leaving us alone in
+      this heaven.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dimness had fallen on the waters, and her lifted lips met his bending
+      ones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Trailing late into dinner that evening, Ellie announced that, after all,
+      she had decided it was safest to wait for Nelson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should simply worry myself ill if I weren&rsquo;t sure of getting my things,&rdquo;
+       she said, in the tone of tender solicitude with which she always discussed
+      her own difficulties. &ldquo;After all, people who deny themselves everything do
+      get warped and bitter, don&rsquo;t they?&rdquo; she argued plaintively, her lovely
+      eyes wandering from one to the other of her assembled friends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford remarked gravely that it was the complaint which had fatally
+      undermined his own health; and in the laugh that followed the party
+      drifted into the great vaulted dining-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I don&rsquo;t mind your laughing at me, Streffy darling,&rdquo; his hostess
+      retorted, pressing his arm against her own; and Susy, receiving the shock
+      of their rapidly exchanged glance, said to herself, with a sharp twinge of
+      apprehension: &ldquo;Of course Streffy knows everything; he showed no surprise
+      at finding Ellie away when he arrived. And if he knows, what&rsquo;s to prevent
+      Nelson&rsquo;s finding out?&rdquo; For Strefford, in a mood of mischief, was no more
+      to be trusted than a malicious child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy instantly resolved to risk speaking to him, if need be even betraying
+      to him the secret of the letters. Only by revealing the depth of her own
+      danger could she hope to secure his silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the balcony, late in the evening, while the others were listening
+      indoors to the low modulations of a young composer who had embroidered his
+      fancies on Browning&rsquo;s &ldquo;Toccata,&rdquo; Susy found her chance. Strefford,
+      unsummoned, had followed her out, and stood silently smoking at her side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see, Streff&mdash;oh, why should you and I make mysteries to each
+      other?&rdquo; she suddenly began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, indeed: but do we?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy glanced back at the group around the piano. &ldquo;About Ellie, I mean&mdash;and
+      Nelson.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lord! Ellie and Nelson? You call that a mystery? I should as soon apply
+      the term to one of the million candle-power advertisements that adorn your
+      native thoroughfares.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, yes. But&mdash;&rdquo; She stopped again. Had she not tacitly promised
+      Ellie not to speak?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My Susan, what&rsquo;s wrong?&rdquo; Strefford asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I do, then: you&rsquo;re afraid that, if Ellie and Nelson meet here,
+      she&rsquo;ll blurt out something&mdash;injudicious.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, she won&rsquo;t!&rdquo; Susy cried with conviction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then&mdash;who will! I trust that superhuman child not to. And you
+      and I and Nick&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; she gasped, interrupting him, &ldquo;that&rsquo;s just it. Nick doesn&rsquo;t know...
+      doesn&rsquo;t even suspect. And if he did....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford flung away his cigar and turned to scrutinize her. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see&mdash;hanged
+      if I do. What business is it of any of us, after all?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That, of course, was the old view that cloaked connivance in an air of
+      decency. But to Susy it no longer carried conviction, and she hesitated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If Nick should find out that I know....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good Lord&mdash;doesn&rsquo;t he know that you know? After all, I suppose it&rsquo;s
+      not the first time&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She remained silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The first time you&rsquo;ve received confidences&mdash;from married friends.
+      Does Nick suppose you&rsquo;ve lived even to your tender age without... Hang it,
+      what&rsquo;s come over you, child?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      What had, indeed, that she could make clear to him? And yet more than ever
+      she felt the need of having him securely on her side. Once his word was
+      pledged, he was safe: otherwise there was no limit to his capacity for
+      wilful harmfulness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look here, Streff, you and I know that Ellie hasn&rsquo;t been away for a cure;
+      and that if poor Clarissa was sworn to secrecy it was not because it
+      &lsquo;worries father&rsquo; to think that mother needs to take care of her health.&rdquo;
+       She paused, hating herself for the ironic note she had tried to sound.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;?&rdquo; he questioned, from the depths of the chair into which he
+      had sunk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Nick doesn&rsquo;t... doesn&rsquo;t dream of it. If he knew that we owed our
+      summer here to... to my knowing....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford sat silent: she felt his astonished stare through the darkness.
+      &ldquo;Jove!&rdquo; he said at last, with a low whistle Susy bent over the balustrade,
+      her heart thumping against the stone rail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What was left of soul, I wonder&mdash;?&rdquo; the young composer&rsquo;s voice
+      shrilled through the open windows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford sank into another silence, from which he roused himself only as
+      Susy turned back toward the lighted threshold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, my dear, we&rsquo;ll see it through between us; you and I&mdash;and Clarissa,&rdquo;
+       he said with his rasping laugh, rising to follow her. He caught her hand
+      and gave it a short pressure as they re-entered the drawing-room, where
+      Ellie was saying plaintively to Fred Gillow: &ldquo;I can never hear that thing
+      sung without wanting to cry like a baby.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+
+
+<h3>IX.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">Nelson Vanderlyn</span>, still in his travelling clothes, paused on the threshold
+      of his own dining-room and surveyed the scene with pardonable
+      satisfaction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was a short round man, with a grizzled head, small facetious eyes and a
+      large and credulous smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the luncheon table sat his wife, between Charlie Strefford and Nick
+      Lansing. Next to Strefford, perched on her high chair, Clarissa throned in
+      infant beauty, while Susy Lansing cut up a peach for her. Through wide
+      orange awnings the sun slanted in upon the white-clad group.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;well&mdash;well! So I&rsquo;ve caught you at it!&rdquo; cried the happy
+      father, whose inveterate habit it was to address his wife and friends as
+      if he had surprised them at an inopportune moment. Stealing up from
+      behind, he lifted his daughter into the air, while a chorus of &ldquo;Hello, old
+      Nelson,&rdquo; hailed his appearance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was two or three years since Nick Lansing had seen Mr. Vanderlyn, who
+      was now the London representative of the big New York bank of Vanderlyn
+      &amp; Co., and had exchanged his sumptuous house in Fifth Avenue for
+      another, more sumptuous still, in Mayfair; and the young man looked
+      curiously and attentively at his host.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Vanderlyn had grown older and stouter, but his face still kept its
+      look of somewhat worn optimism. He embraced his wife, greeted Susy
+      affectionately, and distributed cordial hand-grasps to the two men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hullo,&rdquo; he exclaimed, suddenly noticing a pearl and coral trinket hanging
+      from Clarissa&rsquo;s neck. &ldquo;Who&rsquo;s been giving my daughter jewellery, I&rsquo;d like
+      to know!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Streffy did&mdash;just think, father! Because I said I&rsquo;d rather have
+      it than a book, you know,&rdquo; Clarissa lucidly explained, her arms tight
+      about her father&rsquo;s neck, her beaming eyes on Strefford.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nelson Vanderlyn&rsquo;s own eyes took on the look of shrewdness which came into
+      them whenever there was a question of material values.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What, Streffy? Caught you at it, eh? Upon my soul-spoiling the brat like
+      that! You&rsquo;d no business to, my dear chap-a lovely baroque pearl&mdash;&rdquo; he
+      protested, with the half-apologetic tone of the rich man embarrassed by
+      too costly a gift from an impecunious friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, hadn&rsquo;t I? Why? Because it&rsquo;s too good for Clarissa, or too expensive
+      for me? Of course you daren&rsquo;t imply the first; and as for me&mdash;I&rsquo;ve
+      had a windfall, and am blowing it in on the ladies.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford, Lansing had noticed, always used American slang when he was
+      slightly at a loss, and wished to divert attention from the main point.
+      But why was he embarrassed, whose attention did he wish to divert, It was
+      plain that Vanderlyn&rsquo;s protest had been merely formal: like most of the
+      wealthy, he had only the dimmest notion of what money represented to the
+      poor. But it was unusual for Strefford to give any one a present, and
+      especially an expensive one: perhaps that was what had fixed Vanderlyn&rsquo;s
+      attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A windfall?&rdquo; he gaily repeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, a tiny one: I was offered a thumping rent for my little place at
+      Como, and dashed over here to squander my millions with the rest of you,&rdquo;
+       said Strefford imperturbably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Vanderlyn&rsquo;s look immediately became interested and sympathetic. &ldquo;What&mdash;the
+      scene of the honey-moon?&rdquo; He included Nick and Susy in his friendly smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just so: the reward of virtue. I say, give me a cigar, will you, old man,
+      I left some awfully good ones at Como, worse luck&mdash;and I don&rsquo;t mind
+      telling you that Ellie&rsquo;s no judge of tobacco, and that Nick&rsquo;s too far gone
+      in bliss to care what he smokes,&rdquo; Strefford grumbled, stretching a hand
+      toward his host&rsquo;s cigar-case.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do like jewellery best,&rdquo; Clarissa murmured, hugging her father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nelson Vanderlyn&rsquo;s first word to his wife had been that he had brought her
+      all her toggery; and she had welcomed him with appropriate enthusiasm. In
+      fact, to the lookers-on her joy at seeing him seemed rather too patently
+      in proportion to her satisfaction at getting her clothes. But no such
+      suspicion appeared to mar Mr. Vanderlyn&rsquo;s happiness in being, for once,
+      and for nearly twenty-four hours, under the same roof with his wife and
+      child. He did not conceal his regret at having promised his mother to join
+      her the next day; and added, with a wistful glance at Ellie: &ldquo;If only I&rsquo;d
+      known you meant to wait for me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But being a man of duty, in domestic as well as business affairs, he did
+      not even consider the possibility of disappointing the exacting old lady
+      to whom he owed his being. &ldquo;Mother cares for so few people,&rdquo; he used to
+      say, not without a touch of filial pride in the parental exclusiveness,
+      &ldquo;that I have to be with her rather more than if she were more sociable&rdquo;;
+      and with smiling resignation he gave orders that Clarissa should be ready
+      to start the next evening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And meanwhile,&rdquo; he concluded, &ldquo;we&rsquo;ll have all the good time that&rsquo;s
+      going.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The ladies of the party seemed united in the desire to further this
+      resolve; and it was settled that as soon as Mr. Vanderlyn had despatched a
+      hasty luncheon, his wife, Clarissa and Susy should carry him off for a
+      tea-picnic at Torcello. They did not even suggest that Strefford or Nick
+      should be of the party, or that any of the other young men of the group
+      should be summoned; as Susy said, Nelson wanted to go off alone with his
+      harem. And Lansing and Strefford were left to watch the departure of the
+      happy Pasha ensconced between attentive beauties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;that&rsquo;s what you call being married!&rdquo; Strefford commented,
+      waving his battered Panama at Clarissa.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no, I don&rsquo;t!&rdquo; Lansing laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He does. But do you know&mdash;&rdquo; Strefford paused and swung about on his
+      companion&mdash;&ldquo;do you know, when the Rude Awakening comes, I don&rsquo;t care
+      to be there. I believe there&rsquo;ll be some crockery broken.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shouldn&rsquo;t wonder,&rdquo; Lansing answered indifferently. He wandered away to
+      his own room, leaving Strefford to philosophize to his pipe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing had always known about poor old Nelson: who hadn&rsquo;t, except poor
+      old Nelson? The case had once seemed amusing because so typical; now, it
+      rather irritated Nick that Vanderlyn should be so complete an ass. But he
+      would be off the next day, and so would Ellie, and then, for many
+      enchanted weeks, the palace would once more be the property of Nick and
+      Susy. Of all the people who came and went in it, they were the only ones
+      who appreciated it, or knew how it was meant to be lived in; and that made
+      it theirs in the only valid sense. In this light it became easy to regard
+      the Vanderlyns as mere transient intruders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having relegated them to this convenient distance, Lansing shut himself up
+      with his book. He had returned to it with fresh energy after his few weeks
+      of holiday-making, and was determined to finish it quickly. He did not
+      expect that it would bring in much money; but if it were moderately
+      successful it might give him an opening in the reviews and magazines, and
+      in that case he meant to abandon archaeology for novels, since it was only
+      as a purveyor of fiction that he could count on earning a living for
+      himself and Susy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Late in the afternoon he laid down his pen and wandered out of doors. He
+      loved the increasing heat of the Venetian summer, the bruised peach-tints
+      of worn house-fronts, the enamelling of sunlight on dark green canals, the
+      smell of half-decayed fruits and flowers thickening the languid air. What
+      visions he could build, if he dared, of being tucked away with Susy in the
+      attic of some tumble-down palace, above a jade-green waterway, with a
+      terrace overhanging a scrap of neglected garden&mdash;and cheques from the
+      publishers dropping in at convenient intervals! Why should they not settle
+      in Venice if he pulled it off!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He found himself before the church of the Scalzi, and pushing open the
+      leathern door wandered up the nave under the whirl of rose-and-lemon
+      angels in Tiepolo&rsquo;s great vault. It was not a church in which one was
+      likely to run across sight-seers; but he presently remarked a young lady
+      standing alone near the choir, and assiduously applying her field-glass to
+      the celestial vortex, from which she occasionally glanced down at an open
+      manual.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Lansing&rsquo;s step sounded on the pavement, the young lady, turning,
+      revealed herself as Miss Hicks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah&mdash;you like this too? It&rsquo;s several centuries out of your line,
+      though, isn&rsquo;t it!&rdquo; Nick asked as they shook hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She gazed at him gravely. &ldquo;Why shouldn&rsquo;t one like things that are out of
+      one&rsquo;s line?&rdquo; she answered; and he agreed, with a laugh, that it was often
+      an incentive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She continued to fix her grave eyes on him, and after one or two remarks
+      about the Tiepolos he perceived that she was feeling her way toward a
+      subject of more personal interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad to see you alone,&rdquo; she said at length, with an abruptness that
+      might have seemed awkward had it not been so completely unconscious. She
+      turned toward a cluster of straw chairs, and signed to Nick to seat
+      himself beside her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I seldom do,&rdquo; she added, with the serious smile that made her heavy face
+      almost handsome; and she went on, giving him no time to protest: &ldquo;I wanted
+      to speak to you&mdash;to explain about father&rsquo;s invitation to go with us
+      to Persia and Turkestan.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To explain?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. You found the letter when you arrived here just after your marriage,
+      didn&rsquo;t you? You must have thought it odd, our asking you just then; but we
+      hadn&rsquo;t heard that you were married.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I guessed as much: it happened very quietly, and I was remiss about
+      announcing it, even to old friends.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing frowned. His thoughts had wandered away to the evening when he had
+      found Mrs. Hicks&rsquo;s letter in the mail awaiting him at Venice. The day was
+      associated in his mind with the ridiculous and mortifying episode of the
+      cigars&mdash;the expensive cigars that Susy had wanted to carry away from
+      Strefford&rsquo;s villa. Their brief exchange of views on the subject had left
+      the first blur on the perfect surface of his happiness, and he still felt
+      an uncomfortable heat at the remembrance. For a few hours the prospect of
+      life with Susy had seemed unendurable; and it was just at that moment that
+      he had found the letter from Mrs. Hicks, with its almost irresistible
+      invitation. If only her daughter had known how nearly he had accepted it!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was a dreadful temptation,&rdquo; he said, smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To go with us? Then why&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, everything&rsquo;s different now: I&rsquo;ve got to stick to my writing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Hicks still bent on him the same unblinking scrutiny. &ldquo;Does that mean
+      that you&rsquo;re going to give up your real work?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My real work&mdash;archaeology?&rdquo; He smiled again to hide a twitch of
+      regret. &ldquo;Why, I&rsquo;m afraid it hardly produces a living wage; and I&rsquo;ve got to
+      think of that.&rdquo; He coloured suddenly, as if suspecting that Miss Hicks
+      might consider the avowal an opening for he hardly knew what ponderous
+      offer of aid. The Hicks munificence was too uncalculating not to be
+      occasionally oppressive. But looking at her again he saw that her eyes
+      were full of tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought it was your vocation,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So did I. But life comes along, and upsets things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I understand. There may be things&mdash;worth giving up all other
+      things for.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are!&rdquo; cried Nick with beaming emphasis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was conscious that Miss Hicks&rsquo;s eyes demanded of him even more than
+      this sweeping affirmation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But your novel may fail,&rdquo; she said with her odd harshness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It may&mdash;it probably will,&rdquo; he agreed. &ldquo;But if one stopped to
+      consider such possibilities&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you have to, with a wife?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, my dear Coral&mdash;how old are you? Not twenty?&rdquo; he questioned,
+      laying a brotherly hand on hers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She stared at him a moment, and sprang up clumsily from her chair. &ldquo;I was
+      never young... if that&rsquo;s what you mean. It&rsquo;s lucky, isn&rsquo;t it, that my
+      parents gave me such a grand education? Because, you see, art&rsquo;s a
+      wonderful resource.&rdquo; (She pronounced it RE-source.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He continued to look at her kindly. &ldquo;You won&rsquo;t need it&mdash;or any other&mdash;when
+      you grow young, as you will some day,&rdquo; he assured her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean, when I fall in love? But I am in love&mdash;Oh, there&rsquo;s
+      Eldorada and Mr. Beck!&rdquo; She broke off with a jerk, signalling with her
+      field-glass to the pair who had just appeared at the farther end of the
+      nave. &ldquo;I told them that if they&rsquo;d meet me here to-day I&rsquo;d try to make them
+      understand Tiepolo. Because, you see, at home we never really have
+      understood Tiepolo; and Mr. Beck and Eldorada are the only ones to realize
+      it. Mr. Buttles simply won&rsquo;t.&rdquo; She turned to Lansing and held out her
+      hand. &ldquo;I am in love,&rdquo; she repeated earnestly, &ldquo;and that&rsquo;s the reason why I
+      find art such a RE source.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She restored her eye-glasses, opened her manual, and strode across the
+      church to the expectant neophytes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing, looking after her, wondered for half a moment whether Mr. Beck
+      were the object of this apparently unrequited sentiment; then, with a
+      queer start of introspection, abruptly decided that, no, he certainly was
+      not. But then&mdash;but then&mdash;. Well, there was no use in following
+      up such conjectures.... He turned home-ward, wondering if the picnickers
+      had already reached Palazzo Vanderlyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They got back only in time for a late dinner, full of chaff and laughter,
+      and apparently still enchanted with each other&rsquo;s society. Nelson Vanderlyn
+      beamed on his wife, sent his daughter off to bed with a kiss, and leaning
+      back in his armchair before the fruit-and-flower-laden table, declared
+      that he&rsquo;d never spent a jollier day in his life. Susy seemed to come in
+      for a full share of his approbation, and Lansing thought that Ellie was
+      unusually demonstrative to her friend. Strefford, from his hostess&rsquo;s side,
+      glanced across now and then at young Mrs. Lansing, and his glance seemed
+      to Lansing a confidential comment on the Vanderlyn raptures. But then
+      Strefford was always having private jokes with people or about them; and
+      Lansing was irritated with himself for perpetually suspecting his best
+      friends of vague complicities at his expense. &ldquo;If I&rsquo;m going to be jealous
+      of Streffy now&mdash;!&rdquo; he concluded with a grimace of self-derision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Certainly Susy looked lovely enough to justify the most irrational pangs.
+      As a girl she had been, for some people&rsquo;s taste, a trifle fine-drawn and
+      sharp-edged; now, to her old lightness of line was added a shadowy bloom,
+      a sort of star-reflecting depth. Her movements were slower, less angular;
+      her mouth had a needing droop, her lids seemed weighed down by their
+      lashes; and then suddenly the old spirit would reveal itself through the
+      new languor, like the tartness at the core of a sweet fruit. As her
+      husband looked at her across the flowers and lights he laughed inwardly at
+      the nothingness of all things else.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Vanderlyn and Clarissa left betimes the next morning; and Mrs. Vanderlyn,
+      who was to start for St. Moritz in the afternoon, devoted her last hours
+      to anxious conferences with her maid and Susy. Strefford, with Fred Gillow
+      and the others, had gone for a swim at the Lido, and Lansing seized the
+      opportunity to get back to his book.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The quietness of the great echoing place gave him a foretaste of the
+      solitude to come. By mid-August all their party would be scattered: the
+      Hickses off on a cruise to Crete and the Ægean, Fred Gillow on the way to
+      his moor, Strefford to stay with friends in Capri till his annual visit to
+      Northumberland in September. One by one the others would follow, and
+      Lansing and Susy be left alone in the great sun-proof palace, alone under
+      the star-laden skies, alone with the great orange moons&mdash;still theirs!&mdash;above
+      the bell-tower of San Giorgio. The novel, in that blessed quiet, would
+      unfold itself as harmoniously as his dreams.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He wrote on, forgetful of the passing hours, till the door opened and he
+      heard a step behind him. The next moment two hands were clasped over his
+      eyes, and the air was full of Mrs. Vanderlyn&rsquo;s last new scent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You dear thing&mdash;I&rsquo;m just off, you know,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Susy told me you
+      were working, and I forbade her to call you down. She and Streffy are
+      waiting to take me to the station, and I&rsquo;ve run up to say good-bye.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ellie, dear!&rdquo; Full of compunction, Lansing pushed aside his writing and
+      started up; but she pressed him back into his seat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no! I should never forgive myself if I&rsquo;d interrupted you. I oughtn&rsquo;t
+      to have come up; Susy didn&rsquo;t want me to. But I had to tell you, you
+      dear.... I had to thank you...&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In her dark travelling dress and hat, so discreetly conspicuous, so
+      negligent and so studied, with a veil masking her paint, and gloves hiding
+      her rings, she looked younger, simpler, more natural than he had ever seen
+      her. Poor Ellie such a good fellow, after all!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To thank me? For what? For being so happy here?&rdquo; he laughed, taking her
+      hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at him, laughed back, and flung her arms about his neck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For helping me to be so happy elsewhere&mdash;you and Susy, you two
+      blessed darlings!&rdquo; she cried, with a kiss on his cheek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Their eyes met for a second; then her arms slipped slowly downward,
+      dropping to her sides. Lansing sat before her like a stone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; she gasped, &ldquo;why do you stare so? Didn&rsquo;t you know...?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They heard Strefford&rsquo;s shrill voice on the stairs. &ldquo;Ellie, where the deuce
+      are you? Susy&rsquo;s in the gondola. You&rsquo;ll miss the train!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing stood up and caught Mrs. Vanderlyn by the wrist. &ldquo;What do you
+      mean? What are you talking about?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, nothing... But you were both such bricks about the letters.... And
+      when Nelson was here, too.... Nick, don&rsquo;t hurt my wrist so! I must run!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He dropped her hand and stood motionless, staring after her and listening
+      to the click of her high heels as she fled across the room and along the
+      echoing corridor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he turned back to the table he noticed that a small morocco case had
+      fallen among his papers. In falling it had opened, and before him, on the
+      pale velvet lining, lay a scarf-pin set with a perfect pearl. He picked
+      the box up, and was about to hasten after Mrs. Vanderlyn&mdash;it was so
+      like her to shed jewels on her path!&mdash;when he noticed his own
+      initials on the cover.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He dropped the box as if it had been a hot coal, and sat for a long while
+      gazing at the gold N. L., which seemed to have burnt itself into his
+      flesh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last he roused himself and stood up.
+    </p>
+
+
+<h3>X.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">With</span> a sigh of relief Susy drew the pins from her hat and threw herself
+      down on the lounge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ordeal she had dreaded was over, and Mr. and Mrs. Vanderlyn had safely
+      gone their several ways. Poor Ellie was not noted for prudence, and when
+      life smiled on her she was given to betraying her gratitude too openly;
+      but thanks to Susy&rsquo;s vigilance (and, no doubt, to Strefford&rsquo;s tacit
+      co-operation), the dreaded twenty-four hours were happily over. Nelson
+      Vanderlyn had departed without a shadow on his brow, and though Ellie&rsquo;s,
+      when she came down from bidding Nick good-bye, had seemed to Susy less
+      serene than usual, she became her normal self as soon as it was discovered
+      that the red morocco bag with her jewel-box was missing. Before it had
+      been discovered in the depths of the gondola they had reached the station,
+      and there was just time to thrust her into her &ldquo;sleeper,&rdquo; from which she
+      was seen to wave an unperturbed farewell to her friends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, my dear, we&rsquo;ve been it through,&rdquo; Strefford remarked with a deep
+      breath as the St. Moritz express rolled away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; Susy sighed in mute complicity; then, as if to cover her
+      self-betrayal: &ldquo;Poor darling, she does so like what she likes!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;even if it&rsquo;s a rotten bounder,&rdquo; Strefford agreed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A rotten bounder? Why, I thought&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That it was still young Davenant? Lord, no&mdash;not for the last six
+      months. Didn&rsquo;t she tell you&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy felt herself redden. &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t ask her&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ask her? You mean you didn&rsquo;t let her!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t let her. And I don&rsquo;t let you,&rdquo; Susy added sharply, as he helped
+      her into the gondola.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, all right: I daresay you&rsquo;re right. It simplifies things,&rdquo; Strefford
+      placidly acquiesced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She made no answer, and in silence they glided homeward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, in the quiet of her own room, Susy lay and pondered on the distance
+      she had travelled during the last year. Strefford had read her mind with
+      his usual penetration. It was true that there had been a time when she
+      would have thought it perfectly natural that Ellie should tell her
+      everything; that the name of young Davenant&rsquo;s successor should be confided
+      to her as a matter of course. Apparently even Ellie had been obscurely
+      aware of the change, for after a first attempt to force her confidences on
+      Susy she had contented herself with vague expressions of gratitude,
+      allusive smiles and sighs, and the pretty &ldquo;surprise&rdquo; of the sapphire
+      bangle slipped onto her friend&rsquo;s wrist in the act of their farewell
+      embrace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bangle was extremely handsome. Susy, who had an auctioneer&rsquo;s eye for
+      values, knew to a fraction the worth of those deep convex stones
+      alternating with small emeralds and brilliants. She was glad to own the
+      bracelet, and enchanted with the effect it produced on her slim wrist;
+      yet, even while admiring it, and rejoicing that it was hers, she had
+      already transmuted it into specie, and reckoned just how far it would go
+      toward the paying of domestic necessities. For whatever came to her now
+      interested her only as something more to be offered up to Nick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The door opened and Nick came in. Dusk had fallen, and she could not see
+      his face; but something in the jerk of the door-handle roused her
+      ever-wakeful apprehension. She hurried toward him with outstretched wrist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look, dearest&mdash;wasn&rsquo;t it too darling of Ellie?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She pressed the button of the lamp that lit her dressing-table, and her
+      husband&rsquo;s face started unfamiliarly out of the twilight. She slipped off
+      the bracelet and held it up to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I can go you one better,&rdquo; he said with a laugh; and pulling a morocco
+      case from his pocket he flung it down among the scent-bottles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy opened the case automatically, staring at the pearl because she was
+      afraid to look again at Nick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ellie&mdash;gave you this?&rdquo; she asked at length.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. She gave me this.&rdquo; There was a pause. &ldquo;Would you mind telling me,&rdquo;
+       Lansing continued in the same dead-level tone, &ldquo;exactly for what services
+      we&rsquo;ve both been so handsomely paid?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The pearl is beautiful,&rdquo; Susy murmured, to gain time, while her head spun
+      round with unimaginable terrors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So are your sapphires; though, on closer examination, my services would
+      appear to have been valued rather higher than yours. Would you be kind
+      enough to tell me just what they were?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy threw her head back and looked at him. &ldquo;What on earth are you talking
+      about, Nick! Why shouldn&rsquo;t Ellie have given us these things? Do you forget
+      that it&rsquo;s like our giving her a pen-wiper or a button-hook? What is it you
+      are trying to suggest?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It had cost her a considerable effort to hold his eyes while she put the
+      questions. Something had happened between him and Ellie, that was
+      evident&mdash;one of those hideous unforeseeable blunders that may cause one&rsquo;s
+      cleverest plans to crumble at a stroke; and again Susy shuddered at the
+      frailty of her bliss. But her old training stood her in good stead. There
+      had been more than one moment in her past when everything&mdash;somebody else&rsquo;s
+      everything&mdash;had depended on her keeping a cool head and a clear glance. It
+      would have been a wonder if now, when she felt her own everything at
+      stake, she had not been able to put up as good a defence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; she repeated impatiently, as Lansing continued to remain
+      silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s what I&rsquo;m here to ask,&rdquo; he returned, keeping his eyes as steady as
+      she kept hers. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s no reason on earth, as you say, why Ellie
+      shouldn&rsquo;t give us presents&mdash;as expensive presents as she likes; and
+      the pearl is a beauty. All I ask is: for what specific services were they
+      given? For, allowing for all the absence of scruple that marks the
+      intercourse of truly civilized people, you&rsquo;ll probably agree that there
+      are limits; at least up to now there have been limits....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I really don&rsquo;t know what you mean. I suppose Ellie wanted to show that
+      she was grateful to us for looking after Clarissa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But she gave us all this in exchange for that, didn&rsquo;t she?&rdquo; he suggested,
+      with a sweep of the hand around the beautiful shadowy room. &ldquo;A whole
+      summer of it if we choose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy smiled. &ldquo;Apparently she didn&rsquo;t think that enough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a doting mother! It shows the store she sets upon her child.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, don&rsquo;t you set store upon Clarissa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Clarissa is exquisite; but her mother didn&rsquo;t mention her in offering me
+      this recompense.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy lifted her head again. &ldquo;Whom did she mention?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Vanderlyn,&rdquo; said Lansing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Vanderlyn? Nelson?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;and some letters... something about letters.... What is it, my
+      dear, that you and I have been hired to hide from Vanderlyn? Because I
+      should like to know,&rdquo; Nick broke out savagely, &ldquo;if we&rsquo;ve been adequately
+      paid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy was silent: she needed time to reckon up her forces, and study her
+      next move; and her brain was in such a whirl of fear that she could at
+      last only retort: &ldquo;What is it that Ellie said to you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing laughed again. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s just what you&rsquo;d like to find out&mdash;isn&rsquo;t
+      it?&mdash;in order to know the line to take in making your explanation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The sneer had an effect that he could not have foreseen, and that Susy
+      herself had not expected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, don&rsquo;t&mdash;don&rsquo;t let us speak to each other like that!&rdquo; she cried;
+      and sinking down by the dressing-table she hid her face in her hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed to her, now, that nothing mattered except that their love for
+      each other, their faith in each other, should be saved from some
+      unhealable hurt. She was willing to tell Nick everything&mdash;she wanted
+      to tell him everything&mdash;if only she could be sure of reaching a
+      responsive chord in him. But the scene of the cigars came back to her, and
+      benumbed her. If only she could make him see that nothing was of any
+      account as long as they continued to love each other!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His touch fell compassionately on her shoulder. &ldquo;Poor child&mdash;don&rsquo;t,&rdquo;
+       he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Their eyes met, but his expression checked the smile breaking through her
+      tears. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you see,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;that we&rsquo;ve got to have this thing
+      out?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She continued to stare at him through a prism of tears. &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t&mdash;while
+      you stand up like that,&rdquo; she stammered, childishly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had cowered down again into a corner of the lounge; but Lansing did
+      not seat himself at her side. He took a chair facing her, like a caller on
+      the farther side of a stately tea-tray. &ldquo;Will that do?&rdquo; he asked with a
+      stiff smile, as if to humour her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing will do&mdash;as long as you&rsquo;re not you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She shook her head wearily. &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the use? You accept things
+      theoretically&mdash;and then when they happen....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What things? What has happened!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A sudden impatience mastered her. What did he suppose, after all&mdash;?
+      &ldquo;But you know all about Ellie. We used to talk about her often enough in
+      old times,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ellie and young Davenant?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Young Davenant; or the others....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Or the others. But what business was it of ours?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, that&rsquo;s just what I think!&rdquo; she cried, springing up with an explosion
+      of relief. Lansing stood up also, but there was no answering light in his
+      face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We&rsquo;re outside of all that; we&rsquo;ve nothing to do with it, have we?&rdquo; he
+      pursued.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing whatever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then what on earth is the meaning of Ellie&rsquo;s gratitude? Gratitude for
+      what we&rsquo;ve done about some letters&mdash;and about Vanderlyn?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, not you,&rdquo; Susy cried, involuntarily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not I? Then you?&rdquo; He came close and took her by the wrist. &ldquo;Answer me.
+      Have you been mixed up in some dirty business of Ellie&rsquo;s?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a pause. She found it impossible to speak, with that burning
+      grasp on the wrist where the bangle had been. At length he let her go and
+      moved away. &ldquo;Answer,&rdquo; he repeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve told you it was my business and not yours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He received this in silence; then he questioned: &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve been sending
+      letters for her, I suppose? To whom?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, why do you torment me? Nelson was not supposed to know that she&rsquo;d
+      been away. She left me the letters to post to him once a week. I found
+      them here the night we arrived.... It was the price&mdash;for this. Oh,
+      Nick, say it&rsquo;s been worth it&mdash;say at least that it&rsquo;s been worth it!&rdquo; she
+      implored him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood motionless, unresponding. One hand drummed on the corner of her
+      dressing-table, making the jewelled bangle dance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How many letters?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know... four... five... What does it matter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And once a week, for six weeks&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you took it all as a matter of course?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No: I hated it. But what could I do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What could you do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When our being together depended on it? Oh, Nick, how could you think I&rsquo;d
+      give you up?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give me up?&rdquo; he echoed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;doesn&rsquo;t our being together depend on&mdash;on what we can get
+      out of people? And hasn&rsquo;t there always got to be some give-and-take? Did
+      you ever in your life get anything for nothing?&rdquo; she cried with sudden
+      exasperation. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve lived among these people as long as I have; I
+      suppose it&rsquo;s not the first time&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By God, but it is,&rdquo; he exclaimed, flushing. &ldquo;And that&rsquo;s the difference&mdash;the
+      fundamental difference.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The difference!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Between you and me. I&rsquo;ve never in my life done people&rsquo;s dirty work for
+      them&mdash;least of all for favours in return. I suppose you guessed it,
+      or you wouldn&rsquo;t have hidden this beastly business from me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The blood rose to Susy&rsquo;s temples also. Yes, she had guessed it;
+      instinctively, from the day she had first visited him in his bare
+      lodgings, she had been aware of his stricter standard. But how could she
+      tell him that under his influence her standard had become stricter too,
+      and that it was as much to hide her humiliation from herself as to escape
+      his anger that she had held her tongue?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You knew I wouldn&rsquo;t have stayed here another day if I&rsquo;d known,&rdquo; he
+      continued.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes: and then where in the world should we have gone?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean that&mdash;in one way or another&mdash;what you call
+      give-and-take is the price of our remaining together?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;isn&rsquo;t it,&rdquo; she faltered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then we&rsquo;d better part, hadn&rsquo;t we?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke in a low tone, thoughtfully and deliberately, as if this had been
+      the inevitable conclusion to which their passionate argument had led.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy made no answer. For a moment she ceased to be conscious of the causes
+      of what had happened; the thing itself seemed to have smothered her under
+      its ruins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nick wandered away from the dressing-table and stood gazing out of the
+      window at the darkening canal flecked with lights. She looked at his back,
+      and wondered what would happen if she were to go up to him and fling her
+      arms about him. But even if her touch could have broken the spell, she was
+      not sure she would have chosen that way of breaking it. Beneath her
+      speechless anguish there burned the half-conscious sense of having been
+      unfairly treated. When they had entered into their queer compact, Nick had
+      known as well as she on what compromises and concessions the life they
+      were to live together must be based. That he should have forgotten it
+      seemed so unbelievable that she wondered, with a new leap of fear, if he
+      were using the wretched Ellie&rsquo;s indiscretion as a means of escape from a
+      tie already wearied of. Suddenly she raised her head with a laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After all&mdash;you were right when you wanted me to be your mistress.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned on her with an astonished stare. &ldquo;You&mdash;my mistress?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Through all her pain she thrilled with pride at the discovery that such a
+      possibility had long since become unthinkable to him. But she insisted.
+      &ldquo;That day at the Fulmers&rsquo;&mdash;have you forgotten? When you said it would
+      be sheer madness for us to marry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing stood leaning in the embrasure of the window, his eyes fixed on
+      the mosaic volutes of the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was right enough when I said it would be sheer madness for us to
+      marry,&rdquo; he rejoined at length.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She sprang up trembling. &ldquo;Well, that&rsquo;s easily settled. Our compact&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, that compact&mdash;&rdquo; he interrupted her with an impatient laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aren&rsquo;t you asking me to carry it out now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because I said we&rsquo;d better part?&rdquo; He paused. &ldquo;But the compact&mdash;I&rsquo;d
+      almost forgotten it&mdash;was to the effect, wasn&rsquo;t it, that we were to
+      give each other a helping hand if either of us had a better chance? The
+      thing was absurd, of course; a mere joke; from my point of view, at least.
+      I shall never want any better chance... any other chance....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Nick, oh, Nick... but then....&rdquo; She was close to him, his face
+      looming down through her tears; but he put her back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would have been easy enough, wouldn&rsquo;t it,&rdquo; he rejoined, &ldquo;if we&rsquo;d been
+      as detachable as all that? As it is, it&rsquo;s going to hurt horribly. But
+      talking it over won&rsquo;t help. You were right just now when you asked how
+      else we were going to live. We&rsquo;re born parasites, both, I suppose, or we&rsquo;d
+      have found out some way long ago. But I find there are things I might put
+      up with for myself, at a pinch&mdash;and should, probably, in time that I
+      can&rsquo;t let you put up with for me... ever.... Those cigars at Como: do you
+      suppose I didn&rsquo;t know it was for me? And this too? Well, it won&rsquo;t do... it
+      won&rsquo;t do....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stopped, as if his courage failed him; and she moaned out: &ldquo;But your
+      writing&mdash;if your book&rsquo;s a success....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My poor Susy&mdash;that&rsquo;s all part of the humbug. We both know that my
+      sort of writing will never pay. And what&rsquo;s the alternative except more of
+      the same kind of baseness? And getting more and more blunted to it? At
+      least, till now, I&rsquo;ve minded certain things; I don&rsquo;t want to go on till I
+      find myself taking them for granted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She reached out a timid hand. &ldquo;But you needn&rsquo;t ever, dear... if you&rsquo;d only
+      leave it to me....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He drew back sharply. &ldquo;That seems simple to you, I suppose? Well, men are
+      different.&rdquo; He walked toward the dressing-table and glanced at the little
+      enamelled clock which had been one of her wedding-presents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Time to dress, isn&rsquo;t it? Shall you mind if I leave you to dine with
+      Streffy, and whoever else is coming? I&rsquo;d rather like a long tramp, and no
+      more talking just at present except with myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He passed her by and walked rapidly out of the room. Susy stood
+      motionless, unable to lift a detaining hand or to find a final word of
+      appeal. On her disordered dressing-table Mrs. Vanderlyn&rsquo;s gifts glittered
+      in the rosy lamp-light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes: men were different, as he said.
+    </p>
+
+
+<h3>XI.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">But</span> there were necessary accommodations, there always had been; Nick in
+      old times, had been the first to own it.... How they had laughed at the
+      Perpendicular People, the people who went by on the other side (since you
+      couldn&rsquo;t be a good Samaritan without stooping over and poking into heaps
+      of you didn&rsquo;t know what)! And now Nick had suddenly become
+      perpendicular....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy, that evening, at the head of the dinner table, saw&mdash;in the
+      breaks between her scudding thoughts&mdash;the nauseatingly familiar faces
+      of the people she called her friends: Strefford, Fred Gillow, a giggling
+      fool of a young Breckenridge, of their New York group, who had arrived
+      that day, and Prince Nerone Altineri, Ursula&rsquo;s Prince, who, in Ursula&rsquo;s
+      absence at a tiresome cure, had, quite simply and naturally, preferred to
+      join her husband at Venice. Susy looked from one to the other of them, as
+      if with newly-opened eyes, and wondered what life would be like with no
+      faces but such as theirs to furnish it....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ah, Nick had become perpendicular!... After all, most people went through
+      life making a given set of gestures, like dance-steps learned in advance.
+      If your dancing manual told you at a given time to be perpendicular, you
+      had to be, automatically&mdash;and that was Nick!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what on earth, Susy,&rdquo; Gillow&rsquo;s puzzled voice suddenly came to her as
+      from immeasurable distances, &ldquo;Are you going to do in this beastly stifling
+      hole for the rest of the summer?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ask Nick, my dear fellow,&rdquo; Strefford answered for her; and: &ldquo;By the way,
+      where is Nick&mdash;if one may ask?&rdquo; young Breckenridge interposed,
+      glancing up to take belated note of his host&rsquo;s absence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dining out,&rdquo; said Susy glibly. &ldquo;People turned up: blighting bores that I
+      wouldn&rsquo;t have dared to inflict on you.&rdquo; How easily the old familiar
+      fibbing came to her!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The kind to whom you say, &lsquo;Now mind you look me up&rsquo;; and then spend the
+      rest of your life dodging-like our good Hickses,&rdquo; Strefford amplified.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Hickses&mdash;but, of course, Nick was with the Hickses! It went
+      through Susy like a knife, and the dinner she had so lightly fibbed became
+      a hateful truth. She said to herself feverishly: &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll call him up there
+      after dinner&mdash;and then he will feel silly&rdquo;&mdash;but only to remember
+      that the Hickses, in their mediaeval setting, had of course sternly denied
+      themselves a telephone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fact of Nick&rsquo;s temporary inaccessibility&mdash;since she was now
+      convinced that he was really at the Hickses&rsquo;&mdash;turned her distress to
+      a mocking irritation. Ah, that was where he carried his principles, his
+      standards, or whatever he called the new set of rules he had suddenly
+      begun to apply to the old game! It was stupid of her not to have guessed
+      it at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, the Hickses&mdash;Nick adores them, you know. He&rsquo;s going to marry
+      Coral next,&rdquo; she laughed out, flashing the joke around the table with all
+      her practiced flippancy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lord!&rdquo; grasped Gillow, inarticulate: while the Prince displayed the
+      unsurprised smile which Susy accused him of practicing every morning with
+      his Mueller exercises.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly Susy felt Strefford&rsquo;s eyes upon her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the matter with me? Too much rouge?&rdquo; she asked, passing her arm in
+      his as they left the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No: too little. Look at yourself,&rdquo; he answered in a low tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, in these cadaverous old looking-glasses-everybody looks fished up
+      from the canal!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She jerked away from him to spin down the long floor of the sala, hands on
+      hips, whistling a rag-time tune. The Prince and young Breckenridge caught
+      her up, and she spun back with the latter, while Gillow&mdash;it was believed to
+      be his sole accomplishment&mdash;snapped his fingers in simulation of bones, and
+      shuffled after the couple on stamping feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy sank down on a sofa near the window, fanning herself with a floating
+      scarf, and the men foraged for cigarettes, and rang for the gondoliers,
+      who came in with trays of cooling drinks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, what next&mdash;this ain&rsquo;t all, is it?&rdquo; Gillow presently queried,
+      from the divan where he lolled half-asleep with dripping brow. Fred
+      Gillow, like Nature, abhorred a void, and it was inconceivable to him that
+      every hour of man&rsquo;s rational existence should not furnish a motive for
+      getting up and going somewhere else. Young Breckenridge, who took the same
+      view, and the Prince, who earnestly desired to, reminded the company that
+      somebody they knew was giving a dance that night at the Lido.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford vetoed the Lido, on the ground that he&rsquo;d just come back from
+      there, and proposed that they should go out on foot for a change.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not? What fun!&rdquo; Susy was up in an instant. &ldquo;Let&rsquo;s pay somebody a
+      surprise visit&mdash;I don&rsquo;t know who! Streffy, Prince, can&rsquo;t you think of
+      somebody who&rsquo;d be particularly annoyed by our arrival?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, the list&rsquo;s too long. Let&rsquo;s start, and choose our victim on the way,&rdquo;
+       Strefford suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy ran to her room for a light cloak, and without changing her
+      high-heeled satin slippers went out with the four men. There was no moon&mdash;thank
+      heaven there was no moon!&mdash;but the stars hung over them as close as
+      fruit, and secret fragrances dropped on them from garden-walls. Susy&rsquo;s
+      heart tightened with memories of Como.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They wandered on, laughing and dawdling, and yielding to the drifting
+      whims of aimless people. Presently someone proposed taking a nearer look
+      at the facade of San Giorgio Maggiore, and they hailed a gondola and were
+      rowed out through the bobbing lanterns and twanging guitar-strings. When
+      they landed again, Gillow, always acutely bored by scenery, and
+      particularly resentful of midnight aesthetics, suggested a night club near
+      at hand, which was said to be jolly. The Prince warmly supported this
+      proposal; but on Susy&rsquo;s curt refusal they started their rambling again,
+      circuitously threading the vague dark lanes and making for the Piazza and
+      Florian&rsquo;s ices. Suddenly, at a calle-corner, unfamiliar and yet somehow
+      known to her, Susy paused to stare about her with a laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But the Hickses&mdash;surely that&rsquo;s their palace? And the windows all lit
+      up! They must be giving a party! Oh, do let&rsquo;s go up and surprise them!&rdquo;
+       The idea struck her as one of the drollest that she had ever originated,
+      and she wondered that her companions should respond so languidly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t see anything very thrilling in surprising the Hickses,&rdquo; Gillow
+      protested, defrauded of possible excitements; and Strefford added: &ldquo;It
+      would surprise me more than them if I went.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Susy insisted feverishly: &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t know. It may be awfully exciting!
+      I have an idea that Coral&rsquo;s announcing her engagement&mdash;her engagement
+      to Nick! Come, give me a hand, Streff&mdash;and you the other, Fred-&rdquo; she
+      began to hum the first bars of Donna Anna&rsquo;s entrance in Don Giovanni.
+      &ldquo;Pity I haven&rsquo;t got a black cloak and a mask....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, your face will do,&rdquo; said Strefford, laying his hand on her arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She drew back, flushing crimson. Breckenridge and the Prince had sprung on
+      ahead, and Gillow, lumbering after them, was already halfway up the
+      stairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My face? My face? What&rsquo;s the matter with my face? Do you know any reason
+      why I shouldn&rsquo;t go to the Hickses to-night?&rdquo; Susy broke out in sudden
+      wrath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;None whatever; except that if you do it will bore me to death,&rdquo; Strefford
+      returned, with serenity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, in that case&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; come on. I hear those fools banging on the door already.&rdquo; He caught
+      her by the hand, and they started up the stairway. But on the first
+      landing she paused, twisted her hand out of his, and without a word,
+      without a conscious thought, dashed down the long flight, across the great
+      resounding vestibule and out into the darkness of the calle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford caught up with her, and they stood a moment silent in the night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Susy&mdash;what the devil&rsquo;s the matter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The matter? Can&rsquo;t you see? That I&rsquo;m tired, that I&rsquo;ve got a splitting
+      headache&mdash;that you bore me to death, one and all of you!&rdquo; She turned
+      and laid a deprecating hand on his arm. &ldquo;Streffy, old dear, don&rsquo;t mind me:
+      but for God&rsquo;s sake find a gondola and send me home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alone?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was never any concern of Streff&rsquo;s if people wanted to do things he did
+      not understand, and she knew that she could count on his obedience. They
+      walked on in silence to the next canal, and he picked up a passing gondola
+      and put her in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now go and amuse yourself,&rdquo; she called after him, as the boat shot under
+      the nearest bridge. Anything, anything, to be alone, away from the folly
+      and futility that would be all she had left if Nick were to drop out of
+      her life....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But perhaps he has dropped already&mdash;dropped for good,&rdquo; she thought
+      as she set her foot on the Vanderlyn threshold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The short summer night was already growing transparent: a new born breeze
+      stirred the soiled surface of the water and sent it lapping freshly
+      against the old palace doorways. Nearly two o&rsquo;clock! Nick had no doubt
+      come back long ago. Susy hurried up the stairs, reassured by the mere
+      thought of his nearness. She knew that when their eyes and their lips met
+      it would be impossible for anything to keep them apart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gondolier dozing on the landing roused himself to receive her, and to
+      proffer two envelopes. The upper one was a telegram for Strefford: she
+      threw it down again and paused under the lantern hanging from the painted
+      vault, the other envelope in her hand. The address it bore was in Nick&rsquo;s
+      writing. &ldquo;When did the signore leave this for me? Has he gone out again?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gone out again? But the signore had not come in since dinner: of that the
+      gondolier was positive, as he had been on duty all the evening. A boy had
+      brought the letter&mdash;an unknown boy: he had left it without waiting.
+      It must have been about half an hour after the signora had herself gone
+      out with her guests.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy, hardly hearing him, fled on to her own room, and there, beside the
+      very lamp which, two months before, had illuminated Ellie Vanderlyn&rsquo;s
+      fatal letter, she opened Nick&rsquo;s.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t think me hard on you, dear; but I&rsquo;ve got to work this thing out by
+      myself. The sooner the better&mdash;don&rsquo;t you agree? So I&rsquo;m taking the express
+      to Milan presently. You&rsquo;ll get a proper letter in a day or two. I wish I
+      could think, now, of something to say that would show you I&rsquo;m not a brute&mdash;but
+      I can&rsquo;t. N. L.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was not much of the night left in which to sleep, even had a
+      semblance of sleep been achievable. The letter fell from Susy&rsquo;s hands, and
+      she crept out onto the balcony and cowered there, her forehead pressed
+      against the balustrade, the dawn wind stirring in her thin laces. Through
+      her closed eyelids and the tightly-clenched fingers pressed against them,
+      she felt the penetration of the growing light, the relentless advance of
+      another day&mdash;a day without purpose and without meaning&mdash;a day
+      without Nick. At length she dropped her hands, and staring from dry lids
+      saw a rim of fire above the roofs across the Grand Canal. She sprang up,
+      ran back into her room, and dragging the heavy curtains shut across the
+      windows, stumbled over in the darkness to the lounge and fell among its
+      pillows-face downward&mdash;groping, delving for a deeper night....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She started up, stiff and aching, to see a golden wedge of sun on the
+      floor at her feet. She had slept, then&mdash;was it possible?&mdash;it
+      must be eight or nine o&rsquo;clock already! She had slept&mdash;slept like a
+      drunkard&mdash;with that letter on the table at her elbow! Ah, now she
+      remembered&mdash;she had dreamed that the letter was a dream! But there,
+      inexorably, it lay; and she picked it up, and slowly, painfully re-read
+      it. Then she tore it into shreds hunted for a match, and kneeling before
+      the empty hearth, as though she were accomplishing some funeral rite, she
+      burnt every shred of it to ashes. Nick would thank her for that some day!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After a bath and a hurried toilet she began to be aware of feeling younger
+      and more hopeful. After all, Nick had merely said that he was going away
+      for &ldquo;a day or two.&rdquo; And the letter was not cruel: there were tender things
+      in it, showing through the curt words. She smiled at herself a little
+      stiffly in the glass, put a dash of red on her colourless lips, and rang
+      for the maid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Coffee, Giovanna, please; and will you tell Mr. Strefford that I should
+      like to see him presently.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      If Nick really kept to his intention of staying away for a few days she
+      must trump up some explanation of his absence; but her mind refused to
+      work, and the only thing she could think of was to take Strefford into her
+      confidence. She knew that he could be trusted in a real difficulty; his
+      impish malice transformed itself into a resourceful ingenuity when his
+      friends required it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The maid stood looking at her with a puzzled gaze, and Susy somewhat
+      sharply repeated her order. &ldquo;But don&rsquo;t wake him on purpose,&rdquo; she added,
+      foreseeing the probable effect on Strefford&rsquo;s temper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, signora, the gentleman is already out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Already out?&rdquo; Strefford, who could hardly be routed from his bed before
+      luncheon-time! &ldquo;Is it so late?&rdquo; Susy cried, incredulous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After nine. And the gentleman took the eight o&rsquo;clock train for England.
+      Gervaso said he had received a telegram. He left word that he would write
+      to the signora.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The door closed upon the maid, and Susy continued to gaze at her painted
+      image in the glass, as if she had been trying to outstare an importunate
+      stranger. There was no one left for her to take counsel of, then&mdash;no
+      one but poor Fred Gillow! She made a grimace at the idea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But what on earth could have summoned Strefford back to England?
+    </p>
+
+
+<h3>XII.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">Nick Lansing</span>, in the Milan express, was roused by the same bar of sunshine
+      lying across his knees. He yawned, looked with disgust at his stolidly
+      sleeping neighbours, and wondered why he had decided to go to Milan, and
+      what on earth he should do when he got there. The difficulty about
+      trenchant decisions was that the next morning they generally left one
+      facing a void....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the train drew into the station at Milan, he scrambled out, got some
+      coffee, and having drunk it decided to continue his journey to Genoa. The
+      state of being carried passively onward postponed action and dulled
+      thought; and after twelve hours of furious mental activity that was
+      exactly what he wanted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He fell into a doze again, waking now and then to haggard intervals of
+      more thinking, and then dropping off to the clank and rattle of the train.
+      Inside his head, in his waking intervals, the same clanking and grinding
+      of wheels and chains went on unremittingly. He had done all his lucid
+      thinking within an hour of leaving the Palazzo Vanderlyn the night before;
+      since then, his brain had simply continued to revolve indefatigably about
+      the same old problem. His cup of coffee, instead of clearing his thoughts,
+      had merely accelerated their pace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At Genoa he wandered about in the hot streets, bought a cheap suit-case
+      and some underclothes, and then went down to the port in search of a
+      little hotel he remembered there. An hour later he was sitting in the
+      coffee-room, smoking and glancing vacantly over the papers while he waited
+      for dinner, when he became aware of being timidly but intently examined by
+      a small round-faced gentleman with eyeglasses who sat alone at the
+      adjoining table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hullo&mdash;Buttles!&rdquo; Lansing exclaimed, recognising with surprise the
+      recalcitrant secretary who had resisted Miss Hicks&rsquo;s endeavour to convert
+      him to Tiepolo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Buttles, blushing to the roots of his scant hair, half rose and bowed
+      ceremoniously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nick Lansing&rsquo;s first feeling was of annoyance at being disturbed in his
+      solitary broodings; his next, of relief at having to postpone them even to
+      converse with Mr. Buttles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No idea you were here: is the yacht in harbour?&rdquo; he asked, remembering
+      that the Ibis must be just about to spread her wings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Buttles, at salute behind his chair, signed a mute negation: for the
+      moment he seemed too embarrassed to speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah&mdash;you&rsquo;re here as an advance guard? I remember now&mdash;I saw Miss
+      Hicks in Venice the day before yesterday,&rdquo; Lansing continued, dazed at the
+      thought that hardly forty-eight hours had passed since his encounter with
+      Coral in the Scalzi.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Buttles, instead of speaking, had tentatively approached his table.
+      &ldquo;May I take this seat for a moment, Mr. Lansing? Thank you. No, I am not
+      here as an advance guard&mdash;though I believe the Ibis is due some time
+      to-morrow.&rdquo; He cleared his throat, wiped his eyeglasses on a silk
+      handkerchief, replaced them on his nose, and went on solemnly: &ldquo;Perhaps,
+      to clear up any possible misunderstanding, I ought to say that I am no
+      longer in the employ of Mr. Hicks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing glanced at him sympathetically. It was clear that he suffered
+      horribly in imparting this information, though his compact face did not
+      lend itself to any dramatic display of emotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Really,&rdquo; Nick smiled, and then ventured: &ldquo;I hope it&rsquo;s not owing to
+      conscientious objections to Tiepolo?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Buttles&rsquo;s blush became a smouldering agony. &ldquo;Ah, Miss Hicks mentioned
+      to you... told you...? No, Mr. Lansing. I am principled against the effete
+      art of Tiepolo, and of all his contemporaries, I confess; but if Miss
+      Hicks chooses to surrender herself momentarily to the unwholesome spell of
+      the Italian decadence it is not for me to protest or to criticize. Her
+      intellectual and aesthetic range so far exceeds my humble capacity that it
+      would be ridiculous, unbecoming....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He broke off, and once more wiped a faint moisture from his eyeglasses. It
+      was evident that he was suffering from a distress which he longed and yet
+      dreaded to communicate. But Nick made no farther effort to bridge the gulf
+      of his own preoccupations; and Mr. Buttles, after an expectant pause, went
+      on: &ldquo;If you see me here to-day it is only because, after a somewhat abrupt
+      departure, I find myself unable to take leave of our friends without a
+      last look at the Ibis&mdash;the scene of so many stimulating hours. But I
+      must beg you,&rdquo; he added earnestly, &ldquo;should you see Miss Hicks&mdash;or any
+      other member of the party&mdash;to make no allusion to my presence in
+      Genoa. I wish,&rdquo; said Mr. Buttles with simplicity, &ldquo;to preserve the
+      strictest incognito.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing glanced at him kindly. &ldquo;Oh, but&mdash;isn&rsquo;t that a little
+      unfriendly?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No other course is possible, Mr. Lansing,&rdquo; said the ex-secretary, &ldquo;and I
+      commit myself to your discretion. The truth is, if I am here it is not to
+      look once more at the Ibis, but at Miss Hicks: once only. You will
+      understand me, and appreciate what I am suffering.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He bowed again, and trotted away on his small, tightly-booted feet;
+      pausing on the threshold to say: &ldquo;From the first it was hopeless,&rdquo; before
+      he disappeared through the glass doors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A gleam of commiseration flashed through Nick&rsquo;s mind: there was something
+      quaintly poignant in the sight of the brisk and efficient Mr. Buttles
+      reduced to a limp image of unrequited passion. And what a painful surprise
+      to the Hickses to be thus suddenly deprived of the secretary who possessed
+      &ldquo;the foreign languages&rdquo;! Mr. Beck kept the accounts and settled with the
+      hotel-keepers; but it was Mr. Buttles&rsquo;s loftier task to entertain in their
+      own tongues the unknown geniuses who flocked about the Hickses, and Nick
+      could imagine how disconcerting his departure must be on the eve of their
+      Grecian cruise which Mrs. Hicks would certainly call an Odyssey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next moment the vision of Coral&rsquo;s hopeless suitor had faded, and Nick
+      was once more spinning around on the wheel of his own woes. The night
+      before, when he had sent his note to Susy, from a little restaurant close
+      to Palazzo Vanderlyn that they often patronized, he had done so with the
+      firm intention of going away for a day or two in order to collect his wits
+      and think over the situation. But after his letter had been entrusted to
+      the landlord&rsquo;s little son, who was a particular friend of Susy&rsquo;s, Nick had
+      decided to await the lad&rsquo;s return. The messenger had not been bidden to
+      ask for an answer; but Nick, knowing the friendly and inquisitive Italian
+      mind, was almost sure that the boy, in the hope of catching a glimpse of
+      Susy, would linger about while the letter was carried up. And he pictured
+      the maid knocking at his wife&rsquo;s darkened room, and Susy dashing some
+      powder on her tear-stained face before she turned on the light&mdash;poor
+      foolish child!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The boy had returned rather sooner than Nick expected, and he had brought
+      no answer, but merely the statement that the signora was out: that
+      everybody was out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Everybody?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The signora and the four gentlemen who were dining at the palace. They
+      all went out together on foot soon after dinner. There was no one to whom
+      I could give the note but the gondolier on the landing, for the signora
+      had said she would be very late, and had sent the maid to bed; and the
+      maid had, of course, gone out immediately with her innamorato.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah&mdash;&rdquo; said Nick, slipping his reward into the boy&rsquo;s hand, and
+      walking out of the restaurant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy had gone out&mdash;gone out with their usual band, as she did every
+      night in these sultry summer weeks, gone out after her talk with Nick, as
+      if nothing had happened, as if his whole world and hers had not crashed in
+      ruins at their feet. Ah, poor Susy! After all, she had merely obeyed the
+      instinct of self preservation, the old hard habit of keeping up, going
+      ahead and hiding her troubles; unless indeed the habit had already
+      engendered indifference, and it had become as easy for her as for most of
+      her friends to pass from drama to dancing, from sorrow to the cinema. What
+      of soul was left, he wondered&mdash;?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His train did not start till midnight, and after leaving the restaurant
+      Nick tramped the sultry by-ways till his tired legs brought him to a
+      standstill under the vine-covered pergola of a gondolier&rsquo;s wine-shop at a
+      landing close to the Piazzetta. There he could absorb cooling drinks until
+      it was time to go to the station.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was after eleven, and he was beginning to look about for a boat, when a
+      black prow pushed up to the steps, and with much chaff and laughter a
+      party of young people in evening dress jumped out. Nick, from under the
+      darkness of the vine, saw that there was only one lady among them, and it
+      did not need the lamp above the landing to reveal her identity. Susy,
+      bareheaded and laughing, a light scarf slipping from her bare shoulders, a
+      cigarette between her fingers, took Strefford&rsquo;s arm and turned in the
+      direction of Florian&rsquo;s, with Gillow, the Prince and young Breckenridge in
+      her wake....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nick had relived this rapid scene hundreds of times during his hours in
+      the train and his aimless trampings through the streets of Genoa. In that
+      squirrel-wheel of a world of his and Susy&rsquo;s you had to keep going or drop
+      out&mdash;and Susy, it was evident, had chosen to keep going. Under the
+      lamp-flare on the landing he had had a good look at her face, and had seen
+      that the mask of paint and powder was carefully enough adjusted to hide
+      any ravages the scene between them might have left. He even fancied that
+      she had dropped a little atropine into her eyes....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no time to spare if he meant to catch the midnight train, and no
+      gondola in sight but that which his wife had just left. He sprang into it,
+      and bade the gondolier carry him to the station. The cushions, as he
+      leaned back, gave out a breath of her scent; and in the glare of electric
+      light at the station he saw at his feet a rose which had fallen from her
+      dress. He ground his heel into it as he got out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There it was, then; that was the last picture he was to have of her. For
+      he knew now that he was not going back; at least not to take up their life
+      together. He supposed he should have to see her once, to talk things over,
+      settle something for their future. He had been sincere in saying that he
+      bore her no ill-will; only he could never go back into that slough again.
+      If he did, he knew he would inevitably be drawn under, slipping downward
+      from concession to concession....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The noises of a hot summer night in the port of Genoa would have kept the
+      most care-free from slumber; but though Nick lay awake he did not notice
+      them, for the tumult in his brain was more deafening. Dawn brought a
+      negative relief, and out of sheer weariness he dropped into a heavy sleep.
+      When he woke it was nearly noon, and from his window he saw the well-known
+      outline of the Ibis standing up dark against the glitter of the harbour.
+      He had no fear of meeting her owners, who had doubtless long since landed
+      and betaken themselves to cooler and more fashionable regions: oddly
+      enough, the fact seemed to accentuate his loneliness, his sense of having
+      no one on earth to turn to. He dressed, and wandered out disconsolately to
+      pick up a cup of coffee in some shady corner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he drank his coffee his thoughts gradually cleared. It became obvious
+      to him that he had behaved like a madman or a petulant child&mdash;he
+      preferred to think it was like a madman. If he and Susy were to separate
+      there was no reason why it should not be done decently and quietly, as
+      such transactions were habitually managed among people of their kind. It
+      seemed grotesque to introduce melodrama into their little world of
+      unruffled Sybarites, and he felt inclined, now, to smile at the
+      incongruity of his gesture.... But suddenly his eyes filled with tears.
+      The future without Susy was unbearable, inconceivable. Why, after all,
+      should they separate? At the question, her soft face seemed close to his,
+      and that slight lift of the upper lip that made her smile so exquisite.
+      Well&mdash;he would go back. But not with any presence of going to talk things
+      over, come to an agreement, wind up their joint life like a business
+      association. No&mdash;if he went back he would go without conditions, for
+      good, forever....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Only, what about the future? What about the not far-distant day when the
+      wedding cheques would have been spent, and Granny&rsquo;s pearls sold, and
+      nothing left except unconcealed and unconditional dependence on rich
+      friends, the role of the acknowledged hangers-on? Was there no other
+      possible solution, no new way of ordering their lives? No&mdash;there was
+      none: he could not picture Susy out of her setting of luxury and leisure,
+      could not picture either of them living such a life as the Nat Fulmers,
+      for instance! He remembered the shabby untidy bungalow in New Hampshire,
+      the slatternly servants, uneatable food and ubiquitous children. How could
+      he ask Susy to share such a life with him? If he did, she would probably
+      have the sense to refuse. Their alliance had been based on a moment&rsquo;s
+      midsummer madness; now the score must be paid....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He decided to write. If they were to part he could not trust himself to
+      see her. He called a waiter, asked for pen and paper, and pushed aside a
+      pile of unread newspapers on the corner of the table where his coffee had
+      been served. As he did so, his eye lit on a Daily Mail of two days before.
+      As a pretext for postponing his letter, he took up the paper and glanced
+      down the first page. He read:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tragic Yachting Accident in the Solent. The Earl of Altringham and his
+      son Viscount d&rsquo;Amblay drowned in midnight collision. Both bodies
+      recovered.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He read on. He grasped the fact that the disaster had happened the night
+      before he had left Venice and that, as the result of a fog in the Solent,
+      their old friend Strefford was now Earl of Altringham, and possessor of
+      one of the largest private fortunes in England. It was vertiginous to
+      think of their old impecunious Streff as the hero of such an adventure.
+      And what irony in that double turn of the wheel which, in one day, had
+      plunged him, Nick Lansing, into nethermost misery, while it tossed the
+      other to the stars!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With an intenser precision he saw again Susy&rsquo;s descent from the gondola at
+      the calle steps, the sound of her laughter and of Strefford&rsquo;s chaff, the
+      way she had caught his arm and clung to it, sweeping the other men on in
+      her train. Strefford&mdash;Susy and Strefford!... More than once, Nick had
+      noticed the softer inflections of his friend&rsquo;s voice when he spoke to
+      Susy, the brooding look in his lazy eyes when they rested on her. In the
+      security of his wedded bliss Nick had made light of those signs. The only
+      real jealousy he had felt had been of Fred Gillow, because of his
+      unlimited power to satisfy a woman&rsquo;s whims. Yet Nick knew that such
+      material advantages would never again suffice for Susy. With Strefford it
+      was different. She had delighted in his society while he was notoriously
+      ineligible; might not she find him irresistible now?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The forgotten terms of their bridal compact came back to Nick: the absurd
+      agreement on which he and Susy had solemnly pledged their faith. But was
+      it so absurd, after all? It had been Susy&rsquo;s suggestion (not his, thank
+      God!); and perhaps in making it she had been more serious than he
+      imagined. Perhaps, even if their rupture had not occurred, Strefford&rsquo;s
+      sudden honours might have caused her to ask for her freedom....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Money, luxury, fashion, pleasure: those were the four cornerstones of her
+      existence. He had always known it&mdash;she herself had always
+      acknowledged it, even in their last dreadful talk together; and once he
+      had gloried in her frankness. How could he ever have imagined that, to
+      have her fill of these things, she would not in time stoop lower than she
+      had yet stooped? Perhaps in giving her up to Strefford he might be saving
+      her. At any rate, the taste of the past was now so bitter to him that he
+      was moved to thank whatever gods there were for pushing that mortuary
+      paragraph under his eye....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Susy, dear [he wrote], the fates seem to have taken our future in hand,
+      and spared us the trouble of unravelling it. If I have sometimes been
+      selfish enough to forget the conditions on which you agreed to marry me,
+      they have come back to me during these two days of solitude. You&rsquo;ve given
+      me the best a man can have, and nothing else will ever be worth much to
+      me. But since I haven&rsquo;t the ability to provide you with what you want, I
+      recognize that I&rsquo;ve no right to stand in your way. We must owe no more
+      Venetian palaces to underhand services. I see by the newspapers that
+      Streff can now give you as many palaces as you want. Let him have the
+      chance&mdash;I fancy he&rsquo;ll jump at it, and he&rsquo;s the best man in sight. I
+      wish I were in his shoes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll write again in a day or two, when I&rsquo;ve collected my wits, and can
+      give you an address. NICK.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He added a line on the subject of their modest funds, put the letter into
+      an envelope, and addressed it to Mrs. Nicholas Lansing. As he did so, he
+      reflected that it was the first time he had ever written his wife&rsquo;s
+      married name.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;by God, no other woman shall have it after her,&rdquo; he vowed, as
+      he groped in his pocketbook for a stamp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood up with a stretch of weariness&mdash;the heat was stifling!&mdash;and
+      put the letter in his pocket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll post it myself, it&rsquo;s safer,&rdquo; he thought; &ldquo;and then what in the name
+      of goodness shall I do next, I wonder?&rdquo; He jammed his hat down on his head
+      and walked out into the sun-blaze.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he was turning away from the square by the general Post Office, a white
+      parasol waved from a passing cab, and Coral Hicks leaned forward with
+      outstretched hand. &ldquo;I knew I&rsquo;d find you,&rdquo; she triumphed. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been
+      driving up and down in this broiling sun for hours, shopping and watching
+      for you at the same time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stared at her blankly, too bewildered even to wonder how she knew he
+      was in Genoa; and she continued, with the kind of shy imperiousness that
+      always made him feel, in her presence, like a member of an orchestra under
+      a masterful baton; &ldquo;Now please get right into this carriage, and don&rsquo;t
+      keep me roasting here another minute.&rdquo; To the cabdriver she called out:
+      &ldquo;Al porto.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nick Lansing sank down beside her. As he did so he noticed a heap of
+      bundles at her feet, and felt that he had simply added one more to the
+      number. He supposed that she was taking her spoils to the Ibis, and that
+      he would be carried up to the deck-house to be displayed with the others.
+      Well, it would all help to pass the day&mdash;and by night he would have
+      reached some kind of a decision about his future.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the third day after Nick&rsquo;s departure the post brought to the Palazzo
+      Vanderlyn three letters for Mrs. Lansing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first to arrive was a word from Strefford, scribbled in the train and
+      posted at Turin. In it he briefly said that he had been called home by the
+      dreadful accident of which Susy had probably read in the daily papers. He
+      added that he would write again from England, and then&mdash;in a blotted
+      postscript&mdash;: &ldquo;I wanted uncommonly badly to see you for good-bye, but
+      the hour was impossible. Regards to Nick. Do write me just a word to
+      Altringham.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The other two letters, which came together in the afternoon, were both
+      from Genoa. Susy scanned the addresses and fell upon the one in her
+      husband&rsquo;s writing. Her hand trembled so much that for a moment she could
+      not open the envelope. When she had done so, she devoured the letter in a
+      flash, and then sat and brooded over the outspread page as it lay on her
+      knee. It might mean so many things&mdash;she could read into it so many
+      harrowing alternatives of indifference and despair, of irony and
+      tenderness! Was he suffering tortures when he wrote it, or seeking only to
+      inflict them upon her? Or did the words represent his actual feelings, no
+      more and no less, and did he really intend her to understand that he
+      considered it his duty to abide by the letter of their preposterous
+      compact? He had left her in wrath and indignation, yet, as a closer
+      scrutiny revealed, there was not a word of reproach in his brief lines.
+      Perhaps that was why, in the last issue, they seemed so cold to her....
+      She shivered and turned to the other envelope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The large stilted characters, though half-familiar, called up no definite
+      image. She opened the envelope and discovered a post-card of the Ibis,
+      canvas spread, bounding over a rippled sea. On the back was written:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So awfully dear of you to lend us Mr. Lansing for a little cruise. You
+      may count on our taking the best of care of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;CORAL&rdquo; <a name="link2H_PART2" id="link2H_PART2">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PART II
+    </h2>
+
+    <h3>
+      XIII.
+    </h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">When</span> Violet Melrose had said to Susy Branch, the winter before in New
+      York: &ldquo;But why on earth don&rsquo;t you and Nick go to my little place at
+      Versailles for the honeymoon? I&rsquo;m off to China, and you could have it to
+      yourselves all summer,&rdquo; the offer had been tempting enough to make the
+      lovers waver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was such an artless ingenuous little house, so full of the demoralizing
+      simplicity of great wealth, that it seemed to Susy just the kind of place
+      in which to take the first steps in renunciation. But Nick had objected
+      that Paris, at that time of year, would be swarming with acquaintances who
+      would hunt them down at all hours; and Susy&rsquo;s own experience had led her
+      to remark that there was nothing the very rich enjoyed more than taking
+      pot-luck with the very poor. They therefore gave Strefford&rsquo;s villa the
+      preference, with an inward proviso (on Susy&rsquo;s part) that Violet&rsquo;s house
+      might very conveniently serve their purpose at another season.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These thoughts were in her mind as she drove up to Mrs. Melrose&rsquo;s door on
+      a rainy afternoon late in August, her boxes piled high on the roof of the
+      cab she had taken at the station. She had travelled straight through from
+      Venice, stopping in Milan just long enough to pick up a reply to the
+      telegram she had despatched to the perfect housekeeper whose permanent
+      presence enabled Mrs. Melrose to say: &ldquo;Oh, when I&rsquo;m sick of everything I
+      just rush off without warning to my little shanty at Versailles, and live
+      there all alone on scrambled eggs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The perfect house-keeper had replied to Susy&rsquo;s enquiry: &ldquo;Am sure Mrs.
+      Melrose most happy&rdquo;; and Susy, without further thought, had jumped into a
+      Versailles train, and now stood in the thin rain before the sphinx-guarded
+      threshold of the pavilion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The revolving year had brought around the season at which Mrs. Melrose&rsquo;s
+      house might be convenient: no visitors were to be feared at Versailles at
+      the end of August, and though Susy&rsquo;s reasons for seeking solitude were so
+      remote from those she had once prefigured, they were none the less cogent.
+      To be alone&mdash;alone! After those first exposed days when, in the
+      persistent presence of Fred Gillow and his satellites, and in the mocking
+      radiance of late summer on the lagoons, she had fumed and turned about in
+      her agony like a trapped animal in a cramping cage, to be alone had seemed
+      the only respite, the one craving: to be alone somewhere in a setting as
+      unlike as possible to the sensual splendours of Venice, under skies as
+      unlike its azure roof. If she could have chosen she would have crawled
+      away into a dingy inn in a rainy northern town, where she had never been
+      and no one knew her. Failing that unobtainable luxury, here she was on the
+      threshold of an empty house, in a deserted place, under lowering skies.
+      She had shaken off Fred Gillow, sulkily departing for his moor (where she
+      had half-promised to join him in September); the Prince, young
+      Breckenridge, and the few remaining survivors of the Venetian group, had
+      dispersed in the direction of the Engadine or Biarritz; and now she could
+      at least collect her wits, take stock of herself, and prepare the
+      countenance with which she was to face the next stage in her career. Thank
+      God it was raining at Versailles!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The door opened, she heard voices in the drawing-room, and a slender
+      languishing figure appeared on the threshold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Darling!&rdquo; Violet Melrose cried in an embrace, drawing her into the dusky
+      perfumed room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I thought you were in China!&rdquo; Susy stammered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In China... in China,&rdquo; Mrs. Melrose stared with dreamy eyes, and Susy
+      remembered her drifting disorganised life, a life more planless, more
+      inexplicable than that of any of the other ephemeral beings blown about
+      upon the same winds of pleasure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Madam, I thought so myself till I got a wire from Mrs. Melrose last
+      evening,&rdquo; remarked the perfect house-keeper, following with Susy&rsquo;s
+      handbag.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Melrose clutched her cavernous temples in her attenuated hands. &ldquo;Of
+      course, of course! I had meant to go to China&mdash;no, India.... But I&rsquo;ve
+      discovered a genius... and Genius, you know....&rdquo; Unable to complete her
+      thought, she sank down upon a pillowy divan, stretched out an arm, cried:
+      &ldquo;Fulmer! Fulmer!&rdquo; and, while Susy Lansing stood in the middle of the room
+      with widening eyes, a man emerged from the more deeply cushioned and
+      scented twilight of some inner apartment, and she saw with surprise Nat
+      Fulmer, the good Nat Fulmer of the New Hampshire bungalow and the
+      ubiquitous progeny, standing before her in lordly ease, his hands in his
+      pockets, a cigarette between his lips, his feet solidly planted in the
+      insidious depths of one of Violet Melrose&rsquo;s white leopard skins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Susy!&rdquo; he shouted with open arms; and Mrs. Melrose murmured: &ldquo;You didn&rsquo;t
+      know, then? You hadn&rsquo;t heard of his masterpieces?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In spite of herself, Susy burst into a laugh. &ldquo;Is Nat your genius?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Melrose looked at her reproachfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fulmer laughed. &ldquo;No; I&rsquo;m Grace&rsquo;s. But Mrs. Melrose has been our
+      Providence, and....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Providence?&rdquo; his hostess interrupted. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t talk as if you were at a
+      prayer-meeting! He had an exhibition in New York... it was the most
+      fabulous success. He&rsquo;s come abroad to make studies for the decoration of
+      my music-room in New York. Ursula Gillow has given him her garden-house at
+      Roslyn to do. And Mrs. Bockheimer&rsquo;s ball-room&mdash;oh, Fulmer, where are
+      the cartoons?&rdquo; She sprang up, tossed about some fashion-papers heaped on a
+      lacquer table, and sank back exhausted by the effort. &ldquo;I&rsquo;d got as far as
+      Brindisi. I&rsquo;ve travelled day and night to be here to meet him,&rdquo; she
+      declared. &ldquo;But, you darling,&rdquo; and she held out a caressing hand to Susy,
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m forgetting to ask if you&rsquo;ve had tea?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      An hour later, over the tea-table, Susy already felt herself mysteriously
+      reabsorbed into what had so long been her native element. Ellie Vanderlyn
+      had brought a breath of it to Venice; but Susy was then nourished on
+      another air, the air of Nick&rsquo;s presence and personality; now that she was
+      abandoned, left again to her own devices, she felt herself suddenly at the
+      mercy of the influences from which she thought she had escaped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the queer social whirligig from which she had so lately fled, it seemed
+      natural enough that a shake of the box should have tossed Nat Fulmer into
+      celebrity, and sent Violet Melrose chasing back from the ends of the earth
+      to bask in his success. Susy knew that Mrs. Melrose belonged to the class
+      of moral parasites; for in that strange world the parts were sometimes
+      reversed, and the wealthy preyed upon the pauper. Wherever there was a
+      reputation to batten on, there poor Violet appeared, a harmless vampire in
+      pearls who sought only to feed on the notoriety which all her millions
+      could not create for her. Any one less versed than Susy in the shallow
+      mysteries of her little world would have seen in Violet Melrose a baleful
+      enchantress, in Nat Fulmer her helpless victim. Susy knew better. Violet,
+      poor Violet, was not even that. The insignificant Ellie Vanderlyn, with
+      her brief trivial passions, her artless mixture of amorous and social
+      interests, was a woman with a purpose, a creature who fulfilled herself;
+      but Violet was only a drifting interrogation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And what of Fulmer? Mustering with new eyes his short sturdily-built
+      figure, his nondescript bearded face, and the eyes that dreamed and
+      wandered, and then suddenly sank into you like claws, Susy seemed to have
+      found the key to all his years of dogged toil, his indifference to
+      neglect, indifference to poverty, indifference to the needs of his growing
+      family.... Yes: for the first time she saw that he looked commonplace
+      enough to be a genius&mdash;was a genius, perhaps, even though it was
+      Violet Melrose who affirmed it! Susy looked steadily at Fulmer, their eyes
+      met, and he smiled at her faintly through his beard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I did discover him&mdash;I did,&rdquo; Mrs. Melrose was insisting, from
+      the depths of the black velvet divan in which she lay sunk like a wan
+      Nereid in a midnight sea. &ldquo;You mustn&rsquo;t believe a word that Ursula Gillow
+      tells you about having pounced on his &lsquo;Spring Snow Storm&rsquo; in a dark corner
+      of the American Artists&rsquo; exhibition&mdash;skied, if you please! They skied
+      him less than a year ago! And naturally Ursula never in her life looked
+      higher than the first line at a picture-show. And now she actually
+      pretends... oh, for pity&rsquo;s sake don&rsquo;t say it doesn&rsquo;t matter, Fulmer! Your
+      saying that just encourages her, and makes people think she did. When, in
+      reality, any one who saw me at the exhibition on varnishing-day.... Who?
+      Well, Eddy Breckenridge, for instance. He was in Egypt, you say? Perhaps
+      he was! As if one could remember the people about one, when suddenly one
+      comes upon a great work of art, as St. Paul did&mdash;didn&rsquo;t he?&mdash;and
+      the scales fell from his eyes. Well... that&rsquo;s exactly what happened to me
+      that day... and Ursula, everybody knows, was down at Roslyn at the time,
+      and didn&rsquo;t come up for the opening of the exhibition at all. And Fulmer
+      sits there and laughs, and says it doesn&rsquo;t matter, and that he&rsquo;ll paint
+      another picture any day for me to discover!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy had rung the door-bell with a hand trembling with eagerness&mdash;eagerness
+      to be alone, to be quiet, to stare her situation in the face, and collect
+      herself before she came out again among her kind. She had stood on the
+      door-step, cowering among her bags, counting the instants till a step
+      sounded and the door-knob turned, letting her in from the searching glare
+      of the outer world.... And now she had sat for an hour in Violet&rsquo;s
+      drawing-room, in the very house where her honey-moon might have been
+      spent; and no one had asked her where she had come from, or why she was
+      alone, or what was the key to the tragedy written on her shrinking
+      face....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That was the way of the world they lived in. Nobody questioned, nobody
+      wondered any more&mdash;because nobody had time to remember. The old risk of
+      prying curiosity, of malicious gossip, was virtually over: one was left
+      with one&rsquo;s drama, one&rsquo;s disaster, on one&rsquo;s hands, because there was nobody
+      to stop and notice the little shrouded object one was carrying. As Susy
+      watched the two people before her, each so frankly unaffected by her
+      presence, Violet Melrose so engrossed in her feverish pursuit of
+      notoriety, Fulmer so plunged in the golden sea of his success, she felt
+      like a ghost making inaudible and imperceptible appeals to the grosser
+      senses of the living.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I wanted to be alone,&rdquo; she thought, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m alone enough, in all
+      conscience.&rdquo; There was a deathly chill in such security. She turned to
+      Fulmer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Grace?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He beamed back without sign of embarrassment. &ldquo;Oh, she&rsquo;s here, naturally&mdash;we&rsquo;re
+      in Paris, kids and all. In a pension, where we can polish up the lingo.
+      But I hardly ever lay eyes on her, because she&rsquo;s as deep in music as I am
+      in paint; it was as big a chance for her as for me, you see, and she&rsquo;s
+      making the most of it, fiddling and listening to the fiddlers. Well, it&rsquo;s
+      a considerable change from New Hampshire.&rdquo; He looked at her dreamily, as
+      if making an intense effort to detach himself from his dream, and situate
+      her in the fading past. &ldquo;Remember the bungalow? And Nick&mdash;ah, how&rsquo;s
+      Nick?&rdquo; he brought out triumphantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes&mdash;darling Nick?&rdquo; Mrs. Melrose chimed in; and Susy, her head
+      erect, her cheeks aflame, declared with resonance: &ldquo;Most awfully well&mdash;splendidly!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s not here, though?&rdquo; from Fulmer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. He&rsquo;s off travelling&mdash;cruising.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Melrose&rsquo;s attention was faintly roused. &ldquo;With anybody interesting?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; you wouldn&rsquo;t know them. People we met....&rdquo; She did not have to
+      continue, for her hostess&rsquo;s gaze had again strayed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you&rsquo;ve come for your clothes, I suppose, darling? Don&rsquo;t listen to
+      people who say that skirts are to be wider. I&rsquo;ve discovered a new woman&mdash;a
+      Genius&mdash;and she absolutely swathes you.... Her name&rsquo;s my secret; but
+      we&rsquo;ll go to her together.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy rose from her engulphing armchair. &ldquo;Do you mind if I go up to my
+      room? I&rsquo;m rather tired&mdash;coming straight through.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course, dear. I think there are some people coming to dinner... Mrs.
+      Match will tell you. She has such a memory.... Fulmer, where on earth are
+      those cartoons of the music-room?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Their voices pursued Susy upstairs, as, in Mrs. Match&rsquo;s perpendicular
+      wake, she mounted to the white-panelled room with its gay linen hangings
+      and the low bed heaped with more cushions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If we&rsquo;d come here,&rdquo; she thought, &ldquo;everything might have been different.&rdquo;
+       And she shuddered at the sumptuous memories of the Palazzo Vanderlyn, and
+      the great painted bedroom where she had met her doom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Match, hoping she would find everything, and mentioning that dinner
+      was not till nine, shut her softly in among her terrors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Find everything?&rdquo; Susy echoed the phrase. Oh, yes, she would always find
+      everything: every time the door shut on her now, and the sound of voices
+      ceased, her memories would be there waiting for her, every one of them,
+      waiting quietly, patiently, obstinately, like poor people in a doctor&rsquo;s
+      office, the people who are always last to be attended to, but whom nothing
+      will discourage or drive away, people to whom time is nothing, fatigue
+      nothing, hunger nothing, other engagements nothing: who just wait....
+      Thank heaven, after all, that she had not found the house empty, if,
+      whenever she returned to her room, she was to meet her memories there!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was just a week since Nick had left her. During that week, crammed with
+      people, questions, packing, explaining, evading, she had believed that in
+      solitude lay her salvation. Now she understood that there was nothing she
+      was so unprepared for, so unfitted for. When, in all her life, had she
+      ever been alone? And how was she to bear it now, with all these ravening
+      memories besetting her!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dinner not till nine? What on earth was she to do till nine o&rsquo;clock? She
+      knelt before her boxes, and feverishly began to unpack.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gradually, imperceptibly, the subtle influences of her old life were
+      stealing into her. As she pulled out her tossed and crumpled dresses she
+      remembered Violet&rsquo;s emphatic warning: &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t believe the people who tell
+      you that skirts are going to be wider.&rdquo; Were hers, perhaps, too wide as it
+      was? She looked at her limp raiment, piling itself up on bed and sofa, and
+      understood that, according to Violet&rsquo;s standards, and that of all her set,
+      those dresses, which Nick had thought so original and exquisite, were
+      already commonplace and dowdy, fit only to be passed on to poor relations
+      or given to one&rsquo;s maid. And Susy would have to go on wearing them till
+      they fell to bits&mdash;or else.... Well, or else begin the old life again in
+      some new form....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She laughed aloud at the turn of her thoughts. Dresses? How little they
+      had mattered a few short weeks ago! And now, perhaps, they would again be
+      one of the foremost considerations in her life. How could it be otherwise,
+      if she were to return again to her old dependence on Ellie Vanderlyn,
+      Ursula Gillow, Violet Melrose? And beyond that, only the Bockheimers and
+      their kind awaited her....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A knock on the door&mdash;what a relief! It was Mrs. Match again, with a
+      telegram. To whom had Susy given her new address? With a throbbing heart
+      she tore open the envelope and read:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall be in Paris Friday for twenty-four hours where can I see you write
+      Nouveau Luxe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ah, yes&mdash;she remembered now: she had written to Strefford! And this
+      was his answer: he was coming. She dropped into a chair, and tried to
+      think. What on earth had she said in her letter? It had been mainly, of
+      course, one of condolence; but now she remembered having added, in a
+      precipitate postscript: &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t give your message to Nick, for he&rsquo;s gone
+      off with the Hickses&mdash;I don&rsquo;t know where, or for how long. It&rsquo;s all right,
+      of course: it was in our bargain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had not meant to put in that last phrase; but as she sealed her letter
+      to Strefford her eye had fallen on Nick&rsquo;s missive, which lay beside it.
+      Nothing in her husband&rsquo;s brief lines had embittered her as much as the
+      allusion to Strefford. It seemed to imply that Nick&rsquo;s own plans were made,
+      that his own future was secure, and that he could therefore freely and
+      handsomely take thought for hers, and give her a pointer in the right
+      direction. Sudden rage had possessed her at the thought: where she had at
+      first read jealousy she now saw only a cold providence, and in a blur of
+      tears she had scrawled her postscript to Strefford. She remembered that
+      she had not even asked him to keep her secret. Well&mdash;after all, what
+      would it matter if people should already know that Nick had left her?
+      Their parting could not long remain a mystery, and the fact that it was
+      known might help her to keep up a presence of indifference.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was in the bargain&mdash;in the bargain,&rdquo; rang through her brain as
+      she re-read Strefford&rsquo;s telegram. She understood that he had snatched the
+      time for this hasty trip solely in the hope of seeing her, and her eyes
+      filled. The more bitterly she thought of Nick the more this proof of
+      Strefford&rsquo;s friendship moved her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The clock, to her relief, reminded her that it was time to dress for
+      dinner. She would go down presently, chat with Violet and Fulmer, and with
+      Violet&rsquo;s other guests, who would probably be odd and amusing, and too much
+      out of her world to embarrass her by awkward questions. She would sit at a
+      softly-lit table, breathe delicate scents, eat exquisite food (trust Mrs.
+      Match!), and be gradually drawn again under the spell of her old
+      associations. Anything, anything but to be alone....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She dressed with even more than her habitual care, reddened her lips
+      attentively, brushed the faintest bloom of pink over her drawn cheeks, and
+      went down&mdash;to meet Mrs. Match coming up with a tray.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Madam, I thought you were too tired.... I was bringing it up to you
+      myself&mdash;just a little morsel of chicken.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy, glancing past her, saw, through the open door, that the lamps were
+      not lit in the drawing-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no, I&rsquo;m not tired, thank you. I thought Mrs. Melrose expected friends
+      at dinner!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Friends at dinner-to-night?&rdquo; Mrs. Match heaved a despairing sigh.
+      Sometimes, the sigh seemed to say, her mistress put too great a strain
+      upon her. &ldquo;Why, Mrs. Melrose and Mr. Fulmer were engaged to dine in Paris.
+      They left an hour ago. Mrs. Melrose told me she&rsquo;d told you,&rdquo; the
+      house-keeper wailed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy kept her little fixed smile. &ldquo;I must have misunderstood. In that
+      case... well, yes, if it&rsquo;s no trouble, I believe I will have my tray
+      upstairs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Slowly she turned, and followed the housekeeper up into the dread solitude
+      she had just left.
+    </p>
+
+
+<h3>XIV.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">The</span> next day a lot of people turned up unannounced for luncheon. They were
+      not of the far-fetched and the exotic, in whom Mrs. Melrose now
+      specialized, but merely commonplace fashionable people belonging to Susy&rsquo;s
+      own group, people familiar with the amusing romance of her penniless
+      marriage, and to whom she had to explain (though none of them really
+      listened to the explanation) that Nick was not with her just now but had
+      gone off cruising... cruising in the AEgean with friends... getting up
+      material for his book (this detail had occurred to her in the night).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the kind of encounter she had most dreaded; but it proved, after
+      all, easy enough to go through compared with those endless hours of
+      turning to and fro, the night before, in the cage of her lonely room.
+      Anything, anything, but to be alone....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gradually, from the force of habit, she found herself actually in tune
+      with the talk of the luncheon table, interested in the references to
+      absent friends, the light allusions to last year&rsquo;s loves and quarrels,
+      scandals and absurdities. The women, in their pale summer dresses, were so
+      graceful, indolent and sure of themselves, the men so easy and
+      good-humoured! Perhaps, after all, Susy reflected, it was the world she
+      was meant for, since the other, the brief Paradise of her dreams, had
+      already shut its golden doors upon her. And then, as they sat on the
+      terrace after luncheon, looking across at the yellow tree-tops of the
+      park, one of the women said something&mdash;made just an allusion&mdash;that
+      Susy would have let pass unnoticed in the old days, but that now filled
+      her with a sudden deep disgust.... She stood up and wandered away, away
+      from them all through the fading garden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two days later Susy and Strefford sat on the terrace of the Tuileries
+      above the Seine. She had asked him to meet her there, with the desire to
+      avoid the crowded halls and drawing-room of the Nouveau Luxe where, even
+      at that supposedly &ldquo;dead&rdquo; season, people one knew were always drifting to
+      and fro; and they sat on a bench in the pale sunlight, the discoloured
+      leaves heaped at their feet, and no one to share their solitude but a lame
+      working-man and a haggard woman who were lunching together mournfully at
+      the other end of the majestic vista.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford, in his new mourning, looked unnaturally prosperous and
+      well-valeted; but his ugly untidy features remained as undisciplined, his
+      smile as whimsical, as of old. He had been on cool though friendly terms
+      with the pompous uncle and the poor sickly cousin whose joint
+      disappearance had so abruptly transformed his future; and it was his way
+      to understate his feelings rather than to pretend more than he felt.
+      Nevertheless, beneath his habitual bantering tone Susy discerned a change.
+      The disaster had shocked him profoundly; already, in his brief sojourn
+      among his people and among the great possessions so tragically acquired,
+      old instincts had awakened, forgotten associations had spoken in him. Susy
+      listened to him wistfully, silenced by her imaginative perception of the
+      distance that these things had put between them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was horrible... seeing them both there together, laid out in that
+      hideous Pugin chapel at Altringham... the poor boy especially. I suppose
+      that&rsquo;s really what&rsquo;s cutting me up now,&rdquo; he murmured, almost
+      apologetically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, it&rsquo;s more than that&mdash;more than you know,&rdquo; she insisted; but he
+      jerked back: &ldquo;Now, my dear, don&rsquo;t be edifying, please,&rdquo; and fumbled for a
+      cigarette in the pocket which was already beginning to bulge with his
+      miscellaneous properties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now about you&mdash;for that&rsquo;s what I came for,&rdquo; he continued,
+      turning to her with one of his sudden movements. &ldquo;I couldn&rsquo;t make head or
+      tail of your letter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She paused a moment to steady her voice. &ldquo;Couldn&rsquo;t you? I suppose you&rsquo;d
+      forgotten my bargain with Nick. He hadn&rsquo;t&mdash;and he&rsquo;s asked me to fulfil it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford stared. &ldquo;What&mdash;that nonsense about your setting each other
+      free if either of you had the chance to make a good match?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She signed &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And he&rsquo;s actually asked you&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well: practically. He&rsquo;s gone off with the Hickses. Before going he wrote
+      me that we&rsquo;d better both consider ourselves free. And Coral sent me a
+      postcard to say that she would take the best of care of him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford mused, his eyes upon his cigarette. &ldquo;But what the deuce led up
+      to all this? It can&rsquo;t have happened like that, out of a clear sky.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy flushed, hesitated, looked away. She had meant to tell Strefford the
+      whole story; it had been one of her chief reasons for wishing to see him
+      again, and half-unconsciously, perhaps, she had hoped, in his laxer
+      atmosphere, to recover something of her shattered self-esteem. But now she
+      suddenly felt the impossibility of confessing to anyone the depths to
+      which Nick&rsquo;s wife had stooped. She fancied that her companion guessed the
+      nature of her hesitation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t tell me anything you don&rsquo;t want to, you know, my dear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; I do want to; only it&rsquo;s difficult. You see&mdash;we had so very
+      little money....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Nick&mdash;who was thinking of his book, and of all sorts of big
+      things, fine things&mdash;didn&rsquo;t realise... left it all to me... to
+      manage....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stumbled over the word, remembering how Nick had always winced at it.
+      But Strefford did not seem to notice her, and she hurried on, unfolding in
+      short awkward sentences the avowal of their pecuniary difficulties, and of
+      Nick&rsquo;s inability to understand that, to keep on with the kind of life they
+      were leading, one had to put up with things... accept favours....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Borrow money, you mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;yes; and all the rest.&rdquo; No&mdash;decidedly she could not
+      reveal to Strefford the episode of Ellie&rsquo;s letters. &ldquo;Nick suddenly felt, I
+      suppose, that he couldn&rsquo;t stand it,&rdquo; she continued; &ldquo;and instead of asking
+      me to try&mdash;to try to live differently, go off somewhere with him and
+      live, like work-people, in two rooms, without a servant, as I was ready to
+      do; well, instead he wrote me that it had all been a mistake from the
+      beginning, that we couldn&rsquo;t keep it up, and had better recognize the fact;
+      and he went off on the Hickses&rsquo; yacht. The last evening that you were in
+      Venice&mdash;the day he didn&rsquo;t come back to dinner&mdash;he had gone off
+      to Genoa to meet them. I suppose he intends to marry Coral.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford received this in silence. &ldquo;Well&mdash;it was your bargain,
+      wasn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo; he said at length.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; but&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Exactly: I always told you so. You weren&rsquo;t ready to have him go yet&mdash;that&rsquo;s
+      all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She flushed to the forehead. &ldquo;Oh, Streff&mdash;is it really all?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A question of time? If you doubt it, I&rsquo;d like to see you try, for a
+      while, in those two rooms without a servant; and then let me hear from
+      you. Why, my dear, it&rsquo;s only a question of time in a palace, with a steam
+      yacht lying off the door-step, and a flock of motors in the garage; look
+      around you and see. And did you ever imagine that you and Nick, of all
+      people, were going to escape the common doom, and survive like Mr. and
+      Mrs. Tithonus, while all about you the eternal passions were crumbling to
+      pieces, and your native Divorce-states piling up their revenues?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She sat with bent head, the weight of the long years to come pressing like
+      a leaden load on her shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I&rsquo;m so young... life&rsquo;s so long. What does last, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you&rsquo;re too young to believe me, if I were to tell you; though you&rsquo;re
+      intelligent enough to understand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, the hold of the things we all think we could do without. Habits&mdash;they
+      outstand the Pyramids. Comforts, luxuries, the atmosphere of ease... above
+      all, the power to get away from dulness and monotony, from constraints and
+      uglinesses. You chose that power, instinctively, before you were even
+      grown up; and so did Nick. And the only difference between you is that
+      he&rsquo;s had the sense to see sooner than you that those are the things that
+      last, the prime necessities.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t believe it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course you don&rsquo;t: at your age one doesn&rsquo;t reason one&rsquo;s materialism.
+      And besides you&rsquo;re mortally hurt that Nick has found out sooner than you,
+      and hasn&rsquo;t disguised his discovery under any hypocritical phrases.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But surely there are people&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;saints and geniuses and heroes: all the fanatics! To which of
+      their categories do you suppose we soft people belong? And the heroes and
+      the geniuses&mdash;haven&rsquo;t they their enormous frailties and their giant
+      appetites? And how should we escape being the victims of our little ones?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She sat for a while without speaking. &ldquo;But, Streff, how can you say such
+      things, when I know you care: care for me, for instance!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Care?&rdquo; He put his hand on hers. &ldquo;But, my dear, it&rsquo;s just the fugitiveness
+      of mortal caring that makes it so exquisite! It&rsquo;s because we know we can&rsquo;t
+      hold fast to it, or to each other, or to anything....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes... yes... but hush, please! Oh, don&rsquo;t say it!&rdquo; She stood up, the
+      tears in her throat, and he rose also.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come along, then; where do we lunch?&rdquo; he said with a smile, slipping his
+      hand through her arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I don&rsquo;t know. Nowhere. I think I&rsquo;m going back to Versailles.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because I&rsquo;ve disgusted you so deeply? Just my luck&mdash;when I came over
+      to ask you to marry me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She laughed, but he had become suddenly grave. &ldquo;Upon my soul, I did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear Streff! As if&mdash;now&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, not now&mdash;I know. I&rsquo;m aware that even with your accelerated
+      divorce methods&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not that. I told you it was no use, Streff&mdash;I told you long
+      ago, in Venice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He shrugged ironically. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not Streff who&rsquo;s asking you now. Streff was
+      not a marrying man: he was only trifling with you. The present offer comes
+      from an elderly peer of independent means. Think it over, my dear: as many
+      days out as you like, and five footmen kept. There&rsquo;s not the least hurry,
+      of course; but I rather think Nick himself would advise it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She flushed to the temples, remembering that Nick had; and the remembrance
+      made Strefford&rsquo;s sneering philosophy seem less unbearable. Why should she
+      not lunch with him, after all? In the first days of his mourning he had
+      come to Paris expressly to see her, and to offer her one of the oldest
+      names and one of the greatest fortunes in England. She thought of Ursula
+      Gillow, Ellie Vanderlyn, Violet Melrose, of their condescending
+      kindnesses, their last year&rsquo;s dresses, their Christmas cheques, and all
+      the careless bounties that were so easy to bestow and so hard to accept.
+      &ldquo;I should rather enjoy paying them back,&rdquo; something in her maliciously
+      murmured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She did not mean to marry Strefford&mdash;she had not even got as far as
+      contemplating the possibility of a divorce but it was undeniable that this
+      sudden prospect of wealth and freedom was like fresh air in her lungs. She
+      laughed again, but now without bitterness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very good, then; we&rsquo;ll lunch together. But it&rsquo;s Streff I want to lunch
+      with to-day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, well,&rdquo; her companion agreed, &ldquo;I rather think that for a tête-à-tête
+      he&rsquo;s better company.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      During their repast in a little restaurant over the Seine, where she
+      insisted on the cheapest dishes because she was lunching with &ldquo;Streff,&rdquo; he
+      became again his old whimsical companionable self. Once or twice she tried
+      to turn the talk to his altered future, and the obligations and interests
+      that lay before him; but he shrugged away from the subject, questioning
+      her instead about the motley company at Violet Melrose&rsquo;s, and fitting a
+      droll or malicious anecdote to each of the people she named.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not till they had finished their coffee, and she was glancing at
+      her watch with a vague notion of taking the next train, that he asked
+      abruptly: &ldquo;But what are you going to do? You can&rsquo;t stay forever at
+      Violet&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no!&rdquo; she cried with a shiver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then&mdash;you&rsquo;ve got some plan, I suppose?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have I?&rdquo; she wondered, jerked back into grim reality from the soothing
+      interlude of their hour together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can&rsquo;t drift indefinitely, can you? Unless you mean to go back to the
+      old sort of life once for all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She reddened and her eyes filled. &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t do that, Streff&mdash;I know I
+      can&rsquo;t!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then what&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She hesitated, and brought out with lowered head: &ldquo;Nick said he would
+      write again&mdash;in a few days. I must wait&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, naturally. Don&rsquo;t do anything in a hurry.&rdquo; Strefford also glanced at
+      his watch. &ldquo;Garcon, l&rsquo;addition! I&rsquo;m taking the train back to-night, and
+      I&rsquo;ve a lot of things left to do. But look here, my dear&mdash;when you
+      come to a decision one way or the other let me know, will you? Oh, I don&rsquo;t
+      mean in the matter I&rsquo;ve most at heart; we&rsquo;ll consider that closed for the
+      present. But at least I can be of use in other ways&mdash;hang it, you
+      know, I can even lend you money. There&rsquo;s a new sensation for our jaded
+      palates!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Streff... Streff!&rdquo; she could only falter; and he pressed on gaily:
+      &ldquo;Try it, now do try it&mdash;I assure you there&rsquo;ll be no interest to pay,
+      and no conditions attached. And promise to let me know when you&rsquo;ve decided
+      anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked into his humorously puckered eyes, answering. Their friendly
+      smile with hers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I promise!&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+
+
+<h3>XV.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">That</span> hour with Strefford had altered her whole perspective. Instead of
+      possible dependence, an enforced return to the old life of connivances and
+      concessions, she saw before her&mdash;whenever she chose to take them&mdash;freedom,
+      power and dignity. Dignity! It was odd what weight that word had come to
+      have for her. She had dimly felt its significance, felt the need of its
+      presence in her inmost soul, even in the young thoughtless days when she
+      had seemed to sacrifice so little to the austere divinities. And since she
+      had been Nick Lansing&rsquo;s wife she had consciously acknowledged it, had
+      suffered and agonized when she fell beneath its standard. Yes: to marry
+      Strefford would give her that sense of self-respect which, in such a world
+      as theirs, only wealth and position could ensure. If she had not the
+      mental or moral training to attain independence in any other way, was she
+      to blame for seeking it on such terms?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course there was always the chance that Nick would come back, would
+      find life without her as intolerable as she was finding it without him. If
+      that happened&mdash;ah, if that happened! Then she would cease to strain
+      her eyes into the future, would seize upon the present moment and plunge
+      into it to the very bottom of oblivion. Nothing on earth would matter then&mdash;money
+      or freedom or pride, or her precious moral dignity, if only she were in
+      Nick&rsquo;s arms again!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But there was Nick&rsquo;s icy letter, there was Coral Hicks&rsquo;s insolent
+      post-card, to show how little chance there was of such a solution. Susy
+      understood that, even before the discovery of her transaction with Ellie
+      Vanderlyn, Nick had secretly wearied, if not of his wife, at least of the
+      life that their marriage compelled him to lead. His passion was not strong
+      enough&mdash;had never been strong enough&mdash;to outweigh his prejudices,
+      scruples, principles, or whatever one chose to call them. Susy&rsquo;s dignity
+      might go up like tinder in the blaze of her love; but his was made of a
+      less combustible substance. She had felt, in their last talk together,
+      that she had forever destroyed the inner harmony between them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well&mdash;there it was, and the fault was doubtless neither hers nor his,
+      but that of the world they had grown up in, of their own moral contempt
+      for it and physical dependence on it, of his half-talents and her
+      half-principles, of the something in them both that was not stout enough
+      to resist nor yet pliant enough to yield. She stared at the fact on the
+      journey back to Versailles, and all that sleepless night in her room; and
+      the next morning, when the housemaid came in with her breakfast tray, she
+      felt the factitious energy that comes from having decided, however
+      half-heartedly, on a definite course.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had said to herself: &ldquo;If there&rsquo;s no letter from Nick this time next
+      week I&rsquo;ll write to Streff&mdash;&rdquo; and the week had passed, and there was
+      no letter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was now three weeks since he had left her, and she had had no word but
+      his note from Genoa. She had concluded that, foreseeing the probability of
+      her leaving Venice, he would write to her in care of their Paris bank. But
+      though she had immediately notified the bank of her change of address no
+      communication from Nick had reached her; and she smiled with a touch of
+      bitterness at the difficulty he was doubtless finding in the composition
+      of the promised letter. Her own scrap-basket, for the first days, had been
+      heaped with the fragments of the letters she had begun; and she told
+      herself that, since they both found it so hard to write, it was probably
+      because they had nothing left to say to each other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile the days at Mrs. Melrose&rsquo;s drifted by as they had been wont to
+      drift when, under the roofs of the rich, Susy Branch had marked time
+      between one episode and the next of her precarious existence. Her
+      experience of such sojourns was varied enough to make her acutely
+      conscious of their effect on her temporary hosts; and in the present case
+      she knew that Violet was hardly aware of her presence. But if no more than
+      tolerated she was at least not felt to be an inconvenience; when your
+      hostess forgot about you it proved that at least you were not in her way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet, as usual, was perpetually on the wing, for her profound indolence
+      expressed itself in a disordered activity. Nat Fulmer had returned to
+      Paris; but Susy guessed that his benefactress was still constantly in his
+      company, and that when Mrs. Melrose was whirled away in her noiseless
+      motor it was generally toward the scene of some new encounter between
+      Fulmer and the arts. On these occasions she sometimes offered to carry
+      Susy to Paris, and they devoted several long and hectic mornings to the
+      dress-makers, where Susy felt herself gradually succumbing to the familiar
+      spell of heaped-up finery. It seemed impossible, as furs and laces and
+      brocades were tossed aside, brought back, and at last carelessly selected
+      from, that anything but the whim of the moment need count in deciding
+      whether one should take all or none, or that any woman could be worth
+      looking at who did not possess the means to make her choice regardless of
+      cost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once alone, and in the street again, the evil fumes would evaporate, and
+      daylight re-enter Susy&rsquo;s soul; yet she felt that the old poison was slowly
+      insinuating itself into her system. To dispel it she decided one day to
+      look up Grace Fulmer. She was curious to know how the happy-go-lucky
+      companion of Fulmer&rsquo;s evil days was bearing the weight of his prosperity,
+      and she vaguely felt that it would be refreshing to see some one who had
+      never been afraid of poverty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The airless pension sitting-room, where she waited while a reluctant
+      maid-servant screamed about the house for Mrs. Fulmer, did not have the
+      hoped-for effect. It was one thing for Grace to put up with such quarters
+      when she shared them with Fulmer; but to live there while he basked in the
+      lingering radiance of Versailles, or rolled from chateau to picture
+      gallery in Mrs. Melrose&rsquo;s motor, showed a courage that Susy felt unable to
+      emulate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear! I knew you&rsquo;d look me up,&rdquo; Grace&rsquo;s joyous voice ran down the
+      stairway; and in another moment she was clasping Susy to her tumbled
+      person.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nat couldn&rsquo;t remember if he&rsquo;d given you our address, though he promised
+      me he would, the last time he was here.&rdquo; She held Susy at arms&rsquo; length,
+      beaming upon her with blinking short-sighted eyes: the same old
+      dishevelled Grace, so careless of her neglected beauty and her squandered
+      youth, so amused and absent-minded and improvident, that the boisterous
+      air of the New Hampshire bungalow seemed to enter with her into the little
+      air-tight salon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While she poured out the tale of Nat&rsquo;s sudden celebrity, and its
+      unexpected consequences, Susy marvelled and dreamed. Was the secret of his
+      triumph perhaps due to those long hard unrewarded years, the steadfast
+      scorn of popularity, the indifference to every kind of material ease in
+      which his wife had so gaily abetted him? Had it been bought at the cost of
+      her own freshness and her own talent, of the children&rsquo;s &ldquo;advantages,&rdquo; of
+      everything except the closeness of the tie between husband and wife? Well&mdash;it
+      was worth the price, no doubt; but what if, now that honours and
+      prosperity had come, the tie were snapped, and Grace were left alone among
+      the ruins?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was nothing in her tone or words to suggest such a possibility. Susy
+      noticed that her ill-assorted raiment was costlier in quality and more
+      professional in cut than the home-made garments which had draped her
+      growing bulk at the bungalow: it was clear that she was trying to dress up
+      to Nat&rsquo;s new situation. But, above all, she was rejoicing in it, filling
+      her hungry lungs with the strong air of his success. It had evidently not
+      occurred to her as yet that those who consent to share the bread of
+      adversity may want the whole cake of prosperity for themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear, it&rsquo;s too wonderful! He&rsquo;s told me to take as many concert and
+      opera tickets as I like; he lets me take all the children with me. The big
+      concerts don&rsquo;t begin till later; but of course the Opera is always going.
+      And there are little things&mdash;there&rsquo;s music in Paris at all seasons.
+      And later it&rsquo;s just possible we may get to Munich for a week&mdash;oh,
+      Susy!&rdquo; Her hands clasped, her eyes brimming, she drank the new wine of
+      life almost sacramentally.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you remember, Susy, when you and Nick came to stay at the bungalow?
+      Nat said you&rsquo;d be horrified by our primitiveness&mdash;but I knew better! And I
+      was right, wasn&rsquo;t I? Seeing us so happy made you and Nick decide to follow
+      our example, didn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo; She glowed with the remembrance. &ldquo;And now, what
+      are your plans? Is Nick&rsquo;s book nearly done? I suppose you&rsquo;ll have to live
+      very economically till he finds a publisher. And the baby, darling&mdash;when is
+      that to be? If you&rsquo;re coming home soon I could let you have a lot of the
+      children&rsquo;s little old things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re always so dear, Grace. But we haven&rsquo;t any special plans as yet&mdash;not
+      even for a baby. And I wish you&rsquo;d tell me all of yours instead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Fulmer asked nothing better: Susy perceived that, so far, the greater
+      part of her European experience had consisted in talking about what it was
+      to be. &ldquo;Well, you see, Nat is so taken up all day with sight-seeing and
+      galleries and meeting important people that he hasn&rsquo;t had time to go about
+      with us; and as so few theatres are open, and there&rsquo;s so little music,
+      I&rsquo;ve taken the opportunity to catch up with my mending. Junie helps me
+      with it now&mdash;she&rsquo;s our eldest, you remember? She&rsquo;s grown into a big
+      girl since you saw her. And later, perhaps, we&rsquo;re to travel. And the most
+      wonderful thing of all&mdash;next to Nat&rsquo;s recognition, I mean&mdash;is
+      not having to contrive and skimp, and give up something every single
+      minute. Just think&mdash;Nat has even made special arrangements here in
+      the pension, so that the children all have second helpings to everything.
+      And when I go up to bed I can think of my music, instead of lying awake
+      calculating and wondering how I can make things come out at the end of the
+      month. Oh, Susy, that&rsquo;s simply heaven!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy&rsquo;s heart contracted. She had come to her friend to be taught again the
+      lesson of indifference to material things, and instead she was hearing
+      from Grace Fulmer&rsquo;s lips the long-repressed avowal of their tyranny. After
+      all, that battle with poverty on the New Hampshire hillside had not been
+      the easy smiling business that Grace and Nat had made it appear. And yet
+      ... and yet....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy stood up abruptly, and straightened the expensive hat which hung
+      irresponsibly over Grace&rsquo;s left ear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&rsquo;s wrong with it? Junie helped me choose it, and she generally
+      knows,&rdquo; Mrs. Fulmer wailed with helpless hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s the way you wear it, dearest&mdash;and the bow is rather top-heavy.
+      Let me have it a minute, please.&rdquo; Susy lifted the hat from her friend&rsquo;s
+      head and began to manipulate its trimming. &ldquo;This is the way Maria Guy or
+      Suzanne would do it.... And now go on about Nat....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She listened musingly while Grace poured forth the tale of her husband&rsquo;s
+      triumph, of the notices in the papers, the demand for his work, the fine
+      ladies&rsquo; battles over their priority in discovering him, and the multiplied
+      orders that had resulted from their rivalry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course they&rsquo;re simply furious with each other&mdash;Mrs. Melrose and Mrs.
+      Gillow especially&mdash;because each one pretends to have been the first
+      to notice his &lsquo;Spring Snow-Storm,&rsquo; and in reality it wasn&rsquo;t either of
+      them, but only poor Bill Haslett, an art-critic we&rsquo;ve known for years, who
+      chanced on the picture, and rushed off to tell a dealer who was looking
+      for a new painter to push.&rdquo; Grace suddenly raised her soft myopic eyes to
+      Susy&rsquo;s face. &ldquo;But, do you know, the funny thing is that I believe Nat is
+      beginning to forget this, and to believe that it was Mrs. Melrose who
+      stopped short in front of his picture on the opening day, and screamed
+      out: &lsquo;This is genius!&rsquo; It seems funny he should care so much, when I&rsquo;ve
+      always known he had genius&mdash;and he has known it too. But they&rsquo;re all so
+      kind to him; and Mrs. Melrose especially. And I suppose it makes a thing
+      sound new to hear it said in a new voice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy looked at her meditatively. &ldquo;And how should you feel if Nat liked too
+      much to hear Mrs. Melrose say it? Too much, I mean, to care any longer
+      what you felt or thought?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her friend&rsquo;s worn face flushed quickly, and then paled: Susy almost
+      repented the question. But Mrs. Fulmer met it with a tranquil dignity.
+      &ldquo;You haven&rsquo;t been married long enough, dear, to understand... how people
+      like Nat and me feel about such things... or how trifling they seem, in
+      the balance... the balance of one&rsquo;s memories.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy stood up again, and flung her arms about her friend. &ldquo;Oh, Grace,&rdquo; she
+      laughed with wet eyes, &ldquo;how can you be as wise as that, and yet not have
+      sense enough to buy a decent hat?&rdquo; She gave Mrs. Fulmer a quick embrace
+      and hurried away. She had learned her lesson after all; but it was not
+      exactly the one she had come to seek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The week she had allowed herself had passed, and still there was no word
+      from Nick. She allowed herself yet another day, and that too went by
+      without a letter. She then decided on a step from which her pride had
+      hitherto recoiled; she would call at the bank and ask for Nick&rsquo;s address.
+      She called, embarrassed and hesitating; and was told, after enquiries in
+      the post-office department, that Mr. Nicholas Lansing had given no address
+      since that of the Palazzo Vanderlyn, three months previously. She went
+      back to Versailles that afternoon with the definite intention of writing
+      to Strefford unless the next morning&rsquo;s post brought a letter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next morning brought nothing from Nick, but a scribbled message from
+      Mrs. Melrose: would Susy, as soon as possible, come into her room for a
+      word, Susy jumped up, hurried through her bath, and knocked at her
+      hostess&rsquo;s door. In the immense low bed that faced the rich umbrage of the
+      park Mrs. Melrose lay smoking cigarettes and glancing over her letters.
+      She looked up with her vague smile, and said dreamily: &ldquo;Susy darling, have
+      you any particular plans&mdash;for the next few months, I mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy coloured: she knew the intonation of old, and fancied she understood
+      what it implied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Plans, dearest? Any number... I&rsquo;m tearing myself away the day after
+      to-morrow... to the Gillows&rsquo; moor, very probably,&rdquo; she hastened to
+      announce.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Instead of the relief she had expected to read on Mrs. Melrose&rsquo;s dramatic
+      countenance she discovered there the blankest disappointment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, really? That&rsquo;s too bad. Is it absolutely settled&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As far as I&rsquo;m concerned,&rdquo; said Susy crisply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other sighed. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m too sorry. You see, dear, I&rsquo;d meant to ask you to
+      stay on here quietly and look after the Fulmer children. Fulmer and I are
+      going to Spain next week&mdash;I want to be with him when he makes his
+      studies, receives his first impressions; such a marvellous experience, to
+      be there when he and Velasquez meet!&rdquo; She broke off, lost in prospective
+      ecstasy. &ldquo;And, you see, as Grace Fulmer insists on coming with us&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, I see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, there are the five children&mdash;such a problem,&rdquo; sighed the
+      benefactress. &ldquo;If you were at a loose end, you know, dear, while Nick&rsquo;s
+      away with his friends, I could really make it worth your while....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So awfully good of you, Violet; only I&rsquo;m not, as it happens.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh the relief of being able to say that, gaily, firmly and even
+      truthfully! Take charge of the Fulmer children, indeed! Susy remembered
+      how Nick and she had fled from them that autumn afternoon in New
+      Hampshire. The offer gave her a salutary glimpse of the way in which, as
+      the years passed, and she lost her freshness and novelty, she would more
+      and more be used as a convenience, a stop-gap, writer of notes, runner of
+      errands, nursery governess or companion. She called to mind several
+      elderly women of her acquaintance, pensioners of her own group, who still
+      wore its livery, struck its attitudes and chattered its jargon, but had
+      long since been ruthlessly relegated to these slave-ant offices. Never in
+      the world would she join their numbers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Melrose&rsquo;s face fell, and she looked at Susy with the plaintive
+      bewilderment of the wielder of millions to whom everything that cannot be
+      bought is imperceptible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I can&rsquo;t see why you can&rsquo;t change your plans,&rdquo; she murmured with a
+      soft persistency.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, well, you know&rdquo;&mdash;Susy paused on a slow inward smile&mdash;&ldquo;they&rsquo;re
+      not mine only, as it happens.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Melrose&rsquo;s brow clouded. The unforeseen complication of Mrs. Fulmer&rsquo;s
+      presence on the journey had evidently tried her nerves, and this new
+      obstacle to her arrangements shook her faith in the divine order of
+      things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your plans are not yours only? But surely you won&rsquo;t let Ursula Gillow
+      dictate to you?... There&rsquo;s my jade pendant; the one you said you liked the
+      other day.... The Fulmers won&rsquo;t go with me, you understand, unless they&rsquo;re
+      satisfied about the children; the whole plan will fall through. Susy
+      darling, you were always too unselfish; I hate to see you sacrificed to
+      Ursula.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy&rsquo;s smile lingered. Time was when she might have been glad to add the
+      jade pendant to the collection already enriched by Ellie Vanderlyn&rsquo;s
+      sapphires; more recently, she would have resented the offer as an insult
+      to her newly-found principles. But already the mere fact that she might
+      henceforth, if she chose, be utterly out of reach of such bribes, enabled
+      her to look down on them with tolerance. Oh, the blessed moral freedom
+      that wealth conferred! She recalled Mrs. Fulmer&rsquo;s uncontrollable cry: &ldquo;The
+      most wonderful thing of all is not having to contrive and skimp, and give
+      up something every single minute!&rdquo; Yes; it was only on such terms that one
+      could call one&rsquo;s soul one&rsquo;s own. The sense of it gave Susy the grace to
+      answer amicably: &ldquo;If I could possibly help you out, Violet, I shouldn&rsquo;t
+      want a present to persuade me. And, as you say, there&rsquo;s no reason why I
+      should sacrifice myself to Ursula&mdash;or to anybody else. Only, as it
+      happens&rdquo;&mdash;she paused and took the plunge&mdash;&ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to England
+      because I&rsquo;ve promised to see a friend.&rdquo; That night she wrote to Strefford.
+    </p>
+
+
+<h3>XVI.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">Stretched</span> out under an awning on the deck of the Ibis, Nick Lansing looked
+      up for a moment at the vanishing cliffs of Malta and then plunged again
+      into his book.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had had nearly three weeks of drug-taking on the Ibis. The drugs he had
+      absorbed were of two kinds: visions of fleeing landscapes, looming up from
+      the blue sea to vanish into it again, and visions of study absorbed from
+      the volumes piled up day and night at his elbow. For the first time in
+      months he was in reach of a real library, just the kind of scholarly yet
+      miscellaneous library, that his restless and impatient spirit craved. He
+      was aware that the books he read, like the fugitive scenes on which he
+      gazed, were merely a form of anesthetic: he swallowed them with the
+      careless greed of the sufferer who seeks only to still pain and deaden
+      memory. But they were beginning to produce in him a moral languor that was
+      not disagreeable, that, indeed, compared with the fierce pain of the first
+      days, was almost pleasurable. It was exactly the kind of drug that he
+      needed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is probably no point on which the average man has more definite
+      views than on the uselessness of writing a letter that is hard to write.
+      In the line he had sent to Susy from Genoa Nick had told her that she
+      would hear from him again in a few days; but when the few days had passed,
+      and he began to consider setting himself to the task, he found fifty
+      reasons for postponing it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Had there been any practical questions to write about it would have been
+      different; he could not have borne for twenty-four hours the idea that she
+      was in uncertainty as to money. But that had all been settled long ago.
+      From the first she had had the administering of their modest fortune. On
+      their marriage Nick&rsquo;s own meagre income, paid in, none too regularly, by
+      the agent who had managed for years the dwindling family properties, had
+      been transferred to her: it was the only wedding present he could make.
+      And the wedding cheques had of course all been deposited in her name.
+      There were therefore no &ldquo;business&rdquo; reasons for communicating with her; and
+      when it came to reasons of another order the mere thought of them benumbed
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the first few days he reproached himself for his inertia; then he
+      began to seek reasons for justifying it. After all, for both their sakes a
+      waiting policy might be the wisest he could pursue. He had left Susy
+      because he could not tolerate the conditions on which he had discovered
+      their life together to be based; and he had told her so. What more was
+      there to say?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nothing was changed in their respective situations; if they came together
+      it could be only to resume the same life; and that, as the days went by,
+      seemed to him more and more impossible. He had not yet reached the point
+      of facing a definite separation; but whenever his thoughts travelled back
+      over their past life he recoiled from any attempt to return to it. As long
+      as this state of mind continued there seemed nothing to add to the letter
+      he had already written, except indeed the statement that he was cruising
+      with the Hickses. And he saw no pressing reason for communicating that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To the Hickses he had given no hint of his situation. When Coral Hicks, a
+      fortnight earlier, had picked him up in the broiling streets of Genoa, and
+      carried him off to the Ibis, he had thought only of a cool dinner and
+      perhaps a moonlight sail. Then, in reply to their friendly urging, he had
+      confessed that he had not been well&mdash;had indeed gone off hurriedly
+      for a few days&rsquo; change of air&mdash;and that left him without defence
+      against the immediate proposal that he should take his change of air on
+      the Ibis. They were just off to Corsica and Sardinia, and from there to
+      Sicily: he could rejoin the railway at Naples, and be back at Venice in
+      ten days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ten days of respite&mdash;the temptation was irresistible. And he really
+      liked the kind uncomplicated Hickses. A wholesome honesty and simplicity
+      breathed through all their opulence, as if the rich trappings of their
+      present life still exhaled the fragrance of their native prairies. The
+      mere fact of being with such people was like a purifying bath. When the
+      yacht touched at Naples he agreed since they were so awfully kind&mdash;to
+      go on to Sicily. And when the chief steward, going ashore at Naples for
+      the last time before they got up steam, said: &ldquo;Any letters for the post,
+      sir?&rdquo; he answered, as he had answered at each previous halt: &ldquo;No, thank
+      you: none.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Now they were heading for Rhodes and Crete&mdash;Crete, where he had never
+      been, where he had so often longed to go. In spite of the lateness of the
+      season the weather was still miraculously fine: the short waves danced
+      ahead under a sky without a cloud, and the strong bows of the Ibis hardly
+      swayed as she flew forward over the flying crests.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Only his hosts and their daughter were on the yacht&mdash;of course with
+      Eldorada Tooker and Mr. Beck in attendance. An eminent archaeologist, who
+      was to have joined them at Naples, had telegraphed an excuse at the last
+      moment; and Nick noticed that, while Mrs. Hicks was perpetually
+      apologizing for the great man&rsquo;s absence, Coral merely smiled and said
+      nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As a matter of fact, Mr. and Mrs. Hicks were never as pleasant as when one
+      had them to one&rsquo;s self. In company, Mr. Hicks ran the risk of appearing
+      over-hospitable, and Mrs. Hicks confused dates and names in the desire to
+      embrace all culture in her conversation. But alone with Nick, their old
+      travelling-companion, they shone out in their native simplicity, and Mr.
+      Hicks talked soundly of investments, and Mrs. Hicks recalled her early
+      married days in Apex City, when, on being brought home to her new house in
+      Aeschylus Avenue, her first thought had been: &ldquo;How on earth shall I get
+      all those windows washed?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The loss of Mr. Buttles had been as serious to them as Nick had supposed:
+      Mr. Beck could never hope to replace him. Apart from his mysterious gift
+      of languages, and his almost superhuman faculty for knowing how to address
+      letters to eminent people, and in what terms to conclude them, he had a
+      smattering of archaeology and general culture on which Mrs. Hicks had
+      learned to depend&mdash;her own memory being, alas, so inadequate to the
+      range of her interests.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her daughter might perhaps have helped her; but it was not Miss Hicks&rsquo;s
+      way to mother her parents. She was exceedingly kind to them, but left
+      them, as it were, to bring themselves up as best they could, while she
+      pursued her own course of self-development. A sombre zeal for knowledge
+      filled the mind of this strange girl: she appeared interested only in
+      fresh opportunities of adding to her store of facts. They were illuminated
+      by little imagination and less poetry; but, carefully catalogued and
+      neatly sorted in her large cool brain, they were always as accessible as
+      the volumes in an up-to-date public library.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Nick there was something reposeful in this lucid intellectual
+      curiosity. He wanted above all things to get away from sentiment, from
+      seduction, from the moods and impulses and flashing contradictions that
+      were Susy. Susy was not a great reader: her store of facts was small, and
+      she had grown up among people who dreaded ideas as much as if they had
+      been a contagious disease. But, in the early days especially, when Nick
+      had put a book in her hand, or read a poem to her, her swift intelligence
+      had instantly shed a new light on the subject, and, penetrating to its
+      depths, had extracted from them whatever belonged to her. What a pity that
+      this exquisite insight, this intuitive discrimination, should for the most
+      part have been spent upon reading the thoughts of vulgar people, and
+      extracting a profit from them&mdash;should have been wasted, since her
+      childhood, on all the hideous intricacies of &ldquo;managing&rdquo;!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And visible beauty&mdash;how she cared for that too! He had not guessed
+      it, or rather he had not been sure of it, till the day when, on their way
+      through Paris, he had taken her to the Louvre, and they had stood before
+      the little Crucifixion of Mantegna. He had not been looking at the
+      picture, or watching to see what impression it produced on Susy. His own
+      momentary mood was for Correggio and Fragonard, the laughter of the Music
+      Lesson and the bold pagan joys of the Antiope; and then he had missed her
+      from his side, and when he came to where she stood, forgetting him,
+      forgetting everything, had seen the glare of that tragic sky in her face,
+      her trembling lip, the tears on her lashes. That was Susy....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Closing his book he stole a glance at Coral Hicks&rsquo;s profile, thrown back
+      against the cushions of the deck-chair at his side. There was something
+      harsh and bracing in her blunt primitive build, in the projection of the
+      black eyebrows that nearly met over her thick straight nose, and the faint
+      barely visible black down on her upper lip. Some miracle of will-power,
+      combined with all the artifices that wealth can buy, had turned the fat
+      sallow girl he remembered into this commanding young woman, almost
+      handsome at times indisputably handsome&mdash;in her big authoritative
+      way. Watching the arrogant lines of her profile against the blue sea, he
+      remembered, with a thrill that was sweet to his vanity, how twice&mdash;under
+      the dome of the Scalzi and in the streets of Genoa&mdash;he had seen those
+      same lines soften at his approach, turn womanly, pleading and almost
+      humble. That was Coral....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly she said, without turning toward him: &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve had no letters
+      since you&rsquo;ve been on board.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at her, surprised. &ldquo;No&mdash;thank the Lord!&rdquo; he laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you haven&rsquo;t written one either,&rdquo; she continued in her hard
+      statistical tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he again agreed, with the same laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That means that you really are free&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Free?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He saw the cheek nearest him redden. &ldquo;Really off on a holiday, I mean; not
+      tied down.&rdquo; After a pause he rejoined: &ldquo;No, I&rsquo;m not particularly tied
+      down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And your book?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, my book&mdash;&rdquo; He stopped and considered. He had thrust The Pageant
+      of Alexander into his handbag on the night of his Bight from Venice; but
+      since then he had never looked at it. Too many memories and illusions were
+      pressed between its pages; and he knew just at what page he had felt Ellie
+      Vanderlyn bending over him from behind, caught a whiff of her scent, and
+      heard her breathless &ldquo;I had to thank you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My book&rsquo;s hung up,&rdquo; he said impatiently, annoyed with Miss Hicks&rsquo;s lack
+      of tact. There was a girl who never put out feelers....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; I thought it was,&rdquo; she went on quietly, and he gave her a startled
+      glance. What the devil else did she think, he wondered? He had never
+      supposed her capable of getting far enough out of her own thick carapace
+      of self-sufficiency to penetrate into any one else&rsquo;s feelings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The truth is,&rdquo; he continued, embarrassed, &ldquo;I suppose I dug away at it
+      rather too continuously; that&rsquo;s probably why I felt the need of a change.
+      You see I&rsquo;m only a beginner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She still continued her relentless questioning. &ldquo;But later&mdash;you&rsquo;ll go
+      on with it, of course?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I don&rsquo;t know.&rdquo; He paused, glanced down the glittering deck, and then
+      out across the glittering water. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been dreaming dreams, you see. I
+      rather think I shall have to drop the book altogether, and try to look out
+      for a job that will pay. To indulge in my kind of literature one must
+      first have an assured income.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was instantly annoyed with himself for having spoken. Hitherto in his
+      relations with the Hickses he had carefully avoided the least allusion
+      that might make him feel the heavy hand of their beneficence. But the idle
+      procrastinating weeks had weakened him and he had yielded to the need of
+      putting into words his vague intentions. To do so would perhaps help to
+      make them more definite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To his relief Miss Hicks made no immediate reply; and when she spoke it
+      was in a softer voice and with an unwonted hesitation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It seems a shame that with gifts like yours you shouldn&rsquo;t find some kind
+      of employment that would leave you leisure enough to do your real
+      work....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He shrugged ironically. &ldquo;Yes&mdash;there are a goodish number of us
+      hunting for that particular kind of employment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her tone became more business-like. &ldquo;I know it&rsquo;s hard to find&mdash;almost
+      impossible. But would you take it, I wonder, if it were offered to you&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned her head slightly, and their eyes met. For an instant blank
+      terror loomed upon him; but before he had time to face it she continued,
+      in the same untroubled voice: &ldquo;Mr. Buttles&rsquo;s place, I mean. My parents
+      must absolutely have some one they can count on. You know what an easy
+      place it is.... I think you would find the salary satisfactory.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nick drew a deep breath of relief. For a moment her eyes had looked as
+      they had in the Scalzi&mdash;and he liked the girl too much not to shrink
+      from reawakening that look. But Mr. Buttles&rsquo;s place: why not?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor Buttles!&rdquo; he murmured, to gain time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;you won&rsquo;t find the same reasons as he did for throwing up
+      the job. He was the martyr of his artistic convictions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He glanced at her sideways, wondering. After all she did not know of his
+      meeting with Mr. Buttles in Genoa, nor of the latter&rsquo;s confidences;
+      perhaps she did not even know of Mr. Buttles&rsquo;s hopeless passion. At any
+      rate her face remained calm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not consider it&mdash;at least just for a few months? Till after our
+      expedition to Mesopotamia?&rdquo; she pressed on, a little breathlessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re awfully kind: but I don&rsquo;t know&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stood up with one of her abrupt movements. &ldquo;You needn&rsquo;t, all at once.
+      Take time think it over. Father wanted me to ask you,&rdquo; she appended.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He felt the inadequacy of his response. &ldquo;It tempts me awfully, of course.
+      But I must wait, at any rate&mdash;wait for letters. The fact is I shall
+      have to wire from Rhodes to have them sent. I had chucked everything, even
+      letters, for a few weeks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you are tired,&rdquo; she murmured, giving him a last downward glance as
+      she turned away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From Rhodes Nick Lansing telegraphed to his Paris bank to send his letters
+      to Candia; but when the Ibis reached Candia, and the mail was brought on
+      board, the thick envelope handed to him contained no letter from Susy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Why should it, since he had not yet written to her?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had not written, no: but in sending his address to the bank he knew he
+      had given her the opportunity of reaching him if she wished to. And she
+      had made no sign.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Late that afternoon, when they returned to the yacht from their first
+      expedition, a packet of newspapers lay on the deck-house table. Nick
+      picked up one of the London journals, and his eye ran absently down the
+      list of social events.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He read:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Among the visitors expected next week at Ruan Castle (let for the season
+      to Mr. Frederick J. Gillow of New York) are Prince Altineri of Rome, the
+      Earl of Altringham and Mrs. Nicholas Lansing, who arrived in London last
+      week from Paris.&rdquo; Nick threw down the paper. It was just a month since he
+      had left the Palazzo Vanderlyn and flung himself into the night express
+      for Milan. A whole month&mdash;and Susy had not written. Only a month&mdash;and
+      Susy and Strefford were already together!
+    </p>
+
+
+<h3>XVII.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">Susy</span> had decided to wait for Strefford in London.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The new Lord Altringham was with his family in the north, and though she
+      found a telegram on arriving, saying that he would join her in town the
+      following week, she had still an interval of several days to fill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      London was a desert; the rain fell without ceasing, and alone in the
+      shabby family hotel which, even out of season, was the best she could
+      afford, she sat at last face to face with herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the moment when Violet Melrose had failed to carry out her plan for
+      the Fulmer children her interest in Susy had visibly waned. Often before,
+      in the old days, Susy Branch had felt the same abrupt change of
+      temperature in the manner of the hostess of the moment; and often&mdash;how
+      often&mdash;had yielded, and performed the required service, rather than
+      risk the consequences of estrangement. To that, at least, thank heaven,
+      she need never stoop again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But as she hurriedly packed her trunks at Versailles, scraped together an
+      adequate tip for Mrs. Match, and bade good-bye to Violet (grown suddenly
+      fond and demonstrative as she saw her visitor safely headed for the
+      station)&mdash;as Susy went through the old familiar mummery of the
+      enforced leave-taking, there rose in her so deep a disgust for the life of
+      makeshifts and accommodations, that if at that moment Nick had reappeared
+      and held out his arms to her, she was not sure she would have had the
+      courage to return to them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In her London solitude the thirst for independence grew fiercer.
+      Independence with ease, of course. Oh, her hateful useless love of
+      beauty... the curse it had always been to her, the blessing it might have
+      been if only she had had the material means to gratify and to express it!
+      And instead, it only gave her a morbid loathing of that hideous hotel
+      bedroom drowned in yellow rain-light, of the smell of soot and cabbage
+      through the window, the blistered wall-paper, the dusty wax bouquets under
+      glass globes, and the electric lighting so contrived that as you turned on
+      the feeble globe hanging from the middle of the ceiling the feebler one
+      beside the bed went out!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What a sham world she and Nick had lived in during their few months
+      together! What right had either of them to those exquisite settings of the
+      life of leisure: the long white house hidden in camellias and cypresses
+      above the lake, or the great rooms on the Giudecca with the shimmer of the
+      canal always playing over their frescoed ceilings! Yet she had come to
+      imagine that these places really belonged to them, that they would always
+      go on living, fondly and irreproachably, in the frame of other people&rsquo;s
+      wealth.... That, again, was the curse of her love of beauty, the way she
+      always took to it as if it belonged to her!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, the awakening was bound to come, and it was perhaps better that it
+      should have come so soon. At any rate there was no use in letting her
+      thoughts wander back to that shattered fool&rsquo;s paradise of theirs. Only, as
+      she sat there and reckoned up the days till Strefford arrived, what else
+      in the world was there to think of?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her future and his?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she knew that future by heart already! She had not spent her life
+      among the rich and fashionable without having learned every detail of the
+      trappings of a rich and fashionable marriage. She had calculated long ago
+      just how many dinner-dresses, how many tea-gowns and how much lacy
+      lingerie would go to make up the outfit of the future Countess of
+      Altringham. She had even decided to which dressmaker she would go for her
+      chinchilla cloak&mdash;for she meant to have one, and down to her feet, and
+      softer and more voluminous and more extravagantly sumptuous than Violet&rsquo;s
+      or Ursula&rsquo;s... not to speak of silver foxes and sables... nor yet of the
+      Altringham jewels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She knew all this by heart; had always known it. It all belonged to the
+      make-up of the life of elegance: there was nothing new about it. What had
+      been new to her was just that short interval with Nick&mdash;a life unreal
+      indeed in its setting, but so real in its essentials: the one reality she
+      had ever known. As she looked back on it she saw how much it had given her
+      besides the golden flush of her happiness, the sudden flowering of
+      sensuous joy in heart and body. Yes&mdash;there had been the flowering
+      too, in pain like birth-pangs, of something graver, stronger, fuller of
+      future power, something she had hardly heeded in her first light rapture,
+      but that always came back and possessed her stilled soul when the rapture
+      sank: the deep disquieting sense of something that Nick and love had
+      taught her, but that reached out even beyond love and beyond Nick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her nerves were racked by the ceaseless swish, swish of the rain on the
+      dirty panes and the smell of cabbage and coal that came in under the door
+      when she shut the window. This nauseating foretaste of the luncheon she
+      must presently go down to was more than she could bear. It brought with it
+      a vision of the dank coffee-room below, the sooty Smyrna rug, the rain on
+      the sky-light, the listless waitresses handing about food that tasted as
+      if it had been rained on too. There was really no reason why she should
+      let such material miseries add to her depression....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She sprang up, put on her hat and jacket, and calling for a taxi drove to
+      the London branch of the Nouveau Luxe hotel. It was just one o&rsquo;clock and
+      she was sure to pick up a luncheon, for though London was empty that great
+      establishment was not. It never was. Along those sultry velvet-carpeted
+      halls, in that great flowered and scented dining-room, there was always a
+      come-and-go of rich aimless people, the busy people who, having nothing to
+      do, perpetually pursue their inexorable task from one end of the earth to
+      the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh, the monotony of those faces&mdash;the faces one always knew, whether
+      one knew the people they belonged to or not! A fresh disgust seized her at
+      the sight of them: she wavered, and then turned and fled. But on the
+      threshold a still more familiar figure met her: that of a lady in
+      exaggerated pearls and sables, descending from an exaggerated motor, like
+      the motors in magazine advertisements, the huge arks in which jewelled
+      beauties and slender youths pause to gaze at snowpeaks from an Alpine
+      summit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Ursula Gillow&mdash;dear old Ursula, on her way to Scotland&mdash;and
+      she and Susy fell on each other&rsquo;s necks. It appeared that Ursula, detained
+      till the next evening by a dress-maker&rsquo;s delay, was also out of a job and
+      killing time, and the two were soon smiling at each other over the
+      exquisite preliminaries of a luncheon which the head-waiter had
+      authoritatively asked Mrs. Gillow to &ldquo;leave to him, as usual.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ursula was in a good humour. It did not often happen; but when it did her
+      benevolence knew no bounds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Like Mrs. Melrose, like all her tribe in fact, she was too much absorbed
+      in her own affairs to give more than a passing thought to any one else&rsquo;s;
+      but she was delighted at the meeting with Susy, as her wandering kind
+      always were when they ran across fellow-wanderers, unless the meeting
+      happened to interfere with choicer pleasures. Not to be alone was the
+      urgent thing; and Ursula, who had been forty-eight hours alone in London,
+      at once exacted from her friend a promise that they should spend the rest
+      of the day together. But once the bargain struck her mind turned again to
+      her own affairs, and she poured out her confidences to Susy over a
+      succession of dishes that manifested the head-waiter&rsquo;s understanding of
+      the case.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ursula&rsquo;s confidences were always the same, though they were usually about
+      a different person. She demolished and rebuilt her sentimental life with
+      the same frequency and impetuosity as that with which she changed her
+      dress-makers, did over her drawing-rooms, ordered new motors, altered the
+      mounting of her jewels, and generally renewed the setting of her life.
+      Susy knew in advance what the tale would be; but to listen to it over
+      perfect coffee, an amber-scented cigarette at her lips, was pleasanter
+      than consuming cold mutton alone in a mouldy coffee-room. The contrast was
+      so soothing that she even began to take a languid interest in her friend&rsquo;s
+      narrative.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After luncheon they got into the motor together and began a systematic
+      round of the West End shops: furriers, jewellers and dealers in old
+      furniture. Nothing could be more unlike Violet Melrose&rsquo;s long hesitating
+      sessions before the things she thought she wanted till the moment came to
+      decide. Ursula pounced on silver foxes and old lacquer as promptly and
+      decisively as on the objects of her surplus sentimentality: she knew at
+      once what she wanted, and valued it more after it was hers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now&mdash;I wonder if you couldn&rsquo;t help me choose a grand piano?&rdquo; she
+      suggested, as the last antiquarian bowed them out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A piano?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes: for Ruan. I&rsquo;m sending one down for Grace Fulmer. She&rsquo;s coming to
+      stay... did I tell you? I want people to hear her. I want her to get
+      engagements in London. My dear, she&rsquo;s a Genius.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A Genius&mdash;Grace!&rdquo; Susy gasped. &ldquo;I thought it was Nat....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nat&mdash;Nat Fulmer?&rdquo; Ursula laughed derisively. &ldquo;Ah, of course&mdash;you&rsquo;ve
+      been staying with that silly Violet! The poor thing is off her head about
+      Nat&mdash;it&rsquo;s really pitiful. Of course he has talent: I saw that long
+      before Violet had ever heard of him. Why, on the opening day of the
+      American Artists&rsquo; exhibition, last winter, I stopped short before his
+      &lsquo;Spring Snow-Storm&rsquo; (which nobody else had noticed till that moment), and
+      said to the Prince, who was with me: &lsquo;The man has talent.&rsquo; But genius&mdash;why,
+      it&rsquo;s his wife who has genius! Have you never heard Grace play the violin?
+      Poor Violet, as usual, is off on the wrong tack. I&rsquo;ve given Fulmer my
+      garden-house to do&mdash;no doubt Violet told you&mdash;because I wanted
+      to help him. But Grace is my discovery, and I&rsquo;m determined to make her
+      known, and to have every one understand that she is the genius of the two.
+      I&rsquo;ve told her she simply must come to Ruan, and bring the best
+      accompanyist she can find. You know poor Nerone is dreadfully bored by
+      sport, though of course he goes out with the guns. And if one didn&rsquo;t have
+      a little art in the evening.... Oh, Susy, do you mean to tell me you don&rsquo;t
+      know how to choose a piano? I thought you were so fond of music!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am fond of it; but without knowing anything about it&mdash;in the way
+      we&rsquo;re all of us fond of the worthwhile things in our stupid set,&rdquo; she
+      added to herself&mdash;since it was obviously useless to impart such
+      reflections to Ursula.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But are you sure Grace is coming?&rdquo; she questioned aloud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite sure. Why shouldn&rsquo;t she? I wired to her yesterday. I&rsquo;m giving her a
+      thousand dollars and all her expenses.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not till they were having tea in a Piccadilly tea-room that Mrs.
+      Gillow began to manifest some interest in her companion&rsquo;s plans. The
+      thought of losing Susy became suddenly intolerable to her. The Prince, who
+      did not see why he should be expected to linger in London out of season,
+      was already at Ruan, and Ursula could not face the evening and the whole
+      of the next day by herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what are you doing in town, darling, I don&rsquo;t remember if I&rsquo;ve asked
+      you,&rdquo; she said, resting her firm elbows on the tea-table while she took a
+      light from Susy&rsquo;s cigarette.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy hesitated. She had foreseen that the time must soon come when she
+      should have to give some account of herself; and why should she not begin
+      by telling Ursula?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But telling her what?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her silence appeared to strike Mrs. Gillow as a reproach, and she
+      continued with compunction: &ldquo;And Nick? Nick&rsquo;s with you? How is he, I
+      thought you and he still were in Venice with Ellie Vanderlyn.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We were, for a few weeks.&rdquo; She steadied her voice. &ldquo;It was delightful.
+      But now we&rsquo;re both on our own again&mdash;for a while.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Gillow scrutinized her more searchingly. &ldquo;Oh, you&rsquo;re alone here,
+      then; quite alone?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes: Nick&rsquo;s cruising with some friends in the Mediterranean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ursula&rsquo;s shallow gaze deepened singularly. &ldquo;But, Susy darling, then if
+      you&rsquo;re alone&mdash;and out of a job, just for the moment?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy smiled. &ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;m not sure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, but if you are, darling, and you would come to Ruan! I know Fred
+      asked you didn&rsquo;t he? And he told me that both you and Nick had refused. He
+      was awfully huffed at your not coming; but I suppose that was because Nick
+      had other plans. We couldn&rsquo;t have him now, because there&rsquo;s no room for
+      another gun; but since he&rsquo;s not here, and you&rsquo;re free, why you know,
+      dearest, don&rsquo;t you, how we&rsquo;d love to have you? Fred would be too glad&mdash;too
+      outrageously glad&mdash;but you don&rsquo;t much mind Fred&rsquo;s love-making, do
+      you? And you&rsquo;d be such a help to me&mdash;if that&rsquo;s any argument! With
+      that big house full of men, and people flocking over every night to dine,
+      and Fred caring only for sport, and Nerone simply loathing it and
+      ridiculing it, and not a minute to myself to try to keep him in a good
+      humour.... Oh, Susy darling, don&rsquo;t say no, but let me telephone at once
+      for a place in the train to-morrow night!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy leaned back, letting the ash lengthen on her cigarette. How familiar,
+      how hatefully familiar, was that old appeal! Ursula felt the pressing need
+      of someone to flirt with Fred for a few weeks... and here was the very
+      person she needed. Susy shivered at the thought. She had never really
+      meant to go to Ruan. She had simply used the moor as a pretext when Violet
+      Melrose had gently put her out of doors. Rather than do what Ursula asked
+      she would borrow a few hundred pounds of Strefford, as he had suggested,
+      and then look about for some temporary occupation until&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Until she became Lady Altringham? Well, perhaps. At any rate, she was not
+      going back to slave for Ursula.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She shook her head with a faint smile. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m so sorry, Ursula: of course I
+      want awfully to oblige you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Gillow&rsquo;s gaze grew reproachful. &ldquo;I should have supposed you would,&rdquo;
+       she murmured. Susy, meeting her eyes, looked into them down a long vista
+      of favours bestowed, and perceived that Ursula was not the woman to forget
+      on which side the obligation lay between them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy hesitated: she remembered the weeks of ecstasy she had owed to the
+      Gillows&rsquo; wedding cheque, and it hurt her to appear ungrateful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I could, Ursula... but really... I&rsquo;m not free at the moment.&rdquo; She
+      paused, and then took an abrupt decision. &ldquo;The fact is, I&rsquo;m waiting here
+      to see Strefford.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Strefford&rsquo; Lord Altringham?&rdquo; Ursula stared. &ldquo;Ah, yes-I remember. You and
+      he used to be great friends, didn&rsquo;t you?&rdquo; Her roving attention
+      deepened.... But if Susy were waiting to see Lord Altringham&mdash;one of
+      the richest men in England! Suddenly Ursula opened her gold-meshed bag and
+      snatched a miniature diary from it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But wait a moment&mdash;yes, it is next week! I knew it was next week
+      he&rsquo;s coming to Ruan! But, you darling, that makes everything all right.
+      You&rsquo;ll send him a wire at once, and come with me to-morrow, and meet him
+      there instead of in this nasty sloppy desert.... Oh, Susy, if you knew how
+      hard life is for me in Scotland between the Prince and Fred you couldn&rsquo;t
+      possibly say no!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy still wavered; but, after all, if Strefford were really bound for
+      Ruan, why not see him there, agreeably and at leisure, instead of spending
+      a dreary day with him in roaming the wet London streets, or screaming at
+      him through the rattle of a restaurant orchestra? She knew he would not be
+      likely to postpone his visit to Ruan in order to linger in London with
+      her: such concessions had never been his way, and were less than ever
+      likely to be, now that he could do so thoroughly and completely as he
+      pleased.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the first time she fully understood how different his destiny had
+      become. Now of course all his days and hours were mapped out in advance:
+      invitations assailed him, opportunities pressed on him, he had only to
+      choose.... And the women! She had never before thought of the women. All
+      the girls in England would be wanting to marry him, not to mention her own
+      enterprising compatriots. And there were the married women, who were even
+      more to be feared. Streff might, for the time, escape marriage; though she
+      could guess the power of persuasion, family pressure, all the converging
+      traditional influences he had so often ridiculed, yet, as she knew, had
+      never completely thrown off.... Yes, those quiet invisible women at
+      Altringham&mdash;his uncle&rsquo;s widow, his mother, the spinster sisters&mdash;it
+      was not impossible that, with tact and patience&mdash;and the stupidest
+      women could be tactful and patient on such occasions&mdash;they might
+      eventually persuade him that it was his duty, they might put just the
+      right young loveliness in his way.... But meanwhile, now, at once, there
+      were the married women. Ah, they wouldn&rsquo;t wait, they were doubtless laying
+      their traps already! Susy shivered at the thought. She knew too much about
+      the way the trick was done, had followed, too often, all the sinuosities
+      of such approaches. Not that they were very sinuous nowadays: more often
+      there was just a swoop and a pounce when the time came; but she knew all
+      the arts and the wiles that led up to it. She knew them, oh, how she knew
+      them&mdash;though with Streff, thank heaven, she had never been called
+      upon to exercise them! His love was there for the asking: would she not be
+      a fool to refuse it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps; though on that point her mind still wavered. But at any rate she
+      saw that, decidedly, it would be better to yield to Ursula&rsquo;s pressure;
+      better to meet him at Ruan, in a congenial setting, where she would have
+      time to get her bearings, observe what dangers threatened him, and make up
+      her mind whether, after all, it was to be her mission to save him from the
+      other women.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, if you like, then, Ursula....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you angel, you! I&rsquo;m so glad! We&rsquo;ll go to the nearest post office, and
+      send off the wire ourselves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As they got into the motor Mrs. Gillow seized Susy&rsquo;s arm with a pleading
+      pressure. &ldquo;And you will let Fred make love to you a little, won&rsquo;t you,
+      darling?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+
+
+<h3>XVIII.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<span class="smcap">But</span> I can&rsquo;t think,&rdquo; said Ellie Vanderlyn earnestly, &ldquo;why you don&rsquo;t
+      announce your engagement before waiting for your divorce. People are
+      beginning to do it, I assure you&mdash;it&rsquo;s so much safer!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Vanderlyn, on the way back from St. Moritz to England, had paused in
+      Paris to renew the depleted wardrobe which, only two months earlier, had
+      filled so many trunks to bursting. Other ladies, flocking there from all
+      points of the globe for the same purpose, disputed with her the Louis XVI
+      suites of the Nouveau Luxe, the pink-candled tables in the restaurant, the
+      hours for trying-on at the dressmakers&rsquo;; and just because they were so
+      many, and all feverishly fighting to get the same things at the same time,
+      they were all excited, happy and at ease. It was the most momentous period
+      of the year: the height of the &ldquo;dress makers&rsquo; season.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Vanderlyn had run across Susy Lansing at one of the Rue de la Paix
+      openings, where rows of ladies wan with heat and emotion sat for hours in
+      rapt attention while spectral apparitions in incredible raiment tottered
+      endlessly past them on aching feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Distracted from the regal splendours of a chinchilla cloak by the sense
+      that another lady was also examining it, Mrs. Vanderlyn turned in surprise
+      at sight of Susy, whose head was critically bent above the fur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Susy! I&rsquo;d no idea you were here! I saw in the papers that you were with
+      the Gillows.&rdquo; The customary embraces followed; then Mrs. Vanderlyn, her
+      eyes pursuing the matchless cloak as it disappeared down a vista of
+      receding mannequins, interrogated sharply: &ldquo;Are you shopping for Ursula?
+      If you mean to order that cloak for her I&rsquo;d rather know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy smiled, and paused a moment before answering. During the pause she
+      took in all the exquisite details of Ellie Vanderlyn&rsquo;s perpetually
+      youthful person, from the plumed crown of her head to the perfect arch of
+      her patent-leather shoes. At last she said quietly: &ldquo;No&mdash;to-day I&rsquo;m
+      shopping for myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yourself? Yourself?&rdquo; Mrs. Vanderlyn echoed with a stare of incredulity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; just for a change,&rdquo; Susy serenely acknowledged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But the cloak&mdash;I meant the chinchilla cloak... the one with the
+      ermine lining....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; it is awfully good, isn&rsquo;t it? But I mean to look elsewhere before I
+      decide.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ah, how often she had heard her friends use that phrase; and how amusing
+      it was, now, to see Ellie&rsquo;s amazement as she heard it tossed off in her
+      own tone of contemptuous satiety! Susy was becoming more and more
+      dependent on such diversions; without them her days, crowded as they were,
+      would nevertheless have dragged by heavily. But it still amused her to go
+      to the big dressmakers&rsquo;, watch the mannequins sweep by, and be seen by her
+      friends superciliously examining all the most expensive dresses in the
+      procession. She knew the rumour was abroad that she and Nick were to be
+      divorced, and that Lord Altringham was &ldquo;devoted&rdquo; to her. She neither
+      confirmed nor denied the report: she just let herself be luxuriously
+      carried forward on its easy tide. But although it was now three months
+      since Nick had left the Palazzo Vanderlyn she had not yet written to him&mdash;nor
+      he to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile, in spite of all that she packed into them, the days passed more
+      and more slowly, and the excitements she had counted on no longer excited
+      her. Strefford was hers: she knew that he would marry her as soon as she
+      was free. They had been together at Ruan for ten days, and after that she
+      had motored south with him, stopping on the way to see Altringham, from
+      which, at the moment, his mourning relatives were absent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At Altringham they had parted; and after one or two more visits in England
+      she had come back to Paris, where he was now about to join her. After her
+      few hours at Altringham she had understood that he would wait for her as
+      long as was necessary: the fear of the &ldquo;other women&rdquo; had ceased to trouble
+      her. But, perhaps for that very reason, the future seemed less exciting
+      than she had expected. Sometimes she thought it was the sight of that
+      great house which had overwhelmed her: it was too vast, too venerable, too
+      like a huge monument built of ancient territorial traditions and
+      obligations. Perhaps it had been lived in for too long by too many
+      serious-minded and conscientious women: somehow she could not picture it
+      invaded by bridge and debts and adultery. And yet that was what would have
+      to be, of course... she could hardly picture either Strefford or herself
+      continuing there the life of heavy county responsibilities, dull parties,
+      laborious duties, weekly church-going, and presiding over local
+      committees.... What a pity they couldn&rsquo;t sell it and have a little house
+      on the Thames!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless she was not sorry to let it be known that Altringham was hers
+      when she chose to take it. At times she wondered whether Nick knew...
+      whether rumours had reached him. If they had, he had only his own letter
+      to thank for it. He had told her what course to pursue; and she was
+      pursuing it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment the meeting with Ellie Vanderlyn had been a shock to her; she
+      had hoped never to see Ellie again. But now that they were actually face
+      to face Susy perceived how dulled her sensibilities were. In a few moments
+      she had grown used to Ellie, as she was growing used to everybody and to
+      everything in the old life she had returned to. What was the use of making
+      such a fuss about things? She and Mrs. Vanderlyn left the dress-maker&rsquo;s
+      together, and after an absorbing session at a new milliner&rsquo;s were now
+      taking tea in Ellie&rsquo;s drawing-room at the Nouveau Luxe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ellie, with her spoiled child&rsquo;s persistency, had come back to the question
+      of the chinchilla cloak. It was the only one she had seen that she fancied
+      in the very least, and as she hadn&rsquo;t a decent fur garment left to her name
+      she was naturally in somewhat of a hurry... but, of course, if Susy had
+      been choosing that model for a friend....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy, leaning back against her cushions, examined through half-closed lids
+      Mrs. Vanderlyn&rsquo;s small delicately-restored countenance, which wore the
+      same expression of childish eagerness as when she discoursed of the young
+      Davenant of the moment. Once again Susy remarked that, in Ellie&rsquo;s agitated
+      existence, every interest appeared to be on exactly the same plane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The poor shivering dear,&rdquo; she answered laughing, &ldquo;of course it shall have
+      its nice warm winter cloak, and I&rsquo;ll choose another one instead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you darling, you! If you would! Of course, whoever you were ordering
+      it for need never know....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you can&rsquo;t comfort yourself with that, I&rsquo;m afraid. I&rsquo;ve already told
+      you that I was ordering it for myself.&rdquo; Susy paused to savour to the full
+      Ellie&rsquo;s look of blank bewilderment; then her amusement was checked by an
+      indefinable change in her friend&rsquo;s expression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, dearest&mdash;seriously? I didn&rsquo;t know there was someone....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy flushed to the forehead. A horror of humiliation overwhelmed her.
+      That Ellie should dare to think that of her&mdash;that anyone should dare
+      to!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Someone buying chinchilla cloaks for me? Thanks!&rdquo; she flared out. &ldquo;I
+      suppose I ought to be glad that the idea didn&rsquo;t immediately occur to you.
+      At least there was a decent interval of doubt....&rdquo; She stood up, laughing
+      again, and began to wander about the room. In the mirror above the mantel
+      she caught sight of her flushed angry face, and of Mrs. Vanderlyn&rsquo;s
+      disconcerted stare. She turned toward her friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose everybody else will think it if you do; so perhaps I&rsquo;d better
+      explain.&rdquo; She paused, and drew a quick breath. &ldquo;Nick and I mean to part&mdash;have
+      parted, in fact. He&rsquo;s decided that the whole thing was a mistake. He will
+      probably; marry again soon&mdash;and so shall I.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She flung the avowal out breathlessly, in her nervous dread of letting
+      Ellie Vanderlyn think for an instant longer that any other explanation was
+      conceivable. She had not meant to be so explicit; but once the words were
+      spoken she was not altogether sorry. Of course people would soon begin to
+      wonder why she was again straying about the world alone; and since it was
+      by Nick&rsquo;s choice, why should she not say so? Remembering the burning
+      anguish of those last hours in Venice she asked herself what possible
+      consideration she owed to the man who had so humbled her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ellie Vanderlyn glanced at her in astonishment. &ldquo;You? You and Nick&mdash;are
+      going to part?&rdquo; A light appeared to dawn on her. &ldquo;Ah&mdash;then that&rsquo;s why
+      he sent me back my pin, I suppose?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your pin?&rdquo; Susy wondered, not at once remembering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The poor little scarf-pin I gave him before I left Venice. He sent it
+      back almost at once, with the oddest note&mdash;just: &lsquo;I haven&rsquo;t earned
+      it, really.&rsquo; I couldn&rsquo;t think why he didn&rsquo;t care for the pin. But, now I
+      suppose it was because you and he had quarrelled; though really, even so,
+      I can&rsquo;t see why he should bear me a grudge....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy&rsquo;s quick blood surged up. Nick had sent back the pin&mdash;the fatal pin!
+      And she, Susy, had kept the bracelet&mdash;locked it up out of sight,
+      shrunk away from the little packet whenever her hand touched it in packing
+      or unpacking&mdash;but never thought of returning it, no, not once! Which
+      of the two, she wondered, had been right? Was it not an indirect slight to
+      her that Nick should fling back the gift to poor uncomprehending Ellie? Or
+      was it not rather another proof of his finer moral sensitiveness!... And
+      how could one tell, in their bewildering world, &ldquo;It was not because we&rsquo;ve
+      quarrelled; we haven&rsquo;t quarrelled,&rdquo; she said slowly, moved by the sudden
+      desire to defend her privacy and Nick&rsquo;s, to screen from every eye their
+      last bitter hour together. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve simply decided that our experiment was
+      impossible&mdash;for two paupers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, well&mdash;of course we all felt that at the time. And now somebody
+      else wants to marry you! And it&rsquo;s your trousseau you were choosing that
+      cloak for?&rdquo; Ellie cried in incredulous rapture; then she flung her arms
+      about Susy&rsquo;s shrinking shoulders. &ldquo;You lucky lucky girl! You clever clever
+      darling! But who on earth can he be?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And it was then that Susy, for the first time, had pronounced the name of
+      Lord Altringham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Streff&mdash;Streff? Our dear old Streff, You mean to say he wants to
+      marry you?&rdquo; As the news took possession of her mind Ellie became
+      dithyrambic. &ldquo;But, my dearest, what a miracle of luck! Of course I always
+      knew he was awfully gone on you: Fred Davenant used to say so, I
+      remember... and even Nelson, who&rsquo;s so stupid about such things, noticed it
+      in Venice.... But then it was so different. No one could possibly have
+      thought of marrying him then; whereas now of course every woman is trying
+      for him. Oh, Susy, whatever you do, don&rsquo;t miss your chance! You can&rsquo;t
+      conceive of the wicked plotting and intriguing there will be to get him&mdash;on
+      all sides, and even where one least suspects it. You don&rsquo;t know what
+      horrors women will do&mdash;and even girls!&rdquo; A shudder ran through her at the
+      thought, and she caught Susy&rsquo;s wrists in vehement fingers. &ldquo;But I can&rsquo;t
+      think, my dear, why you don&rsquo;t announce your engagement at once. People are
+      beginning to do it, I assure you&mdash;it&rsquo;s so much safer!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy looked at her, wondering. Not a word of sympathy for the ruin of her
+      brief bliss, not even a gleam of curiosity as to its cause! No doubt Ellie
+      Vanderlyn, like all Susy&rsquo;s other friends, had long since &ldquo;discounted&rdquo; the
+      brevity of her dream, and perhaps planned a sequel to it before she
+      herself had seen the glory fading. She and Nick had spent the greater part
+      of their few weeks together under Ellie Vanderlyn&rsquo;s roof; but to Ellie,
+      obviously, the fact meant no more than her own escapade, at the same
+      moment, with young Davenant&rsquo;s supplanter&mdash;the &ldquo;bounder&rdquo; whom
+      Strefford had never named. Her one thought for her friend was that Susy
+      should at last secure her prize&mdash;her incredible prize. And therein at
+      any rate Ellie showed the kind of cold disinterestedness that raised her
+      above the smiling perfidy of the majority of her kind. At least her advice
+      was sincere; and perhaps it was wise. Why should Susy not let every one
+      know that she meant to marry Strefford as soon as the &ldquo;formalities&rdquo; were
+      fulfilled?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She did not immediately answer Mrs. Vanderlyn&rsquo;s question; and the latter,
+      repeating it, added impatiently: &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand you; if Nick agrees&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, he agrees,&rdquo; said Susy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then what more do you want! Oh, Susy, if you&rsquo;d only follow my example!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your example?&rdquo; Susy paused, weighed the word, was struck by something
+      embarrassed, arch yet half-apologetic in her friend&rsquo;s expression. &ldquo;Your
+      example?&rdquo; she repeated. &ldquo;Why, Ellie, what on earth do you mean? Not that
+      you&rsquo;re going to part from poor Nelson?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Vanderlyn met her reproachful gaze with a crystalline glance. &ldquo;I
+      don&rsquo;t want to, heaven knows&mdash;poor dear Nelson! I assure you I simply
+      hate it. He&rsquo;s always such an angel to Clarissa... and then we&rsquo;re used to
+      each other. But what in the world am I to do? Algie&rsquo;s so rich, so
+      appallingly rich, that I have to be perpetually on the watch to keep other
+      women away from him&mdash;and it&rsquo;s too exhausting....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Algie?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Vanderlyn&rsquo;s lovely eyebrows rose. &ldquo;Algie: Algie Bockheimer. Didn&rsquo;t
+      you know, I think he said you&rsquo;ve dined with his parents. Nobody else in
+      the world is as rich as the Bockheimers; and Algie&rsquo;s their only child.
+      Yes, it was with him... with him I was so dreadfully happy last spring...
+      and now I&rsquo;m in mortal terror of losing him. And I do assure you there&rsquo;s no
+      other way of keeping them, when they&rsquo;re as hideously rich as that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy rose to her feet. A little shudder ran over her. She remembered, now,
+      having seen Algie Bockheimer at one of his parents&rsquo; first entertainments,
+      in their newly-inaugurated marble halls in Fifth Avenue. She recalled his
+      too faultless clothes and his small glossy furtive countenance. She looked
+      at Ellie Vanderlyn with sudden scorn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think you&rsquo;re abominable,&rdquo; she exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other&rsquo;s perfect little face collapsed. &ldquo;A-bo-minable? A-bo-mi-nable?
+      Susy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes... with Nelson... and Clarissa... and your past together... and all
+      the money you can possibly want... and that man! Abominable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ellie stood up trembling: she was not used to scenes, and they disarranged
+      her thoughts as much as her complexion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re very cruel, Susy&mdash;so cruel and dreadful that I hardly know
+      how to answer you,&rdquo; she stammered. &ldquo;But you simply don&rsquo;t know what you&rsquo;re
+      talking about. As if anybody ever had all the money they wanted!&rdquo; She
+      wiped her dark-rimmed eyes with a cautious handkerchief, glanced at
+      herself in the mirror, and added magnanimously: &ldquo;But I shall try to forget
+      what you&rsquo;ve said.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+
+
+<h3>XIX.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">Just</span> such a revolt as she had felt as a girl, such a disgusted recoil from
+      the standards and ideals of everybody about her as had flung her into her
+      mad marriage with Nick, now flamed in Susy Lansing&rsquo;s bosom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How could she ever go back into that world again? How echo its appraisals
+      of life and bow down to its judgments? Alas, it was only by marrying
+      according to its standards that she could escape such subjection. Perhaps
+      the same thought had actuated Nick: perhaps he had understood sooner than
+      she that to attain moral freedom they must both be above material cares.
+      Perhaps...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her talk with Ellie Vanderlyn had left Susy so oppressed and humiliated
+      that she almost shrank from her meeting with Altringham the next day. She
+      knew that he was coming to Paris for his final answer; he would wait as
+      long as was necessary if only she would consent to take immediate steps
+      for a divorce. She was staying at a modest hotel in the Faubourg St.
+      Germain, and had once more refused his suggestion that they should lunch
+      at the Nouveau Luxe, or at some fashionable restaurant of the Boulevards.
+      As before, she insisted on going to an out-of-the-way place near the
+      Luxembourg, where the prices were moderate enough for her own purse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t understand,&rdquo; Strefford objected, as they turned from her hotel
+      door toward this obscure retreat, &ldquo;why you insist on giving me bad food,
+      and depriving me of the satisfaction of being seen with you. Why must we
+      be so dreadfully clandestine? Don&rsquo;t people know by this time that we&rsquo;re to
+      be married?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy winced a little: she wondered if the word would always sound so
+      unnatural on his lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she said, with a laugh, &ldquo;they simply think, for the present, that
+      you&rsquo;re giving me pearls and chinchilla cloaks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He wrinkled his brows good-humouredly. &ldquo;Well, so I would, with joy&mdash;at
+      this particular minute. Don&rsquo;t you think perhaps you&rsquo;d better take
+      advantage of it? I don&rsquo;t wish to insist&mdash;but I foresee that I&rsquo;m much
+      too rich not to become stingy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She gave a slight shrug. &ldquo;At present there&rsquo;s nothing I loathe more than
+      pearls and chinchilla, or anything else in the world that&rsquo;s expensive and
+      enviable....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly she broke off, colouring with the consciousness that she had said
+      exactly the kind of thing that all the women who were trying for him
+      (except the very cleverest) would be sure to say; and that he would
+      certainly suspect her of attempting the conventional comedy of
+      disinterestedness, than which nothing was less likely to deceive or to
+      flatter him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His twinkling eyes played curiously over her face, and she went on,
+      meeting them with a smile: &ldquo;But don&rsquo;t imagine, all the same, that if I
+      should... decide... it would be altogether for your beaux yeux....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He laughed, she thought, rather drily. &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t suppose
+      that&rsquo;s ever likely to happen to me again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Streff&mdash;&rdquo; she faltered with compunction. It was odd&mdash;once upon a
+      time she had known exactly what to say to the man of the moment, whoever
+      he was, and whatever kind of talk he required; she had even, in the
+      difficult days before her marriage, reeled off glibly enough the sort of
+      lime-light sentimentality that plunged poor Fred Gillow into such
+      speechless beatitude. But since then she had spoken the language of real
+      love, looked with its eyes, embraced with its hands; and now the other
+      trumpery art had failed her, and she was conscious of bungling and groping
+      like a beginner under Strefford&rsquo;s ironic scrutiny.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had reached their obscure destination and he opened the door and
+      glanced in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s jammed&mdash;not a table. And stifling! Where shall we go? Perhaps
+      they could give us a room to ourselves&mdash;&rdquo; he suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She assented, and they were led up a cork-screw staircase to a
+      squat-ceilinged closet lit by the arched top of a high window, the lower
+      panes of which served for the floor below. Strefford opened the window,
+      and Susy, throwing her cloak on the divan, leaned on the balcony while he
+      ordered luncheon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the whole she was glad they were to be alone. Just because she felt so
+      sure of Strefford it seemed ungenerous to keep him longer in suspense. The
+      moment had come when they must have a decisive talk, and in the crowded
+      rooms below it would have been impossible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford, when the waiter had brought the first course and left them to
+      themselves, made no effort to revert to personal matters. He turned
+      instead to the topic always most congenial to him: the humours and ironies
+      of the human comedy, as presented by his own particular group. His
+      malicious commentary on life had always amused Susy because of the shrewd
+      flashes of philosophy he shed on the social antics they had so often
+      watched together. He was in fact the one person she knew (excepting Nick)
+      who was in the show and yet outside of it; and she was surprised, as the
+      talk proceeded, to find herself so little interested in his scraps of
+      gossip, and so little amused by his comments on them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With an inward shrug of discouragement she said to herself that probably
+      nothing would ever really amuse her again; then, as she listened, she
+      began to understand that her disappointment arose from the fact that
+      Strefford, in reality, could not live without these people whom he saw
+      through and satirized, and that the rather commonplace scandals he
+      narrated interested him as much as his own racy considerations on them;
+      and she was filled with terror at the thought that the inmost core of the
+      richly-decorated life of the Countess of Altringham would be just as poor
+      and low-ceilinged a place as the little room in which he and she now sat,
+      elbow to elbow yet so unapproachably apart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If Strefford could not live without these people, neither could she and
+      Nick; but for reasons how different! And if his opportunities had been
+      theirs, what a world they would have created for themselves! Such
+      imaginings were vain, and she shrank back from them into the present.
+      After all, as Lady Altringham she would have the power to create that
+      world which she and Nick had dreamed... only she must create it alone.
+      Well, that was probably the law of things. All human happiness was thus
+      conditioned and circumscribed, and hers, no doubt, must always be of the
+      lonely kind, since material things did not suffice for it, even though it
+      depended on them as Grace Fulmer&rsquo;s, for instance, never had. Yet even
+      Grace Fulmer had succumbed to Ursula&rsquo;s offer, and had arrived at Ruan the
+      day before Susy left, instead of going to Spain with her husband and
+      Violet Melrose. But then Grace was making the sacrifice for her children,
+      and somehow one had the feeling that in giving up her liberty she was not
+      surrendering a tittle of herself. All the difference was there....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How I do bore you!&rdquo; Susy heard Strefford exclaim. She became aware that
+      she had not been listening: stray echoes of names of places and people&mdash;Violet
+      Melrose, Ursula, Prince Altineri, others of their group and persuasion&mdash;had
+      vainly knocked at her barricaded brain; what had he been telling her about
+      them? She turned to him and their eyes met; his were full of a melancholy
+      irony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Susy, old girl, what&rsquo;s wrong?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She pulled herself together. &ldquo;I was thinking, Streff, just now&mdash;when
+      I said I hated the very sound of pearls and chinchilla&mdash;how
+      impossible it was that you should believe me; in fact, what a blunder I&rsquo;d
+      made in saying it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He smiled. &ldquo;Because it was what so many other women might be likely to say
+      so awfully unoriginal, in fact?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She laughed for sheer joy at his insight. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s going to be easier than I
+      imagined,&rdquo; she thought. Aloud she rejoined: &ldquo;Oh, Streff&mdash;how you&rsquo;re
+      always going to find me out! Where on earth shall I ever hide from you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where?&rdquo; He echoed her laugh, laying his hand lightly on hers. &ldquo;In my
+      heart, I&rsquo;m afraid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In spite of the laugh his accent shook her: something about it took all
+      the mockery from his retort, checked on her lips the: &ldquo;What? A valentine!&rdquo;
+       and made her suddenly feel that, if he were afraid, so was she. Yet she
+      was touched also, and wondered half exultingly if any other woman had ever
+      caught that particular deep inflexion of his shrill voice. She had never
+      liked him as much as at that moment; and she said to herself, with an odd
+      sense of detachment, as if she had been rather breathlessly observing the
+      vacillations of someone whom she longed to persuade but dared not: &ldquo;Now&mdash;NOW,
+      if he speaks, I shall say yes!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not speak; but abruptly, and as startlingly to her as if she had
+      just dropped from a sphere whose inhabitants had other methods of
+      expressing their sympathy, he slipped his arm around her and bent his keen
+      ugly melting face to hers....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the lightest touch&mdash;in an instant she was free again. But
+      something within her gasped and resisted long after his arm and his lips
+      were gone, and he was proceeding, with a too-studied ease, to light a
+      cigarette and sweeten his coffee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had kissed her.... Well, naturally: why not? It was not the first time
+      she had been kissed. It was true that one didn&rsquo;t habitually associate
+      Streff with such demonstrations; but she had not that excuse for surprise,
+      for even in Venice she had begun to notice that he looked at her
+      differently, and avoided her hand when he used to seek it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No&mdash;she ought not to have been surprised; nor ought a kiss to have
+      been so disturbing. Such incidents had punctuated the career of Susy
+      Branch: there had been, in particular, in far-off discarded times, Fred
+      Gillow&rsquo;s large but artless embraces. Well&mdash;nothing of that kind had
+      seemed of any more account than the click of a leaf in a woodland walk. It
+      had all been merely epidermal, ephemeral, part of the trivial accepted
+      &ldquo;business&rdquo; of the social comedy. But this kiss of Strefford&rsquo;s was what
+      Nick&rsquo;s had been, under the New Hampshire pines, on the day that had
+      decided their fate. It was a kiss with a future in it: like a ring slipped
+      upon her soul. And now, in the dreadful pause that followed&mdash;while
+      Strefford fidgeted with his cigarette-case and rattled the spoon in his
+      cup, Susy remembered what she had seen through the circle of Nick&rsquo;s kiss:
+      that blue illimitable distance which was at once the landscape at their
+      feet and the future in their souls....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps that was what Strefford&rsquo;s sharply narrowed eyes were seeing now,
+      that same illimitable distance that she had lost forever&mdash;perhaps he
+      was saying to himself, as she had said to herself when her lips left
+      Nick&rsquo;s: &ldquo;Each time we kiss we shall see it all again....&rdquo; Whereas all she
+      herself had felt was the gasping recoil from Strefford&rsquo;s touch, and an
+      intenser vision of the sordid room in which he and she sat, and of their
+      two selves, more distant from each other than if their embrace had been a
+      sudden thrusting apart....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The moment prolonged itself, and they sat numb. How long had it lasted?
+      How long ago was it that she had thought: &ldquo;It&rsquo;s going to be easier than I
+      imagined&rdquo;? Suddenly she felt Strefford&rsquo;s queer smile upon her, and saw in
+      his eyes a look, not of reproach or disappointment, but of deep and
+      anxious comprehension. Instead of being angry or hurt, he had seen, he had
+      understood, he was sorry for her!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Impulsively she slipped her hand into his, and they sat silent for another
+      moment. Then he stood up and took her cloak from the divan. &ldquo;Shall we go
+      now! I&rsquo;ve got cards for the private view of the Reynolds exhibition at the
+      Petit Palais. There are some portraits from Altringham. It might amuse
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the taxi she had time, through their light rattle of talk, to readjust
+      herself and drop back into her usual feeling of friendly ease with him. He
+      had been extraordinarily considerate, for anyone who always so
+      undisguisedly sought his own satisfaction above all things; and if his
+      considerateness were just an indirect way of seeking that satisfaction
+      now, well, that proved how much he cared for her, how necessary to his
+      happiness she had become. The sense of power was undeniably pleasant;
+      pleasanter still was the feeling that someone really needed her, that the
+      happiness of the man at her side depended on her yes or no. She abandoned
+      herself to the feeling, forgetting the abysmal interval of his caress, or
+      at least saying to herself that in time she would forget it, that really
+      there was nothing to make a fuss about in being kissed by anyone she liked
+      as much as Streff....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had guessed at once why he was taking her to see the Reynoldses.
+      Fashionable and artistic Paris had recently discovered English eighteenth
+      century art. The principal collections of England had yielded up their
+      best examples of the great portrait painter&rsquo;s work, and the private view
+      at the Petit Palais was to be the social event of the afternoon. Everybody&mdash;Strefford&rsquo;s
+      everybody and Susy&rsquo;s&mdash;was sure to be there; and these, as she knew,
+      were the occasions that revived Strefford&rsquo;s intermittent interest in art.
+      He really liked picture shows as much as the races, if one could be sure
+      of seeing as many people there. With Nick how different it would have
+      been! Nick hated openings and varnishing days, and worldly aesthetics in
+      general; he would have waited till the tide of fashion had ebbed, and
+      slipped off with Susy to see the pictures some morning when they were sure
+      to have the place to themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Susy divined that there was another reason for Strefford&rsquo;s suggestion.
+      She had never yet shown herself with him publicly, among their own group
+      of people: now he had determined that she should do so, and she knew why.
+      She had humbled his pride; he had understood, and forgiven her. But she
+      still continued to treat him as she had always treated the Strefford of
+      old, Charlie Strefford, dear old negligible impecunious Streff; and he
+      wanted to show her, ever so casually and adroitly, that the man who had
+      asked her to marry him was no longer Strefford, but Lord Altringham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the very threshold, his Ambassador&rsquo;s greeting marked the difference: it
+      was followed, wherever they turned, by ejaculations of welcome from the
+      rulers of the world they moved in. Everybody rich enough or titled enough,
+      or clever enough or stupid enough, to have forced a way into the social
+      citadel, was there, waving and flag-flying from the battlements; and to
+      all of them Lord Altringham had become a marked figure. During their slow
+      progress through the dense mass of important people who made the approach
+      to the pictures so well worth fighting for, he never left Susy&rsquo;s side, or
+      failed to make her feel herself a part of his triumphal advance. She heard
+      her name mentioned: &ldquo;Lansing&mdash;a Mrs. Lansing&mdash;an American...
+      Susy Lansing? Yes, of course.... You remember her? At Newport, At St.
+      Moritz? Exactly.... Divorced already? They say so... Susy darling! I&rsquo;d no
+      idea you were here... and Lord Altringham! You&rsquo;ve forgotten me, I know,
+      Lord Altringham.... Yes, last year, in Cairo... or at Newport... or in
+      Scotland ... Susy, dearest, when will you bring Lord Altringham to dine?
+      Any night that you and he are free I&rsquo;ll arrange to be....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You and he&rdquo;: they were &ldquo;you and he&rdquo; already!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, there&rsquo;s one of them&mdash;of my great-grandmothers,&rdquo; Strefford
+      explained, giving a last push that drew him and Susy to the front rank,
+      before a tall isolated portrait which, by sheer majesty of presentment,
+      sat in its great carved golden frame as on a throne above the other
+      pictures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy read on the scroll beneath it: &ldquo;The Hon&rsquo;ble Diana Lefanu, fifteenth
+      Countess of Altringham&rdquo;&mdash;and heard Strefford say: &ldquo;Do you remember?
+      It hangs where you noticed the empty space above the mantel-piece, in the
+      Vandyke room. They say Reynolds stipulated that it should be put with the
+      Vandykes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had never before heard him speak of his possessions, whether ancestral
+      or merely material, in just that full and satisfied tone of voice: the
+      rich man&rsquo;s voice. She saw that he was already feeling the influence of his
+      surroundings, that he was glad the portrait of a Countess of Altringham
+      should occupy the central place in the principal room of the exhibition,
+      that the crowd about it should be denser there than before any of the
+      other pictures, and that he should be standing there with Susy, letting
+      her feel, and letting all the people about them guess, that the day she
+      chose she could wear the same name as his pictured ancestress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the way back to her hotel, Strefford made no farther allusion to their
+      future; they chatted like old comrades in their respective corners of the
+      taxi. But as the carriage stopped at her door he said: &ldquo;I must go back to
+      England the day after to-morrow, worse luck! Why not dine with me to-night
+      at the Nouveau Luxe? I&rsquo;ve got to have the Ambassador and Lady Ascot, with
+      their youngest girl and my old Dunes aunt, the Dowager Duchess, who&rsquo;s over
+      here hiding from her creditors; but I&rsquo;ll try to get two or three amusing
+      men to leaven the lump. We might go on to a boite afterward, if you&rsquo;re
+      bored. Unless the dancing amuses you more....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She understood that he had decided to hasten his departure rather than
+      linger on in uncertainty; she also remembered having heard the Ascots&rsquo;
+      youngest daughter, Lady Joan Senechal, spoken of as one of the prettiest
+      girls of the season; and she recalled the almost exaggerated warmth of the
+      Ambassador&rsquo;s greeting at the private view.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I&rsquo;ll come, Streff dear!&rdquo; she cried, with an effort at gaiety
+      that sounded successful to her own strained ears, and reflected itself in
+      the sudden lighting up of his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She waved a good-bye from the step, saying to herself, as she looked after
+      him: &ldquo;He&rsquo;ll drive me home to-night, and I shall say &lsquo;yes&rsquo;; and then he&rsquo;ll
+      kiss me again. But the next time it won&rsquo;t be nearly as disagreeable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned into the hotel, glanced automatically at the empty pigeon-hole
+      for letters under her key-hook, and mounted the stairs following the same
+      train of images. &ldquo;Yes, I shall say &lsquo;yes&rsquo; to-night,&rdquo; she repeated firmly,
+      her hand on the door of her room. &ldquo;That is, unless, they&rsquo;ve brought up a
+      letter....&rdquo; She never re-entered the hotel without imagining that the
+      letter she had not found below had already been brought up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Opening the door, she turned on the light and sprang to the table on which
+      her correspondence sometimes awaited her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no letter; but the morning papers, still unread, lay at hand,
+      and glancing listlessly down the column which chronicles the doings of
+      society, she read:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After an extended cruise in the AEgean and the Black Sea on their
+      steam-yacht Ibis, Mr. and Mrs. Mortimer Hicks and their daughter are
+      established at the Nouveau Luxe in Rome. They have lately had the honour
+      of entertaining at dinner the Reigning Prince of Teutoburger-Waldhain and
+      his mother the Princess Dowager, with their suite. Among those invited to
+      meet their Serene Highnesses were the French and Spanish Ambassadors, the
+      Duchesse de Vichy, Prince and Princess Bagnidilucca, Lady Penelope
+      Pantiles&mdash;&rdquo; Susy&rsquo;s eye flew impatiently on over the long list of
+      titles&mdash;&ldquo;and Mr. Nicholas Lansing of New York, who has been cruising
+      with Mr. and Mrs. Hicks on the Ibis for the last few months.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+
+
+<h3>XX.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">The</span> Mortimer Hickses were in Rome; not, as they would in former times have
+      been, in one of the antiquated hostelries of the Piazza di Spagna or the
+      Porta del Popolo, where of old they had so gaily defied fever and
+      nourished themselves on local colour; but spread out, with all the
+      ostentation of philistine millionaires, under the piano nobile ceilings of
+      one of the high-perched &ldquo;Palaces,&rdquo; where, as Mrs. Hicks shamelessly
+      declared, they could &ldquo;rely on the plumbing,&rdquo; and &ldquo;have the privilege of
+      over-looking the Queen Mother&rsquo;s Gardens.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was that speech, uttered with beaming aplomb at a dinner-table
+      surrounded by the cosmopolitan nobility of the Eternal City, that had
+      suddenly revealed to Lansing the profound change in the Hicks point of
+      view.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he looked back over the four months since he had so unexpectedly joined
+      the Ibis at Genoa, he saw that the change, at first insidious and
+      unperceived, dated from the ill-fated day when the Hickses had run across
+      a Reigning Prince on his travels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hitherto they had been proof against such perils: both Mr. and Mrs. Hicks
+      had often declared that the aristocracy of the intellect was the only one
+      which attracted them. But in this case the Prince possessed an intellect,
+      in addition to his few square miles of territory, and to one of the most
+      beautiful Field Marshal&rsquo;s uniforms that had ever encased a royal warrior.
+      The Prince was not a warrior, however; he was stooping, pacific and
+      spectacled, and his possession of the uniform had been revealed to Mrs.
+      Hicks only by the gift of a full-length photograph in a Bond Street frame,
+      with Anastasius written slantingly across its legs. The Prince&mdash;and
+      herein lay the Hickses&rsquo; undoing&mdash;the Prince was an archaeologist: an
+      earnest anxious enquiring and scrupulous archaeologist. Delicate health
+      (so his suite hinted) banished him for a part of each year from his cold
+      and foggy principality; and in the company of his mother, the active and
+      enthusiastic Dowager Princess, he wandered from one Mediterranean shore to
+      another, now assisting at the exhumation of Ptolemaic mummies, now at the
+      excavation of Delphic temples or of North African basilicas. The beginning
+      of winter usually brought the Prince and his mother to Rome or Nice,
+      unless indeed they were summoned by family duties to Berlin, Vienna or
+      Madrid; for an extended connection with the principal royal houses of
+      Europe compelled them, as the Princess Mother said, to be always burying
+      or marrying a cousin. At other moments they were seldom seen in the
+      glacial atmosphere of courts, preferring to royal palaces those of the
+      other, and more modern type, in one of which the Hickses were now lodged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes: the Prince and his mother (they gaily avowed it) revelled in Palace
+      Hotels; and, being unable to afford the luxury of inhabiting them, they
+      liked, as often as possible, to be invited to dine there by their friends&mdash;&ldquo;or
+      even to tea, my dear,&rdquo; the Princess laughingly avowed, &ldquo;for I&rsquo;m so awfully
+      fond of buttered scones; and Anastasius gives me so little to eat in the
+      desert.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The encounter with these ambulant Highnesses had been fatal&mdash;Lansing
+      now perceived it&mdash;to Mrs. Hicks&rsquo;s principles. She had known a great
+      many archaeologists, but never one as agreeable as the Prince, and above
+      all never one who had left a throne to camp in the desert and delve in
+      Libyan tombs. And it seemed to her infinitely pathetic that these two
+      gifted beings, who grumbled when they had to go to &ldquo;marry a cousin&rdquo; at the
+      Palace of St. James or of Madrid, and hastened back breathlessly to the
+      far-off point where, metaphorically speaking, pick-axe and spade had
+      dropped from their royal hands&mdash;that these heirs of the ages should
+      be unable to offer themselves the comforts of up-to-date hotel life, and
+      should enjoy themselves &ldquo;like babies&rdquo; when they were invited to the other
+      kind of &ldquo;Palace,&rdquo; to feast on buttered scones and watch the tango.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She simply could not bear the thought of their privations; and neither,
+      after a time, could Mr. Hicks, who found the Prince more democratic than
+      anyone he had ever known at Apex City, and was immensely interested by the
+      fact that their spectacles came from the same optician.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it was, above all, the artistic tendencies of the Prince and his
+      mother which had conquered the Hickses. There was fascination in the
+      thought that, among the rabble of vulgar uneducated royalties who overran
+      Europe from Biarritz to the Engadine, gambling, tangoing, and sponging on
+      no less vulgar plebeians, they, the unobtrusive and self-respecting
+      Hickses, should have had the luck to meet this cultivated pair, who joined
+      them in gentle ridicule of their own frivolous kinsfolk, and whose tastes
+      were exactly those of the eccentric, unreliable and sometimes
+      money-borrowing persons who had hitherto represented the higher life to
+      the Hickses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now at last Mrs. Hicks saw the possibility of being at once artistic and
+      luxurious, of surrendering herself to the joys of modern plumbing and yet
+      keeping the talk on the highest level. &ldquo;If the poor dear Princess wants to
+      dine at the Nouveau Luxe why shouldn&rsquo;t we give her that pleasure?&rdquo; Mrs.
+      Hicks smilingly enquired; &ldquo;and as for enjoying her buttered scones like a
+      baby, as she says, I think it&rsquo;s the sweetest thing about her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Coral Hicks did not join in this chorus; but she accepted, with her
+      curious air of impartiality, the change in her parents&rsquo; manner of life,
+      and for the first time (as Nick observed) occupied herself with her
+      mother&rsquo;s toilet, with the result that Mrs. Hicks&rsquo;s outline became firmer,
+      her garments soberer in hue and finer in material; so that, should anyone
+      chance to detect the daughter&rsquo;s likeness to her mother, the result was
+      less likely to be disturbing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such precautions were the more needful&mdash;Lansing could not but note
+      because of the different standards of the society in which the Hickses now
+      moved. For it was a curious fact that admission to the intimacy of the
+      Prince and his mother&mdash;who continually declared themselves to be the
+      pariahs, the outlaws, the Bohemians among crowned heads nevertheless
+      involved not only living in Palace Hotels but mixing with those who
+      frequented them. The Prince&rsquo;s aide-de-camp&mdash;an agreeable young man of
+      easy manners&mdash;had smilingly hinted that their Serene Highnesses,
+      though so thoroughly democratic and unceremonious, were yet accustomed to
+      inspecting in advance the names of the persons whom their hosts wished to
+      invite with them; and Lansing noticed that Mrs. Hicks&rsquo;s lists, having been
+      &ldquo;submitted,&rdquo; usually came back lengthened by the addition of numerous
+      wealthy and titled guests. Their Highnesses never struck out a name; they
+      welcomed with enthusiasm and curiosity the Hickses&rsquo; oddest and most
+      inexplicable friends, at most putting off some of them to a later day on
+      the plea that it would be &ldquo;cosier&rdquo; to meet them on a more private
+      occasion; but they invariably added to the list any friends of their own,
+      with the gracious hint that they wished these latter (though socially so
+      well-provided for) to have the &ldquo;immense privilege&rdquo; of knowing the Hickses.
+      And thus it happened that when October gales necessitated laying up the
+      Ibis, the Hickses, finding again in Rome the august travellers from whom
+      they had parted the previous month in Athens, also found their
+      visiting-list enlarged by all that the capital contained of fashion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was true enough, as Lansing had not failed to note, that the Princess
+      Mother adored prehistoric art, and Russian music, and the paintings of
+      Gauguin and Matisse; but she also, and with a beaming unconsciousness of
+      perspective, adored large pearls and powerful motors, caravan tea and
+      modern plumbing, perfumed cigarettes and society scandals; and her son,
+      while apparently less sensible to these forms of luxury, adored his
+      mother, and was charmed to gratify her inclinations without cost to
+      himself&mdash;&ldquo;Since poor Mamma,&rdquo; as he observed, &ldquo;is so courageous when
+      we are roughing it in the desert.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The smiling aide-de-camp, who explained these things to Lansing, added
+      with an intenser smile that the Prince and his mother were under
+      obligations, either social or cousinly, to most of the titled persons whom
+      they begged Mrs. Hicks to invite; &ldquo;and it seems to their Serene
+      Highnesses,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;the most flattering return they can make for the
+      hospitality of their friends to give them such an intellectual
+      opportunity.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The dinner-table at which their Highnesses&rsquo; friends were seated on the
+      evening in question represented, numerically, one of the greatest
+      intellectual opportunities yet afforded them. Thirty guests were grouped
+      about the flower-wreathed board, from which Eldorada and Mr. Beck had been
+      excluded on the plea that the Princess Mother liked cosy parties and
+      begged her hosts that there should never be more than thirty at table.
+      Such, at least, was the reason given by Mrs. Hicks to her faithful
+      followers; but Lansing had observed that, of late, the same skilled hand
+      which had refashioned the Hickses&rsquo; social circle usually managed to
+      exclude from it the timid presences of the two secretaries. Their
+      banishment was the more displeasing to Lansing from the fact that, for the
+      last three months, he had filled Mr. Buttles&rsquo;s place, and was himself
+      their salaried companion. But since he had accepted the post, his obvious
+      duty was to fill it in accordance with his employers&rsquo; requirements; and it
+      was clear even to Eldorada and Mr. Beck that he had, as Eldorada
+      ungrudgingly said, &ldquo;Something of Mr. Buttles&rsquo;s marvellous social gifts.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      During the cruise his task had not been distasteful to him. He was glad of
+      any definite duties, however trivial, he felt more independent as the
+      Hickses&rsquo; secretary than as their pampered guest, and the large cheque
+      which Mr. Hicks handed over to him on the first of each month refreshed
+      his languishing sense of self-respect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He considered himself absurdly over-paid, but that was the Hickses&rsquo;
+      affair; and he saw nothing humiliating in being in the employ of people he
+      liked and respected. But from the moment of the ill-fated encounter with
+      the wandering Princes, his position had changed as much as that of his
+      employers. He was no longer, to Mr. and Mrs. Hicks, a useful and estimable
+      assistant, on the same level as Eldorada and Mr. Beck; he had become a
+      social asset of unsuspected value, equalling Mr. Buttles in his capacity
+      for dealing with the mysteries of foreign etiquette, and surpassing him in
+      the art of personal attraction. Nick Lansing, the Hickses found, already
+      knew most of the Princess Mother&rsquo;s rich and aristocratic friends. Many of
+      them hailed him with enthusiastic &ldquo;Old Nicks&rdquo;, and he was almost as
+      familiar as His Highness&rsquo;s own aide-de-camp with all those secret
+      ramifications of love and hate that made dinner-giving so much more of a
+      science in Rome than at Apex City.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Hicks, at first, had hopelessly lost her way in this labyrinth of
+      subterranean scandals, rivalries and jealousies; and finding Lansing&rsquo;s
+      hand within reach she clung to it with pathetic tenacity. But if the young
+      man&rsquo;s value had risen in the eyes of his employers it had deteriorated in
+      his own. He was condemned to play a part he had not bargained for, and it
+      seemed to him more degrading when paid in bank-notes than if his
+      retribution had consisted merely in good dinners and luxurious lodgings.
+      The first time the smiling aide-de-camp had caught his eye over a verbal
+      slip of Mrs. Hicks&rsquo;s, Nick had flushed to the forehead and gone to bed
+      swearing that he would chuck his job the next day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two months had passed since then, and he was still the paid secretary. He
+      had contrived to let the aide-de-camp feel that he was too deficient in
+      humour to be worth exchanging glances with; but even this had not restored
+      his self-respect, and on the evening in question, as he looked about the
+      long table, he said to himself for the hundredth time that he would give
+      up his position on the morrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Only&mdash;what was the alternative? The alternative, apparently, was
+      Coral Hicks. He glanced down the line of diners, beginning with the tall
+      lean countenance of the Princess Mother, with its small inquisitive eyes
+      perched as high as attic windows under a frizzled thatch of hair and a
+      pediment of uncleaned diamonds; passed on to the vacuous and overfed or
+      fashionably haggard masks of the ladies next in rank; and finally caught,
+      between branching orchids, a distant glimpse of Miss Hicks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In contrast with the others, he thought, she looked surprisingly noble.
+      Her large grave features made her appear like an old monument in a street
+      of Palace Hotels; and he marvelled at the mysterious law which had brought
+      this archaic face out of Apex City, and given to the oldest society of
+      Europe a look of such mixed modernity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing perceived that the aide-de-camp, who was his neighbour, was also
+      looking at Miss Hicks. His expression was serious, and even thoughtful;
+      but as his eyes met Lansing&rsquo;s he readjusted his official smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was admiring our hostess&rsquo;s daughter. Her absence of jewels is&mdash;er&mdash;an
+      inspiration,&rdquo; he remarked in the confidential tone which Lansing had come
+      to dread.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Miss Hicks is full of inspirations,&rdquo; he returned curtly, and the
+      aide-de-camp bowed with an admiring air, as if inspirations were rarer
+      than pearls, as in his milieu they undoubtedly were. &ldquo;She is the equal of
+      any situation, I am sure,&rdquo; he replied; and then abandoned the subject with
+      one of his automatic transitions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After dinner, in the embrasure of a drawing-room window, he surprised Nick
+      by returning to the same topic, and this time without thinking it needful
+      to readjust his smile. His face remained serious, though his manner was
+      studiously informal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was admiring, at dinner, Miss Hicks&rsquo;s invariable sense of
+      appropriateness. It must permit her friends to foresee for her almost any
+      future, however exalted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing hesitated, and controlled his annoyance. Decidedly he wanted to
+      know what was in his companion&rsquo;s mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean by exalted?&rdquo; he asked, with a smile of faint amusement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;equal to her marvellous capacity for shining in the public
+      eye.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing still smiled. &ldquo;The question is, I suppose, whether her desire to
+      shine equals her capacity.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The aide-de-camp stared. &ldquo;You mean, she&rsquo;s not ambitious?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On the contrary; I believe her to be immeasurably ambitious.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Immeasurably?&rdquo; The aide-de-camp seemed to try to measure it. &ldquo;But not,
+      surely, beyond&mdash;beyond what we can offer,&rdquo; his eyes completed the
+      sentence; and it was Lansing&rsquo;s turn to stare. The aide-de-camp faced the
+      stare. &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; his eyes concluded in a flash, while his lips let fall: &ldquo;The
+      Princess Mother admires her immensely.&rdquo; But at that moment a wave of Mrs.
+      Hicks&rsquo;s fan drew them hurriedly from their embrasure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Professor Darchivio had promised to explain to us the difference between
+      the Sassanian and Byzantine motives in Carolingian art; but the Manager
+      has sent up word that the two new Creole dancers from Paris have arrived,
+      and her Serene Highness wants to pop down to the ball-room and take a peep
+      at them.... She&rsquo;s sure the Professor will understand....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And accompany us, of course,&rdquo; the Princess irresistibly added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing&rsquo;s brief colloquy in the Nouveau Luxe window had lifted the scales
+      from his eyes. Innumerable dim corners of memory had been flooded with
+      light by that one quick glance of the aide-de-camp&rsquo;s: things he had heard,
+      hints he had let pass, smiles, insinuations, cordialities, rumours of the
+      improbability of the Prince&rsquo;s founding a family, suggestions as to the
+      urgent need of replenishing the Teutoburger treasury....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Hicks, perforce, had accompanied her parents and their princely
+      guests to the ballroom; but as she did not dance, and took little interest
+      in the sight of others so engaged, she remained aloof from the party,
+      absorbed in an archaeological discussion with the baffled but smiling
+      savant who was to have enlightened the party on the difference between
+      Sassanian and Byzantine ornament.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing, also aloof, had picked out a post from which he could observe the
+      girl: she wore a new look to him since he had seen her as the centre of
+      all these scattered threads of intrigue. Yes; decidedly she was growing
+      handsomer; or else she had learned how to set off her massive lines
+      instead of trying to disguise them. As she held up her long eye-glass to
+      glance absently at the dancers he was struck by the large beauty of her
+      arm and the careless assurance of the gesture. There was nothing nervous
+      or fussy about Coral Hicks; and he was not surprised that, plastically at
+      least, the Princess Mother had discerned her possibilities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nick Lansing, all that night, sat up and stared at his future. He knew
+      enough of the society into which the Hickses had drifted to guess that,
+      within a very short time, the hint of the Prince&rsquo;s aide-de-camp would
+      reappear in the form of a direct proposal. Lansing himself would probably&mdash;as
+      the one person in the Hicks entourage with whom one could intelligibly
+      commune&mdash;be entrusted with the next step in the negotiations: he would be
+      asked, as the aide-de-camp would have said, &ldquo;to feel the ground.&rdquo; It was
+      clearly part of the state policy of Teutoburg to offer Miss Hicks, with
+      the hand of its sovereign, an opportunity to replenish its treasury.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What would the girl do? Lansing could not guess; yet he dimly felt that
+      her attitude would depend in a great degree upon his own. And he knew no
+      more what his own was going to be than on the night, four months earlier,
+      when he had flung out of his wife&rsquo;s room in Venice to take the midnight
+      express for Genoa.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The whole of his past, and above all the tendency, on which he had once
+      prided himself, to live in the present and take whatever chances it
+      offered, now made it harder for him to act. He began to see that he had
+      never, even in the closest relations of life, looked ahead of his
+      immediate satisfaction. He had thought it rather fine to be able to give
+      himself so intensely to the fullness of each moment instead of hurrying
+      past it in pursuit of something more, or something else, in the manner of
+      the over-scrupulous or the under-imaginative, whom he had always grouped
+      together and equally pitied. It was not till he had linked his life with
+      Susy&rsquo;s that he had begun to feel it reaching forward into a future he
+      longed to make sure of, to fasten upon and shape to his own wants and
+      purposes, till, by an imperceptible substitution, that future had become
+      his real present, his all-absorbing moment of time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now the moment was shattered, and the power to rebuild it failed him. He
+      had never before thought about putting together broken bits: he felt like
+      a man whose house has been wrecked by an earthquake, and who, for lack of
+      skilled labour, is called upon for the first time to wield a trowel and
+      carry bricks. He simply did not know how.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Will-power, he saw, was not a thing one could suddenly decree oneself to
+      possess. It must be built up imperceptibly and laboriously out of a
+      succession of small efforts to meet definite objects, out of the facing of
+      daily difficulties instead of cleverly eluding them, or shifting their
+      burden on others. The making of the substance called character was a
+      process about as slow and arduous as the building of the Pyramids; and the
+      thing itself, like those awful edifices, was mainly useful to lodge one&rsquo;s
+      descendants in, after they too were dust. Yet the Pyramid-instinct was the
+      one which had made the world, made man, and caused his fugitive joys to
+      linger like fading frescoes on imperishable walls....
+    </p>
+
+
+<h3>XXI.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">On</span> the drive back from her dinner at the Nouveau Luxe, events had followed
+      the course foreseen by Susy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had promised Strefford to seek legal advice about her divorce, and he
+      had kissed her; and the promise had been easier to make than she had
+      expected, the kiss less difficult to receive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had gone to the dinner a-quiver with the mortification of learning
+      that her husband was still with the Hickses. Morally sure of it though she
+      had been, the discovery was a shock, and she measured for the first time
+      the abyss between fearing and knowing. No wonder he had not written&mdash;the
+      modern husband did not have to: he had only to leave it to time and the
+      newspapers to make known his intentions. Susy could imagine Nick&rsquo;s saying
+      to himself, as he sometimes used to say when she reminded him of an
+      unanswered letter: &ldquo;But there are lots of ways of answering a letter&mdash;and
+      writing doesn&rsquo;t happen to be mine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Well&mdash;he had done it in his way, and she was answered. For a minute,
+      as she laid aside the paper, darkness submerged her, and she felt herself
+      dropping down into the bottomless anguish of her dreadful vigil in the
+      Palazzo Vanderlyn. But she was weary of anguish: her healthy body and
+      nerves instinctively rejected it. The wave was spent, and she felt herself
+      irresistibly struggling back to light and life and youth. He didn&rsquo;t want
+      her! Well, she would try not to want him! There lay all the old expedients
+      at her hand&mdash;the rouge for her white lips, the atropine for her
+      blurred eyes, the new dress on her bed, the thought of Strefford and his
+      guests awaiting her, and of the conclusions that the diners of the Nouveau
+      Luxe would draw from seeing them together. Thank heaven no one would say:
+      &ldquo;Poor old Susy&mdash;did you know Nick had chucked her?&rdquo; They would all
+      say: &ldquo;Poor old Nick! Yes, I daresay she was sorry to chuck him; but
+      Altringham&rsquo;s mad to marry her, and what could she do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And once again events had followed the course she had foreseen. Seeing her
+      at Lord Altringham&rsquo;s table, with the Ascots and the old Duchess of Dunes,
+      the interested spectators could not but regard the dinner as confirming
+      the rumour of her marriage. As Ellie said, people didn&rsquo;t wait nowadays to
+      announce their &ldquo;engagements&rdquo; till the tiresome divorce proceedings were
+      over. Ellie herself, prodigally pearled and ermined, had floated in late
+      with Algie Bockheimer in her wake, and sat, in conspicuous tête-à-tête,
+      nodding and signalling her sympathy to Susy. Approval beamed from every
+      eye: it was awfully exciting, they all seemed to say, seeing Susy Lansing
+      pull it off! As the party, after dinner, drifted from the restaurant back
+      into the hall, she caught, in the smiles and hand-pressures crowding about
+      her, the scarcely-repressed hint of official congratulations; and Violet
+      Melrose, seated in a corner with Fulmer, drew her down with a wan
+      jade-circled arm, to whisper tenderly: &ldquo;It&rsquo;s most awfully clever of you,
+      darling, not to be wearing any jewels.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In all the women&rsquo;s eyes she read the reflected lustre of the jewels she
+      could wear when she chose: it was as though their glitter reached her from
+      the far-off bank where they lay sealed up in the Altringham strong-box.
+      What a fool she had been to think that Strefford would ever believe she
+      didn&rsquo;t care for them!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Ambassadress, a blank perpendicular person, had been a shade less
+      affable than Susy could have wished; but then there was Lady Joan&mdash;and
+      the girl was handsome, alarmingly handsome to account for that: probably
+      every one in the room had guessed it. And the old Duchess of Dunes was
+      delightful. She looked rather like Strefford in a wig and false pearls
+      (Susy was sure they were as false as her teeth); and her cordiality was so
+      demonstrative that the future bride found it more difficult to account for
+      than Lady Ascot&rsquo;s coldness, till she heard the old lady, as they passed
+      into the hall, breathe in a hissing whisper to her nephew: &ldquo;Streff,
+      dearest, when you have a minute&rsquo;s time, and can drop in at my wretched
+      little pension, I know you can explain in two words what I ought to do to
+      pacify those awful money-lenders.... And you&rsquo;ll bring your exquisite
+      American to see me, won&rsquo;t you!... No, Joan Senechal&rsquo;s too fair for my
+      taste.... Insipid....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes: the taste of it all was again sweet on her lips. A few days later she
+      began to wonder how the thought of Strefford&rsquo;s endearments could have been
+      so alarming. To be sure he was not lavish of them; but when he did touch
+      her, even when he kissed her, it no longer seemed to matter. An almost
+      complete absence of sensation had mercifully succeeded to the first wild
+      flurry of her nerves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so it would be, no doubt, with everything else in her new life. If it
+      failed to provoke any acute reactions, whether of pain or pleasure, the
+      very absence of sensation would make for peace. And in the meanwhile she
+      was tasting what, she had begun to suspect, was the maximum of bliss to
+      most of the women she knew: days packed with engagements, the exhilaration
+      of fashionable crowds, the thrill of snapping up a jewel or a bibelot or a
+      new &ldquo;model&rdquo; that one&rsquo;s best friend wanted, or of being invited to some
+      private show, or some exclusive entertainment, that one&rsquo;s best friend
+      couldn&rsquo;t get to. There was nothing, now, that she couldn&rsquo;t buy, nowhere
+      that she couldn&rsquo;t go: she had only to choose and to triumph. And for a
+      while the surface-excitement of her life gave her the illusion of
+      enjoyment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford, as she had expected, had postponed his return to England, and
+      they had now been for nearly three weeks together in their new, and
+      virtually avowed, relation. She had fancied that, after all, the easiest
+      part of it would be just the being with Strefford&mdash;the falling back
+      on their old tried friendship to efface the sense of strangeness. But,
+      though she had so soon grown used to his caresses, he himself remained
+      curiously unfamiliar: she was hardly sure, at times, that it was the old
+      Strefford she was talking to. It was not that his point of view had
+      changed, but that new things occupied and absorbed him. In all the small
+      sides of his great situation he took an almost childish satisfaction; and
+      though he still laughed at both its privileges and its obligations, it was
+      now with a jealous laughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It amused him inexhaustibly, for instance, to be made up to by all the
+      people who had always disapproved of him, and to unite at the same table
+      persons who had to dissemble their annoyance at being invited together
+      lest they should not be invited at all. Equally exhilarating was the
+      capricious favouring of the dull and dowdy on occasions when the brilliant
+      and disreputable expected his notice. It enchanted him, for example, to
+      ask the old Duchess of Dunes and Violet Melrose to dine with the Vicar of
+      Altringham, on his way to Switzerland for a month&rsquo;s holiday, and to watch
+      the face of the Vicar&rsquo;s wife while the Duchess narrated her last
+      difficulties with book-makers and money-lenders, and Violet proclaimed the
+      rights of Love and Genius to all that had once been supposed to belong
+      exclusively to Respectability and Dulness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy had to confess that her own amusements were hardly of a higher order;
+      but then she put up with them for lack of better, whereas Strefford, who
+      might have had what he pleased, was completely satisfied with such
+      triumphs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Somehow, in spite of his honours and his opportunities, he seemed to have
+      shrunk. The old Strefford had certainly been a larger person, and she
+      wondered if material prosperity were always a beginning of ossification.
+      Strefford had been much more fun when he lived by his wits. Sometimes,
+      now, when he tried to talk of politics, or assert himself on some question
+      of public interest, she was startled by his limitations. Formerly, when he
+      was not sure of his ground, it had been his way to turn the difficulty by
+      glib nonsense or easy irony; now he was actually dull, at times almost
+      pompous. She noticed too, for the first time, that he did not always hear
+      clearly when several people were talking at once, or when he was at the
+      theatre; and he developed a habit of saying over and over again: &ldquo;Does
+      so-and-so speak indistinctly? Or am I getting deaf, I wonder?&rdquo; which wore
+      on her nerves by its suggestion of a corresponding mental infirmity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These thoughts did not always trouble her. The current of idle activity on
+      which they were both gliding was her native element as well as his; and
+      never had its tide been as swift, its waves as buoyant. In his relation to
+      her, too, he was full of tact and consideration. She saw that he still
+      remembered their frightened exchange of glances after their first kiss;
+      and the sense of this little hidden spring of imagination in him was
+      sometimes enough for her thirst.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had always had a rather masculine punctuality in keeping her word, and
+      after she had promised Strefford to take steps toward a divorce she had
+      promptly set about doing it. A sudden reluctance prevented her asking the
+      advice of friends like Ellie Vanderlyn, whom she knew to be in the thick
+      of the same negotiations, and all she could think of was to consult a
+      young American lawyer practicing in Paris, with whom she felt she could
+      talk the more easily because he was not from New York, and probably
+      unacquainted with her history.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was so ignorant of the procedure in such matters that she was
+      surprised and relieved at his asking few personal questions; but it was a
+      shock to learn that a divorce could not be obtained, either in New York or
+      Paris, merely on the ground of desertion or incompatibility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought nowadays... if people preferred to live apart... it could
+      always be managed,&rdquo; she stammered, wondering at her own ignorance, after
+      the many conjugal ruptures she had assisted at.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young lawyer smiled, and coloured slightly. His lovely client
+      evidently intimidated him by her grace, and still more by her
+      inexperience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It can be&mdash;generally,&rdquo; he admitted; &ldquo;and especially so if... as I
+      gather is the case... your husband is equally anxious....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, quite!&rdquo; she exclaimed, suddenly humiliated by having to admit it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then&mdash;may I suggest that, to bring matters to a point, the
+      best way would be for you to write to him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She recoiled slightly. It had never occurred to her that the lawyers would
+      not &ldquo;manage it&rdquo; without her intervention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Write to him... but what about?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, expressing your wish... to recover your freedom.... The rest, I
+      assume,&rdquo; said the young lawyer, &ldquo;may be left to Mr. Lansing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She did not know exactly what he meant, and was too much perturbed by the
+      idea of having to communicate with Nick to follow any other train of
+      thought. How could she write such a letter? And yet how could she confess
+      to the lawyer that she had not the courage to do so? He would, of course,
+      tell her to go home and be reconciled. She hesitated perplexedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wouldn&rsquo;t it be better,&rdquo; she suggested, &ldquo;if the letter were to come from&mdash;from
+      your office?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He considered this politely. &ldquo;On the whole: no. If, as I take it, an
+      amicable arrangement is necessary&mdash;to secure the requisite evidence
+      then a line from you, suggesting an interview, seems to me more
+      advisable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An interview? Is an interview necessary?&rdquo; She was ashamed to show her
+      agitation to this cautiously smiling young man, who must wonder at her
+      childish lack of understanding; but the break in her voice was
+      uncontrollable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, please write to him&mdash;I can&rsquo;t! And I can&rsquo;t see him! Oh, can&rsquo;t you
+      arrange it for me?&rdquo; she pleaded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She saw now that her idea of a divorce had been that it was something one
+      went out&mdash;or sent out&mdash;to buy in a shop: something concrete and
+      portable, that Strefford&rsquo;s money could pay for, and that it required no
+      personal participation to obtain. What a fool the lawyer must think her!
+      Stiffening herself, she rose from her seat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My husband and I don&rsquo;t wish to see each other again.... I&rsquo;m sure it would
+      be useless... and very painful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are the best judge, of course. But in any case, a letter from you, a
+      friendly letter, seems wiser... considering the apparent lack of
+      evidence....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, then; I&rsquo;ll write,&rdquo; she agreed, and hurried away, scarcely
+      hearing his parting injunction that she should take a copy of her letter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That night she wrote. At the last moment it might have been impossible, if
+      at the theatre little Breckenridge had not bobbed into her box. He was
+      just back from Rome, where he had dined with the Hickses (&ldquo;a bang-up show&mdash;they&rsquo;re
+      really lances&mdash;you wouldn&rsquo;t know them!&rdquo;), and had met there Lansing, whom
+      he reported as intending to marry Coral &ldquo;as soon as things were settled&rdquo;.
+      &ldquo;You were dead right, weren&rsquo;t you, Susy,&rdquo; he snickered, &ldquo;that night in
+      Venice last summer, when we all thought you were joking about their
+      engagement? Pity now you chucked our surprise visit to the Hickses, and
+      sent Streff up to drag us back just as we were breaking in! You remember?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He flung off the &ldquo;Streff&rdquo; airily, in the old way, but with a tentative
+      side-glance at his host; and Lord Altringham, leaning toward Susy, said
+      coldly: &ldquo;Was Breckenridge speaking about me? I didn&rsquo;t catch what he said.
+      Does he speak indistinctly&mdash;or am I getting deaf, I wonder?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After that it seemed comparatively easy, when Strefford had dropped her at
+      her hotel, to go upstairs and write. She dashed off the date and her
+      address, and then stopped; but suddenly she remembered Breckenridge&rsquo;s
+      snicker, and the words rushed from her. &ldquo;Nick dear, it was July when you
+      left Venice, and I have had no word from you since the note in which you
+      said you had gone for a few days, and that I should hear soon again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You haven&rsquo;t written yet, and it is five months since you left me. That
+      means, I suppose, that you want to take back your freedom and give me
+      mine. Wouldn&rsquo;t it be kinder, in that case, to tell me so? It is worse than
+      anything to go on as we are now. I don&rsquo;t know how to put these things but
+      since you seem unwilling to write to me perhaps you would prefer to send
+      your answer to Mr. Frederic Spearman, the American lawyer here. His
+      address is 100, Boulevard Haussmann. I hope&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She broke off on the last word. Hope? What did she hope, either for him or
+      for herself? Wishes for his welfare would sound like a mockery&mdash;and
+      she would rather her letter should seem bitter than unfeeling. Above all,
+      she wanted to get it done. To have to re-write even those few lines would
+      be torture. So she left &ldquo;I hope,&rdquo; and simply added: &ldquo;to hear before long
+      what you have decided.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She read it over, and shivered. Not one word of the past&mdash;not one allusion
+      to that mysterious interweaving of their lives which had enclosed them one
+      in the other like the flower in its sheath! What place had such memories
+      in such a letter? She had the feeling that she wanted to hide that other
+      Nick away in her own bosom, and with him the other Susy, the Susy he had
+      once imagined her to be.... Neither of them seemed concerned with the
+      present business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The letter done, she stared at the sealed envelope till its presence in
+      the room became intolerable, and she understood that she must either tear
+      it up or post it immediately. She went down to the hall of the sleeping
+      hotel, and bribed the night-porter to carry the letter to the nearest post
+      office, though he objected that, at that hour, no time would be gained. &ldquo;I
+      want it out of the house,&rdquo; she insisted: and waited sternly by the desk,
+      in her dressing-gown, till he had performed the errand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As she re-entered her room, the disordered writing-table struck her; and
+      she remembered the lawyer&rsquo;s injunction to take a copy of her letter. A
+      copy to be filed away with the documents in &ldquo;Lansing versus Lansing!&rdquo; She
+      burst out laughing at the idea. What were lawyers made of, she wondered?
+      Didn&rsquo;t the man guess, by the mere look in her eyes and the sound of her
+      voice, that she would never, as long as she lived, forget a word of that
+      letter&mdash;that night after night she would lie down, as she was lying
+      down to-night, to stare wide-eyed for hours into the darkness, while a
+      voice in her brain monotonously hammered out: &ldquo;Nick dear, it was July when
+      you left me...&rdquo; and so on, word after word, down to the last fatal
+      syllable?
+    </p>
+
+
+<h3>XXII.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">Strefford</span> was leaving for England.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once assured that Susy had taken the first step toward freeing herself, he
+      frankly regarded her as his affianced wife, and could see no reason for
+      further mystery. She understood his impatience to have their plans
+      settled; it would protect him from the formidable menace of the
+      marriageable, and cause people, as he said, to stop meddling. Now that the
+      novelty of his situation was wearing off, his natural indolence reasserted
+      itself, and there was nothing he dreaded more than having to be on his
+      guard against the innumerable plans that his well-wishers were perpetually
+      making for him. Sometimes Susy fancied he was marrying her because to do
+      so was to follow the line of least resistance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To marry me is the easiest way of not marrying all the others,&rdquo; she
+      laughed, as he stood before her one day in a quiet alley of the Bois de
+      Boulogne, insisting on the settlement of various preliminaries. &ldquo;I believe
+      I&rsquo;m only a protection to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      An odd gleam passed behind his eyes, and she instantly guessed that he was
+      thinking: &ldquo;And what else am I to you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She changed colour, and he rejoined, laughing also: &ldquo;Well, you&rsquo;re that at
+      any rate, thank the Lord!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She pondered, and then questioned: &ldquo;But in the interval&mdash;how are you going
+      to defend yourself for another year?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you&rsquo;ve got to see to that; you&rsquo;ve got to take a little house in
+      London. You&rsquo;ve got to look after me, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was on the tip of her tongue to flash back: &ldquo;Oh, if that&rsquo;s all you care&mdash;!&rdquo;
+       But caring was exactly the factor she wanted, as much as possible, to keep
+      out of their talk and their thoughts. She could not ask him how much he
+      cared without laying herself open to the same question; and that way
+      terror lay. As a matter of fact, though Strefford was not an ardent wooer&mdash;perhaps
+      from tact, perhaps from temperament, perhaps merely from the long habit of
+      belittling and disintegrating every sentiment and every conviction&mdash;yet
+      she knew he did care for her as much as he was capable of caring for
+      anyone. If the element of habit entered largely into the feeling&mdash;if
+      he liked her, above all, because he was used to her, knew her views, her
+      indulgences, her allowances, knew he was never likely to be bored, and
+      almost certain to be amused, by her; why, such ingredients though not of
+      the fieriest, were perhaps those most likely to keep his feeling for her
+      at a pleasant temperature. She had had a taste of the tropics, and wanted
+      more equable weather; but the idea of having to fan his flame gently for a
+      year was unspeakably depressing to her. Yet all this was precisely what
+      she could not say. The long period of probation, during which, as she
+      knew, she would have to amuse him, to guard him, to hold him, and to keep
+      off the other women, was a necessary part of their situation. She was sure
+      that, as little Breckenridge would have said, she could &ldquo;pull it off&rdquo;; but
+      she did not want to think about it. What she would have preferred would
+      have been to go away&mdash;no matter where and not see Strefford again
+      till they were married. But she dared not tell him that either.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A little house in London&mdash;?&rdquo; She wondered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I suppose you&rsquo;ve got to have some sort of a roof over your head.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat down beside her. &ldquo;If you like me well enough to live at Altringham
+      some day, won&rsquo;t you, in the meantime, let me provide you with a smaller
+      and more convenient establishment?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Still she hesitated. The alternative, she knew, would be to live on Ursula
+      Gillow, Violet Melrose, or some other of her rich friends, any one of whom
+      would be ready to lavish the largest hospitality on the prospective Lady
+      Altringham. Such an arrangement, in the long run, would be no less
+      humiliating to her pride, no less destructive to her independence, than
+      Altringham&rsquo;s little establishment. But she temporized. &ldquo;I shall go over to
+      London in December, and stay for a while with various people&mdash;then we
+      can look about.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right; as you like.&rdquo; He obviously considered her hesitation
+      ridiculous, but was too full of satisfaction at her having started divorce
+      proceedings to be chilled by her reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now, look here, my dear; couldn&rsquo;t I give you some sort of a ring?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A ring?&rdquo; She flushed at the suggestion. &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the use, Streff, dear?
+      With all those jewels locked away in London&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I daresay you&rsquo;ll think them old-fashioned. And, hang it, why
+      shouldn&rsquo;t I give you something new, I ran across Ellie and Bockheimer
+      yesterday, in the rue de la Paix, picking out sapphires. Do you like
+      sapphires, or emeralds? Or just a diamond? I&rsquo;ve seen a thumping one....
+      I&rsquo;d like you to have it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ellie and Bockheimer! How she hated the conjunction of the names! Their
+      case always seemed to her like a caricature of her own, and she felt an
+      unreasoning resentment against Ellie for having selected the same season
+      for her unmating and re-mating.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish you wouldn&rsquo;t speak of them, Streff... as if they were like us! I
+      can hardly bear to sit in the same room with Ellie Vanderlyn.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hullo? What&rsquo;s wrong? You mean because of her giving up Clarissa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not that only.... You don&rsquo;t know.... I can&rsquo;t tell you....&rdquo; She shivered
+      at the memory, and rose restlessly from the bench where they had been
+      sitting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford gave his careless shrug. &ldquo;Well, my dear, you can hardly expect
+      me to agree, for after all it was to Ellie I owed the luck of being so
+      long alone with you in Venice. If she and Algie hadn&rsquo;t prolonged their
+      honeymoon at the villa&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stopped abruptly, and looked at Susy. She was conscious that every drop
+      of blood had left her face. She felt it ebbing away from her heart,
+      flowing out of her as if from all her severed arteries, till it seemed as
+      though nothing were left of life in her but one point of irreducible pain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ellie&mdash;at your villa? What do you mean? Was it Ellie and Bockheimer
+      who&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford still stared. &ldquo;You mean to say you didn&rsquo;t know?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who came after Nick and me...?&rdquo; she insisted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, do you suppose I&rsquo;d have turned you out otherwise? That beastly
+      Bockheimer simply smothered me with gold. Ah, well, there&rsquo;s one good
+      thing: I shall never have to let the villa again! I rather like the little
+      place myself, and I daresay once in a while we might go there for a day or
+      two.... Susy, what&rsquo;s the matter?&rdquo; he exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She returned his stare, but without seeing him. Everything swam and danced
+      before her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then she was there while I was posting all those letters for her&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Letters&mdash;what letters? What makes you look so frightfully upset?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She pursued her thought as if he had not spoken. &ldquo;She and Algie Bockheimer
+      arrived there the very day that Nick and I left?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose so. I thought she&rsquo;d told you. Ellie always tells everybody
+      everything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She would have told me, I daresay&mdash;but I wouldn&rsquo;t let her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, my dear, that was hardly my fault, was it? Though I really don&rsquo;t
+      see&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Susy, still blind to everything but the dance of dizzy sparks before
+      her eyes, pressed on as if she had not heard him. &ldquo;It was their motor,
+      then, that took us to Milan! It was Algie Bockheimer&rsquo;s motor!&rdquo; She did not
+      know why, but this seemed to her the most humiliating incident in the
+      whole hateful business. She remembered Nick&rsquo;s reluctance to use the
+      motor&mdash;she remembered his look when she had boasted of her &ldquo;managing.&rdquo; The
+      nausea mounted to her throat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford burst out laughing. &ldquo;I say&mdash;you borrowed their motor? And
+      you didn&rsquo;t know whose it was?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How could I know? I persuaded the chauffeur... for a little tip.... It
+      was to save our railway fares to Milan... extra luggage costs so
+      frightfully in Italy....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good old Susy! Well done! I can see you doing it&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, how horrible&mdash;how horrible!&rdquo; she groaned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Horrible? What&rsquo;s horrible?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, your not seeing... not feeling...&rdquo; she began impetuously; and then
+      stopped. How could she explain to him that what revolted her was not so
+      much the fact of his having given the little house, as soon as she and
+      Nick had left it, to those two people of all others&mdash;though the
+      vision of them in the sweet secret house, and under the plane-trees of the
+      terrace, drew such a trail of slime across her golden hours? No, it was
+      not that from which she most recoiled, but from the fact that Strefford,
+      living in luxury in Nelson Vanderlyn&rsquo;s house, should at the same time have
+      secretly abetted Ellie Vanderlyn&rsquo;s love-affairs, and allowed her&mdash;for
+      a handsome price&mdash;to shelter them under his own roof. The reproach
+      trembled on her lip&mdash;but she remembered her own part in the wretched
+      business, and the impossibility of avowing it to Strefford, and of
+      revealing to him that Nick had left her for that very reason. She was not
+      afraid that the discovery would diminish her in Strefford&rsquo;s eyes: he was
+      untroubled by moral problems, and would laugh away her avowal, with a
+      sneer at Nick in his new part of moralist. But that was just what she
+      could not bear: that anyone should cast a doubt on the genuineness of
+      Nick&rsquo;s standards, or should know how far below them she had fallen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She remained silent, and Strefford, after a moment, drew her gently down
+      to the seat beside him. &ldquo;Susy, upon my soul I don&rsquo;t know what you&rsquo;re
+      driving at. Is it me you&rsquo;re angry with&mdash;or yourself? And what&rsquo;s it all
+      about! Are you disgusted because I let the villa to a couple who weren&rsquo;t
+      married! But, hang it, they&rsquo;re the kind that pay the highest price and I
+      had to earn my living somehow! One doesn&rsquo;t run across a bridal pair every
+      day....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She lifted her eyes to his puzzled incredulous face. Poor Streff! No, it
+      was not with him that she was angry. Why should she be? Even that
+      ill-advised disclosure had told her nothing she had not already known
+      about him. It had simply revealed to her once more the real point of view
+      of the people he and she lived among had shown her that, in spite of the
+      superficial difference, he felt as they felt, judged as they judged, was
+      blind as they were&mdash;and as she would be expected to be, should she once
+      again become one of them. What was the use of being placed by fortune
+      above such shifts and compromises, if in one&rsquo;s heart one still condoned
+      them? And she would have to&mdash;she would catch the general note, grow
+      blunted as those other people were blunted, and gradually come to wonder
+      at her own revolt, as Strefford now honestly wondered at it. She felt as
+      though she were on the point of losing some new-found treasure, a treasure
+      precious only to herself, but beside which all he offered her was nothing,
+      the triumph of her wounded pride nothing, the security of her future
+      nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it, Susy?&rdquo; he asked, with the same puzzled gentleness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ah, the loneliness of never being able to make him understand! She had
+      felt lonely enough when the flaming sword of Nick&rsquo;s indignation had shut
+      her out from their Paradise; but there had been a cruel bliss in the pain.
+      Nick had not opened her eyes to new truths, but had waked in her again
+      something which had lain unconscious under years of accumulated
+      indifference. And that re-awakened sense had never left her since, and had
+      somehow kept her from utter loneliness because it was a secret shared with
+      Nick, a gift she owed to Nick, and which, in leaving her, he could not
+      take from her. It was almost, she suddenly felt, as if he had left her
+      with a child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear girl,&rdquo; Strefford said, with a resigned glance at his watch, &ldquo;you
+      know we&rsquo;re dining at the Embassy....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the Embassy? She looked at him vaguely: then she remembered. Yes, they
+      were dining that night at the Ascots&rsquo;, with Strefford&rsquo;s cousin, the Duke
+      of Dunes, and his wife, the handsome irreproachable young Duchess; with
+      the old gambling Dowager Duchess, whom her son and daughter-in-law had
+      come over from England to see; and with other English and French guests of
+      a rank and standing worthy of the Duneses. Susy knew that her inclusion in
+      such a dinner could mean but one thing: it was her definite recognition as
+      Altringham&rsquo;s future wife. She was &ldquo;the little American&rdquo; whom one had to
+      ask when one invited him, even on ceremonial occasions. The family had
+      accepted her; the Embassy could but follow suit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s late, dear; and I&rsquo;ve got to see someone on business first,&rdquo;
+       Strefford reminded her patiently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Streff&mdash;I can&rsquo;t, I can&rsquo;t!&rdquo; The words broke from her without her
+      knowing what she was saying. &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t go with you&mdash;I can&rsquo;t go to the
+      Embassy. I can&rsquo;t go on any longer like this....&rdquo; She lifted her eyes to
+      his in desperate appeal. &ldquo;Oh, understand&mdash;do please understand!&rdquo; she
+      wailed, knowing, while she spoke, the utter impossibility of what she
+      asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford&rsquo;s face had gradually paled and hardened. From sallow it turned
+      to a dusky white, and lines of obstinacy deepened between the ironic
+      eyebrows and about the weak amused mouth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Understand? What do you want me to understand,&rdquo; He laughed. &ldquo;That you&rsquo;re
+      trying to chuck me already?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She shrank at the sneer of the &ldquo;already,&rdquo; but instantly remembered that it
+      was the only thing he could be expected to say, since it was just because
+      he couldn&rsquo;t understand that she was flying from him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Streff&mdash;if I knew how to tell you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It doesn&rsquo;t so much matter about the how. Is that what you&rsquo;re trying to
+      say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her head drooped, and she saw the dead leaves whirling across the path at
+      her feet, lifted on a sudden wintry gust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The reason,&rdquo; he continued, clearing his throat with a stiff smile, &ldquo;is
+      not quite as important to me as the fact.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stood speechless, agonized by his pain. But still, she thought, he had
+      remembered the dinner at the Embassy. The thought gave her courage to go
+      on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It wouldn&rsquo;t do, Streff. I&rsquo;m not a bit the kind of person to make you
+      happy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, leave that to me, please, won&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I can&rsquo;t. Because I should be unhappy too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He clicked at the leaves as they whirled past. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve taken a rather long
+      time to find it out.&rdquo; She saw that his new-born sense of his own
+      consequence was making him suffer even more than his wounded affection;
+      and that again gave her courage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I&rsquo;ve taken long it&rsquo;s all the more reason why I shouldn&rsquo;t take longer.
+      If I&rsquo;ve made a mistake it&rsquo;s you who would have suffered from it....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thanks,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;for your extreme solicitude.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at him helplessly, penetrated by the despairing sense of their
+      inaccessibility to each other. Then she remembered that Nick, during their
+      last talk together, had seemed as inaccessible, and wondered if, when
+      human souls try to get too near each other, they do not inevitably become
+      mere blurs to each other&rsquo;s vision. She would have liked to say this to
+      Streff&mdash;but he would not have understood it either. The sense of loneliness
+      once more enveloped her, and she groped in vain for a word that should
+      reach him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me go home alone, won&rsquo;t you?&rdquo; she appealed to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alone?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She nodded. &ldquo;To-morrow&mdash;to-morrow....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He tried, rather valiantly, to smile. &ldquo;Hang to-morrow! Whatever is wrong,
+      it needn&rsquo;t prevent my seeing you home.&rdquo; He glanced toward the taxi that
+      awaited them at the end of the deserted drive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, please. You&rsquo;re in a hurry; take the taxi. I want immensely a long
+      long walk by myself... through the streets, with the lights coming
+      out....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He laid his hand on her arm. &ldquo;I say, my dear, you&rsquo;re not ill?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; I&rsquo;m not ill. But you may say I am, to-night at the Embassy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He released her and drew back. &ldquo;Oh, very well,&rdquo; he answered coldly; and
+      she understood by his tone that the knot was cut, and that at that moment
+      he almost hated her. She turned away, hastening down the deserted alley,
+      flying from him, and knowing, as she fled, that he was still standing
+      there motionless, staring after her, wounded, humiliated, uncomprehending.
+      It was neither her fault nor his....
+    </p>
+
+
+<h3>XXIII.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">As</span> she fled on toward the lights of the streets a breath of freedom seemed
+      to blow into her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Like a weary load the accumulated hypocrisies of the last months had
+      dropped from her: she was herself again, Nick&rsquo;s Susy, and no one else&rsquo;s.
+      She sped on, staring with bright bewildered eyes at the stately facades of
+      the La Muette quarter, the perspectives of bare trees, the awakening
+      glitter of shop-windows holding out to her all the things she would never
+      again be able to buy....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In an avenue of shops she paused before a milliner&rsquo;s window, and said to
+      herself: &ldquo;Why shouldn&rsquo;t I earn my living by trimming hats?&rdquo; She met
+      work-girls streaming out under a doorway, and scattering to catch trams
+      and omnibuses; and she looked with newly-wakened interest at their tired
+      independent faces. &ldquo;Why shouldn&rsquo;t I earn my living as well as they do?&rdquo;
+       she thought. A little farther on she passed a Sister of Charity with
+      softly trotting feet, a calm anonymous glance, and hands hidden in her
+      capacious sleeves. Susy looked at her and thought: &ldquo;Why shouldn&rsquo;t I be a
+      Sister, and have no money to worry about, and trot about under a white
+      coif helping poor people?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All these strangers on whom she smiled in passing, and glanced back at
+      enviously, were free from the necessities that enslaved her, and would not
+      have known what she meant if she had told them that she must have so much
+      money for her dresses, so much for her cigarettes, so much for bridge and
+      cabs and tips, and all kinds of extras, and that at that moment she ought
+      to be hurrying back to a dinner at the British Embassy, where her
+      permanent right to such luxuries was to be solemnly recognized and
+      ratified.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The artificiality and unreality of her life overcame her as with stifling
+      fumes. She stopped at a street-corner, drawing long panting breaths as if
+      she had been running a race. Then, slowly and aimlessly, she began to
+      saunter along a street of small private houses in damp gardens that led to
+      the Avenue du Bois. She sat down on a bench. Not far off, the Arc de
+      Triomphe raised its august bulk, and beyond it a river of lights streamed
+      down toward Paris, and the stir of the city&rsquo;s heart-beats troubled the
+      quiet in her bosom. But not for long. She seemed to be looking at it all
+      from the other side of the grave; and as she got up and wandered down the
+      Champs Elysees, half empty in the evening lull between dusk and dinner,
+      she felt as if the glittering avenue were really changed into the Field of
+      Shadows from which it takes its name, and as if she were a ghost among
+      ghosts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Halfway home, a weakness of loneliness overcame her, and she seated
+      herself under the trees near the Rond Point. Lines of motors and carriages
+      were beginning to animate the converging thoroughfares, streaming abreast,
+      crossing, winding in and out of each other in a tangle of hurried
+      pleasure-seeking. She caught the light on jewels and shirt-fronts and hard
+      bored eyes emerging from dim billows of fur and velvet. She seemed to hear
+      what the couples were saying to each other, she pictured the
+      drawing-rooms, restaurants, dance-halls they were hastening to, the
+      breathless routine that was hurrying them along, as Time, the old
+      vacuum-cleaner, swept them away with the dust of their carriage-wheels.
+      And again the loneliness vanished in a sense of release....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the corner of the Place de la Concorde she stopped, recognizing a man
+      in evening dress who was hailing a taxi. Their eyes met, and Nelson
+      Vanderlyn came forward. He was the last person she cared to run across,
+      and she shrank back involuntarily. What did he know, what had he guessed,
+      of her complicity in his wife&rsquo;s affairs? No doubt Ellie had blabbed it all
+      out by this time; she was just as likely to confide her love-affairs to
+      Nelson as to anyone else, now that the Bockheimer prize was landed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;well&mdash;well&mdash;so I&rsquo;ve caught you at it! Glad to see
+      you, Susy, my dear.&rdquo; She found her hand cordially clasped in Vanderlyn&rsquo;s,
+      and his round pink face bent on her with all its old urbanity. Did nothing
+      matter, then, in this world she was fleeing from, did no one love or hate
+      or remember?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No idea you were in Paris&mdash;just got here myself,&rdquo; Vanderlyn
+      continued, visibly delighted at the meeting. &ldquo;Look here, don&rsquo;t suppose
+      you&rsquo;re out of a job this evening by any chance, and would come and cheer
+      up a lone bachelor, eh? No? You are? Well, that&rsquo;s luck for once! I say,
+      where shall we go? One of the places where they dance, I suppose? Yes, I
+      twirl the light fantastic once in a while myself. Got to keep up with the
+      times! Hold on, taxi! Here&mdash;I&rsquo;ll drive you home first, and wait while
+      you jump into your toggery. Lots of time.&rdquo; As he steered her toward the
+      carriage she noticed that he had a gouty limp, and pulled himself in after
+      her with difficulty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mayn&rsquo;t I come as I am, Nelson, I don&rsquo;t feel like dancing. Let&rsquo;s go and
+      dine in one of those nice smoky little restaurants by the Place de la
+      Bourse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He seemed surprised but relieved at the suggestion, and they rolled off
+      together. In a corner at Bauge&rsquo;s they found a quiet table, screened from
+      the other diners, and while Vanderlyn adjusted his eyeglasses to study the
+      carte Susy stole a long look at him. He was dressed with even more than
+      his usual formal trimness, and she detected, in an ultra-flat wrist-watch
+      and discreetly expensive waistcoat buttons, an attempt at smartness
+      altogether new. His face had undergone the same change: its familiar look
+      of worn optimism had been, as it were, done up to match his clothes, as
+      though a sort of moral cosmetic had made him pinker, shinier and
+      sprightlier without really rejuvenating him. A thin veil of high spirits
+      had merely been drawn over his face, as the shining strands of hair were
+      skilfully brushed over his baldness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here! Carte des vins, waiter! What champagne, Susy?&rdquo; He chose,
+      fastidiously, the best the cellar could produce, grumbling a little at the
+      bourgeois character of the dishes. &ldquo;Capital food of its kind, no doubt,
+      but coarsish, don&rsquo;t you think? Well, I don&rsquo;t mind... it&rsquo;s rather a jolly
+      change from the Luxe cooking. A new sensation&mdash;I&rsquo;m all for new
+      sensations, ain&rsquo;t you, my dear?&rdquo; He re-filled their champagne glasses,
+      flung an arm sideways over his chair, and smiled at her with a foggy
+      benevolence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the champagne flowed his confidences flowed with it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Suppose you know what I&rsquo;m here for&mdash;this divorce business? We wanted
+      to settle it quietly without a fuss, and of course Paris is the best place
+      for that sort of job. Live and let live; no questions asked. None of your
+      dirty newspapers. Great country, this. No hypocrisy... they understand
+      Life over here!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy gazed and listened. She remembered that people had thought Nelson
+      would make a row when he found out. He had always been addicted to
+      truculent anecdotes about unfaithful wives, and the very formula of his
+      perpetual ejaculation&mdash;&ldquo;Caught you at it, eh?&rdquo;&mdash;seemed to hint
+      at a constant preoccupation with such ideas. But now it was evident that,
+      as the saying was, he had &ldquo;swallowed his dose&rdquo; like all the others. No
+      strong blast of indignation had momentarily lifted him above his normal
+      stature: he remained a little man among little men, and his eagerness to
+      rebuild his life with all the old smiling optimism reminded Susy of the
+      patient industry of an ant remaking its ruined ant-heap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell you what, great thing, this liberty! Everything&rsquo;s changed nowadays;
+      why shouldn&rsquo;t marriage be too? A man can get out of a business partnership
+      when he wants to; but the parsons want to keep us noosed up to each other
+      for life because we&rsquo;ve blundered into a church one day and said &lsquo;Yes&rsquo;
+      before one of ’em. No, no&mdash;that&rsquo;s too easy. We&rsquo;ve got beyond that.
+      Science, and all these new discoveries.... I say the Ten Commandments were
+      made for man, and not man for the Commandments; and there ain&rsquo;t a word
+      against divorce in ’em, anyhow! That&rsquo;s what I tell my poor old mother, who
+      builds everything on her Bible. Find me the place where it says: &lsquo;Thou
+      shalt not sue for divorce.&rsquo; It makes her wild, poor old lady, because she
+      can&rsquo;t; and she doesn&rsquo;t know how they happen to have left it out.... I
+      rather think Moses left it out because he knew more about human nature
+      than these snivelling modern parsons do. Not that they&rsquo;ll always bear
+      investigating either; but I don&rsquo;t care about that. Live and let live, eh,
+      Susy? Haven&rsquo;t we all got a right to our Affinities? I hear you&rsquo;re
+      following our example yourself. First-rate idea: I don&rsquo;t mind telling you
+      I saw it coming on last summer at Venice. Caught you at it, so to speak!
+      Old Nelson ain&rsquo;t as blind as people think. Here, let&rsquo;s open another bottle
+      to the health of Streff and Mrs. Streff!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She caught the hand with which he was signalling to the sommelier. This
+      flushed and garrulous Nelson moved her more poignantly than a more heroic
+      figure. &ldquo;No more champagne, please, Nelson. Besides,&rdquo; she suddenly added,
+      &ldquo;it&rsquo;s not true.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stared. &ldquo;Not true that you&rsquo;re going to marry Altringham?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By George then what on earth did you chuck Nick for? Ain&rsquo;t you got an
+      Affinity, my dear?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She laughed and shook her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean to tell me it&rsquo;s all Nick&rsquo;s doing, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know. Let&rsquo;s talk of you instead, Nelson. I&rsquo;m glad you&rsquo;re in such
+      good spirits. I rather thought&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He interrupted her quickly. &ldquo;Thought I&rsquo;d cut up a rumpus&mdash;do some shooting?
+      I know&mdash;people did.&rdquo; He twisted his moustache, evidently proud of his
+      reputation. &ldquo;Well, maybe I did see red for a day or two&mdash;but I&rsquo;m a
+      philosopher, first and last. Before I went into banking I&rsquo;d made and lost
+      two fortunes out West. Well, how did I build ’em up again? Not by shooting
+      anybody even myself. By just buckling to, and beginning all over again.
+      That&rsquo;s how... and that&rsquo;s what I am doing now. Beginning all over again.&rdquo;
+       His voice dropped from boastfulness to a note of wistful melancholy, the
+      look of strained jauntiness fell from his face like a mask, and for an
+      instant she saw the real man, old, ruined, lonely. Yes, that was it: he
+      was lonely, desperately lonely, foundering in such deep seas of solitude
+      that any presence out of the past was like a spar to which he clung.
+      Whatever he knew or guessed of the part she had played in his disaster, it
+      was not callousness that had made him greet her with such forgiving
+      warmth, but the same sense of smallness, insignificance and isolation
+      which perpetually hung like a cold fog on her own horizon. Suddenly she
+      too felt old&mdash;old and unspeakably tired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s been nice seeing you, Nelson. But now I must be getting home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He offered no objection, but asked for the bill, resumed his jaunty air
+      while he scattered largesse among the waiters, and sauntered out behind
+      her after calling for a taxi.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They drove off in silence. Susy was thinking: &ldquo;And Clarissa?&rdquo; but dared
+      not ask. Vanderlyn lit a cigarette, hummed a dance-tune, and stared out of
+      the window. Suddenly she felt his hand on hers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Susy&mdash;do you ever see her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;See&mdash;Ellie?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He nodded, without turning toward her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not often... sometimes....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you do, for God&rsquo;s sake tell her I&rsquo;m happy... happy as a king... tell
+      her you could see for yourself that I was....&rdquo; His voice broke in a little
+      gasp. &ldquo;I... I&rsquo;ll be damned if... if she shall ever be unhappy about me...
+      if I can help it....&rdquo; The cigarette dropped from his fingers, and with a
+      sob he covered his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, poor Nelson&mdash;poor Nelson,&rdquo; Susy breathed. While their cab
+      rattled across the Place du Carrousel, and over the bridge, he continued
+      to sit beside her with hidden face. At last he pulled out a scented
+      handkerchief, rubbed his eyes with it, and groped for another cigarette.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m all right! Tell her that, will you, Susy? There are some of our old
+      times I don&rsquo;t suppose I shall ever forget; but they make me feel kindly to
+      her, and not angry. I didn&rsquo;t know it would be so, beforehand&mdash;but it
+      is.... And now the thing&rsquo;s settled I&rsquo;m as right as a trivet, and you can
+      tell her so.... Look here, Susy...&rdquo; he caught her by the arm as the taxi
+      drew up at her hotel.... &ldquo;Tell her I understand, will you? I&rsquo;d rather like
+      her to know that....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll tell her, Nelson,&rdquo; she promised; and climbed the stairs alone to her
+      dreary room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy&rsquo;s one fear was that Strefford, when he returned the next day, should
+      treat their talk of the previous evening as a fit of &ldquo;nerves&rdquo; to be jested
+      away. He might, indeed, resent her behaviour too deeply to seek to see her
+      at once; but his easygoing modern attitude toward conduct and convictions
+      made that improbable. She had an idea that what he had most minded was her
+      dropping so unceremoniously out of the Embassy Dinner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, after all, why should she see him again? She had had enough of
+      explanations during the last months to have learned how seldom they
+      explain anything. If the other person did not understand at the first
+      word, at the first glance even, subsequent elucidations served only to
+      deepen the obscurity. And she wanted above all&mdash;and especially since
+      her hour with Nelson Vanderlyn&mdash;to keep herself free, aloof, to
+      retain her hold on her precariously recovered self. She sat down and wrote
+      to Strefford&mdash;and the letter was only a little less painful to write
+      than the one she had despatched to Nick. It was not that her own feelings
+      were in any like measure engaged; but because, as the decision to give up
+      Strefford affirmed itself, she remembered only his kindness, his
+      forbearance, his good humour, and all the other qualities she had always
+      liked in him; and because she felt ashamed of the hesitations which must
+      cause him so much pain and humiliation. Yes: humiliation chiefly. She knew
+      that what she had to say would hurt his pride, in whatever way she framed
+      her renunciation; and her pen wavered, hating its task. Then she
+      remembered Vanderlyn&rsquo;s words about his wife: &ldquo;There are some of our old
+      times I don&rsquo;t suppose I shall ever forget&mdash;&rdquo; and a phrase of Grace
+      Fulmer&rsquo;s that she had but half grasped at the time: &ldquo;You haven&rsquo;t been
+      married long enough to understand how trifling such things seem in the
+      balance of one&rsquo;s memories.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here were two people who had penetrated farther than she into the
+      labyrinth of the wedded state, and struggled through some of its thorniest
+      passages; and yet both, one consciously, the other half-unaware, testified
+      to the mysterious fact which was already dawning on her: that the
+      influence of a marriage begun in mutual understanding is too deep not to
+      reassert itself even in the moment of flight and denial.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The real reason is that you&rsquo;re not Nick&rdquo; was what she would have said to
+      Strefford if she had dared to set down the bare truth; and she knew that,
+      whatever she wrote, he was too acute not to read that into it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;ll think it&rsquo;s because I&rsquo;m still in love with Nick... and perhaps I am.
+      But even if I were, the difference doesn&rsquo;t seem to lie there, after all,
+      but deeper, in things we&rsquo;ve shared that seem to be meant to outlast love,
+      or to change it into something different.&rdquo; If she could have hoped to make
+      Strefford understand that, the letter would have been easy enough to write&mdash;but
+      she knew just at what point his imagination would fail, in what obvious
+      and superficial inferences it would rest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor Streff&mdash;poor me!&rdquo; she thought as she sealed the letter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After she had despatched it a sense of blankness descended on her. She had
+      succeeded in driving from her mind all vain hesitations, doubts, returns
+      upon herself: her healthy system naturally rejected them. But they left a
+      queer emptiness in which her thoughts rattled about as thoughts might, she
+      supposed, in the first moments after death&mdash;before one got used to
+      it. To get used to being dead: that seemed to be her immediate business.
+      And she felt such a novice at it&mdash;felt so horribly alive! How had
+      those others learned to do without living? Nelson&mdash;well, he was still
+      in the throes; and probably never would understand, or be able to
+      communicate, the lesson when he had mastered it. But Grace Fulmer&mdash;she
+      suddenly remembered that Grace was in Paris, and set forth to find her.
+    </p>
+
+
+<h3>XXIV.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">Nick Lansing</span> had walked out a long way into the Campagna. His hours were
+      seldom his own, for both Mr. and Mrs. Hicks were becoming more and more
+      addicted to sudden and somewhat imperious demands upon his time; but on
+      this occasion he had simply slipped away after luncheon, and taking the
+      tram to the Porta Salaria, had wandered on thence in the direction of the
+      Ponte Nomentano.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He wanted to get away and think; but now that he had done it the business
+      proved as unfruitful as everything he had put his hand to since he had
+      left Venice. Think&mdash;think about what? His future seemed to him a
+      negligible matter since he had received, two months earlier, the few lines
+      in which Susy had asked him for her freedom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The letter had been a shock&mdash;though he had fancied himself so
+      prepared for it&mdash;yet it had also, in another sense, been a relief,
+      since, now that at last circumstances compelled him to write to her, they
+      also told him what to say. And he had said it as briefly and simply as
+      possible, telling her that he would put no obstacle in the way of her
+      release, that he held himself at her lawyer&rsquo;s disposal to answer any
+      further communication&mdash;and that he would never forget their days
+      together, or cease to bless her for them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That was all. He gave his Roman banker&rsquo;s address, and waited for another
+      letter; but none came. Probably the &ldquo;formalities,&rdquo; whatever they were,
+      took longer than he had supposed; and being in no haste to recover his own
+      liberty, he did not try to learn the cause of the delay. From that moment,
+      however, he considered himself virtually free, and ceased, by the same
+      token, to take any interest in his own future. His life seemed as flat as
+      a convalescent&rsquo;s first days after the fever has dropped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The only thing he was sure of was that he was not going to remain in the
+      Hickses&rsquo; employ: when they left Rome for Central Asia he had no intention
+      of accompanying them. The part of Mr. Buttles&rsquo; successor was becoming
+      daily more intolerable to him, for the very reasons that had probably made
+      it most gratifying to Mr. Buttles. To be treated by Mr. and Mrs. Hicks as
+      a paid oracle, a paraded and petted piece of property, was a good deal
+      more distasteful than he could have imagined any relation with these
+      kindly people could be. And since their aspirations had become frankly
+      social he found his task, if easier, yet far less congenial than during
+      his first months with them. He preferred patiently explaining to Mrs.
+      Hicks, for the hundredth time, that Sassanian and Saracenic were not
+      interchangeable terms, to unravelling for her the genealogies of her
+      titled guests, and reminding her, when she &ldquo;seated&rdquo; her dinner-parties,
+      that Dukes ranked higher than Princes. No&mdash;the job was decidedly
+      intolerable; and he would have to look out for another means of earning
+      his living. But that was not what he had really got away to think about.
+      He knew he should never starve; he had even begun to believe again in his
+      book. What he wanted to think of was Susy&mdash;or rather, it was Susy
+      that he could not help thinking of, on whatever train of thought he set
+      out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again and again he fancied he had established a truce with the past: had
+      come to terms&mdash;the terms of defeat and failure with that bright enemy
+      called happiness. And, in truth, he had reached the point of definitely
+      knowing that he could never return to the kind of life that he and Susy
+      had embarked on. It had been the tragedy, of their relation that loving
+      her roused in him ideals she could never satisfy. He had fallen in love
+      with her because she was, like himself, amused, unprejudiced and
+      disenchanted; and he could not go on loving her unless she ceased to be
+      all these things. From that circle there was no issue, and in it he
+      desperately revolved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If he had not heard such persistent rumours of her re-marriage to Lord
+      Altringham he might have tried to see her again; but, aware of the danger
+      and the hopelessness of a meeting, he was, on the whole, glad to have a
+      reason for avoiding it. Such, at least, he honestly supposed to be his
+      state of mind until he found himself, as on this occasion, free to follow
+      out his thought to its end. That end, invariably, was Susy; not the bundle
+      of qualities and defects into which his critical spirit had tried to sort
+      her out, but the soft blur of identity, of personality, of eyes, hair,
+      mouth, laugh, tricks of speech and gesture, that were all so solely and
+      profoundly her own, and yet so mysteriously independent of what she might
+      do, say, think, in crucial circumstances. He remembered her once saying to
+      him: &ldquo;After all, you were right when you wanted me to be your mistress,&rdquo;
+       and the indignant stare of incredulity with which he had answered her. Yet
+      in these hours it was the palpable image of her that clung closest, till,
+      as invariably happened, his vision came full circle, and feeling her on
+      his breast he wanted her also in his soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well&mdash;such all-encompassing loves were the rarest of human
+      experiences; he smiled at his presumption in wanting no other. Wearily he
+      turned, and tramped homeward through the winter twilight....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the door of the hotel he ran across the Prince of Teutoburg&rsquo;s
+      aide-de-camp. They had not met for some days, and Nick had a vague feeling
+      that if the Prince&rsquo;s matrimonial designs took definite shape he himself
+      was not likely, after all, to be their chosen exponent. He had surprised,
+      now and then, a certain distrustful coldness under the Princess Mother&rsquo;s
+      cordial glance, and had concluded that she perhaps suspected him of being
+      an obstacle to her son&rsquo;s aspirations. He had no idea of playing that part,
+      but was not sorry to appear to; for he was sincerely attached to Coral
+      Hicks, and hoped for her a more human fate than that of becoming Prince
+      Anastasius&rsquo;s consort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This evening, however, he was struck by the beaming alacrity of the
+      aide-de-camp&rsquo;s greeting. Whatever cloud had hung between them had lifted:
+      the Teutoburg clan, for one reason or another, no longer feared or
+      distrusted him. The change was conveyed in a mere hand-pressure, a brief
+      exchange of words, for the aide-de-camp was hastening after a well-known
+      dowager of the old Roman world, whom he helped into a large coronetted
+      brougham which looked as if it had been extracted, for some ceremonial
+      purpose, from a museum of historic vehicles. And in an instant it flashed
+      on Lansing that this lady had been the person chosen to lay the Prince&rsquo;s
+      offer at Miss Hicks&rsquo;s feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The discovery piqued him; and instead of making straight for his own room
+      he went up to Mrs. Hicks&rsquo;s drawing-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The room was empty, but traces of elaborate tea pervaded it, and an
+      immense bouquet of stiff roses lay on the centre table. As he turned away,
+      Eldorada Tooker, flushed and tear-stained, abruptly entered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Mr. Lansing&mdash;we were looking everywhere for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Looking for me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Coral especially... she wants to see you. She wants you to come to
+      her own sitting-room.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She led him across the ante-chamber and down the passage to the separate
+      suite which Miss Hicks inhabited. On the threshold Eldorada gasped out
+      emotionally: &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll find her looking lovely&mdash;&rdquo; and jerked away with
+      a sob as he entered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Coral Hicks was never lovely: but she certainly looked unusually handsome.
+      Perhaps it was the long dress of black velvet which, outlined against a
+      shaded lamp, made her strong build seem slenderer, or perhaps the slight
+      flush on her dusky cheek: a bloom of womanhood hung upon her which she
+      made no effort to dissemble. Indeed, it was one of her originalities that
+      she always gravely and courageously revealed the utmost of whatever mood
+      possessed her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How splendid you look!&rdquo; he said, smiling at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She threw her head back and gazed him straight in the eyes. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s going
+      to be my future job.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To look splendid?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And wear a crown?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And wear a crown....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They continued to consider each other without speaking. Nick&rsquo;s heart
+      contracted with pity and perplexity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Coral&mdash;it&rsquo;s not decided?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She scrutinized him for a last penetrating moment; then she looked away.
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m never long deciding.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He hesitated, choking with contradictory impulses, and afraid to formulate
+      any, lest they should either mislead or pain her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why didn&rsquo;t you tell me?&rdquo; he questioned lamely; and instantly perceived
+      his blunder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She sat down, and looked up at him under brooding lashes&mdash;had he ever
+      noticed the thickness of her lashes before?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would it have made any difference if I had told you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Any difference&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sit down by me,&rdquo; she commanded. &ldquo;I want to talk to you. You can say now
+      whatever you might have said sooner. I&rsquo;m not married yet: I&rsquo;m still free.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You haven&rsquo;t given your answer?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It doesn&rsquo;t matter if I have.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The retort frightened him with the glimpse of what she still expected of
+      him, and what he was still so unable to give.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That means you&rsquo;ve said yes?&rdquo; he pursued, to gain time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes or no&mdash;it doesn&rsquo;t matter. I had to say something. What I want is
+      your advice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At the eleventh hour?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Or the twelfth.&rdquo; She paused. &ldquo;What shall I do?&rdquo; she questioned, with a
+      sudden accent of helplessness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at her as helplessly. He could not say: &ldquo;Ask yourself&mdash;ask
+      your parents.&rdquo; Her next word would sweep away such frail hypocrisies. Her
+      &ldquo;What shall I do?&rdquo; meant &ldquo;What are you going to do?&rdquo; and he knew it, and
+      knew that she knew it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m a bad person to give any one matrimonial advice,&rdquo; he began, with a
+      strained smile; &ldquo;but I had such a different vision for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What kind of a vision?&rdquo; She was merciless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Merely what people call happiness, dear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;People call&rsquo;&mdash;you see you don&rsquo;t believe in it yourself! Well,
+      neither do I&mdash;in that form, at any rate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He considered. &ldquo;I believe in trying for it&mdash;even if the trying&rsquo;s the
+      best of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;ve tried, and failed. And I&rsquo;m twenty-two, and I never was young.
+      I suppose I haven&rsquo;t enough imagination.&rdquo; She drew a deep breath. &ldquo;Now I
+      want something different.&rdquo; She appeared to search for the word. &ldquo;I want to
+      be&mdash;prominent,&rdquo; she declared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Prominent?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She reddened swarthily. &ldquo;Oh, you smile&mdash;you think it&rsquo;s ridiculous: it
+      doesn&rsquo;t seem worth while to you. That&rsquo;s because you&rsquo;ve always had all
+      those things. But I haven&rsquo;t. I know what father pushed up from, and I want
+      to push up as high again&mdash;higher. No, I haven&rsquo;t got much imagination.
+      I&rsquo;ve always liked Facts. And I find I shall like the fact of being a
+      Princess&mdash;choosing the people I associate with, and being up above
+      all these European grandees that father and mother bow down to, though
+      they think they despise them. You can be up above these people by just
+      being yourself; you know how. But I need a platform&mdash;a sky-scraper.
+      Father and mother slaved to give me my education. They thought education
+      was the important thing; but, since we&rsquo;ve all three of us got mediocre
+      minds, it has just landed us among mediocre people. Don&rsquo;t you suppose I
+      see through all the sham science and sham art and sham everything we&rsquo;re
+      surrounded with? That&rsquo;s why I want to buy a place at the very top, where I
+      shall be powerful enough to get about me the people I want, the big
+      people, the right people, and to help them I want to promote culture, like
+      those Renaissance women you&rsquo;re always talking about. I want to do it for
+      Apex City; do you understand? And for father and mother too. I want all
+      those titles carved on my tombstone. They&rsquo;re facts, anyhow! Don&rsquo;t laugh at
+      me....&rdquo; She broke off with one of her clumsy smiles, and moved away from
+      him to the other end of the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat looking at her with a curious feeling of admiration. Her harsh
+      positivism was like a tonic to his disenchanted mood, and he thought:
+      &ldquo;What a pity!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Aloud he said: &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t feel like laughing at you. You&rsquo;re a great woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I shall be a great Princess.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh&mdash;but you might have been something so much greater!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her face flamed again. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t say that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood up involuntarily, and drew near her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because you&rsquo;re the only man with whom I can imagine the other kind of
+      greatness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It moved him&mdash;moved him unexpectedly. He got as far as saying to
+      himself: &ldquo;Good God, if she were not so hideously rich&mdash;&rdquo; and then of
+      yielding for a moment to the persuasive vision of all that he and she
+      might do with those very riches which he dreaded. After all, there was
+      nothing mean in her ideals they were hard and material, in keeping with
+      her primitive and massive person; but they had a certain grim nobility.
+      And when she spoke of &ldquo;the other kind of greatness&rdquo; he knew that she
+      understood what she was talking of, and was not merely saying something to
+      draw him on, to get him to commit himself. There was not a drop of guile
+      in her, except that which her very honesty distilled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The other kind of greatness?&rdquo; he repeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, isn&rsquo;t that what you said happiness was? I wanted to be happy... but
+      one can&rsquo;t choose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He went up to her. &ldquo;No, one can&rsquo;t choose. And how can anyone give you
+      happiness who hasn&rsquo;t got it himself?&rdquo; He took her hands, feeling how
+      large, muscular and voluntary they were, even as they melted in his palms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My poor Coral, of what use can I ever be to you? What you need is to be
+      loved.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She drew back and gave him one of her straight strong glances: &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she
+      said gallantly, &ldquo;but just to love.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_PART3" id="link2H_PART3">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PART III
+    </h2>
+
+    <h3>
+      XXV.
+    </h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">In</span> the persistent drizzle of a Paris winter morning Susy Lansing walked
+      back alone from the school at which she had just deposited the four eldest
+      Fulmers to the little house in Passy where, for the last two months, she
+      had been living with them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had on ready-made boots, an old waterproof and a last year&rsquo;s hat; but
+      none of these facts disturbed her, though she took no particular pride in
+      them. The truth was that she was too busy to think much about them. Since
+      she had assumed the charge of the Fulmer children, in the absence of both
+      their parents in Italy, she had had to pass through such an arduous
+      apprenticeship of motherhood that every moment of her waking hours was
+      packed with things to do at once, and other things to remember to do
+      later. There were only five Fulmers; but at times they were like an army
+      with banners, and their power of self-multiplication was equalled only by
+      the manner in which they could dwindle, vanish, grow mute, and become as
+      it were a single tumbled brown head bent over a book in some corner of the
+      house in which nobody would ever have thought of hunting for them&mdash;and
+      which, of course, were it the bonne&rsquo;s room in the attic, or the
+      subterranean closet where the trunks were kept, had been singled out by
+      them for that very reason.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These changes from ubiquity to invisibility would have seemed to Susy, a
+      few months earlier, one of the most maddening of many characteristics not
+      calculated to promote repose. But now she felt differently. She had grown
+      interested in her charges, and the search for a clue to their methods,
+      whether tribal or individual, was as exciting to her as the development of
+      a detective story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What interested her most in the whole stirring business was the discovery
+      that they had a method. These little creatures, pitched upward into
+      experience on the tossing waves of their parents&rsquo; agitated lives, had
+      managed to establish a rough-and-ready system of self-government. Junie,
+      the eldest (the one who already chose her mother&rsquo;s hats, and tried to put
+      order in her wardrobe) was the recognized head of the state. At twelve she
+      knew lots of things which her mother had never thoroughly learned, and
+      Susy, her temporary mother, had never even guessed at: she spoke with
+      authority on all vital subjects, from castor-oil to flannel under-clothes,
+      from the fair sharing of stamps or marbles to the number of helpings of
+      rice-pudding or jam which each child was entitled to.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was hardly any appeal from her verdict; yet each of her subjects
+      revolved in his or her own orbit of independence, according to laws which
+      Junie acknowledged and respected; and the interpreting of this mysterious
+      charter of rights and privileges had not been without difficulty for Susy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Besides this, there were material difficulties to deal with. The six of
+      them, and the breathless bonne who cooked and slaved for them all, had but
+      a slim budget to live on; and, as Junie remarked, you&rsquo;d have thought the
+      boys ate their shoes, the way they vanished. They ate, certainly, a great
+      deal else, and mostly of a nourishing and expensive kind. They had
+      definite views about the amount and quality of their food, and were
+      capable of concerted rebellion when Susy&rsquo;s catering fell beneath their
+      standard. All this made her life a hurried and harassing business, but
+      never&mdash;what she had most feared it would be a dull or depressing one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not, she owned to herself, that the society of the Fulmer children
+      had roused in her any abstract passion for the human young. She knew&mdash;had
+      known since Nick&rsquo;s first kiss&mdash;how she would love any child of his
+      and hers; and she had cherished poor little Clarissa Vanderlyn with a
+      shrinking and wistful solicitude. But in these rough young Fulmers she
+      took a positive delight, and for reasons that were increasingly clear to
+      her. It was because, in the first place, they were all intelligent; and
+      because their intelligence had been fed only on things worth caring for.
+      However inadequate Grace Fulmer&rsquo;s bringing-up of her increasing tribe had
+      been, they had heard in her company nothing trivial or dull: good music,
+      good books and good talk had been their daily food, and if at times they
+      stamped and roared and crashed about like children unblessed by such
+      privileges, at others they shone with the light of poetry and spoke with
+      the voice of wisdom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That had been Susy&rsquo;s discovery: for the first time she was among awakening
+      minds which had been wakened only to beauty. From their cramped and
+      uncomfortable household Grace and Nat Fulmer had managed to keep out mean
+      envies, vulgar admirations, shabby discontents; above all the din and
+      confusion the great images of beauty had brooded, like those ancestral
+      figures that stood apart on their shelf in the poorest Roman households.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No, the task she had undertaken for want of a better gave Susy no sense of
+      a missed vocation: &ldquo;mothering&rdquo; on a large scale would never, she
+      perceived, be her job. Rather it gave her, in odd ways, the sense of being
+      herself mothered, of taking her first steps in the life of immaterial
+      values which had begun to seem so much more substantial than any she had
+      known.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the day when she had gone to Grace Fulmer for counsel and comfort she
+      had little guessed that they would come to her in this form. She had found
+      her friend, more than ever distracted and yet buoyant, riding the large
+      untidy waves of her life with the splashed ease of an amphibian. Grace was
+      probably the only person among Susy&rsquo;s friends who could have understood
+      why she could not make up her mind to marry Altringham; but at the moment
+      Grace was too much absorbed in her own problems to pay much attention to
+      her friend&rsquo;s, and, according to her wont, she immediately &ldquo;unpacked&rdquo; her
+      difficulties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nat was not getting what she had hoped out of his European opportunity.
+      Oh, she was enough of an artist herself to know that there must be fallow
+      periods&mdash;that the impact of new impressions seldom produced immediate
+      results. She had allowed for all that. But her past experience of Nat&rsquo;s
+      moods had taught her to know just when he was assimilating, when
+      impressions were fructifying in him. And now they were not, and he knew it
+      as well as she did. There had been too much rushing about, too much
+      excitement and sterile flattery... Mrs. Melrose? Well, yes, for a while...
+      the trip to Spain had been a love-journey, no doubt. Grace spoke calmly,
+      but the lines of her face sharpened: she had suffered, oh horribly, at his
+      going to Spain without her. Yet she couldn&rsquo;t, for the children&rsquo;s sake,
+      afford to miss the big sum that Ursula Gillow had given her for her
+      fortnight at Ruan. And her playing had struck people, and led, on the way
+      back, to two or three profitable engagements in private houses in London.
+      Fashionable society had made &ldquo;a little fuss&rdquo; about her, and it had
+      surprised and pleased Nat, and given her a new importance in his eyes. &ldquo;He
+      was beginning to forget that I wasn&rsquo;t only a nursery-maid, and it&rsquo;s been a
+      good thing for him to be reminded... but the great thing is that with what
+      I&rsquo;ve earned he and I can go off to southern Italy and Sicily for three
+      months. You know I know how to manage... and, alone with me, Nat will
+      settle down to work: to observing, feeling, soaking things in. It&rsquo;s the
+      only way. Mrs. Melrose wants to take him, to pay all the expenses
+      again&mdash;well she shan&rsquo;t. I&rsquo;ll pay them.&rdquo; Her worn cheek flushed with
+      triumph. &ldquo;And you&rsquo;ll see what wonders will come of it.... Only there&rsquo;s the
+      problem of the children. Junie quite agrees that we can&rsquo;t take them....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thereupon she had unfolded her idea. If Susy was at a loose end, and hard
+      up, why shouldn&rsquo;t she take charge of the children while their parents were
+      in Italy? For three months at most&mdash;Grace could promise it shouldn&rsquo;t be
+      longer. They couldn&rsquo;t pay her much, of course, but at least she would be
+      lodged and fed. &ldquo;And, you know, it will end by interesting you&mdash;I&rsquo;m
+      sure it will,&rdquo; the mother concluded, her irrepressible hopefulness rising
+      even to this height, while Susy stood before her with a hesitating smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Take care of five Fulmers for three months! The prospect cowed her. If
+      there had been only Junie and Geordie, the oldest and youngest of the
+      band, she might have felt less hesitation. But there was Nat, the second
+      in age, whose motor-horn had driven her and Nick out to the hill-side on
+      their fatal day at the Fulmers&rsquo; and there were the twins, Jack and Peggy,
+      of whom she had kept memories almost equally disquieting. To rule this
+      uproarious tribe would be a sterner business than trying to beguile
+      Clarissa Vanderlyn&rsquo;s ladylike leisure; and she would have refused on the
+      spot, as she had refused once before, if the only possible alternatives
+      had not come to seem so much less bearable, and if Junie, called in for
+      advice, and standing there, small, plain and competent, had not said in
+      her quiet grown-up voice: &ldquo;Oh, yes, I&rsquo;m sure Mrs. Lansing and I can manage
+      while you&rsquo;re away&mdash;especially if she reads aloud well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Reads aloud well! The stipulation had enchanted Susy. She had never before
+      known children who cared to be read aloud to; she remembered with a shiver
+      her attempts to interest Clarissa in anything but gossip and the fashions,
+      and the tone in which the child had said, showing Strefford&rsquo;s trinket to
+      her father: &ldquo;Because I said I&rsquo;d rather have it than a book.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And here were children who consented to be left for three months by their
+      parents, but on condition that a good reader was provided for them!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well&mdash;I will! But what shall I be expected to read to you?&rdquo; she
+      had gaily questioned; and Junie had answered, after one of her sober
+      pauses of reflection: &ldquo;The little ones like nearly everything; but Nat and
+      I want poetry particularly, because if we read it to ourselves we so often
+      pronounce the puzzling words wrong, and then it sounds so horrid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I hope I shall pronounce them right,&rdquo; Susy murmured, stricken with
+      self-distrust and humility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Apparently she did; for her reading was a success, and even the twins and
+      Geordie, once they had grown used to her, seemed to prefer a ringing page
+      of Henry V, or the fairy scenes from the Midsummer Night&rsquo;s Dream, to their
+      own more specialized literature, though that had also at times to be
+      provided.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were, in fact, no lulls in her life with the Fulmers; but its
+      commotions seemed to Susy less meaningless, and therefore less fatiguing,
+      than those that punctuated the existence of people like Altringham, Ursula
+      Gillow, Ellie Vanderlyn and their train; and the noisy uncomfortable
+      little house at Passy was beginning to greet her with the eyes of home
+      when she returned there after her tramps to and from the children&rsquo;s
+      classes. At any rate she had the sense of doing something useful and even
+      necessary, and of earning her own keep, though on so modest a scale; and
+      when the children were in their quiet mood, and demanded books or music
+      (or, even, on one occasion, at the surprising Junie&rsquo;s instigation, a
+      collective visit to the Louvre, where they recognized the most unlikely
+      pictures, and the two elders emitted startling technical judgments, and
+      called their companion&rsquo;s attention to details she had not observed); on
+      these occasions, Susy had a surprised sense of being drawn back into her
+      brief life with Nick, or even still farther and deeper, into those visions
+      of Nick&rsquo;s own childhood on which the trivial later years had heaped their
+      dust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was curious to think that if he and she had remained together, and she
+      had had a child&mdash;the vision used to come to her, in her sleepless
+      hours, when she looked at little Geordie, in his cot by her bed&mdash;their
+      life together might have been very much like the life she was now leading,
+      a small obscure business to the outer world, but to themselves how wide
+      and deep and crowded!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She could not bear, at that moment, the thought of giving up this mystic
+      relation to the life she had missed. In spite of the hurry and fatigue of
+      her days, the shabbiness and discomfort of everything, and the hours when
+      the children were as &ldquo;horrid&rdquo; as any other children, and turned a
+      conspiracy of hostile faces to all her appeals; in spite of all this she
+      did not want to give them up, and had decided, when their parents
+      returned, to ask to go back to America with them. Perhaps, if Nat&rsquo;s
+      success continued, and Grace was able to work at her music, they would
+      need a kind of governess-companion. At any rate, she could picture no
+      future less distasteful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had not sent to Mr. Spearman Nick&rsquo;s answer to her letter. In the
+      interval between writing to him and receiving his reply she had broken
+      with Strefford; she had therefore no object in seeking her freedom. If
+      Nick wanted his, he knew he had only to ask for it; and his silence, as
+      the weeks passed, woke a faint hope in her. The hope flamed high when she
+      read one day in the newspapers a vague but evidently &ldquo;inspired&rdquo; allusion
+      to the possibility of an alliance between his Serene Highness the reigning
+      Prince of Teutoburg-Waldhain and Miss Coral Hicks of Apex City; it sank to
+      ashes when, a few days later, her eye lit on a paragraph wherein Mr. and
+      Mrs. Mortimer Hicks &ldquo;requested to state&rdquo; that there was no truth in the
+      report.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the foundation of these two statements Susy raised one watch-tower of
+      hope after another, feverish edifices demolished or rebuilt by every
+      chance hint from the outer world wherein Nick&rsquo;s name figured with the
+      Hickses&rsquo;. And still, as the days passed and she heard nothing, either from
+      him or from her lawyer, her flag continued to fly from the quaking
+      structures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Apart from the custody of the children there was indeed little to distract
+      her mind from these persistent broodings. She winced sometimes at the
+      thought of the ease with which her fashionable friends had let her drop
+      out of sight. In the perpetual purposeless rush of their days, the
+      feverish making of winter plans, hurrying off to the Riviera or St.
+      Moritz, Egypt or New York, there was no time to hunt up the vanished or to
+      wait for the laggard. Had they learned that she had broken her
+      &ldquo;engagement&rdquo; (how she hated the word!) to Strefford, and had the fact gone
+      about that she was once more only a poor hanger-on, to be taken up when it
+      was convenient, and ignored in the intervals? She did not know; though she
+      fancied Strefford&rsquo;s newly-developed pride would prevent his revealing to
+      any one what had passed between them. For several days after her abrupt
+      flight he had made no sign; and though she longed to write and ask his
+      forgiveness she could not find the words. Finally it was he who wrote: a
+      short note, from Altringham, typical of all that was best in the old
+      Strefford. He had gone down to Altringham, he told her, to think quietly
+      over their last talk, and try to understand what she had been driving at.
+      He had to own that he couldn&rsquo;t; but that, he supposed, was the very head
+      and front of his offending. Whatever he had done to displease her, he was
+      sorry for; but he asked, in view of his invincible ignorance, to be
+      allowed not to regard his offence as a cause for a final break. The
+      possibility of that, he found, would make him even more unhappy than he
+      had foreseen; as she knew, his own happiness had always been his first
+      object in life, and he therefore begged her to suspend her decision a
+      little longer. He expected to be in Paris within another two months, and
+      before arriving he would write again, and ask her to see him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The letter moved her but did not make her waver. She simply wrote that she
+      was touched by his kindness, and would willingly see him if he came to
+      Paris later; though she was bound to tell him that she had not yet changed
+      her mind, and did not believe it would promote his happiness to have her
+      try to do so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not reply to this, and there was nothing further to keep her
+      thoughts from revolving endlessly about her inmost hopes and fears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the rainy afternoon in question, tramping home from the &ldquo;cours&rdquo; (to
+      which she was to return at six), she had said to herself that it was two
+      months that very day since Nick had known she was ready to release him&mdash;and
+      that after such a delay he was not likely to take any further steps. The
+      thought filled her with a vague ecstasy. She had had to fix an arbitrary
+      date as the term of her anguish, and she had fixed that one; and behold
+      she was justified. For what could his silence mean but that he too....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the hall-table lay a typed envelope with the Paris postage-mark. She
+      opened it carelessly, and saw that the letter-head bore Mr. Spearman&rsquo;s
+      office address. The words beneath spun round before her eyes.... &ldquo;Has
+      notified us that he is at your disposal... carry out your wishes...
+      arriving in Paris... fix an appointment with his lawyers....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nick&mdash;it was Nick the words were talking of! It was the fact of
+      Nick&rsquo;s return to Paris that was being described in those preposterous
+      terms! She sank down on the bench beside the dripping umbrella-stand and
+      stared vacantly before her. It had fallen at last&mdash;this blow in which
+      she now saw that she had never really believed! And yet she had imagined
+      she was prepared for it, had expected it, was already planning her future
+      life in view of it&mdash;an effaced impersonal life in the service of
+      somebody else&rsquo;s children&mdash;when, in reality, under that thin surface
+      of abnegation and acceptance, all the old hopes had been smouldering
+      red-hot in their ashes! What was the use of any self-discipline, any
+      philosophy, any experience, if the lawless self underneath could in an
+      instant consume them like tinder?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She tried to collect herself&mdash;to understand what had happened. Nick
+      was coming to Paris&mdash;coming not to see her but to consult his lawyer!
+      It meant, of course, that he had definitely resolved to claim his freedom;
+      and that, if he had made up his mind to this final step, after more than
+      six months of inaction and seeming indifference, it could be only because
+      something unforeseen and decisive had happened to him. Feverishly, she put
+      together again the stray scraps of gossip and the newspaper paragraphs
+      that had reached her in the last months. It was evident that Miss Hicks&rsquo;s
+      projected marriage with the Prince of Teutoburg-Waldhain had been broken
+      off at the last moment; and broken off because she intended to marry Nick.
+      The announcement of his arrival in Paris and the publication of Mr. and
+      Mrs. Hicks&rsquo;s formal denial of their daughter&rsquo;s betrothal coincided too
+      closely to admit of any other inference. Susy tried to grasp the reality
+      of these assembled facts, to picture to herself their actual tangible
+      results. She thought of Coral Hicks bearing the name of Mrs. Nick Lansing&mdash;her
+      name, Susy&rsquo;s own!&mdash;and entering drawing-rooms with Nick in her wake,
+      gaily welcomed by the very people who, a few months before, had welcomed
+      Susy with the same warmth. In spite of Nick&rsquo;s growing dislike of society,
+      and Coral&rsquo;s attitude of intellectual superiority, their wealth would
+      fatally draw them back into the world to which Nick was attached by all
+      his habits and associations. And no doubt it would amuse him to re-enter
+      that world as a dispenser of hospitality, to play the part of host where
+      he had so long been a guest; just as Susy had once fancied it would amuse
+      her to re-enter it as Lady Altringham.... But, try as she would, now that
+      the reality was so close on her, she could not visualize it or relate it
+      to herself. The mere juxtaposition of the two names&mdash;Coral, Nick&mdash;which
+      in old times she had so often laughingly coupled, now produced a blur in
+      her brain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She continued to sit helplessly beside the hall-table, the tears running
+      down her cheeks. The appearance of the bonne aroused her. Her youngest
+      charge, Geordie, had been feverish for a day or two; he was better, but
+      still confined to the nursery, and he had heard Susy unlock the
+      house-door, and could not imagine why she had not come straight up to him.
+      He now began to manifest his indignation in a series of racking howls, and
+      Susy, shaken out of her trance, dropped her cloak and umbrella and hurried
+      up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, that child!&rdquo; she groaned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Under the Fulmer roof there was little time or space for the indulgence of
+      private sorrows. From morning till night there was always some immediate
+      practical demand on one&rsquo;s attention; and Susy was beginning to see how, in
+      contracted households, children may play a part less romantic but not less
+      useful than that assigned to them in fiction, through the mere fact of
+      giving their parents no leisure to dwell on irremediable grievances.
+      Though her own apprenticeship to family life had been so short, she had
+      already acquired the knack of rapid mental readjustment, and as she
+      hurried up to the nursery her private cares were dispelled by a dozen
+      problems of temperature, diet and medicine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such readjustment was of course only momentary; yet each time it happened
+      it seemed to give her more firmness and flexibility of temper. &ldquo;What a
+      child I was myself six months ago!&rdquo; she thought, wondering that Nick&rsquo;s
+      influence, and the tragedy of their parting, should have done less to
+      mature and steady her than these few weeks in a house full of children.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pacifying Geordie was not easy, for he had long since learned to use his
+      grievances as a pretext for keeping the offender at his beck with a
+      continuous supply of stories, songs and games. &ldquo;You&rsquo;d better be careful
+      never to put yourself in the wrong with Geordie,&rdquo; the astute Junie had
+      warned Susy at the outset, &ldquo;because he&rsquo;s got such a memory, and he won&rsquo;t
+      make it up with you till you&rsquo;ve told him every fairy-tale he&rsquo;s ever heard
+      before.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But on this occasion, as soon as he saw her, Geordie&rsquo;s indignation melted.
+      She was still in the doorway, compunctious, abject and racking her dazed
+      brain for his favourite stories, when she saw, by the smoothing out of his
+      mouth and the sudden serenity of his eyes, that he was going to give her
+      the delicious but not wholly reassuring shock of being a good boy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thoughtfully he examined her face as she knelt down beside the cot; then
+      he poked out a finger and pressed it on her tearful cheek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor Susy got a pain too,&rdquo; he said, putting his arms about her; and as
+      she hugged him close, he added philosophically: &ldquo;Tell Geordie a new story,
+      darling, and you&rsquo;ll forget all about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+
+
+<h3>XXVI.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">Nick Lansing</span> arrived in Paris two days after his lawyer had announced his
+      coming to Mr. Spearman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had left Rome with the definite purpose of freeing himself and Susy;
+      and though he was not pledged to Coral Hicks he had not concealed from her
+      the object of his journey. In vain had he tried to rouse in himself any
+      sense of interest in his own future. Beyond the need of reaching a
+      definite point in his relation to Susy his imagination could not travel.
+      But he had been moved by Coral&rsquo;s confession, and his reason told him that
+      he and she would probably be happy together, with the temperate happiness
+      based on a community of tastes and an enlargement of opportunities. He
+      meant, on his return to Rome, to ask her to marry him; and he knew that
+      she knew it. Indeed, if he had not spoken before leaving it was with no
+      idea of evading his fate, or keeping her longer in suspense, but simply
+      because of the strange apathy that had fallen on him since he had received
+      Susy&rsquo;s letter. In his incessant self-communings he dressed up this apathy
+      as a discretion which forbade his engaging Coral&rsquo;s future till his own was
+      assured. But in truth he knew that Coral&rsquo;s future was already engaged, and
+      his with it: in Rome the fact had seemed natural and even inevitable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In Paris, it instantly became the thinnest of unrealities. Not because
+      Paris was not Rome, nor because it was Paris; but because hidden away
+      somewhere in that vast unheeding labyrinth was the half-forgotten part of
+      himself that was Susy.... For weeks, for months past, his mind had been
+      saturated with Susy: she had never seemed more insistently near him than
+      as their separation lengthened, and the chance of reunion became less
+      probable. It was as if a sickness long smouldering in him had broken out
+      and become acute, enveloping him in the Nessus-shirt of his memories.
+      There were moments when, to his memory, their actual embraces seemed
+      perfunctory, accidental, compared with this deep deliberate imprint of her
+      soul on his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet now it had become suddenly different. Now that he was in the same
+      place with her, and might at any moment run across her, meet her eyes,
+      hear her voice, avoid her hand&mdash;now that penetrating ghost of her
+      with which he had been living was sucked back into the shadows, and he
+      seemed, for the first time since their parting, to be again in her actual
+      presence. He woke to the fact on the morning of his arrival, staring down
+      from his hotel window on a street she would perhaps walk through that very
+      day, and over a limitless huddle of roofs, one of which covered her at
+      that hour. The abruptness of the transition startled him; he had not known
+      that her mere geographical nearness would take him by the throat in that
+      way. What would it be, then, if she were to walk into the room?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thank heaven that need never happen! He was sufficiently informed as to
+      French divorce proceedings to know that they would not necessitate a
+      confrontation with his wife; and with ordinary luck, and some precautions,
+      he might escape even a distant glimpse of her. He did not mean to remain
+      in Paris more than a few days; and during that time it would be easy&mdash;knowing,
+      as he did, her tastes and Altringham&rsquo;s&mdash;to avoid the places where she
+      was likely to be met. He did not know where she was living, but imagined
+      her to be staying with Mrs. Melrose, or some other rich friend, or else
+      lodged, in prospective affluence, at the Nouveau Luxe, or in a pretty flat
+      of her own. Trust Susy&mdash;ah, the pang of it&mdash;to &ldquo;manage&rdquo;!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His first visit was to his lawyer&rsquo;s; and as he walked through the familiar
+      streets each approaching face, each distant figure seemed hers. The
+      obsession was intolerable. It would not last, of course; but meanwhile he
+      had the exposed sense of a fugitive in a nightmare, who feels himself the
+      only creature visible in a ghostly and besetting multitude. The eye of the
+      metropolis seemed fixed on him in an immense unblinking stare.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the lawyer&rsquo;s he was told that, as a first step to freedom, he must
+      secure a domicile in Paris. He had of course known of this necessity: he
+      had seen too many friends through the Divorce Court, in one country or
+      another, not to be fairly familiar with the procedure. But the fact
+      presented a different aspect as soon as he tried to relate it to himself
+      and Susy: it was as though Susy&rsquo;s personality were a medium through which
+      events still took on a transfiguring colour. He found the &ldquo;domicile&rdquo; that
+      very day: a tawdrily furnished rez-de-chaussee, obviously destined to far
+      different uses. And as he sat there, after the concierge had discreetly
+      withdrawn with the first quarter&rsquo;s payment in her pocket, and stared about
+      him at the vulgar plushy place, he burst out laughing at what it was about
+      to figure in the eyes of the law: a Home, and a Home desecrated by his own
+      act! The Home in which he and Susy had reared their precarious bliss, and
+      seen it crumble at the brutal touch of his unfaithfulness and his cruelty&mdash;for
+      he had been told that he must be cruel to her as well as unfaithful! He
+      looked at the walls hung with sentimental photogravures, at the shiny
+      bronze &ldquo;nudes,&rdquo; the moth-eaten animal-skins and the bedizened bed&mdash;and once
+      more the unreality, the impossibility, of all that was happening to him
+      entered like a drug into his veins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To rouse himself he stood up, turned the key on the hideous place, and
+      returned to his lawyer&rsquo;s. He knew that in the hard dry atmosphere of the
+      office the act of giving the address of the flat would restore some kind
+      of reality to the phantasmal transaction. And with wonder he watched the
+      lawyer, as a matter of course, pencil the street and the number on one of
+      the papers enclosed in a folder on which his own name was elaborately
+      engrossed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he took leave it occurred to him to ask where Susy was living. At least
+      he imagined that it had just occurred to him, and that he was making the
+      enquiry merely as a measure of precaution, in order to know what quarter
+      of Paris to avoid; but in reality the question had been on his lips since
+      he had first entered the office, and lurking in his mind since he had
+      emerged from the railway station that morning. The fact of not knowing
+      where she lived made the whole of Paris a meaningless unintelligible
+      place, as useless to him as the face of a huge clock that has lost its
+      hour hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The address in Passy surprised him: he had imagined that she would be
+      somewhere in the neighborhood of the Champs Elysees or the Place de
+      l&rsquo;Etoile. But probably either Mrs. Melrose or Ellie Vanderlyn had taken a
+      house at Passy. Well&mdash;it was something of a relief to know that she
+      was so far off. No business called him to that almost suburban region
+      beyond the Trocadero, and there was much less chance of meeting her than
+      if she had been in the centre of Paris.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All day he wandered, avoiding the fashionable quarters, the streets in
+      which private motors glittered five deep, and furred and feathered
+      silhouettes glided from them into tea-rooms, picture-galleries and
+      jewellers&rsquo; shops. In some such scenes Susy was no doubt figuring:
+      slenderer, finer, vivider, than the other images of clay, but imitating
+      their gestures, chattering their jargon, winding her hand among the same
+      pearls and sables. He struck away across the Seine, along the quays to the
+      Cite, the net-work of old Paris, the great grey vaults of St. Eustache,
+      the swarming streets of the Marais. He gazed at monuments dawdled before
+      shop-windows, sat in squares and on quays, watching people bargain, argue,
+      philander, quarrel, work-girls stroll past in linked bands, beggars whine
+      on the bridges, derelicts doze in the pale winter sun, mothers in mourning
+      hasten by taking children to school, and street-walkers beat their weary
+      rounds before the cafes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The day drifted on. Toward evening he began to grow afraid of his
+      solitude, and to think of dining at the Nouveau Luxe, or some other
+      fashionable restaurant where he would be fairly sure to meet
+      acquaintances, and be carried off to a theatre, a boite or a dancing-hall.
+      Anything, anything now, to get away from the maddening round of his
+      thoughts. He felt the same blank fear of solitude as months ago in
+      Genoa.... Even if he were to run across Susy and Altringham, what of it?
+      Better get the job over. People had long since ceased to take on tragedy
+      airs about divorce: dividing couples dined together to the last, and met
+      afterward in each other&rsquo;s houses, happy in the consciousness that their
+      respective remarriages had provided two new centres of entertainment. Yet
+      most of the couples who took their re-matings so philosophically had
+      doubtless had their hour of enchantment, of belief in the immortality of
+      loving; whereas he and Susy had simply and frankly entered into a business
+      contract for their mutual advantage. The fact gave the last touch of
+      incongruity to his agonies and exaltations, and made him appear to himself
+      as grotesque and superannuated as the hero of a romantic novel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood up from a bench on which he had been lounging in the Luxembourg
+      gardens, and hailed a taxi. Dusk had fallen, and he meant to go back to
+      his hotel, take a rest, and then go out to dine. But instead, he threw
+      Susy&rsquo;s address to the driver, and settled down in the cab, resting both
+      hands on the knob of his umbrella and staring straight ahead of him as if
+      he were accomplishing some tiresome duty that had to be got through with
+      before he could turn his mind to more important things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s the easiest way,&rdquo; he heard himself say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the street-corner&mdash;her street-corner&mdash;he stopped the cab, and
+      stood motionless while it rattled away. It was a short vague street, much
+      farther off than he had expected, and fading away at the farther end in a
+      dusky blur of hoardings overhung by trees. A thin rain was beginning to
+      fall, and it was already night in this inadequately lit suburban quarter.
+      Lansing walked down the empty street. The houses stood a few yards apart,
+      with bare-twigged shrubs between, and gates and railings dividing them
+      from the pavement. He could not, at first, distinguish their numbers; but
+      presently, coming abreast of a street-lamp, he discovered that the small
+      shabby facade it illuminated was precisely the one he sought. The
+      discovery surprised him. He had imagined that, as frequently happened in
+      the outlying quarters of Passy and La Muette, the mean street would lead
+      to a stately private hotel, built upon some bowery fragment of an old
+      country-place. It was the latest whim of the wealthy to establish
+      themselves on these outskirts of Paris, where there was still space for
+      verdure; and he had pictured Susy behind some pillared house-front, with
+      lights pouring across glossy turf to sculptured gateposts. Instead, he saw
+      a six-windowed house, huddled among neighbours of its kind, with the
+      family wash fluttering between meagre bushes. The arc-light beat
+      ironically on its front, which had the worn look of a tired work-woman&rsquo;s
+      face; and Lansing, as he leaned against the opposite railing, vainly tried
+      to fit his vision of Susy into so humble a setting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The probable explanation was that his lawyer had given him the wrong
+      address; not only the wrong number but the wrong street. He pulled out the
+      slip of paper, and was crossing over to decipher it under the lamp, when
+      an errand-boy appeared out of the obscurity, and approached the house.
+      Nick drew back, and the boy, unlatching the gate, ran up the steps and
+      gave the bell a pull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Almost immediately the door opened; and there stood Susy, the light full
+      upon her, and upon a red-checked child against her shoulder. The space
+      behind them was dark, or so dimly lit that it formed a black background to
+      her vivid figure. She looked at the errand-boy without surprise, took his
+      parcel, and after he had turned away, lingered a moment in the door,
+      glancing down the empty street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That moment, to her watcher, seemed quicker than a flash yet as long as a
+      life-time. There she was, a stone&rsquo;s throw away, but utterly unconscious of
+      his presence: his Susy, the old Susy, and yet a new Susy, curiously
+      transformed, transfigured almost, by the new attitude in which he beheld
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the first shock of the vision he forgot his surprise at her being in
+      such a place, forgot to wonder whose house she was in, or whose was the
+      sleepy child in her arms. For an instant she stood out from the blackness
+      behind her, and through the veil of the winter night, a thing apart, an
+      unconditioned vision, the eternal image of the woman and the child; and in
+      that instant everything within him was changed and renewed. His eyes were
+      still absorbing her, finding again the familiar curves of her light body,
+      noting the thinness of the lifted arm that upheld the little boy, the
+      droop of the shoulder he weighed on, the brooding way in which her cheek
+      leaned to his even while she looked away; then she drew back, the door
+      closed, and the street-lamp again shone on blankness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But she&rsquo;s mine!&rdquo; Nick cried, in a fierce triumph of recovery...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His eyes were so full of her that he shut them to hold in the crowding
+      vision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It remained with him, at first, as a complete picture; then gradually it
+      broke up into its component parts, the child vanished, the strange house
+      vanished, and Susy alone stood before him, his own Susy, only his Susy,
+      yet changed, worn, tempered&mdash;older, even&mdash;with sharper shadows
+      under the cheek-bones, the brows drawn, the joint of the slim wrist more
+      prominent. It was not thus that his memory had evoked her, and he
+      recalled, with a remorseful pang, the fact that something in her look, her
+      dress, her tired and drooping attitude, suggested poverty, dependence,
+      seemed to make her after all a part of the shabby house in which, at first
+      sight, her presence had seemed so incongruous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But she looks poor!&rdquo; he thought, his heart tightening. And instantly it
+      occurred to him that these must be the Fulmer children whom she was living
+      with while their parents travelled in Italy. Rumours of Nat Fulmer&rsquo;s
+      sudden ascension had reached him, and he had heard that the couple had
+      lately been seen in Naples and Palermo. No one had mentioned Susy&rsquo;s name
+      in connection with them, and he could hardly tell why he had arrived at
+      this conclusion, except perhaps because it seemed natural that, if Susy
+      were in trouble, she should turn to her old friend Grace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But why in trouble? What trouble? What could have happened to check her
+      triumphant career?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s what I mean to find out!&rdquo; he exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His heart was beating with a tumult of new hopes and old memories. The
+      sight of his wife, so remote in mien and manner from the world in which he
+      had imagined her to be re-absorbed, changed in a flash his own relation to
+      life, and flung a mist of unreality over all that he had been trying to
+      think most solid and tangible. Nothing now was substantial to him but the
+      stones of the street in which he stood, the front of the house which hid
+      her, the bell-handle he already felt in his grasp. He started forward, and
+      was halfway to the threshold when a private motor turned the corner, the
+      twin glitter of its lamps carpeting the wet street with gold to Susy&rsquo;s
+      door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing drew back into the shadow as the motor swept up to the house. A
+      man jumped out, and the light fell on Strefford&rsquo;s shambling figure, its
+      lazy disjointed movements so unmistakably the same under his fur coat, and
+      in the new setting of prosperity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lansing stood motionless, staring at the door. Strefford rang, and waited.
+      Would Susy appear again? Perhaps she had done so before only because she
+      had been on the watch....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But no: after a slight delay a bonne appeared&mdash;the breathless
+      maid-of-all-work of a busy household&mdash;and at once effaced herself,
+      letting the visitor in. Lansing was sure that not a word passed between
+      the two, of enquiry on Lord Altringham&rsquo;s part, or of acquiescence on the
+      servant&rsquo;s. There could be no doubt that he was expected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The door closed on him, and a light appeared behind the blind of the
+      adjoining window. The maid had shown the visitor into the sitting-room and
+      lit the lamp. Upstairs, meanwhile, Susy was no doubt running skilful
+      fingers through her tumbled hair and daubing her pale lips with red. Ah,
+      how Lansing knew every movement of that familiar rite, even to the pucker
+      of the brow and the pouting thrust-out of the lower lip! He was seized
+      with a sense of physical sickness as the succession of remembered gestures
+      pressed upon his eyes.... And the other man? The other man, inside the
+      house, was perhaps at that very instant smiling over the remembrance of
+      the same scene!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the thought, Lansing plunged away into the night.
+    </p>
+
+
+<h3>XXVII.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">Susy</span> and Lord Altringham sat in the little drawing-room, divided from each
+      other by a table carrying a smoky lamp and heaped with tattered
+      school-books.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In another half hour the bonne, despatched to fetch the children from
+      their classes, would be back with her flock; and at any moment Geordie&rsquo;s
+      imperious cries might summon his slave up to the nursery. In the scant
+      time allotted them, the two sat, and visibly wondered what to say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford, on entering, had glanced about the dreary room, with its piano
+      laden with tattered music, the children&rsquo;s toys littering the lame sofa,
+      the bunches of dyed grass and impaled butterflies flanking the cast-bronze
+      clock. Then he had turned to Susy and asked simply: &ldquo;Why on earth are you
+      here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had not tried to explain; from the first, she had understood the
+      impossibility of doing so. And she would not betray her secret longing to
+      return to Nick, now that she knew that Nick had taken definite steps for
+      his release. In dread lest Strefford should have heard of this, and should
+      announce it to her, coupling it with the news of Nick&rsquo;s projected
+      marriage, and lest, hearing her fears thus substantiated, she should lose
+      her self-control, she had preferred to say, in a voice that she tried to
+      make indifferent: &ldquo;The &lsquo;proceedings,&rsquo; or whatever the lawyers call them,
+      have begun. While they&rsquo;re going on I like to stay quite by myself.... I
+      don&rsquo;t know why....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford, at that, had looked at her keenly. &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; he murmured; and his
+      lips were twisted into their old mocking smile. &ldquo;Speaking of proceedings,&rdquo;
+       he went on carelessly, &ldquo;what stage have Ellie&rsquo;s reached, I wonder? I saw
+      her and Vanderlyn and Bockheimer all lunching cheerfully together to-day
+      at Larue&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The blood rushed to Susy&rsquo;s forehead. She remembered her tragic evening
+      with Nelson Vanderlyn, only two months earlier, and thought to herself.
+      &ldquo;In time, then, I suppose, Nick and I....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Aloud she said: &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t imagine how Nelson and Ellie can ever want to see
+      each other again. And in a restaurant, of all places!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Strefford continued to smile. &ldquo;My dear, you&rsquo;re incorrigibly old-fashioned.
+      Why should two people who&rsquo;ve done each other the best turn they could by
+      getting out of each other&rsquo;s way at the right moment behave like sworn
+      enemies ever afterward? It&rsquo;s too absurd; the humbug&rsquo;s too flagrant.
+      Whatever our generation has failed to do, it&rsquo;s got rid of humbug; and
+      that&rsquo;s enough to immortalize it. I daresay Nelson and Ellie never liked
+      each other better than they do to-day. Twenty years ago, they&rsquo;d have been
+      afraid to confess it; but why shouldn&rsquo;t they now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy looked at Strefford, conscious that under his words was the ache of
+      the disappointment she had caused him; and yet conscious also that that
+      very ache was not the overwhelming penetrating emotion he perhaps wished
+      it to be, but a pang on a par with a dozen others; and that even while he
+      felt it he foresaw the day when he should cease to feel it. And she
+      thought to herself that this certainty of oblivion must be bitterer than
+      any certainty of pain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A silence had fallen between them. He broke it by rising from his seat,
+      and saying with a shrug: &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll end by driving me to marry Joan
+      Senechal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy smiled. &ldquo;Well, why not? She&rsquo;s lovely.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; but she&rsquo;ll bore me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor Streff! So should I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps. But nothing like as soon&mdash;&rdquo; He grinned sardonically.
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;d be more margin.&rdquo; He appeared to wait for her to speak. &ldquo;And what
+      else on earth are you going to do?&rdquo; he concluded, as she still remained
+      silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Streff, I couldn&rsquo;t marry you for a reason like that!&rdquo; she murmured at
+      length.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then marry me, and find your reason afterward.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her lips made a movement of denial, and still in silence she held out her
+      hand for good-bye. He clasped it, and then turned away; but on the
+      threshold he paused, his screwed-up eyes fixed on her wistfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The look moved her, and she added hurriedly: &ldquo;The only reason I can find
+      is one for not marrying you. It&rsquo;s because I can&rsquo;t yet feel unmarried
+      enough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Unmarried enough? But I thought Nick was doing his best to make you feel
+      that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. But even when he has&mdash;sometimes I think even that won&rsquo;t make
+      any difference.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He still scrutinized her hesitatingly, with the gravest eyes she had ever
+      seen in his careless face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear, that&rsquo;s rather the way I feel about you,&rdquo; he said simply as he
+      turned to go.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That evening after the children had gone to bed Susy sat up late in the
+      cheerless sitting-room. She was not thinking of Strefford but of Nick. He
+      was coming to Paris&mdash;perhaps he had already arrived. The idea that he
+      might be in the same place with her at that very moment, and without her
+      knowing it, was so strange and painful that she felt a violent revolt of
+      all her strong and joy-loving youth. Why should she go on suffering so
+      unbearably, so abjectly, so miserably? If only she could see him, hear his
+      voice, even hear him say again such cruel and humiliating words as he had
+      spoken on that dreadful day in Venice when that would be better than this
+      blankness, this utter and final exclusion from his life! He had been cruel
+      to her, unimaginably cruel: hard, arrogant, unjust; and had been so,
+      perhaps, deliberately, because he already wanted to be free. But she was
+      ready to face even that possibility, to humble herself still farther than
+      he had humbled her&mdash;she was ready to do anything, if only she might
+      see him once again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She leaned her aching head on her hands and pondered. Do anything? But
+      what could she do? Nothing that should hurt him, interfere with his
+      liberty, be false to the spirit of their pact: on that she was more than
+      ever resolved. She had made a bargain, and she meant to stick to it, not
+      for any abstract reason, but simply because she happened to love him in
+      that way. Yes&mdash;but to see him again, only once!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly she remembered what Strefford had said about Nelson Vanderlyn and
+      his wife. &ldquo;Why should two people who&rsquo;ve just done each other the best turn
+      they could behave like sworn enemies ever after?&rdquo; If in offering Nick his
+      freedom she had indeed done him such a service as that, perhaps he no
+      longer hated her, would no longer be unwilling to see her.... At any rate,
+      why should she not write to him on that assumption, write in a spirit of
+      simple friendliness, suggesting that they should meet and &ldquo;settle things&rdquo;?
+      The business-like word &ldquo;settle&rdquo; (how she hated it) would prove to him that
+      she had no secret designs upon his liberty; and besides he was too
+      unprejudiced, too modern, too free from what Strefford called humbug, not
+      to understand and accept such a suggestion. After all, perhaps Strefford
+      was right; it was something to have rid human relations of hypocrisy, even
+      if, in the process, so many exquisite things seemed somehow to have been
+      torn away with it....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She ran up to her room, scribbled a note, and hurried with it through the
+      rain and darkness to the post-box at the corner. As she returned through
+      the empty street she had an odd feeling that it was not empty&mdash;that
+      perhaps Nick was already there, somewhere near her in the night, about to
+      follow her to the door, enter the house, go up with her to her bedroom in
+      the old way. It was strange how close he had been brought by the mere fact
+      of her having written that little note to him!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the bedroom, Geordie lay in his crib in ruddy slumber, and she blew out
+      the candle and undressed softly for fear of waking him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nick Lansing, the next day, received Susy&rsquo;s letter, transmitted to his
+      hotel from the lawyer&rsquo;s office.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He read it carefully, two or three times over, weighing and scrutinizing
+      the guarded words. She proposed that they should meet to &ldquo;settle things.&rdquo;
+       What things? And why should he accede to such a request? What secret
+      purpose had prompted her? It was horrible that nowadays, in thinking of
+      Susy, he should always suspect ulterior motives, be meanly on the watch
+      for some hidden tortuousness. What on earth was she trying to &ldquo;manage&rdquo;
+       now, he wondered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A few hours ago, at the sight of her, all his hardness had melted, and he
+      had charged himself with cruelty, with injustice, with every sin of pride
+      against himself and her; but the appearance of Strefford, arriving at that
+      late hour, and so evidently expected and welcomed, had driven back the
+      rising tide of tenderness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet, after all, what was there to wonder at? Nothing was changed in their
+      respective situations. He had left his wife, deliberately, and for reasons
+      which no subsequent experience had caused him to modify. She had
+      apparently acquiesced in his decision, and had utilized it, as she was
+      justified in doing, to assure her own future.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In all this, what was there to wail or knock the breast between two people
+      who prided themselves on looking facts in the face, and making their grim
+      best of them, without vain repinings? He had been right in thinking their
+      marriage an act of madness. Her charms had overruled his judgment, and
+      they had had their year... their mad year... or at least all but two or
+      three months of it. But his first intuition had been right; and now they
+      must both pay for their madness. The Fates seldom forget the bargains made
+      with them, or fail to ask for compound interest. Why not, then, now that
+      the time had come, pay up gallantly, and remember of the episode only what
+      had made it seem so supremely worth the cost?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sent a pneumatic telegram to Mrs. Nicholas Lansing to say that he would
+      call on her that afternoon at four. &ldquo;That ought to give us time,&rdquo; he
+      reflected drily, &ldquo;to &lsquo;settle things,&rsquo; as she calls it, without interfering
+      with Strefford&rsquo;s afternoon visit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+
+
+<h3>XXVIII.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">Her</span> husband&rsquo;s note had briefly said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To-day at four o&rsquo;clock. N.L.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All day she pored over the words in an agony of longing, trying to read
+      into them regret, emotion, memories, some echo of the tumult in her own
+      bosom. But she had signed &ldquo;Susy,&rdquo; and he signed &ldquo;N.L.&rdquo; That seemed to put
+      an abyss between them. After all, she was free and he was not. Perhaps, in
+      view of his situation, she had only increased the distance between them by
+      her unconventional request for a meeting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She sat in the little drawing-room, and the cast-bronze clock ticked out
+      the minutes. She would not look out of the window: it might bring bad luck
+      to watch for him. And it seemed to her that a thousand invisible spirits,
+      hidden demons of good and evil, pressed about her, spying out her
+      thoughts, counting her heart-beats, ready to pounce upon the least symptom
+      of over-confidence and turn it deftly to derision. Oh, for an altar on
+      which to pour out propitiatory offerings! But what sweeter could they have
+      than her smothered heart-beats, her choked-back tears?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bell rang, and she stood up as if a spring had jerked her to her feet.
+      In the mirror between the dried grasses her face looked long pale
+      inanimate. Ah, if he should find her too changed&mdash;! If there were but
+      time to dash upstairs and put on a touch of red....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The door opened; it shut on him; he was there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He said: &ldquo;You wanted to see me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She answered: &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo; And her heart seemed to stop beating.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At first she could not make out what mysterious change had come over him,
+      and why it was that in looking at him she seemed to be looking at a
+      stranger; then she perceived that his voice sounded as it used to sound
+      when he was talking to other people; and she said to herself, with a sick
+      shiver of understanding, that she had become an &ldquo;other person&rdquo; to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a deathly pause; then she faltered out, not knowing what she
+      said: &ldquo;Nick&mdash;you&rsquo;ll sit down?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He said: &ldquo;Thanks,&rdquo; but did not seem to have heard her, for he continued to
+      stand motionless, half the room between them. And slowly the uselessness,
+      the hopelessness of his being there overcame her. A wall of granite seemed
+      to have built itself up between them. She felt as if it hid her from him,
+      as if with those remote new eyes of his he were staring into the wall and
+      not at her. Suddenly she said to herself: &ldquo;He&rsquo;s suffering more than I am,
+      because he pities me, and is afraid to tell me that he is going to be
+      married.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The thought stung her pride, and she lifted her head and met his eyes with
+      a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you think,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;it&rsquo;s more sensible&mdash;with everything so
+      changed in our lives&mdash;that we should meet as friends, in this way? I
+      wanted to tell you that you needn&rsquo;t feel&mdash;feel in the least unhappy
+      about me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A deep flush rose to his forehead. &ldquo;Oh, I know&mdash;I know that&mdash;&rdquo;
+       he declared hastily; and added, with a factitious animation: &ldquo;But thank
+      you for telling me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s nothing, is there,&rdquo; she continued, &ldquo;to make our meeting in this
+      way in the least embarrassing or painful to either of us, when both have
+      found....&rdquo; She broke off, and held her hand out to him. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve heard about
+      you and Coral,&rdquo; she ended.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He just touched her hand with cold fingers, and let it drop. &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo;
+       he said for the third time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You won&rsquo;t sit down?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you think,&rdquo; she continued, &ldquo;that the new way of... of meeting as
+      friends... and talking things over without ill-will... is much pleasanter
+      and more sensible, after all?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He smiled. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s immensely kind of you to feel that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I do feel it!&rdquo; She stopped short, and wondered what on earth she had
+      meant to say next, and why she had so abruptly lost the thread of her
+      discourse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the pause she heard him cough slightly and clear his throat. &ldquo;Let me
+      say, then,&rdquo; he began, &ldquo;that I&rsquo;m glad too&mdash;immensely glad that your
+      own future is so satisfactorily settled.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She lifted her glance again to his walled face, in which not a muscle
+      stirred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes: it&mdash;it makes everything easier for you, doesn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For you too, I hope.&rdquo; He paused, and then went on: &ldquo;I want also to tell
+      you that I perfectly understand&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; she interrupted, &ldquo;so do I; your point of view, I mean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They were again silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nick, why can&rsquo;t we be friends real friends? Won&rsquo;t it be easier?&rdquo; she
+      broke out at last with twitching lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Easier&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean, about talking things over&mdash;arrangements. There are
+      arrangements to be made, I suppose?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose so.&rdquo; He hesitated. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m doing what I&rsquo;m told&mdash;simply following
+      out instructions. The business is easy enough, apparently. I&rsquo;m taking the
+      necessary steps&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She reddened a little, and drew a gasping breath. &ldquo;The necessary steps:
+      what are they? Everything the lawyers tell one is so confusing.... I don&rsquo;t
+      yet understand&mdash;how it&rsquo;s done.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My share, you mean? Oh, it&rsquo;s very simple.&rdquo; He paused, and added in a tone
+      of laboured ease: &ldquo;I&rsquo;m going down to Fontainebleau to-morrow&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stared, not understanding. &ldquo;To Fontainebleau&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her bewilderment drew from him his first frank smile. &ldquo;Well&mdash;I chose
+      Fontainebleau&mdash;I don&rsquo;t know why... except that we&rsquo;ve never been there
+      together.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At that she suddenly understood, and the blood rushed to her forehead. She
+      stood up without knowing what she was doing, her heart in her throat. &ldquo;How
+      grotesque&mdash;how utterly disgusting!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He gave a slight shrug. &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t make the laws....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But isn&rsquo;t it too stupid and degrading that such things should be
+      necessary when two people want to part&mdash;?&rdquo; She broke off again,
+      silenced by the echo of that fatal &ldquo;want to part.&rdquo;...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He seemed to prefer not to dwell farther on the legal obligations
+      involved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You haven&rsquo;t yet told me,&rdquo; he suggested, &ldquo;how you happen to be living
+      here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here&mdash;with the Fulmer children?&rdquo; She roused herself, trying to catch
+      his easier note. &ldquo;Oh, I&rsquo;ve simply been governessing them for a few weeks,
+      while Nat and Grace are in Sicily.&rdquo; She did not say: &ldquo;It&rsquo;s because I&rsquo;ve
+      parted with Strefford.&rdquo; Somehow it helped her wounded pride a little to
+      keep from him the secret of her precarious independence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked his wonder. &ldquo;All alone with that bewildered bonne? But how many
+      of them are there? Five? Good Lord!&rdquo; He contemplated the clock with
+      unseeing eyes, and then turned them again on her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should have thought a lot of children would rather get on your nerves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, not these children. They&rsquo;re so good to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, well, I suppose it won&rsquo;t be for long.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He sent his eyes again about the room, which his absent-minded gaze seemed
+      to reduce to its dismal constituent elements, and added, with an obvious
+      effort at small talk: &ldquo;I hear the Fulmers are not hitting it off very well
+      since his success. Is it true that he&rsquo;s going to marry Violet Melrose?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The blood rose to Susy&rsquo;s face. &ldquo;Oh, never, never! He and Grace are
+      travelling together now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I didn&rsquo;t know. People say things....&rdquo; He was visibly embarrassed with
+      the subject, and sorry that he had broached it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some of the things that people say are true. But Grace doesn&rsquo;t mind. She
+      says she and Nat belong to each other. They can&rsquo;t help it, she thinks,
+      after having been through such a lot together.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear old Grace!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had risen from his chair, and this time she made no effort to detain
+      him. He seemed to have recovered his self-composure, and it struck her
+      painfully, humiliatingly almost, that he should have spoken in that light
+      way of the expedition to Fontainebleau on the morrow.... Well, men were
+      different, she supposed; she remembered having felt that once before about
+      Nick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was on the tip of her tongue to cry out: &ldquo;But wait&mdash;wait! I&rsquo;m not
+      going to marry Strefford after all!&rdquo;&mdash;but to do so would seem like an
+      appeal to his compassion, to his indulgence; and that was not what she
+      wanted. She could never forget that he had left her because he had not
+      been able to forgive her for &ldquo;managing&rdquo;&mdash;and not for the world would
+      she have him think that this meeting had been planned for such a purpose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he doesn&rsquo;t see that I am different, in spite of appearances... and
+      that I never was what he said I was that day&mdash;if in all these months
+      it hasn&rsquo;t come over him, what&rsquo;s the use of trying to make him see it now?&rdquo;
+       she mused. And then, her thoughts hurrying on: &ldquo;Perhaps he&rsquo;s suffering too&mdash;I
+      believe he is suffering&mdash;at any rate, he&rsquo;s suffering for me, if not for
+      himself. But if he&rsquo;s pledged to Coral, what can he do? What would he think
+      of me if I tried to make him break his word to her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There he stood&mdash;the man who was &ldquo;going to Fontainebleau to-morrow&rdquo;;
+      who called it &ldquo;taking the necessary steps!&rdquo; Who could smile as he made the
+      careless statement! A world seemed to divide them already: it was as if
+      their parting were already over. All the words, cries, arguments beating
+      loud wings in her dropped back into silence. The only thought left was:
+      &ldquo;How much longer does he mean to go on standing there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He may have read the question in her face, for turning back from an
+      absorbed contemplation of the window curtains he said: &ldquo;There&rsquo;s nothing
+      else?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing else?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean: you spoke of things to be settled&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She flushed, suddenly remembering the pretext she had used to summon him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; she faltered, &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t know... I thought there might be.... But the
+      lawyers, I suppose....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She saw the relief on his contracted face. &ldquo;Exactly. I&rsquo;ve always thought
+      it was best to leave it to them. I assure you&rdquo;&mdash;again for a moment
+      the smile strained his lips&mdash;&ldquo;I shall do nothing to interfere with a
+      quick settlement.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stood motionless, feeling herself turn to stone. He appeared already a
+      long way off, like a figure vanishing down a remote perspective.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then&mdash;good-bye,&rdquo; she heard him say from its farther end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&mdash;good-bye,&rdquo; she faltered, as if she had not had the word ready,
+      and was relieved to have him supply it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stopped again on the threshold, looked back at her, began to speak.
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve&mdash;&rdquo; he said; then he repeated &ldquo;Good-bye,&rdquo; as though to make sure
+      he had not forgotten to say it; and the door closed on him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was over; she had had her last chance and missed it. Now, whatever
+      happened, the one thing she had lived and longed for would never be. He
+      had come, and she had let him go again....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How had it come about? Would she ever be able to explain it to herself?
+      How was it that she, so fertile in strategy, so practiced in feminine
+      arts, had stood there before him, helpless, inarticulate, like a
+      school-girl a-choke with her first love-longing? If he was gone, and gone
+      never to return, it was her own fault, and none but hers. What had she
+      done to move him, detain him, make his heart beat and his head swim as
+      hers were beating and swimming? She stood aghast at her own inadequacy,
+      her stony inexpressiveness....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And suddenly she lifted her hands to her throbbing forehead and cried out:
+      &ldquo;But this is love! This must be love!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had loved him before, she supposed; for what else was she to call the
+      impulse that had drawn her to him, taught her how to overcome his
+      scruples, and whirled him away with her on their mad adventure? Well, if
+      that was love, this was something so much larger and deeper that the other
+      feeling seemed the mere dancing of her blood in tune with his....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, no! Real love, great love, the love that poets sang, and privileged
+      and tortured beings lived and died of, that love had its own superior
+      expressiveness, and the sure command of its means. The petty arts of
+      coquetry were no farther from it than the numbness of the untaught girl.
+      Great love was wise, strong, powerful, like genius, like any other
+      dominant form of human power. It knew itself, and what it wanted, and how
+      to attain its ends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not great love, then... but just the common humble average of human love
+      was hers. And it had come to her so newly, so overwhelmingly, with a face
+      so grave, a touch so startling, that she had stood there petrified,
+      humbled at the first look of its eyes, recognizing that what she had once
+      taken for love was merely pleasure and spring-time, and the flavour of
+      youth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But how was I to know? And now it&rsquo;s too late!&rdquo; she wailed.
+    </p>
+
+
+<h3>XXIX.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">The</span> inhabitants of the little house in Passy were of necessity early
+      risers; but when Susy jumped out of bed the next morning no one else was
+      astir, and it lacked nearly an hour of the call of the bonne&rsquo;s
+      alarm-clock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment Susy leaned out of her dark room into the darker night. A
+      cold drizzle fell on her face, and she shivered and drew back. Then,
+      lighting a candle, and shading it, as her habit was, from the sleeping
+      child, she slipped on her dressing-gown and opened the door. On the
+      threshold she paused to look at her watch. Only half-past five! She
+      thought with compunction of the unkindness of breaking in on Junie
+      Fulmer&rsquo;s slumbers; but such scruples did not weigh an ounce in the balance
+      of her purpose. Poor Junie would have to oversleep herself on Sunday, that
+      was all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy stole into the passage, opened a door, and cast her light on the
+      girl&rsquo;s face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Junie! Dearest Junie, you must wake up!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Junie lay in the abandonment of youthful sleep; but at the sound of her
+      name she sat up with the promptness of a grown person on whom domestic
+      burdens have long weighed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which one of them is it?&rdquo; she asked, one foot already out of bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Junie dear, no... it&rsquo;s nothing wrong with the children... or with
+      anybody,&rdquo; Susy stammered, on her knees by the bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the candlelight, she saw Junie&rsquo;s anxious brow darken reproachfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Susy, then why&mdash;? I was just dreaming we were all driving about
+      Rome in a great big motor-car with father and mother!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m so sorry, dear. What a lovely dream! I&rsquo;m a brute to have interrupted
+      it&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She felt the little girl&rsquo;s awakening scrutiny. &ldquo;If there&rsquo;s nothing wrong
+      with anybody, why are you crying, Susy? Is it you there&rsquo;s something wrong
+      with? What has happened?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Am I crying?&rdquo; Susy rose from her knees and sat down on the counterpane.
+      &ldquo;Yes, it is me. And I had to disturb you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Susy, darling, what is it?&rdquo; Junie&rsquo;s arms were about her in a flash,
+      and Susy grasped them in burning fingers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Junie, listen! I&rsquo;ve got to go away at once&mdash;to leave you all for the
+      whole day. I may not be back till late this evening; late to-night; I
+      can&rsquo;t tell. I promised your mother I&rsquo;d never leave you; but I&rsquo;ve got to&mdash;I&rsquo;ve
+      got to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Junie considered her agitated face with fully awakened eyes. &ldquo;Oh, I won&rsquo;t
+      tell, you know, you old brick,&rdquo; she said with simplicity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy hugged her. &ldquo;Junie, Junie, you darling! But that wasn&rsquo;t what I meant.
+      Of course you may tell&mdash;you must tell. I shall write to your mother
+      myself. But what worries me is the idea of having to go away&mdash;away
+      from Paris&mdash;for the whole day, with Geordie still coughing a little,
+      and no one but that silly Angele to stay with him while you&rsquo;re out&mdash;and
+      no one but you to take yourself and the others to school. But Junie,
+      Junie, I&rsquo;ve got to do it!&rdquo; she sobbed out, clutching the child tighter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Junie Fulmer, with her strangely mature perception of the case, and
+      seemingly of every case that fate might call on her to deal with, sat for
+      a moment motionless in Susy&rsquo;s hold. Then she freed her wrists with an
+      adroit twist, and leaning back against the pillows said judiciously:
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll never in the world bring up a family of your own if you take on
+      like this over other people&rsquo;s children.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Through all her turmoil of spirit the observation drew a laugh from Susy.
+      &ldquo;Oh, a family of my own&mdash;I don&rsquo;t deserve one, the way I&rsquo;m behaving to
+      your&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Junie still considered her. &ldquo;My dear, a change will do you good: you need
+      it,&rdquo; she pronounced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy rose with a laughing sigh. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not at all sure it will! But I&rsquo;ve got
+      to have it, all the same. Only I do feel anxious&mdash;and I can&rsquo;t even
+      leave you my address!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Junie still seemed to examine the case.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can&rsquo;t you even tell me where you&rsquo;re going?&rdquo; she ventured, as if not quite
+      sure of the delicacy of asking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;no, I don&rsquo;t think I can; not till I get back. Besides, even if
+      I could it wouldn&rsquo;t be much use, because I couldn&rsquo;t give you my address
+      there. I don&rsquo;t know what it will be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what does it matter, if you&rsquo;re coming back to-night?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I&rsquo;m coming back! How could you possibly imagine I should think
+      of leaving you for more than a day?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I shouldn&rsquo;t be afraid&mdash;not much, that is, with the poker, and
+      Nat&rsquo;s water-pistol,&rdquo; emended Junie, still judicious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy again enfolded her vehemently, and then turned to more practical
+      matters. She explained that she wished if possible to catch an
+      eight-thirty train from the Gare de Lyon, and that there was not a moment
+      to lose if the children were to be dressed and fed, and full instructions
+      written out for Junie and Angele, before she rushed for the underground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While she bathed Geordie, and then hurried into her own clothes, she could
+      not help wondering at her own extreme solicitude for her charges. She
+      remembered, with a pang, how often she had deserted Clarissa Vanderlyn for
+      the whole day, and even for two or three in succession&mdash;poor little
+      Clarissa, whom she knew to be so unprotected, so exposed to evil
+      influences. She had been too much absorbed in her own greedy bliss to be
+      more than intermittently aware of the child; but now, she felt, no sorrow
+      however ravaging, no happiness however absorbing, would ever again isolate
+      her from her kind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then these children were so different! The exquisite Clarissa was
+      already the predestined victim of her surroundings: her budding soul was
+      divided from Susy&rsquo;s by the same barrier of incomprehension that separated
+      the latter from Mrs. Vanderlyn. Clarissa had nothing to teach Susy but the
+      horror of her own hard little appetites; whereas the company of the noisy
+      argumentative Fulmers had been a school of wisdom and abnegation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As she applied the brush to Geordie&rsquo;s shining head and the handkerchief to
+      his snuffling nose, the sense of what she owed him was so borne in on Susy
+      that she interrupted the process to catch him to her bosom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll have such a story to tell you when I get back to-night, if you&rsquo;ll
+      promise me to be good all day,&rdquo; she bargained with him; and Geordie,
+      always astute, bargained back: &ldquo;Before I promise, I&rsquo;d like to know what
+      story.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At length all was in order. Junie had been enlightened, and Angele
+      stunned, by the minuteness of Susy&rsquo;s instructions; and the latter,
+      waterproofed and stoutly shod, descended the doorstep, and paused to wave
+      at the pyramid of heads yearning to her from an upper window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was hardly light, and still raining, when she turned into the dismal
+      street. As usual, it was empty; but at the corner she perceived a
+      hesitating taxi, with luggage piled beside the driver. Perhaps it was some
+      early traveller, just arriving, who would release the carriage in time for
+      her to catch it, and thus avoid the walk to the metro, and the subsequent
+      strap-hanging; for it was the work-people&rsquo;s hour. Susy raced toward the
+      vehicle, which, overcoming its hesitation, was beginning to move in her
+      direction. Observing this, she stopped to see where it would discharge its
+      load. Thereupon the taxi stopped also, and the load discharged itself in
+      front of her in the shape of Nick Lansing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two stood staring at each other through the rain till Nick broke out:
+      &ldquo;Where are you going? I came to get you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To get me? To get me?&rdquo; she repeated. Beside the driver she had suddenly
+      remarked the old suit-case from which her husband had obliged her to
+      extract Strefford&rsquo;s cigars as they were leaving Como; and everything that
+      had happened since seemed to fall away and vanish in the pang and rapture
+      of that memory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To get you; yes. Of course.&rdquo; He spoke the words peremptorily, almost as
+      if they were an order. &ldquo;Where were you going?&rdquo; he repeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Without answering, she turned toward the house. He followed her, and the
+      laden taxi closed the procession.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why are you out in such weather without an umbrella?&rdquo; he continued, in
+      the same severe tone, drawing her under the shelter of his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, because Junie&rsquo;s umbrella is in tatters, and I had to leave her mine,
+      as I was going away for the whole day.&rdquo; She spoke the words like a person
+      in a trance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For the whole day? At this hour? Where?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They were on the doorstep, and she fumbled automatically for her key, let
+      herself in, and led the way to the sitting-room. It had not been tidied up
+      since the night before. The children&rsquo;s school books lay scattered on the
+      table and sofa, and the empty fireplace was grey with ashes. She turned to
+      Nick in the pallid light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was going to see you,&rdquo; she stammered, &ldquo;I was going to follow you to
+      Fontainebleau, if necessary, to tell you... to prevent you....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He repeated in the same aggressive tone: &ldquo;Tell me what? Prevent what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell you that there must be some other way... some decent way... of our
+      separating... without that horror, that horror of your going off with a
+      woman....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stared, and then burst into a laugh. The blood rushed to her face. She
+      had caught a familiar ring in his laugh, and it wounded her. What business
+      had he, at such a time, to laugh in the old way?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry; but there is no other way, I&rsquo;m afraid. No other way but one,&rdquo;
+       he corrected himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She raised her head sharply. &ldquo;Well?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That you should be the woman.&mdash;Oh, my dear!&rdquo; He had dropped his
+      mocking smile, and was at her side, her hands in his. &ldquo;Oh, my dear, don&rsquo;t
+      you see that we&rsquo;ve both been feeling the same thing, and at the same hour?
+      You lay awake thinking of it all night, didn&rsquo;t you? So did I. Whenever the
+      clock struck, I said to myself: &lsquo;She&rsquo;s hearing it too.&rsquo; And I was up
+      before daylight, and packed my traps&mdash;for I never want to set foot
+      again in that awful hotel where I&rsquo;ve lived in hell for the last three
+      days. And I swore to myself that I&rsquo;d go off with a woman by the first
+      train I could catch&mdash;and so I mean to, my dear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stood before him numb. Yes, numb: that was the worst of it! The
+      violence of the reaction had been too great, and she could hardly
+      understand what he was saying. Instead, she noticed that the tassel of the
+      window-blind was torn off again (oh, those children!), and vaguely
+      wondered if his luggage were safe on the waiting taxi. One heard such
+      stories....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His voice came back to her. &ldquo;Susy! Listen!&rdquo; he was entreating. &ldquo;You must
+      see yourself that it can&rsquo;t be. We&rsquo;re married&mdash;isn&rsquo;t that all that
+      matters? Oh, I know&mdash;I&rsquo;ve behaved like a brute: a cursed arrogant
+      ass! You couldn&rsquo;t wish that ass a worse kicking than I&rsquo;ve given him! But
+      that&rsquo;s not the point, you see. The point is that we&rsquo;re married....
+      Married.... Doesn&rsquo;t it mean something to you, something&mdash;inexorable?
+      It does to me. I didn&rsquo;t dream it would&mdash;in just that way. But all I
+      can say is that I suppose the people who don&rsquo;t feel it aren&rsquo;t really
+      married&mdash;and they&rsquo;d better separate; much better. As for us&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Through her tears she gasped out: &ldquo;That&rsquo;s what I felt... that&rsquo;s what I
+      said to Streff....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was upon her with a great embrace. &ldquo;My darling! My darling! You have
+      told him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she panted. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s why I&rsquo;m living here.&rdquo; She paused. &ldquo;And you&rsquo;ve
+      told Coral?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She felt his embrace relax. He drew away a little, still holding her, but
+      with lowered head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No... I... haven&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Nick! But then&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He caught her to him again, resentfully. &ldquo;Well&mdash;then what? What do
+      you mean? What earthly difference does it make?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But if you&rsquo;ve told her you were going to marry her&mdash;&rdquo; (Try as she
+      would, her voice was full of silver chimes.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Marry her? Marry her?&rdquo; he echoed. &ldquo;But how could I? What does marriage
+      mean anyhow? If it means anything at all it means&mdash;you! And I can&rsquo;t
+      ask Coral Hicks just to come and live with me, can I?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Between crying and laughing she lay on his breast, and his hand passed
+      over her hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were silent for a while; then he began again: &ldquo;You said it yourself
+      yesterday, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She strayed back from sunlit distances. &ldquo;Yesterday?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes: that Grace Fulmer says you can&rsquo;t separate two people who&rsquo;ve been
+      through a lot of things&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, been through them together&mdash;it&rsquo;s not the things, you see, it&rsquo;s
+      the togetherness,&rdquo; she interrupted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The togetherness&mdash;that&rsquo;s it!&rdquo; He seized on the word as if it had
+      just been coined to express their case, and his mind could rest in it
+      without farther labour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The door-bell rang, and they started. Through the window they saw the
+      taxi-driver gesticulating enquiries as to the fate of the luggage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He wants to know if he&rsquo;s to leave it here,&rdquo; Susy laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&mdash;no! You&rsquo;re to come with me,&rdquo; her husband declared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come with you?&rdquo; She laughed again at the absurdity of the suggestion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course: this very instant. What did you suppose? That I was going away
+      without you? Run up and pack your things,&rdquo; he commanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My things? My things? But I can&rsquo;t leave the children!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stared, between indignation and amusement. &ldquo;Can&rsquo;t leave the children?
+      Nonsense! Why, you said yourself you were going to follow me to
+      Fontainebleau&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She reddened again, this time a little painfully &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t know what I was
+      doing.... I had to find you... but I should have come back this evening,
+      no matter what happened.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No matter what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She nodded, and met his gaze resolutely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; but really&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Really, I can&rsquo;t leave the children till Nat and Grace come back. I
+      promised I wouldn&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; but you didn&rsquo;t know then.... Why on earth can&rsquo;t their nurse look
+      after them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There isn&rsquo;t any nurse but me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good Lord!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it&rsquo;s only for two weeks more,&rdquo; she pleaded. &ldquo;Two weeks! Do you know
+      how long I&rsquo;ve been without you!&rdquo; He seized her by both wrists, and drew
+      them against his breast. &ldquo;Come with me at least for two days&mdash;Susy!&rdquo;
+       he entreated her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;that&rsquo;s the very first time you&rsquo;ve said my name!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Susy, Susy, then&mdash;my Susy&mdash;Susy! And you&rsquo;ve only said mine
+      once, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nick!&rdquo; she sighed, at peace, as if the one syllable were a magic seed
+      that hung out great branches to envelop them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, Susy, be reasonable. Come!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Reasonable&mdash;oh, reasonable!&rdquo; she sobbed through laughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Unreasonable, then! That&rsquo;s even better.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She freed herself, and drew back gently. &ldquo;Nick, I swore I wouldn&rsquo;t leave
+      them; and I can&rsquo;t. It&rsquo;s not only my promise to their mother&mdash;it&rsquo;s
+      what they&rsquo;ve been to me themselves. You don&rsquo;t, know... You can&rsquo;t imagine
+      the things they&rsquo;ve taught me. They&rsquo;re awfully naughty at times, because
+      they&rsquo;re so clever; but when they&rsquo;re good they&rsquo;re the wisest people I
+      know.&rdquo; She paused, and a sudden inspiration illuminated her. &ldquo;But why
+      shouldn&rsquo;t we take them with us?&rdquo; she exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her husband&rsquo;s arms fell away from her, and he stood dumfounded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take them with us?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All five of them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course&mdash;I couldn&rsquo;t possibly separate them. And Junie and Nat will
+      help us to look after the young ones.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Help us!&rdquo; he groaned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you&rsquo;ll see; they won&rsquo;t bother you. Just leave it to me; I&rsquo;ll manage&mdash;&rdquo;
+       The word stopped her short, and an agony of crimson suffused her from brow
+      to throat. Their eyes met; and without a word he stooped and laid his lips
+      gently on the stain of red on her neck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nick,&rdquo; she breathed, her hands in his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But those children&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Instead of answering, she questioned: &ldquo;Where are we going?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His face lit up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Anywhere, dearest, that you choose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;I choose Fontainebleau!&rdquo; she exulted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So do I! But we can&rsquo;t take all those children to an hotel at
+      Fontainebleau, can we?&rdquo; he questioned weakly. &ldquo;You see, dear, there&rsquo;s the
+      mere expense of it&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her eyes were already travelling far ahead of him. &ldquo;The expense won&rsquo;t
+      amount to much. I&rsquo;ve just remembered that Angele, the bonne, has a sister
+      who is cook there in a nice old-fashioned pension which must be almost
+      empty at this time of year. I&rsquo;m sure I can ma&mdash;arrange easily,&rdquo; she
+      hurried on, nearly tripping again over the fatal word. &ldquo;And just think of
+      the treat it will be to them! This is Friday, and I can get them let off
+      from their afternoon classes, and keep them in the country till Monday.
+      Poor darlings, they haven&rsquo;t been out of Paris for months! And I daresay
+      the change will cure Geordie&rsquo;s cough&mdash;Geordie&rsquo;s the youngest,&rdquo; she
+      explained, surprised to find herself, even in the rapture of reunion, so
+      absorbed in the welfare of the Fulmers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was conscious that her husband was surprised also; but instead of
+      prolonging the argument he simply questioned: &ldquo;Was Geordie the chap you
+      had in your arms when you opened the front door the night before last?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She echoed: &ldquo;I opened the front door the night before last?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To a boy with a parcel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; she sobbed, &ldquo;you were there? You were watching?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He held her to him, and the currents flowed between them warm and full as
+      on the night of their moon over Como.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a trice, after that, she had the matter in hand and her forces
+      marshalled. The taxi was paid, Nick&rsquo;s luggage deposited in the vestibule,
+      and the children, just piling down to breakfast, were summoned in to hear
+      the news.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was apparent that, seasoned to surprises as they were, Nick&rsquo;s presence
+      took them aback. But when, between laughter and embraces, his identity,
+      and his right to be where he was, had been made clear to them, Junie
+      dismissed the matter by asking him in her practical way: &ldquo;Then I suppose
+      we may talk about you to Susy now?&rdquo;&mdash;and thereafter all five
+      addressed themselves to the vision of their imminent holiday.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From that moment the little house became the centre of a whirlwind. Treats
+      so unforeseen, and of such magnitude, were rare in the young Fulmers&rsquo;
+      experience, and had it not been for Junie&rsquo;s steadying influence Susy&rsquo;s
+      charges would have got out of hand. But young Nat, appealed to by Nick on
+      the ground of their common manhood, was induced to forego celebrating the
+      event on his motor horn (the very same which had tortured the New
+      Hampshire echoes), and to assert his authority over his juniors; and
+      finally a plan began to emerge from the chaos, and each child to fit into
+      it like a bit of a picture puzzle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy, riding the whirlwind with her usual firmness, nevertheless felt an
+      undercurrent of anxiety. There had been no time as yet, between her and
+      Nick, to revert to money matters; and where there was so little money it
+      could not, obviously, much matter. But that was the more reason for being
+      secretly aghast at her intrepid resolve not to separate herself from her
+      charges. A three days&rsquo; honey-moon with five children in the party&mdash;and
+      children with the Fulmer appetite&mdash;could not but be a costly
+      business; and while she settled details, packed them off to school, and
+      routed out such nondescript receptacles as the house contained in the way
+      of luggage, her thoughts remained fixed on the familiar financial problem.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes&mdash;it was cruel to have it rear its hated head, even through the
+      bursting boughs of her new spring; but there it was, the perpetual serpent
+      in her Eden, to be bribed, fed, sent to sleep with such scraps as she
+      could beg, borrow or steal for it. And she supposed it was the price that
+      fate meant her to pay for her blessedness, and was surer than ever that
+      the blessedness was worth it. Only, how was she to compound the business
+      with her new principles?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With the children&rsquo;s things to pack, luncheon to be got ready, and the
+      Fontainebleau pension to be telephoned to, there was little time to waste
+      on moral casuistry; and Susy asked herself with a certain irony if the
+      chronic lack of time to deal with money difficulties had not been the
+      chief cause of her previous lapses. There was no time to deal with this
+      question either; no time, in short, to do anything but rush forward on a
+      great gale of plans and preparations, in the course of which she whirled
+      Nick forth to buy some charcuterie for luncheon, and telephone to
+      Fontainebleau.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once he was gone&mdash;and after watching him safely round the corner&mdash;she
+      too got into her wraps, and transferring a small packet from her
+      dressing-case to her pocket, hastened out in a different direction.
+    </p>
+
+
+<h3>XXX.</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      <span class="smcap">It</span> took two brimming taxi-cabs to carry the Nicholas Lansings to the
+      station on their second honey-moon. In the first were Nick, Susy and the
+      luggage of the whole party (little Nat&rsquo;s motor horn included, as a last
+      concession, and because he had hitherto forborne to play on it); and in
+      the second, the five Fulmers, the bonne, who at the eleventh hour had
+      refused to be left, a cage-full of canaries, and a foundling kitten who
+      had murderous designs on them; all of which had to be taken because, if
+      the bonne came, there would be nobody left to look after them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the corner Susy tore herself from Nick&rsquo;s arms and held up the
+      procession while she ran back to the second taxi to make sure that the
+      bonne had brought the house-key. It was found of course that she hadn&rsquo;t
+      but that Junie had; whereupon the caravan got under way again, and reached
+      the station just as the train was starting; and there, by some miracle of
+      good nature on the part of the guard, they were all packed together into
+      an empty compartment&mdash;no doubt, as Susy remarked, because train
+      officials never failed to spot a newly-married couple, and treat them
+      kindly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The children, sentinelled by Junie, at first gave promise of superhuman
+      goodness; but presently their feelings overflowed, and they were not to be
+      quieted till it had been agreed that Nat should blow his motor-horn at
+      each halt, while the twins called out the names of the stations, and
+      Geordie, with the canaries and kitten, affected to change trains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Luckily the halts were few; but the excitement of travel, combined with
+      over-indulgence in the chocolates imprudently provided by Nick,
+      overwhelmed Geordie with a sudden melancholy that could be appeased only
+      by Susy&rsquo;s telling him stories till they arrived at Fontainebleau.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The day was soft, with mild gleams of sunlight on decaying foliage; and
+      after luggage and livestock had been dropped at the pension Susy confessed
+      that she had promised the children a scamper in the forest, and buns in a
+      tea-shop afterward. Nick placidly agreed, and darkness had long fallen,
+      and a great many buns been consumed, when at length the procession turned
+      down the street toward the pension, headed by Nick with the sleeping
+      Geordie on his shoulder, while the others, speechless with fatigue and
+      food, hung heavily on Susy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It had been decided that, as the bonne was of the party, the children
+      might be entrusted to her for the night, and Nick and Susy establish
+      themselves in an adjacent hotel. Nick had flattered himself that they
+      might remove their possessions there when they returned from the tea-room;
+      but Susy, manifestly surprised at the idea, reminded him that her charges
+      must first be given their supper and put to bed. She suggested that he
+      should meanwhile take the bags to the hotel, and promised to join him as
+      soon as Geordie was asleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was a long time coming, but waiting for her was sweet, even in a
+      deserted hotel reading-room insufficiently heated by a sulky stove; and
+      after he had glanced through his morning&rsquo;s mail, hurriedly thrust into his
+      pocket as he left Paris, he sank into a state of drowsy beatitude. It was
+      all the maddest business in the world, yet it did not give him the sense
+      of unreality that had made their first adventure a mere golden dream; and
+      he sat and waited with the security of one in whom dear habits have struck
+      deep roots. In this mood of acquiescence even the presence of the five
+      Fulmers seemed a natural and necessary consequence of all the rest; and
+      when Susy at length appeared, a little pale and tired, with the brooding
+      inward look that busy mothers bring from the nursery, that too seemed
+      natural and necessary, and part of the new order of things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had wandered out to a cheap restaurant for dinner; now, in the damp
+      December night, they were walking back to the hotel under a sky full of
+      rain-clouds. They seemed to have said everything to each other, and yet
+      barely to have begun what they had to tell; and at each step they took,
+      their heavy feet dragged a great load of bliss.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the hotel almost all the lights were already out; and they groped their
+      way to the third floor room which was the only one that Susy had found
+      cheap enough. A ray from a street-lamp struck up through the unshuttered
+      windows; and after Nick had revived the fire they drew their chairs close
+      to it, and sat quietly for a while in the dark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Their silence was so sweet that Nick could not make up his mind to break
+      it; not to do so gave his tossing spirit such a sense of permanence, of
+      having at last unlimited time before him in which to taste his joy and let
+      its sweetness stream through him. But at length he roused himself to say:
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s queer how things coincide. I&rsquo;ve had a little bit of good news in one
+      of the letters I got this morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy took the announcement serenely. &ldquo;Well, you would, you know,&rdquo; she
+      commented, as if the day had been too obviously designed for bliss to
+      escape the notice of its dispensers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he continued with a thrill of pardonable pride. &ldquo;During the cruise
+      I did a couple of articles on Crete&mdash;oh, just travel-impressions, of
+      course; they couldn&rsquo;t be more. But the editor of the New Review has
+      accepted them, and asks for others. And here&rsquo;s his cheque, if you please!
+      So you see you might have let me take the jolly room downstairs with the
+      pink curtains. And it makes me awfully hopeful about my book.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had expected a rapturous outburst, and perhaps some reassertion of
+      wifely faith in the glorious future that awaited The Pageant of Alexander;
+      and deep down under the lover&rsquo;s well-being the author felt a faint twinge
+      of mortified vanity when Susy, leaping to her feet, cried out, ravenously
+      and without preamble: &ldquo;Oh, Nick, Nick&mdash;let me see how much they&rsquo;ve
+      given you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He flourished the cheque before her in the firelight. &ldquo;A couple of
+      hundred, you mercenary wretch!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, oh&mdash;&rdquo; she gasped, as if the good news had been almost too much
+      for her tense nerves; and then surprised him by dropping to the ground,
+      and burying her face against his knees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Susy, my Susy,&rdquo; he whispered, his hand on her shaking shoulder. &ldquo;Why,
+      dear, what is it? You&rsquo;re not crying?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Nick, Nick&mdash;two hundred? Two hundred dollars? Then I&rsquo;ve got to
+      tell you&mdash;oh now, at once!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A faint chill ran over him, and involuntarily his hand drew back from her
+      bowed figure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now? Oh, why now?&rdquo; he protested. &ldquo;What on earth does it matter now&mdash;whatever
+      it is?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it does matter&mdash;it matters more than you can think!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She straightened herself, still kneeling before him, and lifted her head
+      so that the firelight behind her turned her hair into a ruddy halo. &ldquo;Oh,
+      Nick, the bracelet&mdash;Ellie&rsquo;s bracelet.... I&rsquo;ve never returned it to
+      her,&rdquo; she faltered out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He felt himself recoiling under the hands with which she clutched his
+      knees. For an instant he did not remember what she alluded to; it was the
+      mere mention of Ellie Vanderlyn&rsquo;s name that had fallen between them like
+      an icy shadow. What an incorrigible fool he had been to think they could
+      ever shake off such memories, or cease to be the slaves of such a past!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The bracelet?&mdash;Oh, yes,&rdquo; he said, suddenly understanding, and
+      feeling the chill mount slowly to his lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, the bracelet... Oh, Nick, I meant to give it back at once; I did&mdash;I
+      did; but the day you went away I forgot everything else. And when I found
+      the thing, in the bottom of my bag, weeks afterward, I thought everything
+      was over between you and me, and I had begun to see Ellie again, and she
+      was kind to me and how could I?&rdquo; To save his life he could have found no
+      answer, and she pressed on: &ldquo;And so this morning, when I saw you were
+      frightened by the expense of bringing all the children with us, and when I
+      felt I couldn&rsquo;t leave them, and couldn&rsquo;t leave you either, I remembered
+      the bracelet; and I sent you off to telephone while I rushed round the
+      corner to a little jeweller&rsquo;s where I&rsquo;d been before, and pawned it so that
+      you shouldn&rsquo;t have to pay for the children.... But now, darling, you see,
+      if you&rsquo;ve got all that money, I can get it out of pawn at once, can&rsquo;t I,
+      and send it back to her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She flung her arms about him, and he held her fast, wondering if the tears
+      he felt were hers or his. Still he did not speak; but as he clasped her
+      close she added, with an irrepressible flash of her old irony: &ldquo;Not that
+      Ellie will understand why I&rsquo;ve done it. She&rsquo;s never yet been able to make
+      out why you returned her scarf-pin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a long time she continued to lean against him, her head on his knees,
+      as she had done on the terrace of Como on the last night of their
+      honeymoon. She had ceased to talk, and he sat silent also, passing his
+      hand quietly to and fro over her hair. The first rapture had been
+      succeeded by soberer feelings. Her confession had broken up the frozen
+      pride about his heart, and humbled him to the earth; but it had also
+      roused forgotten things, memories and scruples swept aside in the first
+      rush of their reunion. He and she belonged to each other for always: he
+      understood that now. The impulse which had first drawn them together
+      again, in spite of reason, in spite of themselves almost, that deep-seated
+      instinctive need that each had of the other, would never again wholly let
+      them go. Yet as he sat there he thought of Strefford, he thought of Coral
+      Hicks. He had been a coward in regard to Coral, and Susy had been sincere
+      and courageous in regard to Strefford. Yet his mind dwelt on Coral with
+      tenderness, with compunction, with remorse; and he was almost sure that
+      Susy had already put Strefford utterly out of her mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the old contrast between the two ways of loving, the man&rsquo;s way and
+      the woman&rsquo;s; and after a moment it seemed to Nick natural enough that
+      Susy, from the very moment of finding him again, should feel neither pity
+      nor regret, and that Strefford should already be to her as if he had never
+      been. After all, there was something Providential in such arrangements.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stooped closer, pressed her dreaming head between his hands, and
+      whispered: &ldquo;Wake up; it&rsquo;s bedtime.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She rose; but as she moved away to turn on the light he caught her hand
+      and drew her to the window. They leaned on the sill in the darkness, and
+      through the clouds, from which a few drops were already falling, the moon,
+      labouring upward, swam into a space of sky, cast her troubled glory on
+      them, and was again hidden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
+
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+Project Gutenberg Etext of The Glimpses of the Moon, by Wharton
+#9 in our series by Edith Wharton
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+The Glimpses of the Moon
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+by Edith Wharton
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+April, 1998  [Etext #1263]
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+
+
+THE GLIMPSES OF THE MOON
+BY
+EDITH WHARTON
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+I
+
+IT rose for them--their honey-moon--over the waters of a lake so
+famed as the scene of romantic raptures that they were rather
+proud of not having been afraid to choose it as the setting of
+their own.
+
+"It required a total lack of humour, or as great a gift for it
+as ours, to risk the experiment," Susy Lansing opined, as they
+hung over the inevitable marble balustrade and watched their
+tutelary orb roll its magic carpet across the waters to their
+feet.
+
+"Yes--or the loan of Strefford's villa," her husband emended,
+glancing upward through the branches at a long low patch of
+paleness to which the moonlight was beginning to give the form
+of a white house-front.
+
+"Oh, come when we'd five to choose from.  At least if you count
+the Chicago flat."
+
+"So we had--you wonder!"  He laid his hand on hers, and his
+touch renewed the sense of marvelling exultation which the
+deliberate survey of their adventure always roused in her ....
+It was characteristic that she merely added, in her steady
+laughing tone:  "Or, not counting the flat--for I hate to brag-
+just consider the others:  Violet Melrose's place at Versailles,
+your aunt's villa at Monte Carlo--and a moor!"
+
+She was conscious of throwing in the moor tentatively, and yet
+with a somewhat exaggerated emphasis, as if to make sure that he
+shouldn't accuse her of slurring it over.  But he seemed to have
+no desire to do so.  "Poor old Fred!" he merely remarked; and
+she breathed out carelessly:  "Oh, well--"
+
+His hand still lay on hers, and for a long interval, while they
+stood silent in the enveloping loveliness of the night, she was
+aware only of the warm current running from palm to palm, as the
+moonlight below them drew its line of magic from shore to shore.
+
+Nick Lansing spoke at last.  "Versailles in May would have been
+impossible:  all our Paris crowd would have run us down within
+twenty-four hours.  And Monte Carlo is ruled out because it's
+exactly the kind of place everybody expected us to go.  So--
+with all respect to you--it wasn't much of a mental strain to
+decide on Como."
+
+His wife instantly challenged this belittling of her capacity.
+"It took a good deal of argument to convince you that we could
+face the ridicule of Como!"
+
+"Well, I should have preferred something in a lower key; at
+least I thought I should till we got here.  Now I see that this
+place is idiotic unless one is perfectly happy; and that then
+it's-as good as any other."
+
+She sighed out a blissful assent. "And I must say that Streffy
+has done things to a turn. Even the cigars--who do you suppose
+gave him those cigars?"  She added thoughtfully:  "You'll miss
+them when we have to go."
+
+"Oh, I say, don't let's talk to-night about going.  Aren't we
+outside of time and space ...?  Smell that guinea-a-bottle stuff
+over there:  what is it?  Stephanotis?"
+
+"Y-yes ....  I suppose so.  Or gardenias ....  Oh, the fire-
+flies!  Look ... there, against that splash of moonlight on the
+water.  Apples of silver in a net-work of gold ...."  They
+leaned together, one flesh from shoulder to finger-tips, their
+eyes held by the snared glitter of the ripples.
+
+"I could bear," Lansing remarked, "even a nightingale at this
+moment ...."
+
+A faint gurgle shook the magnolias behind them, and a long
+liquid whisper answered it from the thicket of laurel above
+their heads.
+
+"It's a little late in the year for them:  they're ending just
+as we begin."
+
+Susy laughed.  "I hope when our turn comes we shall say good-bye
+to each other as sweetly."
+
+It was in her husband's mind to answer:  "They're not saying
+good-bye, but only settling down to family cares."  But as this
+did not happen to be in his plan, or in Susy's, he merely echoed
+her laugh and pressed her closer.
+
+The spring night drew them into its deepening embrace.  The
+ripples of the lake had gradually widened and faded into a
+silken smoothness, and high above the mountains the moon was
+turning from gold to white in a sky powdered with vanishing
+stars.  Across the lake the lights of a little town went out,
+one after another, and the distant shore became a floating
+blackness.  A breeze that rose and sank brushed their faces with
+the scents of the garden; once it blew out over the water a
+great white moth like a drifting magnolia petal.  The
+nightingales had paused and the trickle of the fountain behind
+the house grew suddenly insistent.
+
+When Susy spoke it was in a voice languid with visions.  "I have
+been thinking," she said, "that we ought to be able to make it
+last at least a year longer."
+
+Her husband received the remark without any sign of surprise or
+disapprobation; his answer showed that he not only understood
+her, but had been inwardly following the same train of thought.
+
+"You mean," he enquired after a pause, "without counting your
+grandmother's pearls?"
+
+"Yes--without the pearls."
+
+He pondered a while, and then rejoined in a tender whisper:
+"Tell me again just how."
+
+"Let's sit down, then.  No, I like the cushions best."  He
+stretched himself in a long willow chair, and she curled up on
+a heap of boat-cushions and leaned her head against his knee.
+Just above her, when she lifted her lids, she saw bits of
+moonflooded sky incrusted like silver in a sharp black
+patterning of plane-boughs.  All about them breathed of peace
+and beauty and stability, and her happiness was so acute that it
+was almost a relief to remember the stormy background of bills
+and borrowing against which its frail structure had been reared.
+"People with a balance can't be as happy as all this," Susy
+mused, letting the moonlight filter through her lazy lashes.
+
+People with a balance had always been Susy Branch's bugbear;
+they were still, and more dangerously, to be Susy Lansing's.
+She detested them, detested them doubly, as the natural enemies
+of mankind and as the people one always had to put one's self
+out for.  The greater part of her life having been passed among
+them, she knew nearly all that there was to know about them, and
+judged them with the contemptuous lucidity of nearly twenty
+years of dependence.  But at the present moment her animosity
+was diminished not only by the softening effect of love but by
+the fact that she had got out of those very people more--yes,
+ever so much more--than she and Nick, in their hours of most
+reckless planning, had ever dared to hope for.
+
+"After all, we owe them this!" she mused.
+
+Her husband, lost in the drowsy beatitude of the hour, had not
+repeated his question; but she was still on the trail of the
+thought he had started.  A year--yes, she was sure now that
+with a little management they could have a whole year of it!
+"It" was their marriage, their being together, and away from
+bores and bothers, in a comradeship of which both of them had
+long ago guessed the immediate pleasure, but she at least had
+never imagined the deeper harmony.
+
+It was at one of their earliest meetings--at one of the
+heterogeneous dinners that the Fred Gillows tried to think
+"literary"--that the young man who chanced to sit next to her,
+and of whom it was vaguely rumoured that he had "written," had
+presented himself to her imagination as the sort of luxury to
+which Susy Branch, heiress, might conceivably have treated
+herself as a crowning folly.  Susy Branch, pauper, was fond of
+picturing how this fancied double would employ her millions:  it
+was one of her chief grievances against her rich friends that
+they disposed of theirs so unimaginatively.
+
+"I'd rather have a husband like that than a steam-yacht!"  she
+had thought at the end of her talk with the young man who had
+written, and as to whom it had at once been clear to her that
+nothing his pen had produced, or might hereafter set down, would
+put him in a position to offer his wife anything more costly
+than a row-boat.
+
+"His wife!  As if he could ever have one!  For he's not the kind
+to marry for a yacht either."  In spite of her past, Susy had
+preserved enough inner independence to detect the latent signs
+of it in others, and also to ascribe it impulsively to those of
+the opposite sex who happened to interest her.  She had a
+natural contempt for people who gloried in what they need only
+have endured.  She herself meant eventually to marry, because
+one couldn't forever hang on to rich people; but she was going
+to wait till she found some one who combined the maximum of
+wealth with at least a minimum of companionableness.
+
+She had at once perceived young Lansing's case to be exactly the
+opposite:  he was as poor as he could be, and as companionable
+as it was possible to imagine.  She therefore decided to see as
+much of him as her hurried and entangled life permitted; and
+this, thanks to a series of adroit adjustments, turned out to be
+a good deal.  They met frequently all the rest of that winter;
+so frequently that Mrs. Fred Gillow one day abruptly and sharply
+gave Susy to understand that she was "making herself
+ridiculous."
+
+"Ah--" said Susy with a long breath, looking her friend and
+patroness straight in the painted eyes.
+
+"Yes," cried Ursula Gillow in a sob, "before you interfered Nick
+liked me awfully ... and, of course, I don't want to reproach
+you ... but when I think ...."
+
+Susy made no answer.  How could she, when she thought?  The
+dress she had on had been given her by Ursula; Ursula's motor
+had carried her to the feast from which they were both
+returning.  She counted on spending the following August with
+the Gillows at Newport ... and the only alternative was to go to
+California with the Bockheimers, whom she had hitherto refused
+even to dine with.
+
+"Of course, what you fancy is perfect nonsense, Ursula; and as
+to my interfering--" Susy hesitated, and then murmured:  "But if
+it will make you any happier I'll arrange to see him less
+often ...."  She sounded the lowest depths of subservience in
+returning Ursula's tearful kiss ....
+
+Susy Branch had a masculine respect for her word; and the next
+day she put on her most becoming hat and sought out young Mr.
+Lansing in his lodgings.  She was determined to keep her promise
+to Ursula; but she meant to look her best when she did it.
+
+She knew at what time the young man was likely to be found, for
+he was doing a dreary job on a popular encyclopaedia (V to X),
+and had told her what hours were dedicated to the hateful task.
+"Oh, if only it were a novel!" she thought as she mounted his
+dingy stairs; but immediately reflected that, if it were the
+kind that she could bear to read, it probably wouldn't bring him
+in much more than his encyclopaedia.  Miss Branch had her
+standards in literature ....
+
+The apartment to which Mr. Lansing admitted her was a good deal
+cleaner, but hardly less dingy, than his staircase.  Susy,
+knowing him to be addicted to Oriental archaeology, had pictured
+him in a bare room adorned by a single Chinese bronze of
+flawless shape, or by some precious fragment of Asiatic pottery.
+But such redeeming features were conspicuously absent, and no
+attempt had been made to disguise the decent indigence of the
+bed-sitting-room.
+
+Lansing welcomed his visitor with every sign of pleasure, and
+with apparent indifference as to what she thought of his
+furniture.  He seemed to be conscious only of his luck in seeing
+her on a day when they had not expected to meet.  This made Susy
+all the sorrier to execute her promise, and the gladder that she
+had put on her prettiest hat; and for a moment or two she looked
+at him in silence from under its conniving brim.
+
+Warm as their mutual liking was, Lansing had never said a word
+of love to her; but this was no deterrent to his visitor, whose
+habit it was to speak her meaning clearly when there were no
+reasons, worldly or pecuniary, for its concealment.  After a
+moment, therefore, she told him why she had come; it was a
+nuisance, of course, but he would understand.  Ursula Gillow was
+jealous, and they would have to give up seeing each other.
+
+The young man's burst of laughter was music to her; for, after
+all, she had been rather afraid that being devoted to Ursula
+might be as much in his day's work as doing the encyclopaedia.
+
+"But I give you my word it's a raving-mad mistake!  And I don't
+believe she ever meant me, to begin with--" he protested; but
+Susy, her common-sense returning with her reassurance, promptly
+cut short his denial.
+
+"You can trust Ursula to make herself clear on such occasions.
+And it doesn't make any difference what you think.  All that
+matters is what she believes."
+
+"Oh, come!  I've got a word to say about that too, haven't I?"
+
+Susy looked slowly and consideringly about the room.  There was
+nothing in it, absolutely nothing, to show that he had ever
+possessed a spare dollar--or accepted a present.
+
+"Not as far as I'm concerned," she finally pronounced.
+
+"How do you mean?  If I'm as free as air--?"
+
+"I'm not."
+
+He grew thoughtful.  "Oh, then, of course--.  It only seems a
+little odd," he added drily, "that in that case, the protest
+should have come from Mrs. Gillow."
+
+"Instead of coming from my millionaire bridegroom, Oh, I haven't
+any; in that respect I'm as free as you."
+
+"Well, then--?  Haven't we only got to stay free?"
+
+Susy drew her brows together anxiously.  It was going to be
+rather more difficult than she had supposed.
+
+"I said I was as free in that respect.  I'm not going to
+marry--and I don't suppose you are?"
+
+"God, no!" he ejaculated fervently.
+
+"But that doesn't always imply complete freedom ...."
+
+He stood just above her, leaning his elbow against the hideous
+black marble arch that framed his fireless grate.  As she
+glanced up she saw his face harden, and the colour flew to hers.
+
+"Was that what you came to tell me?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, you don't understand--and I don't see why you don't, since
+we've knocked about so long among exactly the same kind of
+people."  She stood up impulsively and laid her hand on his arm.
+"I do wish you'd help me--!"
+
+He remained motionless, letting the hand lie untouched.
+
+"Help you to tell me that poor Ursula was a pretext, but that
+there IS someone who--for one reason or another--really has a
+right to object to your seeing me too often?"
+
+Susy laughed impatiently.  "You talk like the hero of a novel--
+the kind my governess used to read.  In the first place I should
+never recognize that kind of right, as you call it--never!"
+
+"Then what kind do you?"  he asked with a clearing brow.
+
+"Why--the kind I suppose you recognize on the part of your
+publisher."  This evoked a hollow laugh from him.  "A business
+claim, call it," she pursued.  "Ursula does a lot for me:  I
+live on her for half the year.  This dress I've got on now is
+one she gave me.  Her motor is going to take me to a dinner
+to-night.  I'm going to spend next summer with her at
+Newport ....  If I don't, I've got to go to California with the
+Bockheimers-so good-bye."
+
+Suddenly in tears, she was out of the door and down his steep
+three flights before he could stop her--though, in thinking it
+over, she didn't even remember if he had tried to.  She only
+recalled having stood a long time on the corner of Fifth Avenue,
+in the harsh winter radiance, waiting till a break in the
+torrent of motors laden with fashionable women should let her
+cross, and saying to herself:  "After all, I might have promised
+Ursula ... and kept on seeing him ...."
+
+Instead of which, when Lansing wrote the next day entreating a
+word with her, she had sent back a friendly but firm refusal;
+and had managed soon afterward to get taken to Canada for a
+fortnight's ski-ing, and then to Florida for six weeks in a
+house-boat ....
+
+As she reached this point in her retrospect the remembrance of
+Florida called up a vision of moonlit waters, magnolia fragrance
+and balmy airs; merging with the circumambient sweetness, it
+laid a drowsy spell upon her lids.  Yes, there had been a bad
+moment:  but it was over; and she was here, safe and blissful,
+and with Nick; and this was his knee her head rested on, and
+they had a year ahead of them ... a whole year ....  "Not
+counting the pearls," she murmured, shutting her eyes ....
+
+
+
+II.
+
+LANSING threw the end of Strefford's expensive cigar into the
+lake, and bent over his wife.  Poor child!  She had fallen
+asleep ....  He leaned back and stared up again at the
+silver-flooded sky.  How queer--how inexpressibly queer--it was
+to think that that light was shed by his honey-moon!  A year
+ago, if anyone had predicted his risking such an adventure, he
+would have replied by asking to be locked up at the first
+symptoms ....
+
+There was still no doubt in his mind that the adventure was a
+mad one.  It was all very well for Susy to remind him twenty
+times a day that they had pulled it off--and so why should he
+worry?  Even in the light of her far-seeing cleverness, and of
+his own present bliss, he knew the future would not bear the
+examination of sober thought.  And as he sat there in the summer
+moonlight, with her head on his knee, he tried to recapitulate
+the successive steps that had landed them on Streffy's
+lake-front.
+
+On Lansing's side, no doubt, it dated back to his leaving
+Harvard with the large resolve not to miss anything.  There
+stood the evergreen Tree of Life, the Four Rivers flowing from
+its foot; and on every one of the four currents he meant to
+launch his little skiff.  On two of them he had not gone very
+far, on the third he had nearly stuck in the mud; but the fourth
+had carried him to the very heart of wonder.  It was the stream
+of his lively imagination, of his inexhaustible interest in
+every form of beauty and strangeness and folly.  On this stream,
+sitting in the stout little craft of his poverty, his
+insignificance and his independence, he had made some notable
+voyages ....  And so, when Susy Branch, whom he had sought out
+through a New York season as the prettiest and most amusing girl
+in sight, had surprised him with the contradictory revelation of
+her modern sense of expediency and her old-fashioned standard of
+good faith, he had felt an irresistible desire to put off on one
+more cruise into the unknown.
+
+It was of the essence of the adventure that, after her one brief
+visit to his lodgings, he should have kept his promise and not
+tried to see her again.  Even if her straightforwardness had not
+roused his emulation, his understanding of her difficulties
+would have moved his pity.  He knew on how frail a thread the
+popularity of the penniless hangs, and how miserably a girl like
+Susy was the sport of other people's moods and whims.  It was a
+part of his difficulty and of hers that to get what they liked
+they so often had to do what they disliked.  But the keeping of
+his promise was a greater bore than he had expected.  Susy
+Branch had become a delightful habit in a life where most of the
+fixed things were dull, and her disappearance had made it
+suddenly clear to him that his resources were growing more and
+more limited.  Much that had once amused him hugely now amused
+him less, or not at all:  a good part of his world of wonder had
+shrunk to a village peep-show.  And the things which had kept
+their stimulating power--distant journeys, the enjoyment of art,
+the contact with new scenes and strange societies--were becoming
+less and less attainable.  Lansing had never had more than a
+pittance; he had spent rather too much of it in his first plunge
+into life, and the best he could look forward to was a middle-
+age of poorly-paid hack-work, mitigated by brief and frugal
+holidays.  He knew that he was more intelligent than the
+average, but he had long since concluded that his talents were
+not marketable.  Of the thin volume of sonnets which a friendly
+publisher had launched for him, just seventy copies had been
+sold; and though his essay on "Chinese Influences in Greek Art"
+had created a passing stir, it had resulted in controversial
+correspondence and dinner invitations rather than in more
+substantial benefits.  There seemed, in short, no prospect of
+his ever earning money, and his restricted future made him
+attach an increasing value to the kind of friendship that Susy
+Branch had given him.  Apart from the pleasure of looking at her
+and listening to her--of enjoying in her what others less
+discriminatingly but as liberally appreciated--he had the sense,
+between himself and her, of a kind of free-masonry of precocious
+tolerance and irony.  They had both, in early youth, taken the
+measure of the world they happened to live in:  they knew just
+what it was worth to them and for what reasons, and the
+community of these reasons lent to their intimacy its last
+exquisite touch.  And now, because of some jealous whim of a
+dissatisfied fool of a woman, as to whom he felt himself no more
+to blame than any young man who has paid for good dinners by
+good manners, he was to be deprived of the one complete
+companionship he had ever known ....
+
+His thoughts travelled on.  He recalled the long dull spring in
+New York after his break with Susy, the weary grind on his last
+articles, his listless speculations as to the cheapest and least
+boring way of disposing of the summer; and then the amazing luck
+of going, reluctantly and at the last minute, to spend a Sunday
+with the poor Nat Fulmers, in the wilds of New Hampshire, and of
+finding Susy there--Susy, whom he had never even suspected of
+knowing anybody in the Fulmers' set!
+
+She had behaved perfectly--and so had he--but they were
+obviously much too glad to see each other.  And then it was
+unsettling to be with her in such a house as the Fulmers', away
+from the large setting of luxury they were both used to, in the
+cramped cottage where their host had his studio in the verandah,
+their hostess practiced her violin in the dining-room, and five
+ubiquitous children sprawled and shouted and blew trumpets and
+put tadpoles in the water-jugs, and the mid-day dinner was two
+hours late-and proportionately bad--because the Italian cook
+was posing for Fulmer.
+
+Lansing's first thought had been that meeting Susy in such
+circumstances would be the quickest way to cure them both of
+their regrets.  The case of the Fulmers was an awful object-
+lesson in what happened to young people who lost their heads;
+poor Nat, whose pictures nobody bought, had gone to seed so
+terribly-and Grace, at twenty-nine, would never again be
+anything but the woman of whom people say, "I can remember her
+when she was lovely."
+
+But the devil of it was that Nat had never been such good
+company, or Grace so free from care and so full of music; and
+that, in spite of their disorder and dishevelment, and the bad
+food and general crazy discomfort, there was more amusement to
+be got out of their society than out of the most opulently
+staged house-party through which Susy and Lansing had ever
+yawned their way.
+
+It was almost a relief to tile young man when, on the second
+afternoon, Miss Branch drew him into the narrow hall to say:  "I
+really can't stand the combination of Grace's violin and little
+Nat's motor-horn any longer.  Do let us slip out till the duet
+is over."
+
+"How do they stand it, I wonder?"  he basely echoed, as he
+followed her up the wooded path behind the house.
+
+"It might be worth finding out," she rejoined with a musing
+smile.
+
+But he remained resolutely skeptical.  "Oh, give them a year or
+two more and they'll collapse--!  His pictures will never sell,
+you know.  He'll never even get them into a show."
+
+"I suppose not. And she'll never have time to do anything worth
+while with her music."
+
+They had reached a piny knoll high above the ledge on which the
+house was perched.  All about them stretched an empty landscape
+of endless featureless wooded hills.  "Think of sticking here
+all the year round!"  Lansing groaned.
+
+"I know.  But then think of wandering over the world with some
+people!"
+
+"Oh, Lord, yes.  For instance, my trip to India with the
+Mortimer Hickses.  But it was my only chance and what the deuce
+is one to do?"
+
+"I wish I knew!"  she sighed, thinking of the Bockheimers; and
+he turned and looked at her.
+
+"Knew what?"
+
+"The answer to your question.  What is one to do--when one sees
+both sides of the problem?  Or every possible side of it,
+indeed?"
+
+They had seated themselves on a commanding rock under the pines,
+but Lansing could not see the view at their feet for the stir of
+the brown lashes on her cheek.
+
+"You mean:  Nat and Grace may after all be having the best of
+it?"
+
+"How can I say, when I've told you I see all the sides?  Of
+course," Susy added hastily, " I couldn't live as they do for a
+week.  But it's wonderful how little it's dimmed them."
+
+"Certainly Nat was never more coruscating.  And she keeps it up
+even better." He reflected. "We do them good, I daresay."
+
+"Yes--or they us. I wonder which?"
+
+After that, he seemed to remember that they sat a long time
+silent, and that his next utterance was a boyish outburst
+against the tyranny of the existing order of things, abruptly
+followed by the passionate query why, since he and she couldn't
+alter it, and since they both had the habit of looking at facts
+as they were, they wouldn't be utter fools not to take their
+chance of being happy in the only way that was open to them, To
+this challenge he did not recall Susy's making any definite
+answer; but after another interval, in which all the world
+seemed framed in a sudden kiss, he heard her murmur to herself
+in a brooding tone:  "I don't suppose it's ever been tried
+before; but we might--."  And then and there she had laid before
+him the very experiment they had since hazarded.
+
+She would have none of surreptitious bliss, she began by
+declaring; and she set forth her reasons with her usual lucid
+impartiality.  In the first place, she should have to marry some
+day, and when she made the bargain she meant it to be an honest
+one; and secondly, in the matter of love, she would never give
+herself to anyone she did not really care for, and if such
+happiness ever came to her she did not want it shorn of half its
+brightness by the need of fibbing and plotting and dodging.
+
+"I've seen too much of that kind of thing.  Half the women I
+know who've had lovers have had them for the fun of sneaking and
+lying about it; but the other half have been miserable. And I
+should be miserable."
+
+It was at this point that she unfolded her plan.  Why shouldn't
+they marry; belong to each other openly and honourably, if for
+ever so short a time, and with the definite understanding that
+whenever either of them got the chance to do better he or she
+should be immediately released?  The law of their country
+facilitated such exchanges, and society was beginning to view
+them as indulgently as the law.  As Susy talked, she warmed to
+her theme and began to develop its endless possibilities.
+
+"We should really, in a way, help more than we should hamper
+each other," she ardently explained.  "We both know the ropes so
+well; what one of us didn't see the other might--in the way of
+opportunities, I mean.  And then we should be a novelty as
+married people.  We're both rather unusually popular--why not be
+frank!--and it's such a blessing for dinner-givers to be able to
+count on a couple of whom neither one is a blank.  Yes, I really
+believe we should be more than twice the success we are now; at
+least," she added with a smile, "if there's that amount of room
+for improvement.  I don't know how you feel; a man's popularity
+is so much less precarious than a girl's--but I know it would
+furbish me up tremendously to reappear as a married woman."  She
+glanced away from him down the long valley at their feet, and
+added in a lower tone: "And I should like, just for a little
+while, to feel I had something in life of my very own--something
+that nobody had lent me, like a fancy-dress or a motor or an
+opera cloak."
+
+The suggestion, at first, had seemed to Lansing as mad as it was
+enchanting:  it had thoroughly frightened him.  But Susy's
+arguments were irrefutable, her ingenuities inexhaustible. Had
+he ever thought it all out?  She asked.  No.  Well, she had; and
+would he kindly not interrupt?  In the first place, there would
+be all the wedding-presents.  Jewels, and a motor, and a silver
+dinner service, did she mean?  Not a bit of it!  She could see
+he'd never given the question proper thought.  Cheques, my dear,
+nothing but cheques--she undertook to manage that on her side:
+she really thought she could count on about fifty, and she
+supposed he could rake up a few more?  Well, all that would
+simply represent pocket-money!  For they would have plenty of
+houses to live in:  he'd see.  People were always glad to lend
+their house to a newly-married couple.  It was such fun to pop
+down and see them:  it made one feel romantic and jolly.  All
+they need do was to accept the houses in turn:  go on honey-
+mooning for a year!  What was he afraid of?  Didn't he think
+they'd be happy enough to want to keep it up?  And why not at
+least try--get engaged, and then see what would happen?  Even if
+she was all wrong, and her plan failed, wouldn't it have been
+rather nice, just for a month or two, to fancy they were going
+to be happy?  "I've often fancied it all by myself," she
+concluded; "but fancying it with you would somehow be so awfully
+different ...."
+
+That was how it began:  and this lakeside dream was what it had
+led up to.  Fantastically improbable as they had seemed, all her
+previsions had come true.  If there were certain links in the
+chain that Lansing had never been able to put his hand on,
+certain arrangements and contrivances that still needed further
+elucidation, why, he was lazily resolved to clear them up with
+her some day; and meanwhile it was worth all the past might have
+cost, and every penalty the future might exact of him, just to
+be sitting here in the silence and sweetness, her sleeping head
+on his knee, clasped in his joy as the hushed world was clasped
+in moonlight.
+
+He stooped down and kissed her.  "Wake up," he whispered, "it's
+bed-time."
+
+
+
+III.
+
+THEIR month of Como was within a few hours of ending.  Till the
+last moment they had hoped for a reprieve; but the accommodating
+Streffy had been unable to put the villa at their disposal for a
+longer time, since he had had the luck to let it for a thumping
+price to some beastly bouncers who insisted on taking possession
+at the date agreed on.
+
+Lansing, leaving Susy's side at dawn, had gone down to the lake
+for a last plunge; and swimming homeward through the crystal
+light he looked up at the garden brimming with flowers, the long
+low house with the cypress wood above it, and the window behind
+which his wife still slept.  The month had been exquisite, and
+their happiness as rare, as fantastically complete, as the scene
+before him.  He sank his chin into the sunlit ripples and sighed
+for sheer content ....
+
+It was a bore to be leaving the scene of such complete
+well-being, but the next stage in their progress promised to be
+hardly less delightful.  Susy was a magician: everything she
+predicted came true.  Houses were being showered on them; on all
+sides he seemed to see beneficent spirits winging toward them,
+laden with everything from a piano nobile in Venice to a camp in
+the Adirondacks.  For the present, they had decided on the
+former.  Other considerations apart, they dared not risk the
+expense of a journey across the Atlantic; so they were heading
+instead for the Nelson Vanderlyns' palace on the Giudecca.  They
+were agreed that, for reasons of expediency, it might be wise to
+return to New York for the coming winter.  It would keep them in
+view, and probably lead to fresh opportunities; indeed, Susy
+already had in mind the convenient flat that she was sure a
+migratory cousin (if tactfully handled, and assured that they
+would not overwork her cook) could certainly be induced to lend
+them.  Meanwhile the need of making plans was still remote; and
+if there was one art in which young Lansing's twenty-eight years
+of existence had perfected him it was that of living completely
+and unconcernedly in the present ....
+
+If of late he had tried to look into the future more insistently
+than was his habit, it was only because of Susy.  He had meant,
+when they married, to be as philosophic for her as for himself;
+and he knew she would have resented above everything his
+regarding their partnership as a reason for anxious thought.
+But since they had been together she had given him glimpses of
+her past that made him angrily long to shelter and defend her
+future.  It was intolerable that a spirit as fine as hers should
+be ever so little dulled or diminished by the kind of
+compromises out of which their wretched lives were made.  For
+himself, he didn't care a hang:  he had composed for his own
+guidance a rough-and-ready code, a short set of "mays" and
+"mustn'ts" which immensely simplified his course.  There were
+things a fellow put up with for the sake of certain definite and
+otherwise unattainable advantages; there were other things he
+wouldn't traffic with at any price.  But for a woman, he began
+to see, it might be different.  The temptations might be
+greater, the cost considerably higher, the dividing line between
+the "mays" and "mustn'ts" more fluctuating and less sharply
+drawn.  Susy, thrown on the world at seventeen, with only a weak
+wastrel of a father to define that treacherous line for her, and
+with every circumstance soliciting her to overstep it, seemed to
+have been preserved chiefly by an innate scorn of most of the
+objects of human folly.  "Such trash as he went to pieces for,"
+was her curt comment on her parent's premature demise:  as
+though she accepted in advance the necessity of ruining one's
+self for something, but was resolved to discriminate firmly
+between what was worth it and what wasn't.
+
+This philosophy had at first enchanted Lansing; but now it began
+to rouse vague fears.  The fine armour of her fastidiousness had
+preserved her from the kind of risks she had hitherto been
+exposed to; but what if others, more subtle, found a joint in
+it?  Was there, among her delicate discriminations, any
+equivalent to his own rules?  Might not her taste for the best
+and rarest be the very instrument of her undoing; and if
+something that wasn't "trash" came her way, would she hesitate a
+second to go to pieces for it?
+
+He was determined to stick to the compact that they should do
+nothing to interfere with what each referred to as the other's
+"chance"; but what if, when hers came, he couldn't agree with
+her in recognizing it?  He wanted for her, oh, so passionately,
+the best; but his conception of that best had so insensibly, so
+subtly been transformed in the light of their first month
+together!
+
+His lazy strokes were carrying him slowly shoreward; but the
+hour was so exquisite that a few yards from the landing he laid
+hold of the mooring rope of Streffy's boat and floated there,
+following his dream ....  It was a bore to be leaving; no doubt
+that was what made him turn things inside-out so uselessly.
+Venice would be delicious, of course; but nothing would ever
+again be as sweet as this.  And then they had only a year of
+security before them; and of that year a month was gone.
+
+Reluctantly he swam ashore, walked up to the house, and pushed
+open a window of the cool painted drawing-room.  Signs of
+departure were already visible.  There were trunks in the hall,
+tennis rackets on the stairs; on the landing, the cook Giulietta
+had both arms around a slippery hold-all that refused to let
+itself be strapped.  It all gave him a chill sense of unreality,
+as if the past month had been an act on the stage, and
+its setting were being folded away and rolled into the wings to
+make room for another play in which he and Susy had no part.
+
+By the time he came down again, dressed and hungry, to the
+terrace where coffee awaited him, he had recovered his usual
+pleasant sense of security.  Susy was there, fresh and gay, a
+rose in her breast and the sun in her hair:  her head was bowed
+over Bradshaw, but she waved a fond hand across the breakfast
+things, and presently looked up to say:  "Yes, I believe we can
+just manage it."
+
+"Manage what?"
+
+"To catch the train at Milan--if we start in the motor at ten
+sharp."
+
+He stared.  "The motor?  What motor?"
+
+"Why, the new people's--Streffy's tenants.  He's never told me
+their name, and the chauffeur says he can't pronounce it.  The
+chauffeur's is Ottaviano, anyhow; I've been making friends with
+him.  He arrived last night, and he says they're not due at Como
+till this evening.  He simply jumped at the idea of running us
+over to Milan."
+
+"Good Lord--" said Lansing, when she stopped.
+
+She sprang up from the table with a laugh.  "It will be a
+scramble; but I'll manage it, if you'll go up at once and pitch
+the last things into your trunk. "
+
+"Yes; but look here--have you any idea what it's going to cost?"
+
+She raised her eyebrows gaily.  "Why, a good deal less than our
+railway tickets.  Ottaviano's got a sweetheart in Milan, and
+hasn't seen her for six months.  When I found that out I knew
+he'd be going there anyhow."
+
+It was clever of her, and he laughed.  But why was it that he
+had grown to shrink from even such harmless evidence of her
+always knowing how to "manage"?  "Oh, well," he said to himself,
+"she's right:  the fellow would be sure to be going to Milan."
+
+Upstairs, on the way to his dressing room, he found her in a
+cloud of finery which her skilful hands were forcibly
+compressing into a last portmanteau.  He had never seen anyone
+pack as cleverly as Susy:  the way she coaxed reluctant things
+into a trunk was a symbol of the way she fitted discordant facts
+into her life.  "When I'm rich," she often said, "the thing I
+shall hate most will be to see an idiot maid at my trunks."
+
+As he passed, she glanced over her shoulder, her face pink with
+the struggle, and drew a cigar-box from the depths.  "Dearest,
+do put a couple of cigars into your pocket as a tip for
+Ottaviano."
+
+Lansing stared.  "Why, what on earth are you doing with
+Streffy's cigars?"
+
+"Packing them, of course ....  You don't suppose he meant them
+for those other people?"  She gave him a look of honest wonder.
+
+"I don't know whom he meant them for--but they're not
+ours ...."
+
+She continued to look at him wonderingly.  "I don't see
+what there is to be solemn about.  The cigars are not Streffy's
+either ... you may be sure he got them out of some bounder.  And
+there's nothing he'd hate more than to have them passed on to
+another."
+
+"Nonsense.  If they're not Streffy's they're much less mine.
+Hand them over, please, dear."
+
+"Just as you like.  But it does seem a waste; and, of course,
+the other people will never have one of them ....  The gardener
+and Giulietta's lover will see to that!"
+
+Lansing looked away from her at the waves of lace and muslin
+from which she emerged like a rosy Nereid.  "How many boxes of
+them are left?"
+
+"Only four."
+
+"Unpack them, please."
+
+Before she moved there was a pause so full of challenge that
+Lansing had time for an exasperated sense of the disproportion
+between his anger and its cause.  And this made him still
+angrier.
+
+She held out a box.  "The others are in your suitcase
+downstairs.  It's locked and strapped."
+
+"Give me the key, then."
+
+"We might send them back from Venice, mightn't we?  That lock is
+so nasty:  it will take you half an hour."
+
+"Give me the key, please."  She gave it.
+
+He went downstairs and battled with the lock, for the allotted
+half-hour, under the puzzled eyes of Giulietta and the sardonic
+grin of the chauffeur, who now and then, from the threshold,
+politely reminded him how long it would take to get to Milan.
+Finally the key turned, and Lansing, broken-nailed and
+perspiring, extracted the cigars and stalked with them into the
+deserted drawing room.  The great bunches of golden roses that
+he and Susy had gathered the day before were dropping their
+petals on the marble embroidery of the floor, pale camellias
+floated in the alabaster tazzas between the windows, haunting
+scents of the garden blew in on him with the breeze from the
+lake.  Never had Streffy's little house seemed so like a nest of
+pleasures.  Lansing laid the cigar boxes on a console and ran
+upstairs to collect his last possessions.  When he came down
+again, his wife, her eyes brilliant with achievement, was seated
+in their borrowed chariot, the luggage cleverly stowed away, and
+Giulietta and the gardener kissing her hand and weeping out
+inconsolable farewells.
+
+"I wonder what she's given them?" he thought, as he jumped in
+beside her and the motor whirled them through the nightingale-
+thickets to the gate.
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+CHARLIE STREFFORD'S villa was like a nest in a rose-bush; the
+Nelson Vanderlyns' palace called for loftier analogies.
+
+Its vastness and splendour seemed, in comparison, oppressive to
+Susy.  Their landing, after dark, at the foot of the great
+shadowy staircase, their dinner at a dimly-lit table under a
+ceiling weighed down with Olympians, their chilly evening in a
+corner of a drawing room where minuets should have been danced
+before a throne, contrasted with the happy intimacies of Como as
+their sudden sense of disaccord contrasted with the mutual
+confidence of the day before.
+
+The journey had been particularly jolly:  both Susy and Lansing
+had had too long a discipline in the art of smoothing things
+over not to make a special effort to hide from each other the
+ravages of their first disagreement.  But, deep down and
+invisible, the disagreement remained; and compunction for having
+been its cause gnawed at Susy's bosom as she sat in her
+tapestried and vaulted bedroom, brushing her hair before a
+tarnished mirror.
+
+"I thought I liked grandeur; but this place is really out of
+scale," she mused, watching the reflection of a pale hand move
+back and forward in the dim recesses of the mirror.  "And yet,"
+she continued, "Ellie Vanderlyn's hardly half an inch taller
+than I am; and she certainly isn't a bit more dignified ....  I
+wonder if it's because I feel so horribly small to-night that
+the place seems so horribly big."
+
+She loved luxury:  splendid things always made her feel handsome
+and high ceilings arrogant; she did not remember having ever
+before been oppressed by the evidences of wealth.
+
+She laid down the brush and leaned her chin on her clasped
+hands ....  Even now she could not understand what had made her
+take the cigars.  She had always been alive to the value of her
+inherited scruples:  her reasoned opinions were unusually free,
+but with regard to the things one couldn't reason about she was
+oddly tenacious.  And yet she had taken Streffy's cigars!  She
+had taken them--yes, that was the point--she had taken them for
+Nick, because the desire to please him, to make the smallest
+details of his life easy and agreeable and luxurious, had become
+her absorbing preoccupation.  She had committed, for him,
+precisely the kind of little baseness she would most have
+scorned to commit for herself; and, since he hadn't instantly
+felt the difference, she would never be able to explain it to
+him.
+
+She stood up with a sigh, shook out her loosened hair, and
+glanced around the great frescoed room.  The maid-servant had
+said something about the Signora's having left a letter for her;
+and there it lay on the writing-table, with her mail and Nick's;
+a thick envelope addressed in Ellie's childish scrawl, with a
+glaring "Private" dashed across the corner.
+
+"What on earth can she have to say, when she hates writing so,"
+Susy mused.
+
+She broke open the envelope, and four or five stamped and sealed
+letters fell from it.  All were addressed, in Ellie's hand, to
+Nelson Vanderlyn Esqre; and in the corner of each was faintly
+pencilled a number and a date: one, two, three, four--with a
+week's interval between the dates.
+
+"Goodness--" gasped Susy, understanding.
+
+She had dropped into an armchair near the table, and for a long
+time she sat staring at the numbered letters.  A sheet of paper
+covered with Ellie's writing had fluttered out among them, but
+she let it lie; she knew so well what it would say!  She knew
+all about her friend, of course; except poor old Nelson, who
+didn't,  But she had never imagined that Ellie would dare to use
+her in this way.  It was unbelievable ... she had never pictured
+anything so vile ....  The blood rushed to her face, and she
+sprang up angrily, half minded to tear the letters in bits and
+throw them all into the fire.
+
+She heard her husband's knock on the door between their rooms,
+and swept the dangerous packet under the blotting-book.
+
+"Oh, go away, please, there's a dear," she called out; "I
+haven't finished unpacking, and everything's in such a mess."
+Gathering up Nick's papers and letters, she ran across the room
+and thrust them through the door.  "Here's something to keep you
+quiet," she laughed, shining in on him an instant from the
+threshold.
+
+She turned back feeling weak with shame.  Ellie's letter lay on
+the floor:  reluctantly she stooped to pick it up, and one by
+one the expected phrases sprang out at her.
+
+"One good turn deserves another ....  Of course you and Nick are
+welcome to stay all summer ....  There won't be a particle of
+expense for you--the servants have orders ....  If you'll just
+be an angel and post these letters yourself ....  It's been my
+only chance for such an age; when we meet I'll explain
+everything.  And in a month at latest I'll be back to fetch
+Clarissa ...."
+
+Susy lifted the letter to the lamp to be sure she had read
+aright.  To fetch Clarissa!  Then Ellie's child was here?  Here,
+under the roof with them, left to their care?  She read on,
+raging.  "She's so delighted, poor darling, to know you're
+coming.  I've had to sack her beastly governess for
+impertinence, and if it weren't for you she'd be all alone with
+a lot of servants I don't much trust.  So for pity's sake be
+good to my child, and forgive me for leaving her.  She thinks
+I've gone to take a cure; and she knows she's not to tell her
+Daddy that I'm away, because it would only worry him if he
+thought I was ill.  She's perfectly to be trusted; you'll see
+what a clever angel she is ...."  And then, at the bottom of the
+page, in a last slanting postscript:  "Susy darling, if you've
+ever owed me anything in the way of kindness, you won't, on your
+sacred honour, say a word of this to any one, even to Nick.  And
+I know I can count on you to rub out the numbers."
+
+Susy sprang up and tossed Mrs. Vanderlyn's letter into the fire:
+then she came slowly back to the chair.  There, at her elbow,
+lay the four fatal envelopes; and her next affair was to make up
+her mind what to do with them.
+
+To destroy them on the spot had seemed, at first thought,
+inevitable:  it might be saving Ellie as well as herself.  But
+such a step seemed to Susy to involve departure on the morrow,
+and this in turn involved notifying Ellie, whose letter she had
+vainly scanned for an address.  Well--perhaps Clarissa's nurse
+would know where one could write to her mother; it was unlikely
+that even Ellie would go off without assuring some means of
+communication with her child.  At any rate, there was nothing to
+be done that night:  nothing but to work out the details of
+their flight on the morrow, and rack her brains to find a
+substitute for the hospitality they were rejecting.  Susy did
+not disguise from herself how much she had counted on the
+Vanderlyn apartment for the summer:  to be able to do so had
+singularly simplified the future.  She knew Ellie's largeness of
+hand, and had been sure in advance that as long as they were her
+guests their only expense would be an occasional present to the
+servants.  And what would the alternative be?  She and Lansing,
+in their endless talks, had so lived themselves into the vision
+of indolent summer days on the lagoon, of flaming hours on the
+beach of the Lido, and evenings of music and dreams on their
+broad balcony above the Giudecca, that the idea of having to
+renounce these joys, and deprive her Nick of them, filled Susy
+with a wrath intensified by his having confided in her that when
+they were quietly settled in Venice he "meant to write."
+Already nascent in her breast was the fierce resolve of the
+author's wife to defend her husband's privacy and facilitate his
+encounters with the Muse.  It was abominable, simply abominable,
+that Ellie Vanderlyn should have drawn her into such a trap!
+
+Well--there was nothing for it but to make a clean breast of the
+whole thing to Nick.  The trivial incident of the cigars-how
+trivial it now seemed!--showed her the kind of stand he would
+take, and communicated to her something of his own
+uncompromising energy.  She would tell him the whole story in
+the morning, and try to find a way out with him:  Susy's faith
+in her power of finding a way out was inexhaustible.  But
+suddenly she remembered the adjuration at the end of Mrs.
+Vanderlyn's letter:  "If you're ever owed me anything in the way
+of kindness, you won't, on your sacred honour, say a word to
+Nick ...."
+
+It was, of course, exactly what no one had the right to ask of
+her:  if indeed the word "right", could be used in any
+conceivable relation to this coil of wrongs.  But the fact
+remained that, in the way of kindness, she did owe much to
+Ellie; and that this was the first payment her friend had ever
+exacted.  She found herself, in fact, in exactly the same
+position as when Ursula Gillow, using the same argument, had
+appealed to her to give up Nick Lansing.  Yes, Susy reflected;
+but then Nelson Vanderlyn had been kind to her too; and the
+money Ellie had been so kind with was Nelson's ....  The queer
+edifice of Susy's standards tottered on its base she honestly
+didn't know where fairness lay, as between so much that was 
+foul.
+
+The very depth of her perplexity puzzled her.  She had been in
+"tight places" before; had indeed been in so few that were not,
+in one way or another, constricting!  As she looked back on her
+past it lay before her as a very network of perpetual
+concessions and contrivings.  But never before had she had such
+a sense of being tripped up, gagged and pinioned.  The little
+misery of the cigars still galled her, and now this big
+humiliation superposed itself on the raw wound.  Decidedly, the
+second month of their honey-moon was beginning cloudily ....
+
+She glanced at the enamel led travelling-clock on her dressing
+table--one of the few wedding-presents she had consented to
+accept in kind--and was startled at the lateness of the hour.
+In a moment Nick would be coming; and an uncomfortable sensation
+in her throat warned her that through sheer nervousness and
+exasperation she might blurt out something ill-advised.  The old
+habit of being always on her guard made her turn once more to
+the looking-glass.  Her face was pale and haggard; and having,
+by a swift and skilful application of cosmetics, increased its
+appearance of fatigue, she crossed the room and softly opened
+her husband's door.
+
+He too sat by a lamp, reading a letter which he put aside as she
+entered.  His face was grave, and she said to herself that he
+was certainly still thinking about the cigars.
+
+"I'm very tired, dearest, and my head aches so horribly that
+I've come to bid you good-night."  Bending over the back of his
+chair, she laid her arms on his shoulders.  He lifted his hands
+to clasp hers, but, as he threw his head back to smile up at her
+she noticed that his look was still serious, almost remote.  It
+was as if, for the first time, a faint veil hung between his
+eyes and hers.
+
+"I'm so sorry:  it's been a long day for you," he said absently,
+pressing his lips to her hands
+
+She felt the dreaded twitch in her throat.
+
+"Nick!" she burst out, tightening her embrace, "before I go,
+you've got to swear to me on your honour that you know I should
+never have taken those cigars for myself!"
+
+For a moment he stared at her, and she stared back at him with
+equal gravity; then the same irresistible mirth welled up in
+both, and Susy's compunctions were swept away on a gale of
+laughter.
+
+When she woke the next morning the sun was pouring in between
+her curtains of old brocade, and its refraction from the ripples
+of the Canal was drawing a network of golden scales across the
+vaulted ceiling.  The maid had just placed a tray on a slim
+marquetry table near the bed, and over the edge of the tray Susy
+discovered the small serious face of Clarissa Vanderlyn.  At the
+sight of the little girl all her dormant qualms awoke.
+
+Clarissa was just eight, and small for her age:  her little
+round chin was barely on a level with the tea-service, and her
+clear brown eyes gazed at Susy between the ribs of the toast-
+rack and the single tea-rose in an old Murano glass.  Susy had
+not seen her for two years, and she seemed, in the interval, to
+have passed from a thoughtful infancy to complete ripeness of
+feminine experience.  She was looking with approval at her
+mother's guest.
+
+"I'm so glad you've come," she said in a small sweet voice.  "I
+like you so very much.  I know I'm not to be often with you; but
+at least you'll have an eye on me, won't you?"
+
+"An eye on you!  I shall never want to have it off you, if you
+say such nice things to me!"  Susy laughed, leaning from her
+pillows to draw the little girl up to her side.
+
+Clarissa smiled and settled herself down comfortably on the
+silken bedspread.  "Oh, I know I'm not to be always about,
+because you're just married; but could you see to it that I have
+my meals regularly?"
+
+"Why, you poor darling!  Don't you always?"
+
+"Not when mother's away on these cures.  The servants don't
+always obey me:  you see I'm so little for my age.  In a few
+years, of course, they'll have to--even if I don't grow much,"
+she added judiciously.  She put out her hand and touched the
+string of pearls about Susy's throat.  "They're small, but
+they're very good.  I suppose you don't take the others when you
+travel?"
+
+"The others?  Bless you!  I haven't any others--and never shall
+have, probably."
+
+"No other pearls?"
+
+"No other jewels at all."
+
+Clarissa stared.  "Is that really true?"  she asked, as if in
+the presence of the unprecedented.
+
+"Awfully true," Susy confessed.  "But I think I can make the
+servants obey me all the same."
+
+This point seemed to have lost its interest for Clarissa, who
+was still gravely scrutinizing her companion.  After a while she
+brought forth another question.
+
+"Did you have to give up all your jewels when you were
+divorced?"
+
+"Divorced--?"  Susy threw her head back against the pillows and
+laughed.  "Why, what are you thinking of?   Don't you remember
+that I wasn't even married the last time you saw me?"
+
+"Yes; I do.  But that was two years ago."  The little girl wound
+her arms about Susy's neck and leaned against her caressingly.
+"Are you going to be soon, then? I'll promise not to tell if you
+don't want me to."
+
+"Going to be divorced?  Of course not!  What in the world made
+you think so? "
+
+"Because you look so awfully happy," said Clarissa Vanderlyn
+simply.
+
+
+
+V.
+
+IT was a trifling enough sign, but it had remained in Susy's
+mind:  that first morning in Venice Nick had gone out without
+first coming in to see her.  She had stayed in bed late,
+chatting with Clarissa, and expecting to see the door open and
+her husband appear; and when the child left, and she had jumped
+up and looked into Nick's room, she found it empty, and a line
+on his dressing table informed her that he had gone out to send
+a telegram.
+
+It was lover-like, and even boyish, of him to think it necessary
+to explain his absence; but why had he not simply come in and
+told her!  She instinctively connected the little fact with the
+shade of preoccupation she had noticed on his face the night
+before, when she had gone to his room and found him absorbed in
+letter; and while she dressed she had continued to wonder what
+was in the letter, and whether the telegram he had hurried out
+to send was an answer to it.
+
+She had never found out.  When he reappeared, handsome and happy
+as the morning, he proffered no explanation; and it was part of
+her life-long policy not to put uncalled-for questions.  It was
+not only that her jealous regard for her own freedom was matched
+by an equal respect for that of others; she had steered too long
+among the social reefs and shoals not to know how narrow is the
+passage that leads to peace of mind, and she was determined to
+keep her little craft in mid-channel.  But the incident had
+lodged itself in her memory, acquiring a sort of symbolic
+significance, as of a turning-point in her relations with her
+husband.  Not that these were less happy, but that she now
+beheld them, as she had always formerly beheld such joys, as an
+unstable islet in a sea of storms.  Her present bliss was as
+complete as ever, but it was ringed by the perpetual menace of
+all she knew she was hiding from Nick, and of all she suspected
+him of hiding from her ....
+
+She was thinking of these things one afternoon about three weeks
+after their arrival in Venice.  It was near sunset, and she sat
+alone on the balcony, watching the cross-lights on the water
+weave their pattern above the flushed reflection of old
+palace-basements.  She was almost always alone at that hour.
+Nick had taken to writing in the afternoons--he had been as good
+as his word, and so, apparently, had the Muse and it was his
+habit to join his wife only at sunset, for a late row on the
+lagoon.  She had taken Clarissa, as usual, to the Giardino
+Pubblico, where that obliging child had politely but
+indifferently "played"--Clarissa joined in the diversions of her
+age as if conforming to an obsolete tradition--and had brought
+her back for a music lesson, echoes of which now drifted down
+from a distant window.
+
+Susy had come to be extremely thankful for  Clarissa.  But for
+the little girl, her pride in her  husband's industry might have
+been tinged with a  faint sense of being at times left out and
+forgotten;  and as Nick's industry was the completest
+justification for their being where they were, and for her
+having done what she had, she was grateful  to Clarissa for
+helping her to feel less alone.  Clarissa, indeed, represented
+the other half of her  justification:  it was as much on the
+child's account as on Nick's that Susy had held her tongue,
+remained in Venice, and slipped out once a week to  post one of
+Ellie's numbered letters.  A day's experience of the Palazzo
+Vanderlyn had convinced Susy of the impossibility of deserting
+Clarissa.  Long experience had shown her that the most crowded
+households often contain the loneliest nurseries, and that the
+rich child is exposed to evils unknown to less pampered infancy;
+but hitherto such things had merely been to her one of the
+uglier bits in the big muddled pattern of life.  Now she found
+herself feeling where before she had only judged:  her
+precarious bliss came to her charged with a new weight of pity.
+
+She was thinking of these things, and of the approaching date of
+Ellie Vanderlyn's return, and of the searching truths she was
+storing up for that lady's private ear, when she noticed a
+gondola turning its prow toward the steps below the balcony.
+She leaned over, and a tall gentleman in shabby clothes,
+glancing up at her as he jumped out, waved a mouldy Panama in
+joyful greeting.
+
+"Streffy!" she exclaimed as joyfully; and she was half-way down
+the stairs when he ran up them followed by his luggage-laden
+boatman.
+
+"It's all right, I suppose?--Ellie said I might come," he
+explained in a shrill cheerful voice; "and I'm to have my same
+green room with the parrot-panels, because its furniture is
+already so frightfully stained with my hair-wash."
+
+Susy was beaming on him with the deep sense of satisfaction
+which his presence always produced in his friends.  There was no
+one in the world, they all agreed, half as ugly and untidy and
+delightful as Streffy; no one who combined such outspoken
+selfishness with such imperturbable good humour; no one who knew
+so well how to make you believe he was being charming to you
+when it was you who were being charming to him.
+
+In addition to these seductions, of which none estimated the
+value more accurately than their possessor, Strefford had for
+Susy another attraction of which he was probably unconscious.
+It was that of being the one rooted and stable being among the
+fluid and shifting figures that composed her world.  Susy had
+always lived among people so denationalized that those one took
+for Russians generally turned out to be American, and those one
+was inclined to ascribe to New York proved to have originated in
+Rome or Bucharest.  These cosmopolitan people, who, in countries
+not their own, lived in houses as big as hotels, or in hotels
+where the guests were as international as the waiters, had
+inter-married, inter-loved and inter-divorced each other over
+the whole face of Europe, and according to every code that
+attempts to regulate human ties.  Strefford, too, had his home
+in this world, but only one of his homes.  The other, the one he
+spoke of, and probably thought of, least often, was a great dull
+English country-house in a northern county, where a life as
+monotonous and self-contained as his own was chequered and
+dispersed had gone on for generation after generation; and it
+was the sense of that house, and of all it typified even to his
+vagrancy and irreverence, which, coming out now and then in his
+talk, or in his attitude toward something or somebody, gave him
+a firmer outline and a steadier footing than the other
+marionettes in the dance.  Superficially so like them all, and
+so eager to outdo them in detachment and adaptability,
+ridiculing the prejudices he had shaken off, and the people to
+whom he belonged, he still kept, under his easy pliancy, the
+skeleton of old faiths and old fashions.  "He talks every
+language as well as the rest of us," Susy had once said of him,
+"but at least he talks one language better than the others"; and
+Strefford, told of the remark, had laughed, called her an idiot,
+and been pleased.
+
+As he shambled up the stairs with her, arm in arm, she was
+thinking of this quality with a new appreciation of its value.
+Even she and Lansing, in spite of their unmixed Americanism,
+their substantial background of old-fashioned cousinships in New
+York and Philadelphia, were as mentally detached, as universally
+at home, as touts at an International Exhibition.  If they were
+usually recognized as Americans it was only because they spoke
+French so well, and because Nick was too fair to be "foreign,"
+and too sharp-featured to be English.  But Charlie Strefford was
+English with all the strength of an inveterate habit; and
+something in Susy was slowly waking to a sense of the beauty of
+habit.
+
+Lounging on the balcony, whither he had followed her without
+pausing to remove the stains of travel, Strefford showed himself
+immensely interested in the last chapter of her history, greatly
+pleased at its having been enacted under his roof, and hugely
+and flippantly amused at the firmness with which she refused to
+let him see Nick till the latter's daily task was over.
+
+"Writing?  Rot!  What's he writing?  He's breaking you in, my
+dear; that's what he's doing: establishing an alibi.  What'll
+you bet he's just sitting there smoking and reading Le Rire? 
+Let's go and see."
+
+But Susy was firm.  "He's read me his first chapter:  it's
+wonderful.  It's a philosophic romance--rather like Marius, you
+know."
+
+"Oh, yes--I do!" said Strefford, with a laugh that she thought
+idiotic.
+
+She flushed up like a child.  "You're stupid, Streffy.  You
+forget that Nick and I don't need alibis.  We've got rid of all
+that hyprocrisy by agreeing that each will give the other a hand
+up when either of us wants a change.  We've not married to spy
+and lie, and nag each other; we've formed a partnership for our
+mutual advantage."
+
+"I see; that's capital.  But how can you be sure that, when Nick
+wants a change, you'll consider it for his advantage to have
+one?"
+
+It was the point that had always secretly tormented Susy; she
+often wondered if it equally tormented Nick.
+
+"I hope I shall have enough common sense--" she began.
+
+"Oh, of course:  common sense is what you're both bound to base
+your argument on, whichever way you argue."
+
+This flash of insight disconcerted her, and she said, a little
+irritably:  "What should you do then, if you married?--Hush,
+Streffy!  I forbid you to shout like that--all the gondolas are
+stopping to look!"
+
+"How can I help it?"  He rocked backward and forward in his
+chair.  "'If you marry,' she says:  'Streffy, what have you
+decided to do if you suddenly become a raving maniac?'"
+
+"I said no such thing.  If your uncle and your cousin died,
+you'd marry to-morrow; you know you would."
+
+"Oh, now you're talking business."  He folded his long arms and
+leaned over the balcony, looking down at the dusky ripples
+streaked with fire.  "In that case I should say:  'Susan, my
+dear--Susan--now that by the merciful intervention of Providence
+you have become Countess of Altringham in the peerage of Great
+Britain, and Baroness Dunsterville and d'Amblay in the peerages
+of Ireland and Scotland, I'll thank you to remember that you are
+a member of one of the most ancient houses in the United
+Kingdom--and not to get found out.'"
+
+Susy laughed.  "We know what those warnings mean!  I pity my
+namesake."
+
+He swung about and gave her a quick look out of his small ugly
+twinkling eyes.  "Is there any other woman in the world named
+Susan?"
+
+"I hope so, if the name's an essential.  Even if Nick chucks me,
+don't count on me to carry out that programme.  I've seen it in
+practice too often."
+
+"Oh, well:  as far as I know, everybody's in perfect health at
+Altringham."  He fumbled in his pocket and drew out a fountain
+pen, a handkerchief over which it had leaked, and a packet of
+dishevelled cigarettes.  Lighting one, and restoring the other
+objects to his pocket, he continued calmly:  "Tell me how did
+you manage to smooth things over with the Gillows?  Ursula was
+running amuck when I was in Newport last Summer; it was just
+when people were beginning to say that you were going to marry
+Nick.  I was afraid she'd put a spoke in your wheel; and I hear
+she put a big cheque in your hand instead."
+
+Susy was silent.  From the first moment of Strefford's
+appearance she had known that in the  course of time he would
+put that question.  He was as inquisitive as a monkey, and when
+he had made up his mind to find out anything it was useless to
+try to divert his attention.  After a moment's hesitation she
+said:  "I flirted with Fred.  It was a bore but he was very
+decent."
+
+"He would be--poor Fred.  And you got Ursula thoroughly
+frightened!"
+
+"Well--enough.  And then luckily that young Nerone Altineri
+turned up from Rome:  he went over to New York to look for a job
+as an engineer, and Ursula made Fred put him in their iron
+works."  She paused again, and then added abruptly:  "Streffy!
+If you knew how I hate that kind of thing.  I'd rather have Nick
+come in now and tell me frankly, as I know he would, that he's
+going off with--"
+
+"With Coral Hicks?"  Strefford suggested.
+
+She laughed.  "Poor Coral Hicks!  What on earth made you think
+of the Hickses?"
+
+"Because I caught a glimpse of them the other day at Capri.
+They're cruising about:  they said they were coming in here."
+
+"What a nuisance!  I do hope they won't find us out.  They were
+awfully kind to Nick when he went to India with them, and
+they're so simple-minded that they would expect him to be glad
+to see them."
+
+Strefford aimed his cigarette-end at a tourist on a puggaree who
+was gazing up from his guidebook at the palace.  "Ah," he
+murmured with satisfaction, seeing the shot take effect; then he
+added:  "Coral Hicks is growing up rather pretty."
+
+"Oh, Streff--you're dreaming!  That lump of a girl with
+spectacles and thick ankles!  Poor Mrs. Hicks used to say to
+Nick:  'When Mr. Hicks and I had Coral educated we presumed
+culture was in greater demand in Europe than it appears to be.'"
+
+"Well, you'll see:  that girl's education won't interfere with
+her, once she's started.  So then:  if Nick came in and told you
+he was going off--"
+
+"I should be so thankful if it was with a fright like Coral!
+But you know," she added with a smile, "we've agreed that it's
+not to happen for a year."
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+SUSY found Strefford, after his first burst of nonsense,
+unusually kind and responsive.  The interest he showed in her
+future and Nick's seemed to proceed not so much from his
+habitual spirit of scientific curiosity as from simple
+friendliness.  He was privileged to see Nick's first chapter, of
+which he formed so favourable an impression that he spoke
+sternly to Susy on the importance of respecting her husband's
+working hours; and he even carried his general benevolence to
+the length of showing a fatherly interest in Clarissa Vanderlyn.
+He was always charming to children, but fitfully and warily,
+with an eye on his independence, and on the possibility of being
+suddenly bored by them; Susy had never seen him abandon these
+precautions so completely as he did with Clarissa.
+
+"Poor little devil!  Who looks after her when you and Nick are
+off together?  Do you mean to tell me Ellie sacked the governess
+and went away without having anyone to take her place?"
+
+"I think she expected me to do it," said Susy with a touch of
+asperity.  There were moments when her duty to Clarissa weighed
+on her somewhat heavily; whenever she went off alone with Nick
+she was pursued by the vision of a little figure waving wistful
+farewells from the balcony.
+
+"Ah, that's like Ellie:  you might have known she'd get an
+equivalent when she lent you all this.  But I don't believe she
+thought you'd be so conscientious about it."
+
+Susy considered.  "I don't suppose she did; and perhaps I
+shouldn't have been, a year ago.  But you see"--she hesitated-- 
+"Nick's so awfully good:  it's made me look; at a lot of things
+differently ...."
+
+"Oh, hang Nick's goodness!  It's happiness that's done it, my
+dear.  You're just one of the people with whom it happens to
+agree."
+
+Susy, leaning back, scrutinized between her lashes his crooked
+ironic face.
+
+"What is it that's agreeing with you, Streffy?  I've never seen
+you so human.  You must be getting an outrageous price for the
+villa."
+
+Strefford laughed and clapped his hand on his breast-pocket.  "I
+should be an ass not to:  I've got a wire here saying they must
+have it for another month at any price."
+
+"What luck!  I'm so glad.  Who are they, by the way?"
+
+He drew himself up out of the long chair in which he was
+disjointedly lounging, and looked down at her with a smile.
+"Another couple of love-sick idiots like you and Nick .... I
+say, before I spend it all let's go out and buy something
+ripping for Clarissa."
+
+The days passed so quickly and radiantly that, but for her
+concern for Clarissa, Susy would hardly have been conscious of
+her hostess's protracted absence.  Mrs. Vanderlyn had said:
+"Four weeks at the latest," and the four weeks were over, and
+she had neither arrived nor written to explain her non-
+appearance.  She had, in fact, given no sign of life since her
+departure, save in the shape of a post-card which had reached
+Clarissa the day after the Lansings' arrival, and in which Mrs.
+Vanderlyn instructed her child to be awfully good, and not to
+forget to feed the mongoose.  Susy noticed that this missive had
+been posted in Milan.
+
+She communicated her apprehensions to Strefford.  "I don't trust
+that green-eyed nurse.  She's forever with the younger
+gondolier; and Clarissa's so awfully sharp.  I don't see why
+Ellie hasn't come:  she was due last Monday."
+
+Her companion laughed, and something in the sound of his laugh
+suggested that he probably knew as much of Ellie's movements as
+she did, if not more.  The sense of disgust which the subject
+always roused in her made her look away quickly from his
+tolerant smile.  She would have given the world, at that moment,
+to have been free to tell Nick what she had learned on the night
+of their arrival, and then to have gone away with him, no matter
+where.  But there was Clarissa--!
+
+To fortify herself against the temptation, she resolutely fixed
+her thoughts on her husband.  Of Nick's beatitude there could be
+no doubt.  He adored her, he revelled in Venice, he rejoiced in
+his work; and concerning the quality of that work her judgment
+was as confident as her heart.  She still doubted if he would
+ever earn a living by what he wrote, but she no longer doubted
+that he would write something remarkable.  The mere fact that he
+was engaged on a philosophic romance, and not a mere novel,
+seemed the proof of an intrinsic superiority.  And if she had
+mistrusted her impartiality Strefford's approval would have
+reassured her.  Among their friends Strefford passed as an
+authority on such matters:  in summing him up his eulogists
+always added:  "And you know he writes."  As a matter of fact,
+the paying public had remained cold to his few published pages;
+but he lived among the kind of people who confuse taste with
+talent, and are impressed by the most artless attempts at
+literary expression; and though he affected to disdain their
+judgment, and his own efforts, Susy knew he was not sorry to
+have it said of him:  "Oh, if only Streffy had chosen--!"
+
+Strefford's approval of the philosophic romance convinced her
+that it had been worth while staying in Venice for Nick's sake;
+and if only Ellie would come back, and carry off Clarissa to St.
+Moritz or Deauville, the disagreeable episode on which their
+happiness was based would vanish like a cloud, and leave them to
+complete enjoyment.
+
+Ellie did not come; but the Mortimer Hickses did, and Nick
+Lansing was assailed by the scruples his wife had foreseen.
+Strefford, coming back one evening from the Lido, reported
+having recognized the huge outline of the Ibis among the
+pleasure craft of the outer harbour; and the very next evening,
+as the guests of Palazzo Vanderlyn were sipping their ices at
+Florian's, the Hickses loomed up across the Piazza.
+
+Susy pleaded in vain with her husband in defence of his privacy.
+"Remember you're here to write, dearest; it's your duty not to
+let any one interfere with that.  Why shouldn't we tell them
+we're just leaving!"
+
+"Because it's no use:  we're sure to be always meeting them.
+And besides, I'll be hanged if I'm going to shirk the Hickses.
+I spent five whole months on the Ibis, and if they bored me
+occasionally, India didn't."
+
+"We'll make them take us to Aquileia anyhow," said Strefford
+philosophically; and the next moment the Hickses were bearing
+down on the defenceless trio.
+
+They presented a formidable front, not only because of their
+mere physical bulk--Mr. and Mrs. Hicks were equally and
+majestically three-dimensional--but because they never moved
+abroad without the escort of two private secretaries (one for
+the foreign languages), Mr. Hicks's doctor, a maiden lady known
+as Eldoradder Tooker, who was Mrs. Hicks's cousin and
+stenographer, and finally their daughter, Coral Hicks.
+
+Coral Hicks, when Susy had last encountered the party, had been
+a fat spectacled school-girl, always lagging behind her parents,
+with a reluctant poodle in her wake.  Now the poodle had gone,
+and his mistress led the procession.  The fat school-girl had
+changed into a young lady of compact if not graceful outline; a
+long-handled eyeglass had replaced the spectacles, and through
+it, instead of a sullen glare, Miss Coral Hicks projected on the
+world a glance at once confident and critical.  She looked so
+strong and so assured that Susy, taking her measure in a flash,
+saw that her position at the head of the procession was not
+fortuitous, and murmured inwardly:  "Thank goodness she's not
+pretty too!"
+
+If she was not pretty, she was well-dressed; and if she was
+overeducated, she seemed capable, as Strefford had suggested, of
+carrying off even this crowning disadvantage.  At any rate, she
+was above disguising it; and before the whole party had been
+seated five minutes in front of a fresh supply of ices (with
+Eldorada and the secretaries at a table slightly in the
+background) she had taken up with Nick the question of
+exploration in Mesopotamia.
+
+"Queer child, Coral," he said to Susy that night as they smoked
+a last cigarette on their balcony.  "She told me this afternoon
+that she'd remembered lots of things she heard me say in India.
+I thought at the time that she cared only for caramels and
+picture-puzzles, but it seems she was listening to everything,
+and reading all the books she could lay her hands on; and she
+got so bitten with Oriental archaeology that she took a course
+last year at Bryn Mawr.  She means to go to Bagdad next spring,
+and back by the Persian plateau and Turkestan."
+
+Susy laughed luxuriously:  she was sitting with her hand in
+Nick's, while the late moon--theirs again--rounded its orange-
+coloured glory above the belfry of San Giorgio.
+
+"Poor Coral!  How dreary--" Susy murmured
+
+"Dreary?  Why?  A trip like that is about as well worth doing as
+anything I know."
+
+"Oh, I meant:  dreary to do it without you or me, she laughed,
+getting up lazily to go indoors.  A broad band of moonlight,
+dividing her room onto two shadowy halves, lay on the painted
+Venetian bed with its folded-back sheet, its old damask coverlet
+and lace-edged pillows.  She felt the warmth of Nick's enfolding
+arm and lifted her face to his.
+
+The Hickses retained the most tender memory of Nick's sojourn on
+the Ibis, and Susy, moved by their artless pleasure in meeting
+him again, was glad he had not followed her advice and tried to
+elude them.  She had always admired Strefford's ruthless talent
+for using and discarding the human material in his path, but now
+she began to hope that Nick would not remember her suggestion
+that he should mete out that measure to the Hickses.  Even if it
+had been less pleasant to have a big yacht at their door during
+the long golden days and the nights of silver fire, the Hickses'
+admiration for Nick would have made Susy suffer them gladly.
+She even began to be aware of a growing liking for them, a
+liking inspired by the very characteristics that would once have
+provoked her disapproval.  Susy had had plenty of training in
+liking common people with big purses; in such cases her stock of
+allowances and extenuations was inexhaustible.  But they had to
+be successful common people; and the trouble was that the
+Hickses, judged by her standards, were failures.  It was not
+only that they were ridiculous; so, heaven knew, were many of
+their rivals.  But the Hickses were both ridiculous and
+unsuccessful.  They had consistently resisted the efforts of the
+experienced advisers who had first descried them on the horizon
+and tried to help them upward.  They were always taking up the
+wrong people, giving the wrong kind of party, and spending
+millions on things that nobody who mattered cared about.  They
+all believed passionately in "movements" and "causes" and
+"ideals," and were always attended by the exponents of their
+latest beliefs, always asking you to hear lectures by haggard
+women in peplums, and having their portraits painted by wild
+people who never turned out to be the fashion.
+
+All this would formerly have increased Susy's contempt; now she
+found herself liking the Hickses most for their failings.  She
+was touched by their simple good faith, their isolation in the
+midst of all their queer apostles and parasites, their way of
+drifting about an alien and indifferent world in a compactly
+clinging group of which Eldorada Tooker, the doctor and the two
+secretaries formed the outer fringe, and by their view of
+themselves as a kind of collective re-incarnation of some past
+state of princely culture, symbolised for Mrs. Hicks in what she
+called "the court of the Renaissance."  Eldorada, of course, was
+their chief prophetess; but even the intensely "bright" and
+modern young secretaries, Mr. Beck and Mr. Buttles, showed a
+touching tendency to share her view, and spoke of Mr. Hicks as
+"promoting art," in the spirit of Pandolfino celebrating the
+munificence of the Medicis.
+
+"I'm getting really fond of the Hickses; I believe I should be
+nice to them even if they were staying at Danieli's," Susy said
+to Strefford.
+
+"And even if you owned the yacht?" he answered; and for once his
+banter struck her as beside the point.
+
+The Ibis carried them, during the endless June days, far and
+wide along the enchanted shores; they roamed among the
+Euganeans, they saw Aquileia and Pomposa and Ravenna.  Their
+hosts would gladly have taken them farther, across the Adriatic
+and on into the golden network of the Aegean; but Susy resisted
+this infraction of Nick's rules, and he himself preferred to
+stick to his task.  Only now he wrote in the early mornings, so
+that on most days they could set out before noon and steam back
+late to the low fringe of lights on the lagoon.  His work
+continued to progress, and as page was added to page Susy
+obscurely but surely perceived that each one corresponded with a
+hidden secretion of energy, the gradual forming within him of
+something that might eventually alter both their lives.  In what
+sense she could not conjecture:  she merely felt that the fact
+of his having chosen a job and stuck to it, if only through a
+few rosy summer weeks, had already given him a new way of saying
+"Yes" and "No."
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+OF some new ferment at work in him Nick Lansing himself was
+equally aware.  He was a better judge of the book he was trying
+to write than either Susy or Strefford; he knew its weaknesses,
+its treacheries, its tendency to slip through his fingers just
+as he thought his grasp tightest; but he knew also that at the
+very moment when it seemed to have failed him it would suddenly
+be back, beating its loud wings in his face.
+
+He had no delusions as to its commercial value, and had winced
+more than he triumphed when Susy produced her allusion to
+Marius.  His book was to be called The Pageant of Alexander.
+His imagination had been enchanted by the idea of picturing the
+young conqueror's advance through the fabulous landscapes of
+Asia:  he liked writing descriptions, and vaguely felt that
+under the guise of fiction he could develop his theory of
+Oriental influences in Western art at the expense of less
+learning than if he had tried to put his ideas into an essay.
+He knew enough of his subject to know that he did not know
+enough to write about it; but he consoled himself by remembering
+that Wilhelm Meister has survived many weighty volumes on
+aesthetics; and between his moments of self-disgust he took
+himself at Susy's valuation, and found an unmixed joy in his
+task.
+
+Never--no, never!--had he been so boundlessly, so confidently
+happy.  His hack-work had given him the habit of application,
+and now habit wore the glow of inspiration.  His previous
+literary ventures had been timid and tentative:  if this one was
+growing and strengthening on his hands, it must be because the
+conditions were so different.  He was at ease, he was secure, he
+was satisfied; and he had also, for the first time since his
+early youth, before his mother's death, the sense of having some
+one to look after, some one who was his own particular care, and
+to whom he was answerable for himself and his actions, as he had
+never felt himself answerable to the hurried and indifferent
+people among whom he had chosen to live.
+
+Susy had the same standards as these people:  she spoke their
+language, though she understood others, she required their
+pleasures if she did not revere their gods.  But from the moment
+that she had become his property he had built up in himself a
+conception of her answering to some deep-seated need of
+veneration.  She was his, he had chosen her, she had taken her
+place in the long line of Lansing women who had been loved,
+honoured, and probably deceived, by bygone Lansing men.  He
+didn't pretend to understand the logic of it; but the fact that
+she was his wife gave purpose and continuity to his scattered
+impulses, and a mysterious glow of consecration to his task.
+
+Once or twice, in the first days of his marriage, he had asked
+himself with a slight shiver what would happen if Susy should
+begin to bore him.  The thing had happened to him with other
+women as to whom his first emotions had not differed in
+intensity from those she inspired.  The part he had played in
+his previous love-affairs might indeed have been summed up in
+the memorable line:  "I am the hunter and the prey," for he had
+invariably ceased to be the first only to regard himself as the
+second.  This experience had never ceased to cause him the
+liveliest pain, since his sympathy for his pursuer was only less
+keen than his commiseration for himself; but as he was always a
+little sorrier for himself, he had always ended by distancing
+the pursuer.
+
+All these pre-natal experiences now seemed utterly inapplicable
+to the new man he had become.  He could not imagine being bored
+by Susy--or trying to escape from her if he were.  He could not
+think of her as an enemy, or even as an accomplice, since
+accomplices are potential enemies:  she was some one with whom,
+by some unheard-of miracle, joys above the joys of friendship
+were to be tasted, but who, even through these fleeting
+ecstasies, remained simply and securely his friend.
+
+These new feelings did not affect his general attitude toward
+life:  they merely confirmed his faith in its ultimate
+"jolliness."  Never had he more thoroughly enjoyed the things he
+had always enjoyed.  A good dinner had never been as good to
+him, a beautiful sunset as beautiful; he still rejoiced in the
+fact that he appreciated both with an equal acuity.  He was as
+proud as ever of Susy's cleverness and freedom from prejudice:
+she couldn't be too "modern" for him now that she was his.  He
+shared to the full her passionate enjoyment of the present, and
+all her feverish eagerness to make it last.  He knew when she
+was thinking of ways of extending their golden opportunity, and
+he secretly thought with her, wondering what new means they
+could devise.  He was thankful that Ellie Vanderlyn was still
+absent, and began to hope they might have the palace to
+themselves for the remainder of the summer.  If they did, he
+would have time to finish his book, and Susy to lay up a little
+interest on their wedding cheques; and thus their enchanted year
+might conceivably be prolonged to two.
+
+Late as the season was, their presence and Strefford's in Venice
+had already drawn thither several wandering members of their
+set.  It was characteristic of these indifferent but
+agglutinative people that they could never remain long parted
+from each other without a dim sense of uneasiness.  Lansing was
+familiar with the feeling.  He had known slight twinges of it
+himself, and had often ministered to its qualms in others.  It
+was hardly stronger than the faint gnawing which recalls the
+tea-hour to one who has lunched well and is sure of dining as
+abundantly; but it gave a purpose to the purposeless, and helped
+many hesitating spirits over the annual difficulty of deciding
+between Deauville and St. Moritz, Biarritz and Capri.
+
+Nick was not surprised to learn that it was becoming the
+fashion, that summer, to pop down to Venice and take a look at
+the Lansings.  Streffy had set the example, and Streffy's
+example was always followed.  And then Susy's marriage was still
+a subject of sympathetic speculation.  People knew the story of
+the wedding cheques, and were interested in seeing how long they
+could be made to last.  It was going to be the thing, that year,
+to help prolong the honey-moon by pressing houses on the
+adventurous couple.  Before June was over a band of friends were
+basking with the Lansings on the Lido.
+
+Nick found himself unexpectedly disturbed by their arrival.  To
+avoid comment and banter he put his book aside and forbade Susy
+to speak of it, explaining to her that he needed an interval of
+rest.  His wife instantly and exaggeratedly adopted this view,
+guarding him from the temptation to work as jealously as she had
+discouraged him from idling; and he was careful not to let her
+find out that the change in his habits coincided with his having
+reached a difficult point in his book.  But though he was not
+sorry to stop writing he found himself unexpectedly oppressed by
+the weight of his leisure.  For the first time communal dawdling
+had lost its charm for him; not because his fellow dawdlers were
+less congenial than of old, but because in the interval he had
+known something so immeasurably better.  He had always felt
+himself to be the superior of his habitual associates, but now
+the advantage was too great:  really, in a sense, it was hardly
+fair to them.
+
+He had flattered himself that Susy would share this feeling; but
+he perceived with annoyance that the arrival of their friends
+heightened her animation.  It was as if the inward glow which
+had given her a new beauty were now refracted upon her by the
+presence of the very people they had come to Venice to avoid.
+
+Lansing was vaguely irritated; and when he asked her how she
+liked being with their old crowd again his irritation was
+increased by her answering with a laugh that she only hoped the
+poor dears didn't see too plainly how they bored her.  The
+patent insincerity of the reply was a shock to Lansing.  He knew
+that Susy was not really bored, and he understood that she had
+simply guessed his feelings and instinctively adopted them:
+that henceforth she was always going to think as he thought.  To
+confirm this fear he said carelessly:  "Oh, all the same, it's
+rather jolly knocking about with them again for a bit;" and she
+answered at once, and with equal conviction:  "Yes, isn't it?
+The old darlings--all the same!"
+
+A fear of the future again laid its cold touch on Lansing.
+Susy's independence and self-sufficiency had been among her
+chief attractions; if she were to turn into an echo their
+delicious duet ran the risk of becoming the dullest of
+monologues.  He forgot that five minutes earlier he had resented
+her being glad to see their friends, and for a moment he found
+himself leaning dizzily over that insoluble riddle of the
+sentimental life:  that to be differed with is exasperating, and
+to be agreed with monotonous.
+
+Once more he began to wonder if he were not fundamentally
+unfitted for the married state; and was saved from despair only
+by remembering that Susy's subjection to his moods was not
+likely to last.  But even then it never occurred to him to
+reflect that his apprehensions were superfluous, since their tie
+was avowedly a temporary one.  Of the special understanding on
+which their marriage had been based not a trace remained in his
+thoughts of her; the idea that he or she might ever renounce
+each other for their mutual good had long since dwindled to the
+ghost of an old joke.
+
+It was borne in on him, after a week or two of unbroken
+sociability, that of all his old friends it was the Mortimer
+Hickses who bored him the least.  The Hickses had left the Ibis
+for an apartment in a vast dilapidated palace near the
+Canareggio.  They had hired the apartment from a painter (one of
+their newest discoveries), and they put up philosophically with
+the absence of modern conveniences in order to secure the
+inestimable advantage of "atmosphere."  In this privileged air
+they gathered about them their usual mixed company of quiet
+studious people and noisy exponents of new theories, themselves
+totally unconscious of the disparity between their different
+guests, and beamingly convinced that at last they were seated at
+the source of wisdom.
+
+In old days Lansing would have got half an hour's amusement,
+followed by a long evening of boredom, from the sight of Mrs.
+Hicks, vast and jewelled, seated between a quiet-looking
+professor of archaeology and a large-browed composer, or the
+high priest of a new dance-step, while Mr. Hicks, beaming above
+his vast white waistcoat, saw to it that the champagne flowed
+more abundantly than the talk, and the bright young secretaries
+industriously "kept up" with the dizzy cross-current of prophecy
+and erudition.  But a change had come over Lansing.  Hitherto it
+was in contrast to his own friends that the Hickses had seemed
+most insufferable; now it was as an escape from these same
+friends that they had become not only sympathetic but even
+interesting.  It was something, after all, to be with people who
+did not regard Venice simply as affording exceptional
+opportunities for bathing and adultery, but who were reverently
+if confusedly aware that they were in the presence of something
+unique and ineffable, and determined to make the utmost of their
+privilege.
+
+"After all," he said to himself one evening, as his eyes
+wandered, with somewhat of a convalescent's simple joy, from one
+to another of their large confiding faces, "after all, they've
+got a religion ...."  The phrase struck him, in the moment of
+using it, as indicating a new element in his own state of mind,
+and as being, in fact, the key to his new feeling about the
+Hickses.  Their muddled ardour for great things was related to
+his own new view of the universe:  the people who felt, however
+dimly, the wonder and weight of life must ever after be nearer
+to him than those to whom it was estimated solely by one's
+balance at the bank.  He supposed, on reflexion, that that was
+what he meant when he thought of the Hickses as having "a
+religion" ....
+
+A few days later, his well-being was unexpectedly disturbed by
+the arrival of Fred Gillow.  Lansing had always felt a tolerant
+liking for Gillow, a large smiling silent young man with an
+intense and serious desire to miss nothing attainable by one of
+his fortune and standing.  What use he made of his experiences,
+Lansing, who had always gone into his own modest adventures
+rather thoroughly, had never been able to guess; but he had
+always suspected the prodigal Fred of being no more than a well-
+disguised looker-on.  Now for the first time he began to view
+him with another eye.  The Gillows were, in fact, the one uneasy
+point in Nick's conscience.  He and Susy from the first, had
+talked of them less than of any other members of their group:
+they had tacitly avoided the name from the day on which Susy had
+come to Lansing's lodgings to say that Ursula Gillow had asked
+her to renounce him, till that other day, just before their
+marriage, when she had met him with the rapturous cry:  "Here's
+our first wedding present!  Such a thumping big cheque from Fred
+and Ursula!"
+
+Plenty of sympathizing people were ready, Lansing knew, to tell
+him just what had happened in the interval between those two
+dates; but he had taken care not to ask.  He had even affected
+an initiation so complete that the friends who burned to
+enlighten him were discouraged by his so obviously knowing more
+than they; and gradually he had worked himself around to their
+view, and had taken it for granted that he really did.
+
+Now he perceived that he knew nothing at all, and that the
+"Hullo, old Fred!" with which Susy hailed Gillow's arrival might
+be either the usual tribal welcome--since they were all "old,"
+and all nicknamed, in their private jargon--or a greeting that
+concealed inscrutable depths of complicity.
+
+Susy was visibly glad to see Gillow; but she was glad of
+everything just then, and so glad to show her gladness!  The
+fact disarmed her husband and made him ashamed of his
+uneasiness.  "You ought to have thought this all out sooner, or
+else you ought to chuck thinking of it at all," was the sound
+but ineffectual advice he gave himself on the day after Gillow's
+arrival; and immediately set to work to rethink the whole
+matter.
+
+Fred Gillow showed no consciousness of disturbing any one's
+peace of mind.  Day after day he sprawled for hours on the Lido
+sands, his arms folded under his head, listening to Streffy's
+nonsense and watching Susy between sleepy lids; but he betrayed
+no desire to see her alone, or to draw her into talk apart from
+the others.  More than ever he seemed content to be the
+gratified spectator of a costly show got up for his private
+entertainment.  It was not until he heard her, one morning,
+grumble a little at the increasing heat and the menace of
+mosquitoes, that he said, quite as if they had talked the matter
+over long before, and finally settled it:  "The moor will be
+ready any time after the first of August."
+
+Nick fancied that Susy coloured a little, and drew herself up
+more defiantly than usual as she sent a pebble skimming across
+the dying ripples at their feet.
+
+"You'll be a lot cooler in Scotland," Fred added, with what, for
+him, was an unusual effort at explicitness.
+
+"Oh, shall we?" she retorted gaily; and added with an air of
+mystery and importance, pivoting about on her high heels:
+"Nick's got work to do here.  It will probably keep us all
+summer."
+
+"Work?  Rot!  You'll die of the smells."  Gillow stared
+perplexedly skyward from under his tilted hat-brim; and then
+brought out, as from the depth of a rankling grievance:  "I
+thought it was all understood."
+
+"Why," Nick asked his wife that night, as they re-entered
+Ellie's cool drawing-room after a late dinner at the Lido, "did
+Gillow think it was understood that we were going to his moor in
+August?"  He was conscious of the oddness of speaking of their
+friend by his surname, and reddened at his blunder.
+
+Susy had let her lace cloak slide to her feet, and stood before
+him in the faintly-lit room, slim and shimmering-white through
+black transparencies.
+
+She raised her eyebrows carelessly.  "I told you long ago he'd
+asked us there for August."
+
+"You didn't tell me you'd accepted."
+
+She smiled as if he had said something as simple as Fred.  "I
+accepted everything--from everybody!"
+
+What could he answer?  It was the very principle on which their
+bargain had been struck.  And if he were to say:  "Ah, but this
+is different, because I'm jealous of Gillow," what light would
+such an answer shed on his past?  The time for being jealous-if
+so antiquated an attitude were on any ground defensible-would
+have been before his marriage, and before the acceptance of the
+bounties which had helped to make it possible.  He wondered a
+little now that in those days such scruples had not troubled
+him.  His inconsistency irritated him, and increased his
+irritation against Gillow.  "I suppose he thinks he owns us!" he
+grumbled inwardly.
+
+He had thrown himself into an armchair, and Susy, advancing
+across the shining arabesques of the floor, slid down at his
+feet, pressed her slender length against him, and whispered with
+lifted face and lips close to his:  "We needn't ever go anywhere
+you don't want to."  For once her submission was sweet, and
+folding her close he whispered back through his kiss:  "Not
+there, then."
+
+In her response to his embrace he felt the acquiescence of her
+whole happy self in whatever future he decided on, if only it
+gave them enough of such moments as this; and as they held each
+other fast in silence his doubts and distrust began to seem like
+a silly injustice.
+
+"Let us stay here as long as ever Ellie will let us," he said,
+as if the shadowy walls and shining floors were a magic boundary
+drawn about his happiness.
+
+She murmured her assent and stood up, stretching her sleepy arm
+above her shoulders.  "How dreadfully late it is ....  Will you
+unhook me? ... Oh, there's a telegram."
+
+She picked it up from the table, and tearing it open stared a
+moment at the message.  "It's from Ellie.  She's coming to-
+morrow."
+
+She turned to the window and strayed out onto the balcony.  Nick
+followed her with enlacing arm.  The canal below them lay in
+moonless shadow, barred with a few lingering lights.  A last
+snatch of gondola-music came from far off, carried upward on a
+sultry gust.
+
+"Dear old Ellie.  All the same ... I wish all this belonged to
+you and me."  Susy sighed.
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+IT was not Mrs. Vanderlyn's fault if, after her arrival, her
+palace seemed to belong any less to the Lansings.
+
+She arrived in a mood of such general benevolence that it was
+impossible for Susy, when they finally found themselves alone,
+to make her view even her own recent conduct in any but the most
+benevolent light.
+
+"I knew you'd be the veriest angel about it all, darling,
+because I knew you'd understand me-- especially now," she
+declared, her slim hands in Susy's, her big eyes (so like
+Clarissa's) resplendent with past pleasures and future plans.
+
+The expression of her confidence was unexpectedly distasteful to
+Susy Lansing, who had never lent so cold an ear to such warm
+avowals.  She had always imagined that being happy one's self
+made one--as Mrs. Vanderlyn appeared to assume --more tolerant
+of the happiness of others, of however doubtful elements
+composed; and she was almost ashamed of responding so languidly
+to her friend's outpourings.  But she herself had no desire to
+confide her bliss to Ellie; and why should not Ellie observe a
+similar reticence?
+
+"It was all so perfect--you see, dearest, I was meant to be
+happy," that lady continued, as if the possession of so unusual
+a characteristic singled her out for special privileges.
+
+Susy, with a certain sharpness, responded that she had always
+supposed we all were.
+
+"Oh, no, dearest:  not governesses and mothers-in-law and
+companions, and that sort of people.  They wouldn't know how if
+they tried.  But you and I, darling--"
+
+"Oh, I don't consider myself in any way exceptional," Susy
+intervened.  She longed to add:  "Not in your way, at any
+rate--" but a few minutes earlier Mrs. Vanderlyn had told her
+that the palace was at her disposal for the rest of the summer,
+and that she herself was only going to perch there--if they'd
+let her!--long enough to gather up her things and start for St.
+Moritz.  The memory of this announcement had the effect of
+curbing Susy's irony, and of making her shift the conversation
+to the safer if scarcely less absorbing topic of the number of
+day and evening dresses required for a season at St. Moritz.
+
+As she listened to Mrs. Vanderlyn--no less eloquent on this
+theme than on the other--Susy began to measure the gulf between
+her past and present.  "This is the life I used to lead; these
+are the things I used to live for," she thought, as she stood
+before the outspread glories of Mrs. Vanderlyn's wardrobe.  Not
+that she did not still care:  she could not look at Ellie's
+laces and silks and furs without picturing herself in them, and
+wondering by what new miracle of management she could give
+herself the air of being dressed by the same consummate artists.
+But these had become minor interests:  the past few months had
+given her a new perspective, and the thing that most puzzled and
+disconcerted her about Ellie was the fact that love and finery
+and bridge and dining-out were seemingly all on the same plane
+to her.
+
+The inspection of the dresses lasted a long time, and was marked
+by many fluctuations of mood on the part of Mrs. Vanderlyn, who
+passed from comparative hopefulness to despair at the total
+inadequacy of her wardrobe.  It wouldn't do to go to St. Moritz
+looking like a frump, and yet there was no time to get anything
+sent from Paris, and, whatever she did, she wasn't going to show
+herself in any dowdy re-arrangements done at home. But suddenly
+light broke on her, and she clasped her hands for joy.  "Why,
+Nelson'll bring them--I'd forgotten all about Nelson!  There'll
+be just time if I wire to him at once."
+
+"Is Nelson going to join you at St. Moritz?"  Susy asked,
+surprised.
+
+"Heavens, no!  He's coming here to pick up Clarissa and take her
+to some stuffy cure in Austria with his mother.  It's too lucky:
+there's just time to telegraph him to bring my things.  I didn't
+mean to wait for him; but it won't delay me more than day or
+two."
+
+Susy's heart sank.  She was not much afraid of Ellie alone, but
+Ellie and Nelson together formed an incalculable menace.  No one
+could tell what spark of truth might dash from their collision.
+Susy felt that she could deal with the two dangers separately
+and successively, but not together and simultaneously.
+
+"But, Ellie, why should you wait for Nelson?  I'm certain to
+find someone here who's going to St. Moritz and will take your
+things if he brings them.  It's a pity to risk losing your
+rooms."
+
+This argument appealed for a moment to Mrs. Vanderlyn.  "That's
+true; they say all the hotels are jammed.  You dear, you're
+always so practical!"  She clasped Susy to her scented bosom.
+"And you know, darling, I'm sure you'll be glad to get rid of
+me--you and Nick!  Oh, don't be hypocritical and say 'Nonsense!'
+You see, I understand ... I used to think of you so often, you
+two ... during those blessed weeks when we two were alone...."
+
+The sudden tears, brimming over Ellie's lovely eyes, and
+threatening to make the blue circles below them run into the
+adjoining carmine, filled Susy with compunction.
+
+"Poor thing--oh, poor thing!" she thought; and hearing herself
+called by Nick, who was waiting to take her out for their usual
+sunset on the lagoon, she felt a wave of pity for the deluded
+creature who would never taste that highest of imaginable joys.
+"But all the same," Susy reflected, as she hurried down to her
+husband, "I'm glad I persuaded her not to wait for Nelson."
+
+Some days had elapsed since Susy and Nick had had a sunset to
+themselves, and in the interval Susy had once again learned the
+superior quality of the sympathy that held them together.  She
+now viewed all the rest of life as no more than a show:  a jolly
+show which it would have been a thousand pities to miss, but
+which, if the need arose, they could get up and leave at any
+moment--provided that they left it together.
+
+In the dusk, while their prow slid over inverted palaces, and
+through the scent of hidden gardens, she leaned against him and
+murmured, her mind returning to the recent scene with Ellie:
+"Nick, should you hate me dreadfully if I had no clothes?"
+
+Her husband was kindling a cigarette, and the match lit up the
+grin with which he answered:  "But, my dear, have I ever shown
+the slightest symptom--?"
+
+"Oh, rubbish!  When a woman says:  'No clothes,' she means:
+'Not the right clothes.'"
+
+He took a meditative puff.  "Ah, you've been going over Ellie's
+finery with her."
+
+"Yes:  all those trunks and trunks full.  And she finds she's
+got nothing for St. Moritz!"
+
+"Of course," he murmured, drowsy with content, and manifesting
+but a languid interest in the subject of Mrs. Vanderlyn's
+wardrobe.
+
+"Only fancy--she very nearly decided to stop over for Nelson's
+arrival next week, so that he might bring her two or three more
+trunkfuls from Paris.  But mercifully I've managed to persuade
+her that it would be foolish to wait."
+
+Susy felt a hardly perceptible shifting of her husband's
+lounging body, and was aware, through all her watchful
+tentacles, of a widening of his half-closed lids.
+
+"You 'managed'--?"  She fancied he paused on the word
+ironically.  "But why?"
+
+"Why--what?"
+
+"Why on earth should you try to prevent Ellie's waiting for
+Nelson, if for once in her life she wants to?"
+
+Susy, conscious of reddening suddenly, drew back as though the
+leap of her tell-tale heart might have penetrated the blue
+flannel shoulder against which she leaned.
+
+"Really, dearest--!" she murmured; but with a sudden doggedness
+he renewed his "Why?"
+
+"Because she's in such a fever to get to St. Moritz--and in such
+a funk lest the hotel shouldn't keep her rooms," Susy somewhat
+breathlessly produced.
+
+"Ah--I see."  Nick paused again.  "You're a devoted friend,
+aren't you!"
+
+"What an odd question!  There's hardly anyone I've reason to be
+more devoted to than Ellie," his wife answered; and she felt his
+contrite clasp on her hand.
+
+"Darling!  No; nor I--.  Or more grateful to for leaving us
+alone in this heaven."
+
+Dimness had fallen on the waters, and her lifted lips met his
+bending ones.
+
+Trailing late into dinner that evening, Ellie announced that,
+after all, she had decided it was safest to wait for Nelson.
+
+"I should simply worry myself ill if I weren't sure of getting
+my things," she said, in the tone of tender solicitude with
+which she always discussed her own difficulties.  "After all,
+people who deny themselves everything do get warped and bitter,
+don't they?" she argued plaintively, her lovely eyes wandering
+from one to the other of her assembled friends.
+
+Strefford remarked gravely that it was the complaint which had
+fatally undermined his own health; and in the laugh that
+followed the party drifted into the great vaulted dining-room.
+
+"Oh, I don't mind your laughing at me, Streffy darling," his
+hostess retorted, pressing his arm against her own; and Susy,
+receiving the shock of their rapidly exchanged glance, said to
+herself, with a sharp twinge of apprehension:  "Of course
+Streffy knows everything; he showed no surprise at finding Ellie
+away when he arrived.  And if he knows, what's to prevent
+Nelson's finding out?"  For Strefford, in a mood of mischief,
+was no more to be trusted than a malicious child.
+
+Susy instantly resolved to risk speaking to him, if need be even
+betraying to him the secret of the letters.  Only by revealing
+the depth of her own danger could she hope to secure his
+silence.
+
+On the balcony, late in the evening, while the others were
+listening indoors to the low modulations of a young composer who
+had embroidered his fancies on Browning's "Toccata," Susy found
+her chance.  Strefford, unsummoned, had followed her out, and
+stood silently smoking at her side.
+
+"You see, Streff--oh, why should you and I make mysteries to
+each other?" she suddenly began.
+
+"Why, indeed:  but do we?"
+
+Susy glanced back at the group around the piano.  "About Ellie,
+I mean--and Nelson."
+
+"Lord!  Ellie and Nelson?  You call that a mystery?  I should as
+soon apply the term to one of the million candle-power
+advertisements that adorn your native thoroughfares."
+
+"Well, yes. But--" She stopped again.  Had she not tacitly
+promised Ellie not to speak?
+
+"My Susan, what's wrong?"  Strefford asked.
+
+"I don't know...."
+
+"Well, I do, then: you're afraid that, if Ellie and Nelson meet
+here, she'll blurt out something--injudicious."
+
+"Oh, she won't!"  Susy cried with conviction.
+
+"Well, then--who will!  I trust that superhuman child not to.
+And you and I and Nick--"
+
+"Oh," she gasped, interrupting him, "that's just it.  Nick
+doesn't know ... doesn't even suspect.  And if he did...."
+
+Strefford flung away his cigar and turned to scrutinize her.  "I
+don't see--hanged if I do.  What business is it of any of us,
+after all?"
+
+That, of course, was the old view that cloaked connivance in an
+air of decency.  But to Susy it no longer carried conviction,
+and she hesitated.
+
+"If Nick should find out that I know...."
+
+"Good Lord--doesn't he know that you know?  After all, I suppose
+it's not the first time--"
+
+She remained silent.
+
+"The first time you've received confidences--from married
+friends.  Does Nick suppose you've lived even to your tender age
+without ... Hang it, what's come over you, child?"
+
+What had, indeed, that she could make clear to him?  And yet
+more than ever she felt the need of having him securely on her
+side.  Once his word was pledged, he was safe:  otherwise there
+was no limit to his capacity for wilful harmfulness.
+
+"Look here, Streff, you and I know that Ellie hasn't been away
+for a cure; and that if poor Clarissa was sworn to secrecy it
+was not because it 'worries father' to think that mother needs
+to take care of her health."  She paused, hating herself for the
+ironic note she had tried to sound.
+
+"Well--?" he questioned, from the depths of the chair into which
+he had sunk.
+
+"Well, Nick doesn't ... doesn't dream of it.  If he knew that we
+owed our summer here to ... to my knowing...."
+
+Strefford sat silent:  she felt his astonished stare through the
+darkness.  "Jove!" he said at last, with a low whistle Susy bent
+over the balustrade, her heart thumping against the stone rail.
+
+"What was left of soul, I wonder--?"  the young composer's voice
+shrilled through the open windows.
+
+Strefford sank into another silence, from which he roused
+himself only as Susy turned back toward the lighted threshold.
+
+"Well, my dear, we'll see it through between us; you and I-and
+Clarissa," he said with his rasping laugh, rising to follow her.
+He caught her hand and gave it a short pressure as they re-
+entered the drawing-room, where Ellie was saying plaintively to
+Fred Gillow:  "I can never hear that thing sung without wanting
+to cry like a baby."
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+NELSON VANDERLYN, still in his travelling clothes, paused on the
+threshold of his own dining-room and surveyed the scene with
+pardonable satisfaction.
+
+He was a short round man, with a grizzled head, small facetious
+eyes and a large and credulous smile.
+
+At the luncheon table sat his wife, between Charlie Strefford
+and Nick Lansing.  Next to Strefford, perched on her high chair,
+Clarissa throned in infant beauty, while Susy Lansing cut up a
+peach for her.  Through wide orange awnings the sun slanted in
+upon the white-clad group.
+
+"Well--well--well!  So I've caught you at it!" cried the happy
+father, whose inveterate habit it was to address his wife and
+friends as if he had surprised them at an inopportune moment.
+Stealing up from behind, he lifted his daughter into the air,
+while a chorus of "Hello, old Nelson," hailed his appearance.
+
+It was two or three years since Nick Lansing had seen Mr.
+Vanderlyn, who was now the London representative of the big New
+York bank of Vanderlyn & Co., and had exchanged his sumptuous
+house in Fifth Avenue for another, more sumptuous still, in
+Mayfair; and the young man looked curiously and attentively at
+his host.
+
+Mr. Vanderlyn had grown older and stouter, but his face still
+kept its look of somewhat worn optimism.  He embraced his wife,
+greeted Susy affectionately, and distributed cordial hand-grasps
+to the two men.
+
+"Hullo," he exclaimed, suddenly noticing a pearl and coral
+trinket hanging from Clarissa's neck.  "Who's been giving my
+daughter jewellery, I'd like to know!"
+
+"Oh, Streffy did--just think, father!  Because I said I'd rather
+have it than a book, you know," Clarissa lucidly explained, her
+arms tight about her father's neck, her beaming eyes on
+Strefford.
+
+Nelson Vanderlyn's own eyes took on the look of shrewdness which
+came into them whenever there was a question of material values.
+
+"What, Streffy?  Caught you at it, eh?  Upon my soul-spoiling
+the brat like that!  You'd no business to, my dear chap-a
+lovely baroque pearl--" he protested, with the half-apologetic
+tone of the rich man embarrassed by too costly a gift from an
+impecunious friend.
+
+"Oh, hadn't I?  Why?  Because it's too good for Clarissa, or too
+expensive for me?  Of course you daren't imply the first; and as
+for me--I've had a windfall, and am blowing it in on the
+ladies."
+
+Strefford, Lansing had noticed, always used American slang when
+he was slightly at a loss, and wished to divert attention from
+the main point.  But why was he embarrassed, whose attention did
+he wish to divert, It was plain that Vanderlyn's protest had
+been merely formal:  like most of the wealthy, he had only the
+dimmest notion of what money represented to the poor.  But it
+was unusual for Strefford to give any one a present, and
+especially an expensive one:  perhaps that was what had fixed
+Vanderlyn's attention.
+
+"A windfall?" he gaily repeated.
+
+"Oh, a tiny one:  I was offered a thumping rent for my little
+place at Como, and dashed over here to squander my millions with
+the rest of you," said Strefford imperturbably.
+
+Vanderlyn's look immediately became interested and sympathetic.
+"What--the scene of the honey-moon?"  He included Nick and Susy
+in his friendly smile.
+
+"Just so:  the reward of virtue.  I say, give me a cigar, will
+you, old man, I left some awfully good ones at Como, worse
+luck--and I don't mind telling you that Ellie's no judge of
+tobacco, and that Nick's too far gone in bliss to care what he
+smokes," Strefford grumbled, stretching a hand toward his host's
+cigar-case.
+
+"I do like jewellery best," Clarissa murmured, hugging her
+father.
+
+Nelson Vanderlyn's first word to his wife had been that he had
+brought her all her toggery; and she had welcomed him with
+appropriate enthusiasm.  In fact, to the lookers-on her joy at
+seeing him seemed rather too patently in proportion to her
+satisfaction at getting her clothes.  But no such suspicion
+appeared to mar Mr. Vanderlyn's happiness in being, for once,
+and for nearly twenty-four hours, under the same roof with his
+wife and child.  He did not conceal his regret at having
+promised his mother to join her the next day; and added, with a
+wistful glance at Ellie:  "If only I'd known you meant to wait
+for me!"
+
+But being a man of duty, in domestic as well as business
+affairs, he did not even consider the possibility of
+disappointing the exacting old lady to whom he owed his being.
+"Mother cares for so few people," he used to say, not without a
+touch of filial pride in the parental exclusiveness, "that I
+have to be with her rather more than if she were more sociable";
+and with smiling resignation he gave orders that Clarissa should
+be ready to start the next evening.
+
+"And meanwhile," he concluded, "we'll have all the good time
+that's going."
+
+The ladies of the party seemed united in the desire to further
+this resolve; and it was settled that as soon as Mr. Vanderlyn
+had despatched a hasty luncheon, his wife, Clarissa and Susy
+should carry him off for a tea-picnic at Torcello.  They did not
+even suggest that Strefford or Nick should be of the party, or
+that any of the other young men of the group should be summoned;
+as Susy said, Nelson wanted to go off alone with his harem.  And
+Lansing and Strefford were left to watch the departure of the
+happy Pasha ensconced between attentive beauties.
+
+"Well--that's what you call being married!"  Strefford
+commented, waving his battered Panama at Clarissa.
+
+"Oh, no, I don't!"  Lansing laughed.
+
+"He does.  But do you know--" Strefford paused and swung about
+on his companion--"do you know, when the Rude Awakening comes, I
+don't care to be there.  I believe there'll be some crockery
+broken."
+
+"Shouldn't wonder," Lansing answered indifferently.  He wandered
+away to his own room, leaving Strefford to philosophize to his
+pipe.
+
+Lansing had always known about poor old Nelson:  who hadn't,
+except poor old Nelson?  The case had once seemed amusing
+because so typical; now, it rather irritated Nick that Vanderlyn
+should be so complete an ass.  But he would be off the next day,
+and so would Ellie, and then, for many enchanted weeks, the
+palace would once more be the property of Nick and Susy.  Of all
+the people who came and went in it, they were the only ones who
+appreciated it, or knew how it was meant to be lived in; and
+that made it theirs in the only valid sense.  In this light it
+became easy to regard the Vanderlyns as mere transient
+intruders.
+
+Having relegated them to this convenient distance, Lansing shut
+himself up with his book.  He had returned to it with fresh
+energy after his few weeks of holiday-making, and was determined
+to finish it quickly.  He did not expect that it would bring in
+much money; but if it were moderately successful it might give
+him an opening in the reviews and magazines, and in that case he
+meant to abandon archaeology for novels, since it was only as a
+purveyor of fiction that he could count on earning a living for
+himself and Susy.
+
+Late in the afternoon he laid down his pen and wandered out of
+doors.  He loved the increasing heat of the Venetian summer, the
+bruised peach-tints of worn house-fronts, the enamelling of
+sunlight on dark green canals, the smell of half-decayed fruits
+and flowers thickening the languid air.  What visions he could
+build, if he dared, of being tucked away with Susy in the attic
+of some tumble-down palace, above a jade-green waterway, with a
+terrace overhanging a scrap of neglected garden--and cheques
+from the publishers dropping in at convenient intervals!  Why
+should they not settle in Venice if he pulled it off!
+
+He found himself before the church of the Scalzi, and pushing
+open the leathern door wandered up the nave under the whirl of
+rose-and-lemon angels in Tiepolo's great vault.  It was not a
+church in which one was likely to run across sight-seers; but he
+presently remarked a young lady standing alone near the choir,
+and assiduously applying her field-glass to the celestial
+vortex, from which she occasionally glanced down at an open
+manual.
+
+As Lansing's step sounded on the pavement, the young lady,
+turning, revealed herself as Miss Hicks.
+
+"Ah--you like this too?  It's several centuries out of your
+line, though, isn't it!"  Nick asked as they shook hands.
+
+She gazed at him gravely.  "Why shouldn't one like things that
+are out of one's line?"  she answered; and he agreed, with a
+laugh, that it was often an incentive.
+
+She continued to fix her grave eyes on him, and after one or two
+remarks about the Tiepolos he perceived that she was feeling her
+way toward a subject of more personal interest.
+
+"I'm glad to see you alone," she said at length, with an
+abruptness that might have seemed awkward had it not been so
+completely unconscious.  She turned toward a cluster of straw
+chairs, and signed to Nick to seat himself beside her.
+
+"I seldom do," she added, with the serious smile that made her
+heavy face almost handsome; and she went on, giving him no time
+to protest:  "I wanted to speak to you--to explain about
+father's invitation to go with us to Persia and Turkestan."
+
+"To explain?"
+
+"Yes.  You found the letter when you arrived here just after
+your marriage, didn't you?  You must have thought it odd, our
+asking you just then; but we hadn't heard that you were
+married."
+
+"Oh, I guessed as much:  it happened very quietly, and I was
+remiss about announcing it, even to old friends."
+
+Lansing frowned.  His thoughts had wandered away to the evening
+when he had found Mrs. Hicks's letter in the mail awaiting him
+at Venice.  The day was associated in his mind with the
+ridiculous and mortifying episode of the cigars--the expensive
+cigars that Susy had wanted to carry away from Strefford's
+villa.  Their brief exchange of views on the subject had left
+the first blur on the perfect surface of his happiness, and he
+still felt an uncomfortable heat at the remembrance.  For a few
+hours the prospect of life with Susy had seemed unendurable; and
+it was just at that moment that he had found the letter from
+Mrs. Hicks, with its almost irresistible invitation.  If only
+her daughter had known how nearly he had accepted it!
+
+"It was a dreadful temptation," he said, smiling.
+
+"To go with us?  Then why--?"
+
+"Oh, everything's different now:  I've got to stick to my
+writing."
+
+Miss Hicks still bent on him the same unblinking scrutiny.
+"Does that mean that you're going to give up your real work?"
+
+"My real work--archaeology?"  He smiled again to hide a twitch
+of regret.  "Why, I'm afraid it hardly produces a living wage;
+and I've got to think of that."  He coloured suddenly, as if
+suspecting that Miss Hicks might consider the avowal an opening
+for he hardly knew what ponderous offer of aid.  The Hicks
+munificence was too uncalculating not to be occasionally
+oppressive.  But looking at her again he saw that her eyes were
+full of tears.
+
+"I thought it was your vocation," she said.
+
+"So did I.  But life comes along, and upsets things."
+
+"Oh, I understand.  There may be things--worth giving up all
+other things for."
+
+"There are!" cried Nick with beaming emphasis.
+
+He was conscious that Miss Hicks's eyes demanded of him even
+more than this sweeping affirmation.
+
+"But your novel may fail," she said with her odd harshness.
+
+"It may--it probably will," he agreed.  "But if one stopped to
+consider such possibilities--"
+
+"Don't you have to, with a wife?"
+
+"Oh, my dear Coral--how old are you?  Not twenty?" he
+questioned, laying a brotherly hand on hers.
+
+She stared at him a moment, and sprang up clumsily from her
+chair.  "I was never young ... if that's what you mean.  It's
+lucky, isn't it, that my parents gave me such a grand education?
+Because, you see, art's a wonderful resource."  (She pronounced
+it RE-source.)
+
+He continued to look at her kindly.  "You won't need it--or any
+other--when you grow young, as you will some day," he assured
+her.
+
+"Do you mean, when I fall in love?  But I am in love--Oh,
+there's Eldorada and Mr. Beck!"  She broke off with a jerk,
+signalling with her field-glass to the pair who had just
+appeared at the farther end of the nave.  "I told them that if
+they'd meet me here to-day I'd try to make them understand
+Tiepolo.  Because, you see, at home we never really have
+understood Tiepolo; and Mr. Beck and Eldorada are the only ones
+to realize it.  Mr. Buttles simply won't."  She turned to
+Lansing and held out her hand.  "I am in love," she repeated
+earnestly, "and that's the reason why I find art such a RE
+source."
+
+She restored her eye-glasses, opened her manual, and strode
+across the church to the expectant neophytes.
+
+Lansing, looking after her, wondered for half a moment whether
+Mr. Beck were the object of this apparently unrequited
+sentiment; then, with a queer start of introspection, abruptly
+decided that, no, he certainly was not.  But then--but then--. 
+Well, there was no use in following up such conjectures ....  He
+turned home-ward, wondering if the picnickers had already
+reached Palazzo Vanderlyn.
+
+They got back only in time for a late dinner, full of chaff and
+laughter, and apparently still enchanted with each other's
+society.  Nelson Vanderlyn beamed on his wife, sent his daughter
+off to bed with a kiss, and leaning back in his armchair before
+the fruit-and-flower-laden table, declared that he'd never spent
+a jollier day in his life.  Susy seemed to come in for a full
+share of his approbation, and Lansing thought that Ellie was
+unusually demonstrative to her friend.  Strefford, from his
+hostess's side, glanced across now and then at young Mrs.
+Lansing, and his glance seemed to Lansing a confidential comment
+on the Vanderlyn raptures.  But then Strefford was always having
+private jokes with people or about them; and Lansing was
+irritated with himself for perpetually suspecting his best
+friends of vague complicities at his expense.  "If I'm going to
+be jealous of Streffy now--!"  he concluded with a grimace of
+self-derision.
+
+Certainly Susy looked lovely enough to justify the most
+irrational pangs.  As a girl she had been, for some people's
+taste, a trifle fine-drawn and sharp-edged; now, to her old
+lightness of line was added a shadowy bloom, a sort of star-
+reflecting depth.  Her movements were slower, less angular; her
+mouth had a needing droop, her lids seemed weighed down by their
+lashes; and then suddenly the old spirit would reveal itself
+through the new languor, like the tartness at the core of a
+sweet fruit.  As her husband looked at her across the flowers
+and lights he laughed inwardly at the nothingness of all things
+else.
+
+Vanderlyn and Clarissa left betimes the next morning; and Mrs.
+Vanderlyn, who was to start for St. Moritz in the afternoon,
+devoted her last hours to anxious conferences with her maid and
+Susy.  Strefford, with Fred Gillow and the others, had gone for
+a swim at the Lido, and Lansing seized the opportunity to get
+back to his book.
+
+The quietness of the great echoing place gave him a foretaste of
+the solitude to come.  By mid-August all their party would be
+scattered:  the Hickses off on a cruise to Crete and the AEgean,
+Fred Gillow on the way to his moor, Strefford to stay with
+friends in Capri till his annual visit to Northumberland in
+September.  One by one the others would follow, and Lansing and
+Susy be left alone in the great sun-proof palace, alone under
+the star-laden skies, alone with the great orange moons-still
+theirs!--above the bell-tower of San Giorgio.  The novel, in
+that blessed quiet, would unfold itself as harmoniously as his
+dreams.
+
+He wrote on, forgetful of the passing hours, till the door
+opened and he heard a step behind him.  The next moment two
+hands were clasped over his eyes, and the air was full of Mrs.
+Vanderlyn's last new scent.
+
+"You dear thing--I'm just off, you know," she said.  "Susy told
+me you were working, and I forbade her to call you down.  She
+and Streffy are waiting to take me to the station, and I've run
+up to say good-bye."
+
+"Ellie, dear!"  Full of compunction, Lansing pushed aside his
+writing and started up; but she pressed him back into his seat.
+
+"No, no!  I should never forgive myself if I'd interrupted you.
+I oughtn't to have come up; Susy didn't want me to.  But I had
+to tell you, you dear ....  I had to thank you..."
+
+In her dark travelling dress and hat, so discreetly conspicuous,
+so negligent and so studied, with a veil masking her paint, and
+gloves hiding her rings, she looked younger, simpler, more
+natural than he had ever seen her.  Poor Ellie such a good
+fellow, after all!
+
+"To thank me?  For what?  For being so happy here?"  he laughed,
+taking her hands.
+
+She looked at him, laughed back, and flung her arms about his
+neck.
+
+"For helping me to be so happy elsewhere--you and Susy, you two
+blessed darlings!"  she cried, with a kiss on his cheek.
+
+Their eyes met for a second; then her arms slipped slowly
+downward, dropping to her sides.  Lansing sat before her like a
+stone.
+
+"Oh," she gasped, "why do you stare so?  Didn't you know ...?"
+
+They heard Strefford's shrill voice on the stairs.  "Ellie,
+where the deuce are you?  Susy's in the gondola.  You'll miss
+the train!"
+
+Lansing stood up and caught Mrs. Vanderlyn by the wrist.  "What
+do you mean?  What are you talking about?"
+
+"Oh, nothing ... But you were both such bricks about the
+letters ....  And when Nelson was here, too ....  Nick, don't
+hurt my wrist so!  I must run!"
+
+He dropped her hand and stood motionless, staring after her and
+listening to the click of her high heels as she fled across the
+room and along the echoing corridor.
+
+When he turned back to the table he noticed that a small morocco
+case had fallen among his papers.  In falling it had opened, and
+before him, on the pale velvet lining, lay a scarf-pin set with
+a perfect pearl.  He picked the box up, and was about to hasten
+after Mrs. Vanderlyn--it was so like her to shed jewels on her
+path!--when he noticed his own initials on the cover.
+
+He dropped the box as if it had been a hot coal, and sat for a
+long while gazing at the gold N. L., which seemed to have burnt
+itself into his flesh.
+
+At last he roused himself and stood up.
+
+
+
+X.
+
+WITH a sigh of relief Susy drew the pins from her hat and threw
+herself down on the lounge.
+
+The ordeal she had dreaded was over, and Mr. and Mrs. Vanderlyn
+had safely gone their several ways.  Poor Ellie was not noted
+for prudence, and when life smiled on her she was given to
+betraying her gratitude too openly; but thanks to Susy's
+vigilance (and, no doubt, to Strefford's tacit co-operation),
+the dreaded twenty-four hours were happily over.  Nelson
+Vanderlyn had departed without a shadow on his brow, and though
+Ellie's, when she came down from bidding Nick good-bye, had
+seemed to Susy less serene than usual, she became her normal
+self as soon as it was discovered that the red morocco bag with
+her jewel-box was missing.  Before it had been discovered in the
+depths of the gondola they had reached the station, and there
+was just time to thrust her into her "sleeper," from which she
+was seen to wave an unperturbed farewell to her friends.
+
+"Well, my dear, we've been it through," Strefford remarked with
+a deep breath as the St. Moritz express rolled away.
+
+"Oh," Susy sighed in mute complicity; then, as if to cover her
+self-betrayal:  "Poor darling, she does so like what she likes!"
+
+"Yes--even if it's a rotten bounder," Strefford agreed.
+
+"A rotten bounder? Why, I thought--"
+
+"That it was still young Davenant?  Lord, no--not for the last
+six months.  Didn't she tell you--?"
+
+Susy felt herself redden.  "I didn't ask her--"
+
+"Ask her?  You mean you didn't let her!"
+
+"I didn't let her.  And I don't let you," Susy added sharply, as
+he helped her into the gondola.
+
+"Oh, all right:  I daresay you're right.  It simplifies things,"
+Strefford placidly acquiesced.
+
+She made no answer, and in silence they glided homeward.
+
+Now, in the quiet of her own room, Susy lay and pondered on the
+distance she had travelled during the last year.  Strefford had
+read her mind with his usual penetration.  It was true that
+there had been a time when she would have thought it perfectly
+natural that Ellie should tell her everything; that the name of
+young Davenant's successor should be confided to her as a matter
+of course.  Apparently even Ellie had been obscurely aware of
+the change, for after a first attempt to force her confidences
+on Susy she had contented herself with vague expressions of
+gratitude, allusive smiles and sighs, and the pretty "surprise"
+of the sapphire bangle slipped onto her friend's wrist in the
+act of their farewell embrace.
+
+The bangle was extremely handsome.  Susy, who had an
+auctioneer's eye for values, knew to a fraction the worth of
+those deep convex stones alternating with small emeralds and
+brilliants.  She was glad to own the bracelet, and enchanted
+with the effect it produced on her slim wrist; yet, even while
+admiring it, and rejoicing that it was hers, she had already
+transmuted it into specie, and reckoned just how far it would go
+toward the paying of domestic necessities.  For whatever came to
+her now interested her only as something more to be offered up
+to Nick.
+
+The door opened and Nick came in.  Dusk had fallen, and she
+could not see his face; but something in the jerk of the door-
+handle roused her ever-wakeful apprehension.  She hurried toward
+him with outstretched wrist.
+
+"Look, dearest--wasn't it too darling of Ellie?"
+
+She pressed the button of the lamp that lit her dressing-table,
+and her husband's face started unfamiliarly out of the twilight.
+She slipped off the bracelet and held it up to him.
+
+"Oh, I can go you one better," he said with a laugh; and pulling
+a morocco case from his pocket he flung it down among the scent-
+bottles.
+
+Susy opened the case automatically, staring at the pearl because
+she was afraid to look again at Nick.
+
+"Ellie--gave you this?"  she asked at length.
+
+"Yes.  She gave me this."  There was a pause.  "Would you mind
+telling me," Lansing continued in the same dead-level tone,
+"exactly for what services we've both been so handsomely paid?"
+
+"The pearl is beautiful," Susy murmured, to gain time, while her
+head spun round with unimaginable terrors.
+
+"So are your sapphires; though, on closer examination, my
+services would appear to have been valued rather higher than
+yours.  Would you be kind enough to tell me just what they
+were?"
+
+Susy threw her head back and looked at him.  "What on earth are
+you talking about, Nick!  Why shouldn't Ellie have given us
+these things?  Do you forget that it's like our giving her a
+pen-wiper or a button-hook?  What is it you are trying to
+suggest?"
+
+It had cost her a considerable effort to hold his eyes while she
+put the questions.  Something had happened between him and
+Ellie, that was evident-one of those hideous unforeseeable
+blunders that may cause one's cleverest plans to crumble at a
+stroke; and again Susy shuddered at the frailty of her bliss.
+But her old training stood her in good stead.  There had been
+more than one moment in her past when everything-somebody
+else's everything-had depended on her keeping a cool head and a
+clear glance.  It would have been a wonder if now, when she felt
+her own everything at stake, she had not been able to put up as
+good a defence.
+
+"What is it?"  she repeated impatiently, as Lansing continued to
+remain silent.
+
+"That's what I'm here to ask," he returned, keeping his eyes as
+steady as she kept hers.  "There's no reason on earth, as you
+say, why Ellie shouldn't give us presents--as expensive presents
+as she likes; and the pearl is a beauty.  All I ask is:  for
+what specific services were they given?  For, allowing for all
+the absence of scruple that marks the intercourse of truly
+civilized people, you'll probably agree that there are limits;
+at least up to now there have been limits ...."
+
+"I really don't know what you mean.  I suppose Ellie wanted to
+show that she was grateful to us for looking after Clarissa."
+
+"But she gave us all this in exchange for that, didn't she?" he
+suggested, with a sweep of the hand around the beautiful shadowy
+room.  "A whole summer of it if we choose."
+
+Susy smiled.  "Apparently she didn't think that enough."
+
+"What a doting mother!  It shows the store she sets upon her
+child."
+
+"Well, don't you set store upon Clarissa?"
+
+"Clarissa is exquisite; but her mother didn't mention her in
+offering me this recompense."
+
+Susy lifted her head again.  "Whom did she mention?"
+
+"Vanderlyn," said Lansing.
+
+"Vanderlyn? Nelson?"
+
+"Yes--and some letters ... something about letters ....  What is
+it, my dear, that you and I have been hired to hide from
+Vanderlyn?  Because I should like to know," Nick broke out
+savagely, "if we've been adequately paid."
+
+Susy was silent:  she needed time to reckon up her forces, and
+study her next move; and her brain was in such a whirl of fear
+that she could at last only retort:  "What is it that Ellie said
+to you?"
+
+Lansing laughed again.  "That's just what you'd like to find
+out--isn't it?--in order to know the line to take in making your
+explanation."
+
+The sneer had an effect that he could not have foreseen, and
+that Susy herself had not expected.
+
+"Oh, don't--don't let us speak to each other like that!" she
+cried; and sinking down by the dressing-table she hid her face
+in her hands.
+
+It seemed to her, now, that nothing mattered except that their
+love for each other, their faith in each other, should be saved
+from some unhealable hurt.  She was willing to tell Nick
+everything--she wanted to tell him everything--if only she could
+be sure of reaching a responsive chord in him.  But the scene of
+the cigars came back to her, and benumbed her.  If only she
+could make him see that nothing was of any account as long as
+they continued to love each other!
+
+His touch fell compassionately on her shoulder.  "Poor child--
+don't," he said.
+
+Their eyes met, but his expression checked the smile breaking
+through her tears.  "Don't you see," he continued, "that we've
+got to have this thing out?"
+
+She continued to stare at him through a prism of tears.  "I
+can't--while you stand up like that," she stammered, childishly.
+
+She had cowered down again into a corner of the lounge; but
+Lansing did not seat himself at her side.  He took a chair
+facing her, like a caller on the farther side of a stately tea-
+tray.  "Will that do?" he asked with a stiff smile, as if to
+humour her.
+
+"Nothing will do--as long as you're not you!"
+
+"Not me?"
+
+She shook her head wearily.  "What's the use?  You accept things
+theoretically--and then when they happen ...."
+
+"What things? What has happened!"
+
+A sudden impatience mastered her.  What did he suppose, after
+all--?  "But you know all about Ellie.  We used to talk about
+her often enough in old times," she said.
+
+"Ellie and young Davenant?"
+
+"Young Davenant; or the others ...."
+
+"Or the others.  But what business was it of ours?"
+
+"Ah, that's just what I think!" she cried, springing up with an
+explosion of relief.  Lansing stood up also, but there was no
+answering light in his face.
+
+"We're outside of all that; we've nothing to do with it, have
+we?" he pursued.
+
+"Nothing whatever."
+
+"Then what on earth is the meaning of Ellie's gratitude?
+Gratitude for what we've done about some letters--and about
+Vanderlyn?"
+
+"Oh, not you," Susy cried, involuntarily.
+
+"Not I?  Then you?"  He came close and took her by the wrist.
+"Answer me.  Have you been mixed up in some dirty business of
+Ellie's?"
+
+There was a pause.  She found it impossible to speak, with that
+burning grasp on the wrist where the bangle had been.  At length
+he let her go and moved away.  "Answer," he repeated.
+
+"I've told you it was my business and not yours."
+
+He received this in silence; then he questioned:  "You've been
+sending letters for her, I suppose?  To whom?"
+
+"Oh, why do you torment me?  Nelson was not supposed to know
+that she'd been away.  She left me the letters to post to him
+once a week.  I found them here the night we arrived ....  It
+was the price--for this.  Oh, Nick, say it's been worth it-say
+at least that it's been worth it!" she implored him.
+
+He stood motionless, unresponding.  One hand drummed on the
+corner of her dressing-table, making the jewelled bangle dance.
+
+"How many letters?"
+
+"I don't know ... four ... five ... What does it matter?"
+
+"And once a week, for six weeks--?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And you took it all as a matter of course?"
+
+"No:  I hated it.  But what could I do?"
+
+"What could you do?"
+
+"When our being together depended on it?  Oh, Nick, how could
+you think I'd give you up?"
+
+"Give me up?" he echoed.
+
+"Well--doesn't our being together depend on--on what we can get
+out of people?  And hasn't there always got to be some give-and-
+take?  Did you ever in your life get anything for nothing?" she
+cried with sudden exasperation.  "You've lived among these
+people as long as I have; I suppose it's not the first time--"
+
+"By God, but it is," he exclaimed, flushing.  "And that's the
+difference--the fundamental difference."
+
+"The difference!"
+
+"Between you and me.  I've never in my life done people's dirty
+work for them--least of all for favours in return.  I suppose
+you guessed it, or you wouldn't have hidden this beastly
+business from me."
+
+The blood rose to Susy's temples also.  Yes, she had guessed it;
+instinctively, from the day she had first visited him in his
+bare lodgings, she had been aware of his stricter standard.  But
+how could she tell him that under his influence her standard had
+become stricter too, and that it was as much to hide her
+humiliation from herself as to escape his anger that she had
+held her tongue?
+
+"You knew I wouldn't have stayed here another day if I'd known,"
+he continued.
+
+"Yes:  and then where in the world should we have gone?"
+
+"You mean that--in one way or another--what you call give-and-
+take is the price of our remaining together?"
+
+"Well--isn't it," she faltered.
+
+"Then we'd better part, hadn't we?"
+
+He spoke in a low tone, thoughtfully and deliberately, as if
+this had been the inevitable conclusion to which their
+passionate argument had led.
+
+Susy made no answer.  For a moment she ceased to be conscious of
+the causes of what had happened; the thing itself seemed to have
+smothered her under its ruins.
+
+Nick wandered away from the dressing-table and stood gazing out
+of the window at the darkening canal flecked with lights.  She
+looked at his back, and wondered what would happen if she were
+to go up to him and fling her arms about him.  But even if her
+touch could have broken the spell, she was not sure she would
+have chosen that way of breaking it.  Beneath her speechless
+anguish there burned the half-conscious sense of having been
+unfairly treated.  When they had entered into their queer
+compact, Nick had known as well as she on what compromises and
+concessions the life they were to live together must be based.
+That he should have forgotten it seemed so unbelievable that she
+wondered, with a new leap of fear, if he were using the wretched
+Ellie's indiscretion as a means of escape from a tie already
+wearied of.  Suddenly she raised her head with a laugh.
+
+"After all--you were right when you wanted me to be your
+mistress."
+
+He turned on her with an astonished stare.  "You--my mistress?"
+
+Through all her pain she thrilled with pride at the discovery
+that such a possibility had long since become unthinkable to
+him.  But she insisted.  "That day at the Fulmers'--have you
+forgotten?  When you said it would be sheer madness for us to
+marry."
+
+Lansing stood leaning in the embrasure of the window, his eyes
+fixed on the mosaic volutes of the floor.
+
+"I was right enough when I said it would be sheer madness for us
+to marry," he rejoined at length.
+
+She sprang up trembling.  "Well, that's easily settled.  Our
+compact--"
+
+"Oh, that compact--" he interrupted her with an impatient laugh.
+
+"Aren't you asking me to carry it out now?"
+
+"Because I said we'd better part?"  He paused.  "But the
+compact--I'd almost forgotten it--was to the effect, wasn't it,
+that we were to give each other a helping hand if either of us
+had a better chance?  The thing was absurd, of course; a mere
+joke; from my point of view, at least.  I shall never want any
+better chance ... any other chance ...."
+
+"Oh, Nick, oh, Nick ... but then ...."  She was close to him,
+his face looming down through her tears; but he put her back.
+
+"It would have been easy enough, wouldn't it," he rejoined, "if
+we'd been as detachable as all that?  As it is, it's going to
+hurt horribly.  But talking it over won't help.  You were right
+just now when you asked how else we were going to live.  We're
+born parasites, both, I suppose, or we'd have found out some way
+long ago.  But I find there are things I might put up with for
+myself, at a pinch--and should, probably, in time that I can't
+let you put up with for me ... ever ....  Those cigars at Como:
+do you suppose I didn't know it was for me?  And this too?
+Well, it won't do ... it won't do ...."
+
+He stopped, as if his courage failed him; and she moaned out:
+"But your writing--if your book's a success ...."
+
+"My poor Susy--that's all part of the humbug.  We both know that
+my sort of writing will never pay.  And what's the alternative
+except more of the same kind of baseness?  And getting more and
+more blunted to it?  At least, till now, I've minded certain
+things; I don't want to go on till I find myself taking them for
+granted."
+
+She reached out a timid hand.  "But you needn't ever, dear ... 
+if you'd only leave it to me ...."
+
+He drew back sharply.  "That seems simple to you, I suppose?
+Well, men are different."  He walked toward the dressing-table
+and glanced at the little enamelled clock which had been one of
+her wedding-presents.
+
+"Time to dress, isn't it?  Shall you mind if I leave you to dine
+with Streffy, and whoever else is coming?  I'd rather like a
+long tramp, and no more talking just at present except with
+myself."
+
+He passed her by and walked rapidly out of the room.  Susy stood
+motionless, unable to lift a detaining hand or to find a final
+word of appeal.  On her disordered dressing-table Mrs.
+Vanderlyn's gifts glittered in the rosy lamp-light.
+
+Yes:  men were different, as he said.
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+BUT there were necessary accommodations, there always had been;
+Nick in old times, had been the first to own it ....  How they
+had laughed at the Perpendicular People, the people who went by
+on the other side (since you couldn't be a good Samaritan
+without stooping over and poking into heaps of you didn't know
+what)!  And now Nick had suddenly become perpendicular ....
+
+Susy, that evening, at the head of the dinner table, saw--in the
+breaks between her scudding thoughts--the nauseatingly familiar
+faces of the people she called her friends:  Strefford, Fred
+Gillow, a giggling fool of a young Breckenridge, of their New
+York group, who had arrived that day, and Prince Nerone
+Altineri, Ursula's Prince, who, in Ursula's absence at a
+tiresome cure, had, quite simply and naturally, preferred to
+join her husband at Venice.  Susy looked from one to the other
+of them, as if with newly-opened eyes, and wondered what life
+would be like with no faces but such as theirs to furnish
+it ....
+
+Ah, Nick had become perpendicular! ....  After all, most people
+went through life making a given set of gestures, like dance-
+steps learned in advance.  If your dancing manual told you at a
+given time to be perpendicular, you had to be, automatically--
+and that was Nick!
+
+"But what on earth, Susy," Gillow's puzzled voice suddenly came
+to her as from immeasurable distances,  "Are you going to do in
+this beastly stifling hole for the rest of the summer?"
+
+"Ask Nick, my dear fellow," Strefford answered for her; and:
+"By the way, where is Nick--if one may ask?" young Breckenridge
+interposed, glancing up to take belated note of his host's
+absence.
+
+"Dining out," said Susy glibly.  "People turned up:  blighting
+bores that I wouldn't have dared to inflict on you."  How easily
+the old familiar fibbing came to her !
+
+"The kind to whom you say, 'Now mind you look me up'; and then
+spend the rest of your life dodging-like our good Hickses,"
+Strefford amplified.
+
+The Hickses--but, of course, Nick was with the Hickses!  It went
+through Susy like a knife, and the dinner she had so lightly
+fibbed became a hateful truth.  She said to herself feverishly:
+"I'll call him up there after dinner--and then he will feel
+silly"--but only to remember that the Hickses, in their
+mediaeval setting, had of course sternly denied themselves a
+telephone.
+
+The fact of Nick's temporary inaccessibility--since she was now
+convinced that he was really at the Hickses'--turned her
+distress to a mocking irritation.  Ah, that was where he carried
+his principles, his standards, or whatever he called the new set
+of rules he had suddenly begun to apply to the old game!  It was
+stupid of her not to have guessed it at once.
+
+"Oh, the Hickses--Nick adores them, you know.  He's going to
+marry Coral next," she laughed out, flashing the joke around the
+table with all her practiced flippancy.
+
+"Lord!" grasped Gillow, inarticulate:  while the Prince
+displayed the unsurprised smile which Susy accused him of
+practicing every morning with his Mueller exercises.
+
+Suddenly Susy felt Strefford's eyes upon her.
+
+"What's the matter with me?  Too much rouge?" she asked, passing
+her arm in his as they left the table.
+
+"No:  too little.  Look at yourself," he answered in a low tone.
+
+"Oh, in these cadaverous old looking-glasses-everybody looks
+fished up from the canal!"
+
+She jerked away from him to spin down the long floor of the
+sala, hands on hips, whistling a rag-time tune.  The Prince and
+young Breckenridge caught her up, and she spun back with the
+latter, while Gillow-it was believed to be his sole
+accomplishment-snapped his fingers in simulation of bones, and
+shuffled after the couple on stamping feet.
+
+Susy sank down on a sofa near the window, fanning herself with a
+floating scarf, and the men foraged for cigarettes, and rang for
+the gondoliers, who came in with trays of cooling drinks.
+
+"Well, what next--this ain't all, is it?" Gillow presently
+queried, from the divan where he lolled half-asleep with
+dripping brow.  Fred Gillow, like Nature, abhorred a void, and
+it was inconceivable to him that every hour of man's rational
+existence should not furnish a motive for getting up and going
+somewhere else.  Young Breckenridge, who took the same view, and
+the Prince, who earnestly desired to, reminded the company that
+somebody they knew was giving a dance that night at the Lido.
+
+Strefford vetoed the Lido, on the ground that he'd just come
+back from there, and proposed that they should go out on foot
+for a change.
+
+"Why not?  What fun!"  Susy was up in an instant.  "Let's pay
+somebody a surprise visit--I don't know who!  Streffy, Prince,
+can't you think of somebody who'd be particularly annoyed by our
+arrival?"
+
+"Oh, the list's too long.  Let's start, and choose our victim on
+the way," Strefford suggested.
+
+Susy ran to her room for a light cloak, and without changing her
+high-heeled satin slippers went out with the four men.  There
+was no moon--thank heaven there was no moon!--but the stars hung
+over them as close as fruit, and secret fragrances dropped on
+them from garden-walls. Susy's heart tightened with memories of
+Como.
+
+They wandered on, laughing and dawdling, and yielding to the
+drifting whims of aimless people.  Presently someone proposed
+taking a nearer look at the facade of San Giorgio Maggiore, and
+they hailed a gondola and were rowed out through the bobbing
+lanterns and twanging guitar-strings.  When they landed again,
+Gillow, always acutely bored by scenery, and particularly
+resentful of midnight aesthetics, suggested a night club near at
+hand, which was said to be jolly.  The Prince warmly supported
+this proposal; but on Susy's curt refusal they started their
+rambling again, circuitously threading the vague dark lanes and
+making for the Piazza and Florian's ices.  Suddenly, at a calle-
+corner, unfamiliar and yet somehow known to her, Susy paused to
+stare about her with a laugh.
+
+"But the Hickses--surely that's their palace?  And the windows
+all lit up!  They must be giving a party!  Oh, do let's go up
+and surprise them!"  The idea struck her as one of the drollest
+that she had ever originated, and she wondered that her
+companions should respond so languidly.
+
+"I can't see anything very thrilling in surprising the Hickses,"
+Gillow protested, defrauded of possible excitements; and
+Strefford added:  "It would surprise me more than them if I
+went."
+
+But Susy insisted feverishly:  "You don't know.  It may be
+awfully exciting!  I have an idea that Coral's announcing her
+engagement--her engagement to Nick!  Come, give me a hand,
+Streff--and you the other, Fred-" she began to hum the first
+bars of Donna Anna's entrance in Don Giovanni.  "Pity I haven't
+got a black cloak and a mask ...."
+
+"Oh, your face will do," said Strefford, laying his hand on her
+arm.
+
+She drew back, flushing crimson.  Breckenridge and the Prince
+had sprung on ahead, and Gillow, lumbering after them, was
+already halfway up the stairs.
+
+"My face?  My face?  What's the matter with my face?  Do you
+know any reason why I shouldn't go to the Hickses to-night?"
+Susy broke out in sudden wrath.
+
+"None whatever; except that if you do it will bore me to death,"
+Strefford returned, with serenity.
+
+"Oh, in that case--!"
+
+"No; come on.  I hear those fools banging on the door already."
+He caught her by the hand, and they started up the stairway.
+But on the first landing she paused, twisted her hand out of
+his, and without a word, without a conscious thought, dashed
+down the long flight, across the great resounding vestibule and
+out into the darkness of the calle.
+
+Strefford caught up with her, and they stood a moment silent in
+the night.
+
+"Susy--what the devil's the matter?"
+
+"The matter?  Can't you see?  That I'm tired, that I've got a
+splitting headache--that you bore me to death, one and all of
+you!"  She turned and laid a deprecating hand on his arm.
+"Streffy, old dear, don't mind me:  but for God's sake find a
+gondola and send me home."
+
+"Alone?"
+
+"Alone."
+
+It was never any concern of Streff's if people wanted to do
+things he did not understand, and she knew that she could count
+on his obedience.  They walked on in silence to the next canal,
+and he picked up a passing gondola and put her in it.
+
+"Now go and amuse yourself," she called after him, as the boat
+shot under the nearest bridge.  Anything, anything, to be alone,
+away from the folly and futility that would be all she had left
+if Nick were to drop out of her life ....
+
+"But perhaps he has dropped already--dropped for good," she
+thought as she set her foot on the Vanderlyn threshold.
+
+The short summer night was already growing transparent:  a new
+born breeze stirred the soiled surface of the water and sent it
+lapping freshly against the old palace doorways.  Nearly two
+o'clock!  Nick had no doubt come back long ago.  Susy hurried up
+the stairs, reassured by the mere thought of his nearness.  She
+knew that when their eyes and their lips met it would be
+impossible for anything to keep them apart.
+
+The gondolier dozing on the landing roused himself to receive
+her, and to proffer two envelopes.  The upper one was a telegram
+for Strefford:  she threw it down again and paused under the
+lantern hanging from the painted vault, the other envelope in
+her hand.  The address it bore was in Nick's writing.  "When did
+the signore leave this for me?  Has he gone out again?"
+
+Gone out again?  But the signore had not come in since dinner:
+of that the gondolier was positive, as he had been on duty all
+the evening.  A boy had brought the letter--an unknown boy:  he
+had left it without waiting.  It must have been about half an
+hour after the signora had herself gone out with her guests.
+
+Susy, hardly hearing him, fled on to her own room, and there,
+beside the very lamp which, two months before, had illuminated
+Ellie Vanderlyn's fatal letter, she opened Nick's.
+
+"Don't think me hard on you, dear; but I've got to work this
+thing out by myself.  The sooner the better-don't you agree?  So
+I'm taking the express to Milan presently.  You'll get a proper
+letter in a day or two.  I wish I could think, now, of something
+to say that would show you I'm not a brute--but I can't. N. L. "
+
+There was not much of the night left in which to sleep, even had
+a semblance of sleep been achievable.  The letter fell from
+Susy's hands, and she crept out onto the balcony and cowered
+there, her forehead pressed against the balustrade, the dawn
+wind stirring in her thin laces.  Through her closed eyelids and
+the tightly-clenched fingers pressed against them, she felt the
+penetration of the growing light, the relentless advance of
+another day--a day without purpose and without meaning--a day
+without Nick.  At length she dropped her hands, and staring from
+dry lids saw a rim of fire above the roofs across the Grand
+Canal.  She sprang up, ran back into her room, and dragging the
+heavy curtains shut across the windows, stumbled over in the
+darkness to the lounge and fell among its pillows-face
+downward--groping, delving for a deeper night ....
+
+She started up, stiff and aching, to see a golden wedge of sun
+on the floor at her feet.  She had slept, then--was it
+possible?--it must be eight or nine o'clock already!  She had
+slept--slept like a drunkard--with that letter on the table at
+her elbow!  Ah, now she remembered--she had dreamed that the
+letter was a dream!  But there, inexorably, it lay; and she
+picked it up, and slowly, painfully re-read it.  Then she tore
+it into shreds hunted for a match, and kneeling before the empty
+hearth, as though she were accomplishing some funeral rite, she
+burnt every shred of it to ashes.  Nick would thank her for that
+some day!
+
+After a bath and a hurried toilet she began to be aware of
+feeling younger and more hopeful.  After all, Nick had merely
+said that he was going away for "a day or two."  And the letter
+was not cruel:  there were tender things in it, showing through
+the curt words.  She smiled at herself a little stiffly in the
+glass, put a dash of red on her colourless lips, and rang for
+the maid.
+
+"Coffee, Giovanna, please; and will you tell Mr. Strefford that
+I should like to see him presently."
+
+If Nick really kept to his intention of staying away for a few
+days she must trump up some explanation of his absence; but her
+mind refused to work, and the only thing she could think of was
+to take Strefford into her confidence.  She knew that he could
+be trusted in a real difficulty; his impish malice transformed
+itself into a resourceful ingenuity when his friends required
+it.
+
+The maid stood looking at her with a puzzled gaze, and Susy
+somewhat sharply repeated her order.  "But don't wake him on
+purpose," she added, foreseeing the probable effect on
+Strefford's temper.
+
+"But, signora, the gentleman is already out."
+
+"Already out?"  Strefford, who could hardly be routed from his
+bed before luncheon-time!  "Is it so late?" Susy cried,
+incredulous.
+
+"After nine.  And the gentleman took the eight o'clock train for
+England.  Gervaso said he had received a telegram.  He left word
+that he would write to the signora."
+
+The door closed upon the maid, and Susy continued to gaze at her
+painted image in the glass, as if she had been trying to
+outstare an importunate stranger.  There was no one left for her
+to take counsel of, then--no one but poor Fred Gillow!  She made
+a grimace at the idea.
+
+But what on earth could have summoned Strefford back to England?
+
+
+
+XII
+
+NICK LANSING, in the Milan express, was roused by the same bar
+of sunshine lying across his knees.  He yawned, looked with
+disgust at his stolidly sleeping neighbours, and wondered why he
+had decided to go to Milan, and what on earth he should do when
+he got there.  The difficulty about trenchant decisions was that
+the next morning they generally left one facing a void ....
+
+When the train drew into the station at Milan, he scrambled out,
+got some coffee, and having drunk it decided to continue his
+journey to Genoa.  The state of being carried passively onward
+postponed action and dulled thought; and after twelve hours of
+furious mental activity that was exactly what he wanted.
+
+He fell into a doze again, waking now and then to haggard
+intervals of more thinking, and then dropping off to the clank
+and rattle of the train.  Inside his head, in his waking
+intervals, the same clanking and grinding of wheels and chains
+went on unremittingly.  He had done all his lucid thinking
+within an hour of leaving the Palazzo Vanderlyn the night
+before; since then, his brain had simply continued to revolve
+indefatigably about the same old problem.  His cup of coffee,
+instead of clearing his thoughts, had merely accelerated their
+pace.
+
+At Genoa he wandered about in the hot streets, bought a cheap
+suit-case and some underclothes, and then went down to the port
+in search of a little hotel he remembered there.  An hour later
+he was sitting in the coffee-room, smoking and glancing vacantly
+over the papers while he waited for dinner, when he became aware
+of being timidly but intently examined by a small round-faced
+gentleman with eyeglasses who sat alone at the adjoining table.
+
+"Hullo--Buttles!"  Lansing exclaimed, recognising with surprise
+the recalcitrant secretary who had resisted Miss Hicks's
+endeavour to convert him to Tiepolo.
+
+Mr. Buttles, blushing to the roots of his scant hair, half rose
+and bowed ceremoniously.
+
+Nick Lansing's first feeling was of annoyance at being disturbed
+in his solitary broodings; his next, of relief at having to
+postpone them even to converse with Mr. Buttles.
+
+"No idea you were here:  is the yacht in harbour?" he asked,
+remembering that the Ibis must be just about to spread her
+wings.
+
+Mr. Buttles, at salute behind his chair, signed a mute negation:
+for the moment he seemed too embarrassed to speak.
+
+"Ah--you're here as an advance guard?  I remember now--I saw
+Miss Hicks in Venice the day before yesterday," Lansing
+continued, dazed at the thought that hardly forty-eight hours
+had passed since his encounter with Coral in the Scalzi.
+
+Mr. Buttles, instead of speaking, had tentatively approached his
+table.  "May I take this seat for a moment, Mr. Lansing?  Thank
+you.  No, I am not here as an advance guard--though I believe
+the Ibis is due some time to-morrow."  He cleared his throat,
+wiped his eyeglasses on a silk handkerchief, replaced them on
+his nose, and went on solemnly:  "Perhaps, to clear up any
+possible misunderstanding, I ought to say that I am no longer in
+the employ of Mr. Hicks."
+
+Lansing glanced at him sympathetically.  It was clear that he
+suffered horribly in imparting this information, though his
+compact face did not lend itself to any dramatic display of
+emotion.
+
+"Really," Nick smiled, and then ventured:  "I hope it's not
+owing to conscientious objections to Tiepolo?"
+
+Mr. Buttles's blush became a smouldering agony.  "Ah, Miss Hicks
+mentioned to you ... told you ...?  No, Mr. Lansing.  I am
+principled against the effete art of Tiepolo, and of all his
+contemporaries, I confess; but if Miss Hicks chooses to
+surrender herself momentarily to the unwholesome spell of the
+Italian decadence it is not for me to protest or to criticize.
+Her intellectual and aesthetic range so far exceeds my humble
+capacity that it would be ridiculous, unbecoming ...."
+
+He broke off, and once more wiped a faint moisture from his
+eyeglasses.  It was evident that he was suffering from a
+distress which he longed and yet dreaded to communicate.  But
+Nick made no farther effort to bridge the gulf of his own
+preoccupations; and Mr. Buttles, after an expectant pause, went
+on:  "If you see me here to-day it is only because, after a
+somewhat abrupt departure, I find myself unable to take leave of
+our friends without a last look at the Ibis--the scene of so
+many stimulating hours.  But I must beg you," he added
+earnestly, "should you see Miss Hicks--or any other member of
+the party--to make no allusion to my presence in Genoa.  I
+wish," said Mr. Buttles with simplicity, "to preserve the
+strictest incognito."
+
+Lansing glanced at him kindly.  "Oh, but--isn't that a little
+unfriendly?"
+
+"No other course is possible, Mr. Lansing," said the ex-
+secretary, "and I commit myself to your discretion.  The truth
+is, if I am here it is not to look once more at the Ibis, but at
+Miss Hicks:  once only.  You will understand me, and appreciate
+what I am suffering."
+
+He bowed again, and trotted away on his small, tightly-booted
+feet; pausing on the threshold to say:  "From the first it was
+hopeless," before he disappeared through the glass doors.
+
+A gleam of commiseration flashed through Nick's mind:  there was
+something quaintly poignant in the sight of the brisk and
+efficient Mr. Buttles reduced to a limp image of unrequited
+passion.  And what a painful surprise to the Hickses to be thus
+suddenly deprived of the secretary who possessed "the foreign
+languages"!  Mr. Beck kept the accounts and settled with the
+hotel-keepers; but it was Mr. Buttles's loftier task to
+entertain in their own tongues the unknown geniuses who flocked
+about the Hickses, and Nick could imagine how disconcerting his
+departure must be on the eve of their Grecian cruise which Mrs.
+Hicks would certainly call an Odyssey.
+
+The next moment the vision of Coral's hopeless suitor had faded,
+and Nick was once more spinning around on the wheel of his own
+woes.  The night before, when he had sent his note to Susy, from
+a little restaurant close to Palazzo Vanderlyn that they often
+patronized, he had done so with the firm intention of going away
+for a day or two in order to collect his wits and think over the
+situation.  But after his letter had been entrusted to the
+landlord's little son, who was a particular friend of Susy's,
+Nick had decided to await the lad's return.  The messenger had
+not been bidden to ask for an answer; but Nick, knowing the
+friendly and inquisitive Italian mind, was almost sure that the
+boy, in the hope of catching a glimpse of Susy, would linger
+about while the letter was carried up.  And he pictured the maid
+knocking at his wife's darkened room, and Susy dashing some
+powder on her tear-stained face before she turned on the light--
+poor foolish child!
+
+The boy had returned rather sooner than Nick expected, and he
+had brought no answer, but  merely the statement that the
+signora was out:  that everybody was out.
+
+"Everybody?"
+
+"The signora and the four gentlemen who were dining at the
+palace.  They all went out together on foot soon after dinner.
+There was no one to whom I could give the note but the gondolier
+on the landing, for the signora had said she would be very late,
+and had sent the maid to bed; and the maid had, of course, gone
+out immediately with her innamorato."
+
+"Ah--" said Nick, slipping his reward into the boy's hand, and
+walking out of the restaurant.
+
+Susy had gone out--gone out with their usual band, as she did
+every night in these sultry summer weeks, gone out after her
+talk with Nick, as if nothing had happened, as if his whole
+world and hers had not crashed in ruins at their feet.  Ah, poor
+Susy!  After all, she had merely obeyed the instinct of self
+preservation, the old hard habit of keeping up, going ahead and
+hiding her troubles; unless indeed the habit had already
+engendered indifference, and it had become as easy for her as
+for most of her friends to pass from drama to dancing, from
+sorrow to the cinema.  What of soul was left, he wondered--?
+
+His train did not start till midnight, and after leaving the
+restaurant Nick tramped the sultry by-ways till his tired legs
+brought him to a standstill under the vine-covered pergola of a
+gondolier's wine-shop at a landing close to the Piazzetta.
+There he could absorb cooling drinks until it was time to go to
+the station.
+
+It was after eleven, and he was beginning to look about for a
+boat, when a black prow pushed up to the steps, and with much
+chaff and laughter a party of young people in evening dress
+jumped out.  Nick, from under the darkness of the vine, saw that
+there was only one lady among them, and it did not need the lamp
+above the landing to reveal her identity.  Susy, bareheaded and
+laughing, a light scarf slipping from her bare shoulders, a
+cigarette between her fingers, took Strefford's arm and turned
+in the direction of Florian's, with Gillow, the Prince and young
+Breckenridge in her wake ....
+
+Nick had relived this rapid scene hundreds of times during his
+hours in the train and his aimless trampings through the streets
+of Genoa.  In that squirrel-wheel of a world of his and Susy's
+you had to keep going or drop out--and Susy, it was evident, had
+chosen to keep going.  Under the lamp-flare on the landing he
+had had a good look at her face, and had seen that the mask of
+paint and powder was carefully enough adjusted to hide any
+ravages the scene between them might have left.  He even fancied
+that she had dropped a little atropine into her eyes ....
+
+There was no time to spare if he meant to catch the midnight
+train, and no gondola in sight but that which his wife had just
+left.  He sprang into it, and bade the gondolier carry him to
+the station.  The cushions, as he leaned back, gave out a breath
+of her scent; and in the glare of electric light at the station
+he saw at his feet a rose which had fallen from her dress.  He
+ground his heel into it as he got out.
+
+There it was, then; that was the last picture he was to have of
+her.  For he knew now that he was not going back; at least not
+to take up their life together.  He supposed he should have to
+see her once, to talk things over, settle something for their
+future.  He had been sincere in saying that he bore her no ill-
+will; only he could never go back into that slough again.  If he
+did, he knew he would inevitably be drawn under, slipping
+downward from concession to concession ....
+
+The noises of a hot summer night in the port of Genoa would have
+kept the most care-free from slumber; but though Nick lay awake
+he did not notice them, for the tumult in his brain was more
+deafening.  Dawn brought a negative relief, and out of sheer
+weariness he dropped into a heavy sleep.  When he woke it was
+nearly noon, and from his window he saw the well-known outline
+of the Ibis standing up dark against the glitter of the harbour.
+He had no fear of meeting her owners, who had doubtless long
+since landed and betaken themselves to cooler and more
+fashionable regions:  oddly enough, the fact seemed to
+accentuate his loneliness, his sense of having no one on earth
+to turn to.  He dressed, and wandered out disconsolately to pick
+up a cup of coffee in some shady corner.
+
+As he drank his coffee his thoughts gradually cleared.  It
+became obvious to him that he had behaved like a madman or a
+petulant child--he preferred to think it was like a madman.  If
+he and Susy were to separate there was no reason why it should
+not be done decently and quietly, as such transactions were
+habitually managed among people of their kind.  It seemed
+grotesque to introduce melodrama into their little world of
+unruffled Sybarites, and he felt inclined, now, to smile at the
+incongruity of his gesture ....  But suddenly his eyes filled
+with tears.  The future without Susy was unbearable,
+inconceivable.  Why, after all, should they separate?  At the
+question, her soft face seemed close to his, and that slight
+lift of the upper lip that made her smile so exquisite.  Well-
+he would go back.  But not with any presence of going to talk
+things over, come to an agreement, wind up their joint life like
+a business association.  No--if he went back he would go without
+conditions, for good, forever ....
+
+Only, what about the future?  What about the not far-distant day
+when the wedding cheques would have been spent, and Granny's
+pearls sold, and nothing left except unconcealed and
+unconditional dependence on rich friends, the role of the
+acknowledged hangers-on?  Was there no other possible solution,
+no new way of ordering their lives?  No--there was none:  he
+could not picture Susy out of her setting of luxury and leisure,
+could not picture either of them living such a life as the Nat
+Fulmers, for instance!  He remembered the shabby untidy bungalow
+in New Hampshire, the slatternly servants, uneatable food and
+ubiquitous children.  How could he ask Susy to share such a life
+with him?  If he did, she would probably have the sense to
+refuse.  Their alliance had been based on a moment's midsummer
+madness; now the score must be paid ....
+
+He decided to write.  If they were to part he could not trust
+himself to see her.  He called a waiter, asked for pen and
+paper, and pushed aside a pile of unread newspapers on the
+corner of the table where his coffee had been served.  As he did
+so, his eye lit on a Daily Mail of two days before.  As a
+pretext for postponing his letter, he took up the paper and
+glanced down the first page.  He read:
+
+"Tragic Yachting Accident in the Solent.  The Earl of Altringham
+and his son Viscount d'Amblay drowned in midnight collision.
+Both bodies recovered."
+
+He read on.  He grasped the fact that the disaster had happened
+the night before he had left Venice and that, as the result of a
+fog in the Solent, their old friend Strefford was now Earl of
+Altringham, and possessor of one of the largest private fortunes
+in England.  It was vertiginous to think of their old
+impecunious Streff as the hero of such an adventure.  And what
+irony in that double turn of the wheel which, in one day, had
+plunged him, Nick Lansing, into nethermost misery, while it
+tossed the other to the stars!
+
+With an intenser precision he saw again Susy's descent from the
+gondola at the calle steps, the sound of her laughter and of
+Strefford's chaff, the way she had caught his arm and clung to
+it, sweeping the other men on in her train.  Strefford--Susy and
+Strefford! ...  More than once, Nick had noticed the softer
+inflections of his friend's voice when he spoke to Susy, the
+brooding look in his lazy eyes when they rested on her.  In the
+security of his wedded bliss Nick had made light of those signs.
+The only real jealousy he had felt had been of Fred Gillow,
+because of his unlimited power to satisfy a woman's whims.  Yet
+Nick knew that such material advantages would never again
+suffice for Susy.  With Strefford it was different.  She had
+delighted in his society while he was notoriously ineligible;
+might not she find him irresistible now?
+
+The forgotten terms of their bridal compact came back to Nick:
+the absurd agreement on which he and Susy had solemnly pledged
+their faith.  But was it so absurd, after all?  It had been
+Susy's suggestion (not his, thank God!); and perhaps in making
+it she had been more serious than he imagined.  Perhaps, even if
+their rupture had not occurred, Strefford's sudden honours might
+have caused her to ask for her freedom ....
+
+Money, luxury, fashion, pleasure:  those were the four
+cornerstones of her existence.  He had always known it--she
+herself had always acknowledged it, even in their last dreadful
+talk together; and once he had gloried in her frankness.  How
+could he ever have imagined that, to have her fill of these
+things, she would not in time stoop lower than she had yet
+stooped?  Perhaps in giving her up to Strefford he might be
+saving her.  At any rate, the taste of the past was now so
+bitter to him that he was moved to thank whatever gods there
+were for pushing that mortuary paragraph under his eye ....
+
+"Susy, dear [he wrote], the fates seem to have taken our future
+in hand, and spared us the trouble of unravelling it.  If I have
+sometimes been selfish enough to forget the conditions on which
+you agreed to marry me, they have come back to me during these
+two days of solitude.  You've given me the best a man can have,
+and nothing else will ever be worth much to me.  But since I
+haven't the ability to provide you with what you want, I
+recognize that I've no right to stand in your way. We must owe
+no more Venetian palaces to underhand services.  I see by the
+newspapers that Streff can now give you as many palaces as you
+want.  Let him have the chance--I fancy he'll jump at it, and
+he's the best man in sight.  I wish I were in his shoes.
+
+"I'll write again in a day or two, when I've collected my wits,
+and can give you an address.  NICK."
+
+He added a line on the subject of their modest funds, put the
+letter into an envelope, and addressed it to Mrs. Nicholas
+Lansing.  As he did so, he reflected that it was the first time
+he had ever written his wife's married name.
+
+"Well--by God, no other woman shall have it after her," he
+vowed, as he groped in his pocketbook for a stamp.
+
+He stood up with a stretch of weariness--the heat was stifling!
+--and put the letter in his pocket.
+
+"I'll post it myself, it's safer," he thought; "and then what in
+the name of goodness shall I do next, I wonder?"  He jammed his
+hat down on his head and walked out into the sun-blaze.
+
+As he was turning away from the square by the general Post
+Office, a white parasol waved from a passing cab, and Coral
+Hicks leaned forward with outstretched hand. "I knew I'd find
+you," she triumphed.  "I've been driving up and down in this
+broiling sun for hours, shopping and watching for you at the
+same time."
+
+He stared at her blankly, too bewildered even to wonder how she
+knew he was in Genoa; and she continued, with the kind of shy
+imperiousness that always made him feel, in her presence, like a
+member of an orchestra under a masterful baton; "Now please get
+right into this carriage, and don't keep me roasting here
+another minute."  To the cabdriver she called out:  Al porto."
+
+Nick Lansing sank down beside her. As he did so he noticed a
+heap of bundles at her feet, and felt that he had simply added
+one more to the number.  He supposed that she was taking her
+spoils to the Ibis, and that he would be carried up to the deck-
+house to be displayed with the others.  Well, it would all help
+to pass the day--and by night he would have reached some kind of
+a decision about his future.
+
+On the third day after Nick's departure the post brought to the
+Palazzo Vanderlyn three letters for Mrs. Lansing.
+
+The first to arrive was a word from Strefford, scribbled in the
+train and posted at Turin.  In it he briefly said that he had
+been called home by the dreadful accident of which Susy had
+probably read in the daily papers.  He added that he would write
+again from England, and then--in a blotted postscript--:  "I
+wanted uncommonly badly to see you for good-bye, but the hour
+was impossible.  Regards to Nick.  Do write me just a word to
+Altringham."
+
+The other two letters, which came together in the afternoon,
+were both from Genoa.  Susy scanned the addresses and fell upon
+the one in her husband's writing.  Her hand trembled so much
+that for a moment she could not open the envelope.  When she had
+done so, she devoured the letter in a flash, and then sat and
+brooded over the outspread page as it lay on her knee.  It might
+mean so many things--she could read into it so many harrowing
+alternatives of indifference and despair, of irony and
+tenderness!  Was he suffering tortures when he wrote it, or
+seeking only to inflict them upon her?  Or did the words
+represent his actual feelings, no more and no less, and did he
+really intend her to understand that he considered it his duty
+to abide by the letter of their preposterous compact?  He had
+left her in wrath and indignation, yet, as a closer scrutiny
+revealed, there was not a word of reproach in his brief lines.
+Perhaps that was why, in the last issue, they seemed so cold to
+her ....  She shivered and turned to the other envelope.
+
+The large stilted characters, though half-familiar, called up no
+definite image.  She opened the envelope and discovered a post-
+card of the Ibis, canvas spread, bounding over a rippled sea.
+On the back was written:
+
+"So awfully dear of you to lend us Mr. Lansing for a little
+cruise.  You may count on our taking the best of care of him.
+CORAL"
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+XIII
+
+WHEN Violet Melrose had said to Susy Branch, the winter before
+in New York:  "But why on earth don't you and Nick go to my
+little place at Versailles for the honeymoon?  I'm off to China,
+and you could have it to yourselves all summer," the offer had
+been tempting enough to make the lovers waver.
+
+It was such an artless ingenuous little house, so full of the
+demoralizing simplicity of great wealth, that it seemed to Susy
+just the kind of place in which to take the first steps in
+renunciation.  But Nick had objected that Paris, at that time of
+year, would be swarming with acquaintances who would hunt them
+down at all hours; and Susy's own experience had led her to
+remark that there was nothing the very rich enjoyed more than
+taking pot-luck with the very poor.  They therefore gave
+Strefford's villa the preference, with an inward proviso (on
+Susy's part) that Violet's house might very conveniently serve
+their purpose at another season.
+
+These thoughts were in her mind as she drove up to Mrs.
+Melrose's door on a rainy afternoon late in August, her boxes
+piled high on the roof of the cab she had taken at the station.
+She had travelled straight through from Venice, stopping in
+Milan just long enough to pick up a reply to the telegram she
+had despatched to the perfect housekeeper whose permanent
+presence enabled Mrs. Melrose to say:  "Oh, when I'm sick of
+everything I just rush off without warning to my little shanty
+at Versailles, and live there all alone on scrambled eggs."
+
+The perfect house-keeper had replied to Susy's enquiry:  "Am
+sure Mrs. Melrose most happy"; and Susy, without further
+thought, had jumped into a Versailles train, and now stood in
+the thin rain before the sphinx-guarded threshold of the
+pavilion.
+
+The revolving year had brought around the season at which Mrs.
+Melrose's house might be convenient:  no visitors were to be
+feared at Versailles at the end of August, and though Susy's
+reasons for seeking solitude were so remote from those she had
+once prefigured, they were none the less cogent.  To be alone--
+alone!  After those first exposed days when, in the persistent
+presence of Fred Gillow and his satellites, and in the mocking
+radiance of late summer on the lagoons, she had fumed and turned
+about in her agony like a trapped animal in a cramping cage, to
+be alone had seemed the only respite, the one craving:  to be
+alone somewhere in a setting as unlike as possible to the
+sensual splendours of Venice, under skies as unlike its azure
+roof.  If she could have chosen she would have crawled away into
+a dingy inn in a rainy northern town, where she had never been
+and no one knew her.  Failing that unobtainable luxury, here she
+was on the threshold of an empty house, in a deserted place,
+under lowering skies.  She had shaken off Fred Gillow, sulkily
+departing for his moor (where she had half-promised to join him
+in September); the Prince, young Breckenridge, and the few
+remaining survivors of the Venetian group, had dispersed in the
+direction of the Engadine or Biarritz; and now she could at
+least collect her wits, take stock of herself, and prepare the
+countenance with which she was to face the next stage in her
+career.  Thank God it was raining at Versailles!
+
+The door opened, she heard voices in the drawing-room, and a
+slender languishing figure appeared on the threshold.
+
+"Darling!"  Violet Melrose cried in an embrace, drawing her into
+the dusky perfumed room.
+
+"But I thought you were in China!"  Susy stammered.
+
+"In China ... in China," Mrs. Melrose stared with dreamy eyes,
+and Susy remembered her drifting disorganised life, a life more
+planless, more inexplicable than that of any of the other
+ephemeral beings blown about upon the same winds of pleasure.
+
+"Well, Madam, I thought so myself till I got a wire from Mrs.
+Melrose last evening," remarked the perfect house-keeper,
+following with Susy's handbag.
+
+Mrs. Melrose clutched her cavernous temples in her attenuated
+hands.  "Of course, of course!  I had meant to go to China--no,
+India ....  But I've discovered a genius ... and Genius, you
+know ...."  Unable to complete her thought, she sank down upon a
+pillowy divan, stretched out an arm, cried:  "Fulmer! Fulmer!"
+and, while Susy Lansing stood in the middle of the room with
+widening eyes, a man emerged from the more deeply cushioned and
+scented twilight of some inner apartment, and she saw with
+surprise Nat Fulmer, the good Nat Fulmer of the New Hampshire
+bungalow and the ubiquitous progeny, standing before her in
+lordly ease, his hands in his pockets, a cigarette between his
+lips, his feet solidly planted in the insidious depths of one of
+Violet Melrose's white leopard skins.
+
+"Susy!" he shouted with open arms; and Mrs. Melrose murmured:
+"You didn't know, then?  You hadn't heard of his masterpieces?"
+
+In spite of herself, Susy burst into a laugh.  "Is Nat your
+genius?"
+
+Mrs. Melrose looked at her reproachfully.
+
+Fulmer laughed.  "No; I'm Grace's.  But Mrs. Melrose has been
+our Providence, and ...."
+
+"Providence?" his hostess interrupted.  "Don't talk as if you
+were at a prayer-meeting!  He had an exhibition in New York ...
+it was the most fabulous success.  He's come abroad to make
+studies for the decoration of my music-room in New York.  Ursula
+Gillow has given him her garden-house at Roslyn to do.  And Mrs.
+Bockheimer's ball-room--oh, Fulmer, where are the cartoons?"
+She sprang up, tossed about some fashion-papers heaped on a
+lacquer table, and sank back exhausted by the effort.  "I'd got
+as far as Brindisi.  I've travelled day and night to be here to
+meet him," she declared.  "But, you darling," and she held out a
+caressing hand to Susy, "I'm forgetting to ask if you've had
+tea?"
+
+An hour later, over the tea-table, Susy already felt herself
+mysteriously reabsorbed into what had so long been her native
+element.  Ellie Vanderlyn had brought a breath of it to Venice;
+but Susy was then nourished on another air, the air of Nick's
+presence and personality; now that she was abandoned, left again
+to her own devices, she felt herself suddenly at the mercy of
+the influences from which she thought she had escaped.
+
+In the queer social whirligig from which she had so lately fled,
+it seemed natural enough that a shake of the box should have
+tossed Nat Fulmer into celebrity, and sent Violet Melrose
+chasing back from the ends of the earth to bask in his success.
+Susy knew that Mrs. Melrose belonged to the class of moral
+parasites; for in that strange world the parts were sometimes
+reversed, and the wealthy preyed upon the pauper.  Wherever
+there was a reputation to batten on, there poor Violet appeared,
+a harmless vampire in pearls who sought only to feed on the
+notoriety which all her millions could not create for her.  Any
+one less versed than Susy in the shallow mysteries of her little
+world would have seen in Violet Melrose a baleful enchantress,
+in Nat Fulmer her helpless victim.  Susy knew better.  Violet,
+poor Violet, was not even that.  The insignificant Ellie
+Vanderlyn, with her brief trivial passions, her artless mixture
+of amorous and social interests, was a woman with a purpose, a
+creature who fulfilled herself; but Violet was only a drifting
+interrogation.
+
+And what of Fulmer?  Mustering with new eyes his short sturdily-
+built figure, his nondescript bearded face, and the eyes that
+dreamed and wandered, and then suddenly sank into you like
+claws, Susy seemed to have found the key to all his years of
+dogged toil, his indifference to neglect, indifference to
+poverty, indifference to the needs of his growing family ....
+Yes:  for the first time she saw that he looked commonplace
+enough to be a genius--was a genius, perhaps, even though it was
+Violet Melrose who affirmed it!  Susy looked steadily at Fulmer,
+their eyes met, and he smiled at her faintly through his beard.
+
+"Yes, I did discover him--I did," Mrs. Melrose was insisting,
+from the depths of the black velvet divan in which she lay sunk
+like a wan Nereid in a midnight sea.  "You mustn't believe a
+word that Ursula Gillow tells you about having pounced on his
+'Spring Snow Storm' in a dark corner of the American Artists'
+exhibition--skied, if you please!  They skied him less than a
+year ago!  And naturally Ursula never in her life looked higher
+than the first line at a picture-show.  And now she actually
+pretends ... oh, for pity's sake don't say it doesn't matter,
+Fulmer!  Your saying that just encourages her, and makes people
+think she did.  When, in reality, any one who saw me at the
+exhibition on varnishing-day ....  Who?  Well, Eddy
+Breckenridge, for instance.  He was in Egypt, you say?  Perhaps
+he was!  As if one could remember the people about one, when
+suddenly one comes upon a great work of art, as St. Paul did--
+didn't he?--and the scales fell from his eyes.  Well ... that's
+exactly what happened to me that day ... and Ursula, everybody
+knows, was  down at Roslyn at the time, and didn't come up for
+the opening of the exhibition at all.  And Fulmer sits there and
+laughs, and says it doesn't matter, and that he'll paint another
+picture any day for me to discover!"
+
+Susy had rung the door-bell with a hand trembling with
+eagerness--eagerness to be alone, to be quiet, to stare her
+situation in the face, and collect herself before she came out
+again among her kind.  She had stood on the door-step, cowering
+among her bags, counting the instants till a step sounded and
+the door-knob turned, letting her in from the searching glare of
+the outer world ....  And now she had sat for an hour in
+Violet's drawing-room, in the very house where her honey-moon
+might have been spent; and no one had asked her where she had
+come from, or why she was alone, or what was the key to the
+tragedy written on her shrinking face ....
+
+That was the way of the world they lived in.  Nobody questioned,
+nobody wondered any more-because nobody had time to remember.
+The old risk of prying curiosity, of malicious gossip, was
+virtually over:  one was left with one's drama, one's disaster,
+on one's hands, because there was nobody to stop and notice the
+little shrouded object one was carrying.  As Susy watched the
+two people before her, each so frankly unaffected by her
+presence, Violet Melrose so engrossed in her feverish pursuit of
+notoriety, Fulmer so plunged in the golden sea of his success,
+she felt like a ghost making inaudible and imperceptible appeals
+to the grosser senses of the living.
+
+"If I wanted to be alone," she thought, "I'm alone enough, in
+all conscience."  There was a deathly chill in such security.
+She turned to Fulmer.
+
+"And Grace?"
+
+He beamed back without sign of embarrassment.  "Oh, she's here,
+naturally--we're in Paris, kids and all.  In a pension, where we
+can polish up the lingo.  But I hardly ever lay eyes on her,
+because she's as deep in music as I am in paint; it was as big a
+chance for her as for me, you see, and she's making the most of
+it, fiddling and listening to the fiddlers.  Well, it's a
+considerable change from New Hampshire."  He looked at her
+dreamily, as if making an intense effort to detach himself from
+his dream, and situate her in the fading past.  "Remember the
+bungalow?  And Nick--ah, how's Nick?" he brought out
+triumphantly.
+
+"Oh, yes--darling Nick?"  Mrs. Melrose chimed in; and Susy, her
+head erect, her cheeks aflame, declared with resonance:  "Most
+awfully well--splendidly!"
+
+"He's not here, though?" from Fulmer.
+
+"No.  He's off travelling--cruising."
+
+Mrs. Melrose's attention was faintly roused.  "With anybody
+interesting?"
+
+"No; you wouldn't know them.  People we met ...."  She did not
+have to continue, for her hostess's gaze had again strayed.
+
+"And you've come for your clothes, I suppose, darling?  Don't
+listen to people who say that skirts are to be wider.  I've
+discovered a new woman--a Genius--and she absolutely swathes
+you.... Her name's my secret; but we'll go to her together."
+
+Susy rose from her engulphing armchair.  "Do you mind if I go up
+to my room?  I'm rather tired--coming straight through."
+
+"Of course, dear. I think there are some people coming to
+dinner ... Mrs. Match will tell you.  She has such a memory ....
+Fulmer, where on earth are those cartoons of the music-room?"
+
+Their voices pursued Susy upstairs, as, in Mrs. Match's
+perpendicular wake, she mounted to the white-panelled room with
+its gay linen hangings and the low bed heaped with more
+cushions.
+
+"If we'd come here," she thought, "everything might have been
+different."  And she shuddered at the sumptuous memories of the
+Palazzo Vanderlyn, and the great painted bedroom where she had
+met her doom.
+
+Mrs. Match, hoping she would find everything, and mentioning
+that dinner was not till nine, shut her softly in among her
+terrors.
+
+"Find everything?"  Susy echoed the phrase.  Oh, yes, she would
+always find everything:  every time the door shut on her now,
+and the sound of voices ceased, her memories would be there
+waiting for her, every one of them, waiting quietly, patiently,
+obstinately, like poor people in a doctor's office, the people
+who are always last to be attended to, but whom nothing will
+discourage or drive away, people to whom time is nothing,
+fatigue nothing, hunger nothing, other engagements nothing:  who
+just wait ....  Thank heaven, after all, that she had not found
+the house empty, if, whenever she returned to her room, she was
+to meet her memories there!
+
+It was just a week since Nick had left her.  During that week,
+crammed with people, questions, packing, explaining, evading,
+she had believed that in solitude lay her salvation.  Now she
+understood that there was nothing she was so unprepared for, so
+unfitted for.  When, in all her life, had she ever been alone?
+And how was she to bear it now, with all these ravening memories
+besetting her!
+
+Dinner not till nine?  What on earth was she to do till nine
+o'clock?  She knelt before her boxes, and feverishly began to
+unpack.
+
+Gradually, imperceptibly, the subtle influences of her old life
+were stealing into her.  As she pulled out her tossed and
+crumpled dresses she remembered Violet's emphatic warning:
+"Don't believe the people who tell you that skirts are going to
+be wider."  Were hers, perhaps, too wide as it was?  She looked
+at her limp raiment, piling itself up on bed and sofa, and
+understood that, according to Violet's standards, and that of
+all her set, those dresses, which Nick had thought so original
+and exquisite, were already commonplace and dowdy, fit only to
+be passed on to poor relations or given to one's maid.  And Susy
+would have to go on wearing them till they fell to bits-or
+else ....  Well, or else begin the old life again in some new
+form ....
+
+She laughed aloud at the turn of her thoughts.  Dresses?  How
+little they had mattered a few short weeks ago!  And now,
+perhaps, they would again be one of the foremost considerations
+in her life.  How could it be otherwise, if she were to return
+again to her old dependence on Ellie Vanderlyn, Ursula Gillow,
+Violet Melrose?  And beyond that, only the Bockheimers and their
+kind awaited her ....
+
+A knock on the door--what a relief!  It was Mrs. Match again,
+with a telegram.  To whom had Susy given her new address?  With
+a throbbing heart she tore open the envelope and read:
+
+"Shall be in Paris Friday for twenty-four hours where can I see
+you write Nouveau Luxe."
+
+Ah, yes--she remembered now:  she had written to Strefford!  And
+this was his answer:  he was coming.  She dropped into a chair,
+and tried to think.  What on earth had she said in her letter?
+It had been mainly, of course, one of condolence; but now she
+remembered having added, in a precipitate postscript:  "I can't
+give your message to Nick, for he's gone off with the Hickses-I
+don't know where, or for how long.  It's all right, of course:
+it was in our bargain."
+
+She had not meant to put in that last phrase; but as she sealed
+her letter to Strefford her eye had fallen on Nick's missive,
+which lay beside it.  Nothing in her husband's brief lines had
+embittered her as much as the allusion to Strefford.  It seemed
+to imply that Nick's own plans were made, that his own future
+was secure, and that he could therefore freely and handsomely
+take thought for hers, and give her a pointer in the right
+direction.  Sudden rage had possessed her at the thought:  where
+she had at first read jealousy she now saw only a cold
+providence, and in a blur of tears she had scrawled her
+postscript to Strefford.  She remembered that she had not even
+asked him to keep her secret.  Well--after all, what would it
+matter if people should already know that Nick had left her?
+Their parting could not long remain a mystery, and the fact that
+it was known might help her to keep up a presence of
+indifference.
+
+"It was in the bargain--in the bargain," rang through her brain
+as she re-read Strefford's telegram.  She understood that he had
+snatched the time for this hasty trip solely in the hope of
+seeing her, and her eyes filled.  The more bitterly she thought
+of Nick the more this proof of Strefford's friendship moved her.
+
+The clock, to her relief, reminded her that it was time to dress
+for dinner.  She would go down presently, chat with Violet and
+Fulmer, and with Violet's other guests, who would probably be
+odd and amusing, and too much out of her world to embarrass her
+by awkward questions.  She would sit at a softly-lit table,
+breathe delicate scents, eat exquisite food (trust Mrs. Match!),
+and be gradually drawn again under the spell of her old
+associations.  Anything, anything but to be alone ....
+
+She dressed with even more than her habitual care, reddened her
+lips attentively, brushed the faintest bloom of pink over her
+drawn cheeks, and went down--to meet Mrs. Match coming up with a
+tray.
+
+"Oh, Madam, I thought you were too tired ....  I was bringing it
+up to you myself--just a little morsel of chicken."
+
+Susy, glancing past her, saw, through the open door, that the
+lamps were not lit in the drawing-room.
+
+"Oh, no, I'm not tired, thank you.  I thought Mrs. Melrose
+expected friends at dinner!"
+
+"Friends at dinner-to-night?"  Mrs. Match heaved a despairing
+sigh.  Sometimes, the sigh seemed to say, her mistress put too
+great a strain upon her.  "Why, Mrs. Melrose and Mr. Fulmer were
+engaged to dine in Paris.  They left an hour ago.  Mrs. Melrose
+told me she'd told you," the house-keeper wailed.
+
+Susy kept her little fixed smile.  "I must have misunderstood.
+In that case ... well, yes, if it's no trouble, I believe I will
+have my tray upstairs. "
+
+Slowly she turned, and followed the housekeeper up into the
+dread solitude she had just left.
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+THE next day a lot of people turned up unannounced for luncheon.
+They were not of the far-fetched and the exotic, in whom Mrs.
+Melrose now specialized, but merely commonplace fashionable
+people belonging to Susy's own group, people familiar with the
+amusing romance of her penniless marriage, and to whom she had
+to explain (though none of them really listened to the
+explanation) that Nick was not with her just now but had gone
+off cruising ... cruising in the AEgean with friends ... getting
+up material for his book (this detail had occurred to her in the
+night).
+
+It was the kind of encounter she had most dreaded; but it
+proved, after all, easy enough to go through compared with those
+endless hours of turning to and fro, the night before, in the
+cage of her lonely room.  Anything, anything, but to be
+alone ....
+
+Gradually, from the force of habit, she found herself actually
+in tune with the talk of the luncheon table, interested in the
+references to absent friends, the light allusions to last year's
+loves and quarrels, scandals and absurdities.  The women, in
+their pale summer dresses, were so graceful, indolent and sure
+of themselves, the men so easy and good-humoured!  Perhaps,
+after all, Susy reflected, it was the world she was meant for,
+since the other, the brief Paradise of her dreams, had already
+shut its golden doors upon her.  And then, as they sat on the
+terrace after luncheon, looking across at the yellow tree-tops
+of the park, one of the women said something--made just an
+allusion--that Susy would have let pass unnoticed in the old
+days, but that now filled her with a sudden deep disgust ....
+She stood up and wandered away, away from them all through the
+fading garden.
+
+Two days later Susy and Strefford sat on the terrace of the
+Tuileries above the Seine.  She had asked him to meet her there,
+with the desire to avoid the crowded halls and drawing-room of
+the Nouveau Luxe where, even at that supposedly "dead" season,
+people one knew were always drifting to and fro; and they sat on
+a bench in the pale sunlight, the discoloured leaves heaped at
+their feet, and no one to share their solitude but a lame
+working-man and a haggard woman who were lunching together
+mournfully at the other end of the majestic vista.
+
+Strefford, in his new mourning, looked unnaturally prosperous
+and well-valeted; but his ugly untidy features remained as
+undisciplined, his smile as whimsical, as of old.  He had been
+on cool though friendly terms with the pompous uncle and the
+poor sickly cousin whose joint disappearance had so abruptly
+transformed his future; and it was his way to understate his
+feelings rather than to pretend more than he felt.
+Nevertheless, beneath his habitual bantering tone Susy discerned
+a change.  The disaster had shocked him profoundly; already, in
+his brief sojourn among his people and among the great
+possessions so tragically acquired, old instincts had awakened,
+forgotten associations had spoken in him.  Susy listened to him
+wistfully, silenced by her imaginative perception of the
+distance that these things had put between them.
+
+"It was horrible ... seeing them both there together, laid out
+in that hideous Pugin chapel at Altringham ... the poor boy
+especially.  I suppose that's really what's cutting me up now,"
+he murmured, almost apologetically.
+
+"Oh, it's more than that--more than you know," she insisted; but
+he jerked back:  "Now, my dear, don't be edifying, please," and
+fumbled for a cigarette in the pocket which was already
+beginning to bulge with his miscellaneous properties.
+
+"And now about you--for that's what I came for," he continued,
+turning to her with one of his sudden movements.  "I couldn't
+make head or tail of your letter."
+
+She paused a moment to steady her voice.  "Couldn't you?  I
+suppose you'd forgotten my bargain with Nick.  He hadn't-and
+he's asked me to fulfil it."
+
+Strefford stared.  "What--that nonsense about your setting each
+other free if either of you had the chance to make a good
+match?"
+
+She signed "Yes."
+
+"And he's actually asked you--?"
+
+"Well:  practically.  He's gone off with the Hickses.  Before
+going he wrote me that we'd better both consider ourselves free.
+And Coral sent me a postcard to say that she would take the best
+of care of him."
+
+Strefford mused, his eyes upon his cigarette.  "But what the
+deuce led up to all this?  It can't have happened like that, out
+of a clear sky."
+
+Susy flushed, hesitated, looked away.  She had meant to tell
+Strefford the whole story; it had been one of her chief reasons
+for wishing to see him again, and half-unconsciously, perhaps,
+she had hoped, in his laxer atmosphere, to recover something of
+her shattered self-esteem.  But now she suddenly felt the
+impossibility of confessing to anyone the depths to which Nick's
+wife had stooped.  She fancied that her companion guessed the
+nature of her hesitation.
+
+"Don't tell me anything you don't want to, you know, my dear."
+
+"No; I do want to; only it's difficult.  You see--we had so very
+little money ...."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"And Nick--who was thinking of his book, and of all sorts of big
+things, fine things--didn't realise ... left it all to me ... to
+manage ...."
+
+She stumbled over the word, remembering how Nick had always
+winced at it.  But Strefford did not seem to notice her, and she
+hurried on, unfolding in short awkward sentences the avowal of
+their pecuniary difficulties, and of Nick's inability to
+understand that, to keep on with the kind of life they were
+leading, one had to put up with things ... accept favours ....
+
+"Borrow money, you mean?"
+
+"Well--yes; and all the rest."  No--decidedly she could not
+reveal to Strefford the episode of Ellie's letters.  "Nick
+suddenly felt, I suppose, that he couldn't stand it," she
+continued; "and instead of asking me to try--to try to live
+differently, go off somewhere with him and live, like work-
+people, in two rooms, without a servant, as I was ready to do;
+well, instead he wrote me that it had all been a mistake from
+the beginning, that we couldn't keep it up, and had better
+recognize the fact; and he went off on the Hickses' yacht.  The
+last evening that you were in Venice--the day he didn't come
+back to dinner--he had gone off to Genoa to meet them.  I
+suppose he intends to marry Coral."
+
+Strefford received this in silence.  "Well--it was your bargain,
+wasn't it?" he said at length.
+
+"Yes; but--"
+
+"Exactly:  I always told you so.  You weren't ready to have him
+go yet--that's all."
+
+She flushed to the forehead.  "Oh, Streff--is it really all?"
+
+"A question of time?  If you doubt it, I'd like to see you try,
+for a while, in those two rooms without a servant; and then let
+me hear from you.  Why, my dear, it's only a question of time in
+a palace, with a steam yacht lying off the door-step, and a
+flock of motors in the garage; look around you and see.  And did
+you ever imagine that you and Nick, of all people, were going to
+escape the common doom, and survive like Mr. and Mrs. Tithonus,
+while all about you the eternal passions were crumbling to
+pieces, and your native Divorce-states piling up their
+revenues?"
+
+She sat with bent head, the weight of the long years to come
+pressing like a leaden load on her shoulders.
+
+"But I'm so young ... life's so long.  What does last, then?"
+
+"Ah, you're too young to believe me, if I were to tell you;
+though you're intelligent enough to understand."
+
+"What does, then?"
+
+"Why, the hold of the things we all think we could do without.
+Habits--they outstand the Pyramids. Comforts, luxuries, the
+atmosphere of ease ... above all, the power to get away from
+dulness and monotony, from constraints and uglinesses.  You
+chose that power, instinctively, before you were even grown up;
+and so did Nick.  And the only difference between you is that
+he's had the sense to see sooner than you that those are the
+things that last, the prime necessities."
+
+"I don't believe it!"
+
+"Of course you don't:  at your age one doesn't reason one's
+materialism.  And besides you're mortally hurt that Nick has
+found out sooner than you, and hasn't disguised his discovery
+under any hypocritical phrases."
+
+"But surely there are people--"
+
+"Yes--saints and geniuses and heroes:  all the fanatics!  To
+which of their categories do you suppose we soft people belong?
+And the heroes and the geniuses--haven't they their enormous
+frailties and their giant appetites?  And how should we escape
+being the victims of our little ones?"
+
+She sat for a while without speaking.  "But, Streff, how can you
+say such things, when I know you care:  care for me, for
+instance!"
+
+"Care?"  He put his hand on hers.  "But, my dear, it's just the
+fugitiveness of mortal caring that makes it so exquisite!  It's
+because we know we can't hold fast to it, or to each other, or
+to anything ...."
+
+"Yes ... yes ... but hush, please!  Oh, don't say it!"  She
+stood up, the tears in her throat, and he rose also.
+
+"Come along, then; where do we lunch?" he said with a smile,
+slipping his hand through her arm.
+
+"Oh, I don't know.  Nowhere.  I think I'm going back to
+Versailles."
+
+"Because I've disgusted you so deeply?  Just my luck--when I
+came over to ask you to marry me!"
+
+She laughed, but he had become suddenly grave.  "Upon my soul, I
+did."
+
+"Dear Streff!  As if--now--"
+
+"Oh, not now--I know.  I'm aware that even with your accelerated
+divorce methods--"
+
+"It's not that.  I told you it was no use, Streff--I told you
+long ago, in Venice."
+
+He shrugged ironically.  "It's not Streff who's asking you now.
+Streff was not a marrying man:  he was only trifling with you.
+The present offer comes from an elderly peer of independent
+means. Think it over, my dear: as many days out as you like, and
+five footmen kept.  There's not the least hurry, of course; but
+I rather think Nick himself would advise it."
+
+She flushed to the temples, remembering that Nick had; and the
+remembrance made Strefford's sneering philosophy seem less
+unbearable.  Why should she not lunch with him, after all?  In
+the first days of his mourning he had come to Paris expressly to
+see her, and to offer her one of the oldest names and one of the
+greatest fortunes in England.  She thought of Ursula Gillow,
+Ellie Vanderlyn, Violet Melrose, of their condescending
+kindnesses, their last year's dresses, their Christmas cheques,
+and all the careless bounties that were so easy to bestow and so
+hard to accept.  "I should rather enjoy paying them back,"
+something in her maliciously murmured.
+
+She did not mean to marry Strefford--she had not even got as far
+as contemplating the possibility of a divorce but it was
+undeniable that this sudden prospect of wealth and freedom was
+like fresh air in her lungs.  She laughed again, but now without
+bitterness.
+
+"Very good, then; we'll lunch together.  But it's Streff I want
+to lunch with to-day."
+
+"Ah, well," her companion agreed, "I rather think that for a
+tete-a-tete he's better company."
+
+During their repast in a little restaurant over the Seine, where
+she insisted on the cheapest dishes because she was lunching
+with "Streff," he became again his old whimsical companionable
+self.  Once or twice she tried to turn the talk to his altered
+future, and the obligations and interests that lay before him;
+but he shrugged away from the subject, questioning her instead
+about the motley company at Violet Melrose's, and fitting a
+droll or malicious anecdote to each of the people she named.
+
+It was not till they had finished their coffee, and she was
+glancing at her watch with a vague notion of taking the next
+train, that he asked abruptly:  "But what are you going to do?
+You can't stay forever at Violet's."
+
+"Oh, no!" she cried with a shiver.
+
+"Well, then--you've got some plan, I suppose?"
+
+"Have I?" she wondered, jerked back into grim reality from the
+soothing interlude of their hour together.
+
+"You can't drift indefinitely, can you?  Unless you mean to go
+back to the old sort of life once for all."
+
+She reddened and her eyes filled.  "I can't do that, Streff--I
+know I can't!"
+
+"Then what--?"
+
+She hesitated, and brought out with lowered head:  "Nick said he
+would write again--in a few days.  I must wait--"
+
+"Oh, naturally.  Don't do anything in a hurry."  Strefford also
+glanced at his watch.  "Garcon, l'addition!  I'm taking the
+train back to-night, and I've a lot of things left to do.  But
+look here, my dear--when you come to a decision one way or the
+other let me know, will you?  Oh, I don't mean in the matter
+I've most at heart; we'll consider that closed for the present.
+But at least I can be of use in other ways--hang it, you know, I
+can even lend you money.  There's a new sensation for our jaded
+palates!"
+
+"Oh, Streff ... Streff!" she could only falter; and he pressed
+on gaily:  "Try it, now do try it--I assure you there'll be no
+interest to pay, and no conditions attached.  And promise to let
+me know when you've decided anything. "
+
+She looked into his humorously puckered eyes, answering. Their
+friendly smile with hers.
+
+"I promise!" she said.
+
+
+
+XV
+
+THAT hour with Strefford had altered her whole perspective.
+Instead of possible dependence, an enforced return to the old
+life of connivances and concessions, she saw before her--
+whenever she chose to take them--freedom, power and dignity.
+Dignity!  It was odd what weight that word had come to have for
+her.  She had dimly felt its significance, felt the need of its
+presence in her inmost soul, even in the young thoughtless days
+when she had seemed to sacrifice so little to the austere
+divinities.  And since she had been Nick Lansing's wife she had
+consciously acknowledged it, had suffered and agonized when she
+fell beneath its standard.  Yes:  to marry Strefford would give
+her that sense of self-respect which, in such a world as theirs,
+only wealth and position could ensure.  If she had not the
+mental or moral training to attain independence in any other
+way, was she to blame for seeking it on such terms?
+
+Of course there was always the chance that Nick would come back,
+would find life without her as intolerable as she was finding it
+without him.  If that happened--ah, if that happened!  Then she
+would cease to strain her eyes into the future, would seize upon
+the present moment and plunge into it to the very bottom of
+oblivion.  Nothing on earth would matter then--money or freedom
+or pride, or her precious moral dignity, if only she were in
+Nick's arms again!
+
+But there was Nick's icy letter, there was Coral Hicks's
+insolent post-card, to show how little chance there was of such
+a solution.  Susy understood that, even before the discovery of
+her transaction with Ellie Vanderlyn, Nick had secretly wearied,
+if not of his wife, at least of the life that their marriage
+compelled him to lead.  His passion was not strong enough-had
+never been strong enough--to outweigh his prejudices, scruples,
+principles, or whatever one chose to call them.  Susy's dignity
+might go up like tinder in the blaze of her love; but his was
+made of a less combustible substance.  She had felt, in their
+last talk together, that she had forever destroyed the inner
+harmony between them.
+
+Well--there it was, and the fault was doubtless neither hers nor
+his, but that of the world they had grown up in, of their own
+moral contempt for it and physical dependence on it, of his
+half-talents and her half-principles, of the something in them
+both that was not stout enough to resist nor yet pliant enough
+to yield.  She stared at the fact on the journey back to
+Versailles, and all that sleepless night in her room; and the
+next morning, when the housemaid came in with her breakfast
+tray, she felt the factitious energy that comes from having
+decided, however half-heartedly, on a definite course.
+
+She had said to herself:  "If there's no letter from Nick this
+time next week I'll write to Streff--" and the week had passed,
+and there was no letter.
+
+It was now three weeks since he had left her, and she had had no
+word but his note from Genoa.  She had concluded that,
+foreseeing the probability of her leaving Venice, he would write
+to her in care of their Paris bank.  But though she had
+immediately notified the bank of her change of address no
+communication from Nick had reached her; and she smiled with a
+touch of bitterness at the difficulty he was doubtless finding
+in the composition of the promised letter.  Her own scrap-
+basket, for the first days, had been heaped with the fragments
+of the letters she had begun; and she told herself that, since
+they both found it so hard to write, it was probably because
+they had nothing left to say to each other.
+
+Meanwhile the days at Mrs. Melrose's drifted by as they had been
+wont to drift when, under the roofs of the rich, Susy Branch had
+marked time between one episode and the next of her precarious
+existence.  Her experience of such sojourns was varied enough to
+make her acutely conscious of their effect on her temporary
+hosts; and in the present case she knew that Violet was hardly
+aware of her presence.  But if no more than tolerated she was at
+least not felt to be an inconvenience; when your hostess forgot
+about you it proved that at least you were not in her way.
+
+Violet, as usual, was perpetually on the wing, for her profound
+indolence expressed itself in a disordered activity.  Nat Fulmer
+had returned to Paris; but Susy guessed that his benefactress
+was still constantly in his company, and that when Mrs. Melrose
+was whirled away in her noiseless motor it was generally toward
+the scene of some new encounter between Fulmer and the arts.  On
+these occasions she sometimes offered to carry Susy to Paris,
+and they devoted several long and hectic mornings to the dress-
+makers, where Susy felt herself gradually succumbing to the
+familiar spell of heaped-up finery.  It seemed impossible, as
+furs and laces and brocades were tossed aside, brought back, and
+at last carelessly selected from, that anything but the whim of
+the moment need count in deciding whether one should take all or
+none, or that any woman could be worth looking at who did not
+possess the means to make her choice regardless of cost.
+
+Once alone, and in the street again, the evil fumes would
+evaporate, and daylight re-enter Susy's soul; yet she felt that
+the old poison was slowly insinuating itself into her system.
+To dispel it she decided one day to look up Grace Fulmer.  She
+was curious to know how the happy-go-lucky companion of Fulmer's
+evil days was bearing the weight of his prosperity, and she
+vaguely felt that it would be refreshing to see some one who had
+never been afraid of poverty.
+
+The airless pension sitting-room, where she waited while a
+reluctant maid-servant screamed about the house for Mrs. Fulmer,
+did not have the hoped-for effect.  It was one thing for Grace
+to put up with such quarters when she shared them with Fulmer;
+but to live there while he basked in the lingering radiance of
+Versailles, or rolled from chateau to picture gallery in Mrs.
+Melrose's motor, showed a courage that Susy felt unable to
+emulate.
+
+"My dear!  I knew you'd look me up," Grace's joyous voice ran
+ down the stairway; and in another moment she was clasping Susy
+to her tumbled person.
+
+"Nat couldn't remember if he'd given you our address, though he
+promised me he would, the last time he was here."  She held Susy
+at arms' length, beaming upon her with blinking short-sighted
+eyes:  the same old dishevelled Grace, so careless of her
+neglected beauty and her squandered youth, so amused and absent-
+minded and improvident, that the boisterous air of the New
+Hampshire bungalow seemed to enter with her into the little air-
+tight salon.
+
+While she poured out the tale of Nat's sudden celebrity, and its
+unexpected consequences, Susy marvelled and dreamed.  Was the
+secret of his triumph perhaps due to those long hard unrewarded
+years, the steadfast scorn of popularity, the indifference to
+every kind of material ease in which his wife had so gaily
+abetted him?  Had it been bought at the cost of her own
+freshness and her own talent, of the children's "advantages," of
+everything except the closeness of the tie between husband and
+wife?  Well--it was worth the price, no doubt; but what if, now
+that honours and prosperity had come, the tie were snapped, and
+Grace were left alone among the ruins?
+
+There was nothing in her tone or words to suggest such a
+possibility.  Susy noticed that her ill-assorted raiment was
+costlier in quality and more professional in cut than the home-
+made garments which had draped her growing bulk at the bungalow:
+it was clear that she was trying to dress up to Nat's new
+situation.  But, above all, she was rejoicing in it, filling her
+hungry lungs with the strong air of his success.  It had
+evidently not occurred to her as yet that those who consent to
+share the bread of adversity may want the whole cake of
+prosperity for themselves.
+
+"My dear, it's too wonderful!  He's told me to take as many
+concert and opera tickets as I like; he lets me take all the
+children with me.  The big concerts don't begin till later; but
+of course the Opera is always going.  And there are little
+things--there's music in Paris at all seasons.  And later it's
+just possible we may get to Munich for a week--oh, Susy!"  Her
+hands clasped, her eyes brimming, she drank the new wine of life
+almost sacramentally.
+
+"Do you remember, Susy, when you and Nick came to stay at the
+bungalow?  Nat said you'd be horrified by our primitiveness-but
+I knew better!  And I was right, wasn't I?  Seeing us so happy
+made you and Nick decide to follow our example, didn't it?"  She
+glowed with the remembrance.  "And now, what are your plans?  Is
+Nick's book nearly done?  I suppose you'll have to live very
+economically till he finds a publisher.  And the baby, darling-
+when is that to be?  If you're coming home soon I could let you
+have a lot of the children's little old things."
+
+"You're always so dear, Grace.  But we haven't any special plans
+as yet--not even for a baby.  And I wish you'd tell me all of
+yours instead."
+
+Mrs. Fulmer asked nothing better:  Susy perceived that, so far,
+the greater part of her European experience had consisted in
+talking about what it was to be.  "Well, you see, Nat is so
+taken up all day with sight-seeing and galleries and meeting
+important people that he hasn't had time to go about with us;
+and as so few theatres are open, and there's so little music,
+I've taken the opportunity to catch up with my mending.  Junie
+helps me with it now--she's our eldest, you remember?  She's
+grown into a big girl since you saw her.  And later, perhaps,
+we're to travel.  And the most wonderful thing of all--next to
+Nat's recognition, I mean--is not having to contrive and skimp,
+and give up something every single minute.  Just think--Nat has
+even made special arrangements here in the pension, so that the
+children all have second helpings to everything.  And when I go
+up to bed I can think of my music, instead of lying awake
+calculating and wondering how I can make things come out at the
+end of the month.  Oh, Susy, that's simply heaven!"
+
+Susy's heart contracted.  She had come to her friend to be
+taught again the lesson of indifference to material things, and
+instead she was hearing from Grace Fulmer's lips the long-
+repressed avowal of their tyranny.  After all, that battle with
+poverty on the New Hampshire hillside had not been the easy
+smiling business that Grace and Nat had made it appear.  And yet
+... and yet ....
+
+Susy stood up abruptly, and straightened the expensive hat which
+hung irresponsibly over Grace's left ear.
+
+"What's wrong with it?  Junie helped me choose it, and she
+generally knows," Mrs. Fulmer wailed with helpless hands.
+
+"It's the way you wear it, dearest--and the bow is rather top-
+heavy.  Let me have it a minute, please." Susy lifted the hat
+from her friend's head and began to manipulate its trimming.
+"This is the way Maria Guy or Suzanne would do it ....  And now
+go on about Nat ...."
+
+She listened musingly while Grace poured forth the tale of her
+husband's triumph, of the notices in the papers, the demand for
+his work, the fine ladies' battles over their priority in
+discovering him, and the multiplied orders that had resulted
+from their rivalry.
+
+"Of course they're simply furious with each other-Mrs. Melrose
+and Mrs. Gillow especially--because each one pretends to have
+been the first to notice his 'Spring Snow-Storm,' and in reality
+it wasn't either of them, but only poor Bill Haslett, an art-
+critic we've known for years, who chanced on the picture, and
+rushed off to tell a dealer who was looking for a new painter to
+push."  Grace suddenly raised her soft myopic eyes to Susy's
+face.  "But, do you know, the funny thing is that I believe Nat
+is beginning to forget this, and to believe that it was Mrs.
+Melrose who stopped short in front of his picture on the opening
+day, and screamed out:  'This is genius!'  It seems funny he
+should care so much, when I've always known he had genius-and
+he has known it too.  But they're all so kind to him; and Mrs.
+Melrose especially.  And I suppose it makes a thing sound new to
+hear it said in a new voice."
+
+Susy looked at her meditatively.  "And how should you feel if
+Nat liked too much to hear Mrs. Melrose say it?  Too much, I
+mean, to care any longer what you felt or thought?"
+
+Her friend's worn face flushed quickly, and then paled:  Susy
+almost repented the question.  But Mrs. Fulmer met it with a
+tranquil dignity.  "You haven't been married long enough, dear,
+to understand ... how people like Nat and me feel about such
+things ... or how trifling they seem, in the balance ... the
+balance of one's memories."
+
+Susy stood up again, and flung her arms about her friend.  "Oh,
+Grace," she laughed with wet eyes, "how can you be as wise as
+that, and yet not have sense enough to buy a decent hat?"  She
+gave Mrs. Fulmer a quick embrace and hurried away.  She had
+learned her lesson after all; but it was not exactly the one she
+had come to seek.
+
+The week she had allowed herself had passed, and still there was
+no word from Nick.  She allowed herself yet another day, and
+that too went by without a letter.  She then decided on a step
+from which her pride had hitherto recoiled; she would call at
+the bank and ask for Nick's address.  She called, embarrassed
+and hesitating; and was told, after enquiries in the post-office
+department, that Mr. Nicholas Lansing had given no address since
+that of the Palazzo Vanderlyn, three months previously.  She
+went back to Versailles that afternoon with the definite
+intention of writing to Strefford unless the next morning's post
+brought a letter.
+
+The next morning brought nothing from Nick, but a scribbled
+message from Mrs. Melrose:  would Susy, as soon as possible,
+come into her room for a word, Susy jumped up, hurried through
+her bath, and knocked at her hostess's door.  In the immense low
+bed that faced the rich umbrage of the park Mrs. Melrose lay
+smoking cigarettes and glancing over her letters.  She looked up
+with her vague smile, and said dreamily:  "Susy darling, have
+you any particular plans--for the next few months, I mean?"
+
+Susy coloured: she knew the intonation of old, and fancied she
+understood what it implied.
+
+"Plans, dearest?  Any number ... I'm tearing myself away the day
+after to-morrow ... to the Gillows' moor, very probably," she
+hastened to announce.
+
+Instead of the relief she had expected to read on Mrs. Melrose's
+dramatic countenance she discovered there the blankest
+disappointment.
+
+"Oh, really?  That's too bad.  Is it absolutely settled--?"
+
+"As far as I'm concerned," said Susy crisply.
+
+The other sighed.  "I'm too sorry.  You see, dear, I'd meant to
+ask you to stay on here quietly and look after the Fulmer
+children.  Fulmer and I are going to Spain next week--I want to
+be with him when he makes his studies, receives his first
+impressions; such a marvellous experience, to be there when he
+and Velasquez meet!"  She broke off, lost in prospective
+ecstasy.  "And, you see, as Grace Fulmer insists on coming with
+us--"
+
+"Ah, I see."
+
+"Well, there are the five children--such a problem," sighed the
+benefactress.  "If you were at a loose end, you know, dear,
+while Nick's away with his friends, I could really make it worth
+your while ...."
+
+"So awfully good of you, Violet; only I'm not, as it happens."
+
+Oh the relief of being able to say that, gaily, firmly and even
+truthfully!  Take charge of the Fulmer children, indeed!  Susy
+remembered how Nick and she had fled from them that autumn
+afternoon in New Hampshire.  The offer gave her a salutary
+glimpse of the way in which, as the years passed, and she lost
+her freshness and novelty, she would more and more be used as a
+convenience, a stop-gap, writer of notes, runner of errands,
+nursery governess or companion.  She called to mind several
+elderly women of her acquaintance, pensioners of her own group,
+who still wore its livery, struck its attitudes and chattered
+its jargon, but had long since been ruthlessly relegated to
+these slave-ant offices.  Never in the world would she join
+their numbers.
+
+Mrs. Melrose's face fell, and she looked at Susy with the
+plaintive bewilderment of the wielder of millions to whom
+everything that cannot be bought is imperceptible.
+
+"But I can't see why you can't change your plans," she murmured
+with a soft persistency.
+
+"Ah, well, you know"--Susy paused on a slow inward smile--
+"they're not mine only, as it happens."
+
+Mrs. Melrose's brow clouded.  The unforeseen complication of
+Mrs. Fulmer's presence on the journey had evidently tried her
+nerves, and this new  obstacle to her arrangements shook her
+faith in the divine order of things.
+
+"Your plans are not yours only?  But surely you won't let Ursula
+Gillow dictate to you? ...  There's my jade pendant; the one you
+said you liked the other day ....  The Fulmers won't go with me,
+you understand, unless they're satisfied about the children; the
+whole plan will fall through.  Susy darling, you were always too
+unselfish; I hate to see you sacrificed to Ursula."
+
+Susy's smile lingered.  Time was when she might have been glad
+to add the jade pendant to the collection already enriched by
+Ellie Vanderlyn's sapphires; more recently, she would have
+resented the offer as an insult to her newly-found principles.
+But already the mere fact that she might henceforth, if she
+chose, be utterly out of reach of such bribes, enabled her to
+look down on them with tolerance.  Oh, the blessed moral freedom
+that wealth conferred!  She recalled Mrs. Fulmer's
+uncontrollable cry:  "The most wonderful thing of all is not
+having to contrive and skimp, and give up something every single
+minute!"  Yes; it was only on such terms that one could call
+one's soul one's own.  The sense of it gave Susy the grace to
+answer amicably:  "If I could possibly help you out, Violet, I
+shouldn't want a present to persuade me.  And, as you say,
+there's no reason why I should sacrifice myself to Ursula--or to
+anybody else.  Only, as it happens"--she paused and took the
+plunge--"I'm going to England because I've promised to see a
+friend."  That night she wrote to Strefford.
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+STRETCHED out under an awning on the deck of the Ibis, Nick
+Lansing looked up for a moment at the vanishing cliffs of Malta
+and then plunged again into his book.
+
+He had had nearly three weeks of drug-taking on the Ibis.  The
+drugs he had absorbed were of two kinds:  visions of fleeing
+landscapes, looming up from the blue sea to vanish into it
+again, and visions of study absorbed from the volumes piled up
+day and night at his elbow.  For the first time in months he was
+in reach of a real library, just the kind of scholarly yet
+miscellaneous library, that his restless and impatient spirit
+craved.  He was aware that the books he read, like the fugitive
+scenes on which he gazed, were merely a form of anesthetic:  he
+swallowed them with the careless greed of the sufferer who seeks
+only to still pain and deaden memory.  But they were beginning
+to produce in him a moral languor that was not disagreeable,
+that, indeed, compared with the fierce pain of the first days,
+was almost pleasurable.  It was exactly the kind of drug that he
+needed.
+
+There is probably no point on which the average man has more
+definite views than on the uselessness of writing a letter that
+is hard to write.  In the line he had sent to Susy from Genoa
+Nick had told her that she would hear from him again in a few
+days; but when the few days had passed, and he began to consider
+setting himself to the task, he found fifty reasons for
+postponing it.
+
+Had there been any practical questions to write about it would
+have been different; he could not have borne for twenty-four
+hours the idea that she was in uncertainty as to money.  But
+that had all been settled long ago.  From the first she had had
+the administering of their modest fortune.  On their marriage
+Nick's own meagre income, paid in, none too regularly, by the
+agent who had managed for years the dwindling family properties,
+had been transferred to her:  it was the only wedding present he
+could make.  And the wedding cheques had of course all been
+deposited in her name.  There were therefore no "business"
+reasons for communicating with her; and when it came to reasons
+of another order the mere thought of them benumbed him.
+
+For the first few days he reproached himself for his inertia;
+then he began to seek reasons for justifying it.  After all, for
+both their sakes a waiting policy might be the wisest he could
+pursue.  He had left Susy because he could not tolerate the
+conditions on which he had discovered their life together to be
+based; and he had told her so.  What more was there to say?
+
+Nothing was changed in their respective situations; if they came
+together it could be only to resume the same life; and that, as
+the days went by, seemed to him more and more impossible.  He
+had not yet reached the point of facing a definite separation;
+but whenever his thoughts travelled back over their past life he
+recoiled from any attempt to return to it.  As long as this
+state of mind continued there seemed nothing to add to the
+letter he had already written, except indeed the statement that
+he was cruising with the Hickses.  And he saw no pressing reason
+for communicating that.
+
+To the Hickses he had given no hint of his situation.  When
+Coral Hicks, a fortnight earlier, had picked him up in the
+broiling streets of Genoa, and carried him off to the Ibis, he
+had thought only of a cool dinner and perhaps a moonlight sail.
+Then, in reply to their friendly urging, he had confessed that
+he had not been well--had indeed gone off hurriedly for a few
+days' change of air--and that left him without defence against
+the immediate proposal that he should take his change of air on
+the Ibis.  They were just off to Corsica and Sardinia, and from
+there to Sicily:  he could rejoin the railway at Naples, and be
+back at Venice in ten days.
+
+Ten days of respite--the temptation was irresistible.  And he
+really liked the kind uncomplicated Hickses.  A wholesome
+honesty and simplicity breathed through all their opulence, as
+if the rich trappings of their present life still exhaled the
+fragrance of their native prairies.  The mere fact of being with
+such people was like a purifying bath.  When the yacht touched
+at Naples he agreed since they were so awfully kind--to go on to
+Sicily.  And when the chief steward, going ashore at Naples for
+the last time before they got up steam, said:  "Any letters for
+the post, sir?" he answered, as he had answered at each previous
+halt:  "No, thank you:  none."
+
+Now they were heading for Rhodes and Crete--Crete, where he had
+never been, where he had so often longed to go.  In spite of the
+lateness of the season the weather was still miraculously fine:
+the short waves danced ahead under a sky without a cloud, and
+the strong bows of the Ibis hardly swayed as she flew forward
+over the flying crests.
+
+Only his hosts and their daughter were on the yacht-of course
+with Eldorada Tooker and Mr. Beck in attendance.  An eminent
+archaeologist, who was to have joined them at Naples, had
+telegraphed an excuse at the last moment; and Nick noticed that,
+while Mrs. Hicks was perpetually apologizing for the great man's
+absence, Coral merely smiled and said nothing.
+
+As a matter of fact, Mr. and Mrs. Hicks were never as pleasant
+as when one had them to one's self.  In company, Mr. Hicks ran
+the risk of appearing over-hospitable, and Mrs. Hicks confused
+dates and names in the desire to embrace all culture in her
+conversation.  But alone with Nick, their old travelling-
+companion, they shone out in their native simplicity, and Mr.
+Hicks talked soundly of investments, and Mrs. Hicks recalled her
+early married days in Apex City, when, on being brought home to
+her new house in Aeschylus Avenue, her first thought had been:
+"How on earth shall I get all those windows washed?"
+
+The loss of Mr. Buttles had been as serious to them as Nick had
+supposed:  Mr. Beck could never hope to replace him.  Apart from
+his mysterious gift of languages, and his almost superhuman
+faculty for knowing how to address letters to eminent people,
+and in what terms to conclude them, he had a smattering of
+archaeology and general culture on which Mrs. Hicks had learned
+to depend--her own memory being, alas, so inadequate to the
+range of her interests.
+
+Her daughter might perhaps have helped her; but it was not Miss
+Hicks's way to mother her parents.  She was exceedingly kind to
+them, but left them, as it were, to bring themselves up as best
+they could, while she pursued her own course of self-
+development.  A sombre zeal for knowledge filled the mind of
+this strange girl:  she appeared interested only in fresh
+opportunities of adding to her store of facts.  They were
+illuminated by little imagination and less poetry; but,
+carefully catalogued and neatly sorted in her large cool brain,
+they were always as accessible as the volumes in an up-to-date
+public library.
+
+To Nick there was something reposeful in this lucid intellectual
+curiosity.  He wanted above all things to get away from
+sentiment, from seduction, from the moods and impulses and
+flashing contradictions that were Susy.  Susy was not a great
+reader:  her store of facts was small, and she had grown up
+among people who dreaded ideas as much as if they had been a
+contagious disease.  But, in the early days especially, when
+Nick had put a book in her hand, or read a poem to her, her
+swift intelligence had instantly shed a new light on the
+subject, and, penetrating to its depths, had extracted from them
+whatever belonged to her.  What a pity that this exquisite
+insight, this intuitive discrimination, should for the most part
+have been spent upon reading the thoughts of vulgar people, and
+extracting a profit from them--should have been wasted, since
+her childhood, on all the hideous intricacies of "managing"!
+
+And visible beauty--how she cared for that too!  He had not
+guessed it, or rather he had not been sure of it, till the day
+when, on their way through Paris, he had taken her to the
+Louvre, and they had stood before the little Crucifixion of
+Mantegna.  He had not been looking at the picture, or watching
+to see what impression it produced on Susy.  His own momentary
+mood was for Correggio and Fragonard, the laughter of the Music
+Lesson and the bold pagan joys of the Antiope; and then he had
+missed her from his side, and when he came to where she stood,
+forgetting him, forgetting everything, had seen the glare of
+that tragic sky in her face, her trembling lip, the tears on her
+lashes.  That was Susy ....
+
+Closing his book he stole a glance at Coral Hicks's profile,
+thrown back against the cushions of the deck-chair at his side.
+There was something harsh and bracing in her blunt primitive
+build, in the projection of the black eyebrows that nearly met
+over her thick straight nose, and the faint barely visible black
+down on her upper lip.  Some miracle of will-power, combined
+with all the artifices that wealth can buy, had turned the fat
+sallow girl he remembered into this commanding young woman,
+almost handsome at times indisputably handsome--in her big
+authoritative way.  Watching the arrogant lines of her profile
+against the blue sea, he remembered, with a thrill that was
+sweet to his vanity, how twice--under the dome of the Scalzi and
+in the streets of Genoa--he had seen those same lines soften at
+his approach, turn womanly, pleading and almost humble.  That
+was Coral ....
+
+Suddenly she said, without turning toward him:  "You've had no
+letters since you've been on board."
+
+He looked at her, surprised.  "No--thank the Lord!" he laughed.
+
+"And you haven't written one either," she continued in her hard
+statistical tone.
+
+"No," he again agreed, with the same laugh.
+
+"That means that you really are free--"
+
+"Free?"
+
+He saw the cheek nearest him redden.  "Really off on a holiday,
+I mean; not tied down."  After a pause he rejoined:  "No, I'm
+not particularly tied down."
+
+"And your book?"
+
+"Oh, my book--" He stopped and considered.  He had thrust The
+Pageant of Alexander into his handbag on the night of his Bight
+from Venice; but since then he had never looked at it.  Too many
+memories and illusions were pressed between its pages; and he
+knew just at what page he had felt Ellie Vanderlyn bending over
+him from behind, caught a whiff of her scent, and heard her
+breathless "I had to thank you!"
+
+"My book's hung up," he said impatiently, annoyed with Miss
+Hicks's lack of tact.  There was a girl who never put out
+feelers ....
+
+"Yes; I thought it was," she went on quietly, and he gave her a
+startled glance.  What the devil else did she think, he
+wondered?  He had never supposed her capable of getting far
+enough out of her own thick carapace of self-sufficiency to
+penetrate into any one else's feelings.
+
+"The truth is," he continued, embarrassed, "I suppose I dug away
+at it rather too continuously; that's probably why I felt the
+need of a change.  You see I'm only a beginner."
+
+She still continued her relentless questioning.  "But later--
+you'll go on with it, of course?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know."  He paused, glanced down the glittering
+deck, and then out across the glittering water.  "I've been
+dreaming dreams, you see. I rather think I shall have to drop
+the book altogether, and try to look out for a job that will
+pay.  To indulge in my kind of literature one must first have an
+assured income."
+
+He was instantly annoyed with himself for having spoken.
+Hitherto in his relations with the Hickses he had carefully
+avoided the least allusion that might make him feel the heavy
+hand of their beneficence.  But the idle procrastinating weeks
+had weakened him and he had yielded to the need of putting into
+words his vague intentions.  To do so would perhaps help to make
+them more definite.
+
+To his relief Miss Hicks made no immediate reply; and when she
+spoke it was in a softer voice and with an unwonted hesitation.
+
+"It seems a shame that with gifts like yours you shouldn't find
+some kind of employment that would leave you leisure enough to
+do your real work ...."
+
+He shrugged ironically.  "Yes--there are a goodish number of us
+hunting for that particular kind of employment."
+
+Her tone became more business-like.  "I know it's hard to
+find--almost impossible.  But would you take it, I wonder, if it
+were offered to you--?"
+
+She turned her head slightly, and their eyes met.  For an
+instant blank terror loomed upon him; but before he had time to
+face it she continued, in the same untroubled voice:  "Mr.
+Buttles's place, I mean.  My parents must absolutely have some
+one they can count on.  You know what an easy place it is ....
+I think you would find the salary satisfactory."
+
+Nick drew a deep breath of relief.  For a moment her eyes had
+looked as they had in the Scalzi--and he liked the girl too much
+not to shrink from reawakening that look.  But Mr. Buttles's
+place:  why not?
+
+"Poor Buttles!" he murmured, to gain time.
+
+"Oh," she said, "you won't find the same reasons as he did for
+throwing up the job.  He was the martyr of his artistic
+convictions."
+
+He glanced at her sideways, wondering.  After all she did not
+know of his meeting with Mr. Buttles in Genoa, nor of the
+latter's confidences; perhaps she did not even know of Mr.
+Buttles's hopeless passion.  At any rate her face remained calm.
+
+"Why not consider it--at least just for a few months?  Till
+after our expedition to Mesopotamia?" she pressed on, a little
+breathlessly.
+
+"You're awfully kind:  but I don't know--"
+
+She stood up with one of her abrupt movements.  "You needn't,
+all at once.  Take time think it over.  Father wanted me to ask
+you," she appended.
+
+He felt the inadequacy of his response.  "It tempts me awfully,
+of course.  But I must wait, at any rate--wait for letters.  The
+fact is I shall have to wire from Rhodes to have them sent.  I
+had chucked everything, even letters, for a few weeks."
+
+"Ah, you are tired," she murmured, giving him a last downward
+glance as she turned away.
+
+>From Rhodes Nick Lansing telegraphed to his Paris bank to send
+his letters to Candia; but when the Ibis reached Candia, and the
+mail was brought on board, the thick envelope handed to him
+contained no letter from Susy.
+
+Why should it, since he had not yet written to her?
+
+He had not written, no:  but in sending his address to the bank
+he knew he had given her the opportunity of reaching him if she
+wished to.  And she had made no sign.
+
+Late that afternoon, when they returned to the yacht from their
+first expedition, a packet of newspapers lay on the deck-house
+table.  Nick picked up one of the London journals, and his eye
+ran absently down the list of social events.
+
+He read:
+
+"Among the visitors expected next week at Ruan Castle (let for
+the season to Mr. Frederick J. Gillow of New York) are Prince
+Altineri of Rome, the Earl of Altringham and Mrs. Nicholas
+Lansing, who arrived in London last week from Paris. "Nick threw
+down the paper.  It was just a month since he had left the
+Palazzo Vanderlyn and flung himself into the night express for
+Milan.  A whole month--and Susy had not written.  Only a month--
+and Susy and Strefford were already together!
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+SUSY had decided to wait for Strefford in London.
+
+The new Lord Altringham was with his family in the north, and
+though she found a telegram on arriving, saying that he would
+join her in town the following week, she had still an interval
+of several days to fill.
+
+London was a desert; the rain fell without ceasing, and alone in
+the shabby family hotel which, even out of season, was the best
+she could afford, she sat at last face to face with herself.
+
+>From the moment when Violet Melrose had failed to carry out her
+plan for the Fulmer children her interest in Susy had visibly
+waned.  Often before, in the old days, Susy Branch had felt the
+same abrupt change of temperature in the manner of the hostess
+of the moment; and often--how often--had yielded, and performed
+the required service, rather than risk the consequences of
+estrangement.  To that, at least, thank heaven, she need never
+stoop again.
+
+But as she hurriedly packed her trunks at Versailles, scraped
+together an adequate tip for Mrs. Match, and bade good-bye to
+Violet (grown suddenly fond and demonstrative as she saw her
+visitor safely headed for the station)--as Susy went through the
+old familiar mummery of the enforced leave-taking, there rose in
+her so deep a disgust for the life of makeshifts and
+accommodations, that if at that moment Nick had reappeared and
+held out his arms to her, she was not sure she would have had
+the courage to return to them.
+
+In her London solitude the thirst for independence grew fiercer.
+Independence with ease, of course.  Oh, her hateful useless love
+of beauty ... the curse it had always been to her, the blessing
+it might have been if only she had had the material means to
+gratify and to express it!  And instead, it only gave her a
+morbid loathing of that hideous hotel bedroom drowned in yellow
+rain-light, of the smell of soot and cabbage through the window,
+the blistered wall-paper, the dusty wax bouquets under glass
+globes, and the electric lighting so contrived that as you
+turned on the feeble globe hanging from the middle of the
+ceiling the feebler one beside the bed went out!
+
+What a sham world she and Nick had lived in during their few
+months together!  What right had either of them to those
+exquisite settings of the life of leisure:  the long white house
+hidden in camellias and cypresses above the lake, or the great
+rooms on the Giudecca with the shimmer of the canal always
+playing over their frescoed ceilings!  Yet she had come to
+imagine that these places really belonged to them, that they
+would always go on living, fondly and irreproachably, in the
+frame of other people's wealth ....  That, again, was the curse
+of her love of beauty, the way she always took to it as if it
+belonged to her!
+
+Well, the awakening was bound to come, and it was perhaps better
+that it should have come so soon.  At any rate there was no use
+in letting her thoughts wander back to that shattered fool's
+paradise of theirs.  Only, as she sat there and reckoned up the
+days till Strefford arrived, what else in the world was there to
+think of?
+
+Her future and his?
+
+But she knew that future by heart already!  She had not spent
+her life among the rich and fashionable without having learned
+every detail of the trappings of a rich and fashionable
+marriage.  She had calculated long ago just how many dinner-
+dresses, how many tea-gowns and how much lacy lingerie would go
+to make up the outfit of the future Countess of Altringham.  She
+had even decided to which dressmaker she would go for her
+chinchilla cloak-for she meant to have one, and down to her
+feet, and softer and more voluminous and more extravagantly
+sumptuous than Violet's or Ursula's ... not to speak of silver
+foxes and sables ... nor yet of the Altringham jewels.
+
+She knew all this by heart; had always known it.  It all
+belonged to the make-up of the life of elegance:  there was
+nothing new about it.  What had been new to her was just that
+short interval with Nick--a life unreal indeed in its setting,
+but so real in its essentials:  the one reality she had ever
+known.  As she looked back on it she saw how much it had given
+her besides the golden flush of her happiness, the sudden
+flowering of sensuous joy in heart and body.  Yes--there had
+been the flowering too, in pain like birth-pangs, of something
+graver, stronger, fuller of future power, something she had
+hardly heeded in her first light rapture, but that always came
+back and possessed her stilled soul when the rapture sank:  the
+deep disquieting sense of something that Nick and love had
+taught her, but that reached out even beyond love and beyond
+Nick.
+
+Her nerves were racked by the ceaseless swish, swish of the rain
+on the dirty panes and the smell of cabbage and coal that came
+in under the door when she shut the window.  This nauseating
+foretaste of the luncheon she must presently go down to was more
+than she could bear.  It brought with it a vision of the dank
+coffee-room below, the sooty Smyrna rug, the rain on the sky-
+light, the listless waitresses handing about food that tasted as
+if it had been rained on too.  There was really no reason why
+she should let such material miseries add to her depression ....
+
+She sprang up, put on her hat and jacket, and calling for a taxi
+drove to the London branch of the Nouveau Luxe hotel.  It was
+just one o'clock and she was sure to pick up a luncheon, for
+though London was empty that great establishment was not.  It
+never was.  Along those sultry velvet-carpeted halls, in that
+great flowered and scented dining-room, there was always a come-
+and-go of rich aimless people, the busy people who, having
+nothing to do, perpetually pursue their inexorable task from one
+end of the earth to the other.
+
+Oh, the monotony of those faces--the faces one always knew,
+whether one knew the people they belonged to or not!  A fresh
+disgust seized her at the sight of them:  she wavered, and then
+turned and fled.  But on the threshold a still more familiar
+figure met her:  that of a lady in exaggerated pearls and
+sables, descending from an exaggerated motor, like the motors in
+magazine advertisements, the huge arks in which jewelled
+beauties and slender youths pause to gaze at snowpeaks from an
+Alpine summit.
+
+It was Ursula Gillow--dear old Ursula, on her way to Scotland--
+and she and Susy fell on each other's necks.  It appeared that
+Ursula, detained till the next evening by a dress-maker's delay,
+was also out of a job and killing time, and the two were soon
+smiling at each other over the exquisite preliminaries of a
+luncheon which the head-waiter had authoritatively asked Mrs.
+Gillow to "leave to him, as usual."
+
+Ursula was in a good humour.  It did not often happen; but when
+it did her benevolence knew no bounds.
+
+Like Mrs. Melrose, like all her tribe in fact, she was too much
+absorbed in her own affairs to give more than a passing thought
+to any one else's; but she was delighted at the meeting with
+Susy, as her wandering kind always were when they ran across
+fellow-wanderers, unless the meeting happened to interfere with
+choicer pleasures.  Not to be alone was the urgent thing; and
+Ursula, who had been forty-eight hours alone in London, at once
+exacted from her friend a promise that they should spend the
+rest of the day together.  But once the bargain struck her mind
+turned again to her own affairs, and she poured out her
+confidences to Susy over a succession of dishes that manifested
+the head-waiter's understanding of the case.
+
+Ursula's confidences were always the same, though they were
+usually about a different person.  She demolished and rebuilt
+her sentimental life with the same frequency and impetuosity as
+that with which she changed her dress-makers, did over her
+drawing-rooms, ordered new motors, altered the mounting of her
+jewels, and generally renewed the setting of her life.  Susy
+knew in advance what the tale would be; but to listen to it over
+perfect coffee, an amber-scented cigarette at her lips, was
+pleasanter than consuming cold mutton alone in a mouldy coffee-
+room.  The contrast was so soothing that she even began to take
+a languid interest in her friend's narrative.
+
+After luncheon they got into the motor together and began a
+systematic round of the West End shops:  furriers, jewellers and
+dealers in old furniture.  Nothing could be more unlike Violet
+Melrose's long hesitating sessions before the things she thought
+she wanted till the moment came to decide.  Ursula pounced on
+silver foxes and old lacquer as promptly and decisively as on
+the objects of her surplus sentimentality:  she knew at once
+what she wanted, and valued it more after it was hers.
+
+"And now--I wonder if you couldn't help me choose a grand
+piano?" she suggested, as the last antiquarian bowed them out.
+
+"A piano?"
+
+"Yes:  for Ruan.  I'm sending one down for Grace Fulmer.  She's
+coming to stay ... did I tell you?  I want people to hear her.
+I want her to get engagements in London.  My dear, she's a
+Genius."
+
+"A Genius--Grace!" Susy gasped.  "I thought it was Nat ...."
+
+"Nat--Nat Fulmer?  Ursula laughed derisively.  "Ah, of course--
+you've been staying with that silly Violet!  The poor thing is
+off her head about Nat--it's really pitiful.  Of course he has
+talent:  I saw that long before Violet had ever heard of him.
+Why, on the opening day of the American Artists' exhibition,
+last winter, I stopped short before his 'Spring Snow-Storm'
+(which nobody else had noticed till that moment), and said to
+the Prince, who was with me:  'The man has talent.'  But
+genius--why, it's his wife who has genius!  Have you never heard
+Grace play the violin?  Poor Violet, as usual, is off on the
+wrong tack.  I've given Fulmer my garden-house to do--no doubt
+Violet told you--because I  wanted to help him.  But Grace is my
+discovery, and I'm determined to make her known, and to have
+every one understand that she is the genius of the two.  I've
+told her she simply must come to Ruan, and bring the best
+accompanyist she can find.  You know poor Nerone is dreadfully
+bored by sport, though of course he goes out with the guns.  And
+if one didn't have a little art in the evening ....  Oh, Susy,
+do you mean to tell me you don't know how to choose a piano?  I
+thought you were so fond of music!"
+
+"I am fond of it; but without knowing anything about it--in the
+way we're all of us fond of the worthwhile things in our stupid
+set," she added to herself--since it was obviously useless to
+impart such reflections to Ursula.
+
+"But are you sure Grace is coming?" she questioned aloud.
+
+"Quite sure.  Why shouldn't she?  I wired to her yesterday.  I'm
+giving her a thousand dollars and all her expenses."
+
+It was not till they were having tea in a Piccadilly tea-room
+that Mrs. Gillow began to manifest some interest in her
+companion's plans.  The thought of losing Susy became suddenly
+intolerable to her.  The Prince, who did not see why he should
+be expected to linger in London out of season, was already at
+Ruan, and Ursula could not face the evening and the whole of the
+next day by herself.
+
+"But what are you doing in town, darling, I don't remember if
+I've asked you," she said, resting her firm elbows on the tea-
+table while she took a light from Susy's cigarette.
+
+Susy hesitated.  She had foreseen that the time must soon come
+when she should have to give some account of herself; and why
+should she not begin by telling Ursula?
+
+But telling her what?
+
+Her silence appeared to strike Mrs. Gillow as a reproach, and
+she continued with compunction:  "And Nick?  Nick's with you?
+How is he, I thought you and he still were in Venice with Ellie
+Vanderlyn."
+
+"We were, for a few weeks."  She steadied her voice.  "It was
+delightful.  But now we're both on our own again--for a while."
+
+Mrs. Gillow scrutinized her more searchingly.  "Oh, you're alone
+here, then; quite alone?"
+
+"Yes:  Nick's cruising with some friends in the Mediterranean."
+
+Ursula's shallow gaze deepened singularly.  "But, Susy darling,
+then if you're alone--and out of a job, just for the moment?"
+
+Susy smiled.  "Well, I'm not sure."
+
+"Oh, but if you are, darling, and you would come to Ruan!  I
+know Fred asked you didn't he?  And he told me that both you and
+Nick had refused.  He was awfully huffed at your not coming; but
+I suppose that was because Nick had other plans.  We couldn't
+have him now, because there's no room for another gun; but since
+he's not here, and you're free, why you know, dearest, don't
+you, how we'd love to have you?  Fred would be too glad--too
+outrageously glad--but you don't much mind Fred's love-making,
+do you?  And you'd be such a help to me--if that's any argument!
+With that big house full of men, and people flocking over every
+night to dine, and Fred caring only for sport, and Nerone simply
+loathing it and ridiculing it, and not a minute to myself to try
+to keep him in a good humour ....  Oh, Susy darling, don't say
+no, but let me telephone at once for a place in the train to
+morrow night!"
+
+Susy leaned back, letting the ash lengthen on her cigarette.
+How familiar, how hatefully familiar, was that old appeal!
+Ursula felt the pressing need of someone to flirt with Fred for
+a few weeks ... and here was the very person she needed.  Susy
+shivered at the thought.  She had never really meant to go to
+Ruan.  She had simply used the moor as a pretext when Violet
+Melrose had gently put her out of doors.  Rather than do what
+Ursula asked she would borrow a few hundred pounds of Strefford,
+as he had suggested, and then look about for some temporary
+occupation until--
+
+Until she became Lady Altringham?  Well, perhaps.  At any rate,
+she was not going back to slave for Ursula.
+
+She shook her head with a faint smile.  "I'm so sorry, Ursula:
+of course I want awfully to oblige you--"
+
+Mrs. Gillow's gaze grew reproachful.  "I should have supposed
+you would," she murmured.  Susy, meeting her eyes, looked into
+them down a long vista of favours bestowed, and perceived that
+Ursula was not the woman to forget on which side the obligation
+lay between them.
+
+Susy hesitated:  she remembered the weeks of ecstasy she had
+owed to the Gillows' wedding cheque, and it hurt her to appear
+ungrateful.
+
+"If I could, Ursula ... but really ... I'm not free at the
+moment."  She paused, and then took an abrupt decision.  "The
+fact is, I'm waiting here to see Strefford."
+
+"Strefford' Lord Altringham?"  Ursula stared.  "Ah, yes-I
+remember.  You and he used to be great friends, didn't you?"
+Her roving attention deepened ....  But if Susy were waiting to
+see Lord Altringham--one of the richest men in England!
+Suddenly Ursula opened her gold-meshed bag and snatched a
+miniature diary from it.
+
+"But wait a moment--yes, it is next week!  I knew it was next
+week he's coming to Ruan!  But, you darling, that makes
+everything all right.  You'll send him a wire at once, and come
+with me tomorrow, and meet him there instead of in this nasty
+sloppy desert ....  Oh, Susy, if you knew how hard life is for
+me in Scotland between the Prince and Fred you couldn't possibly
+say no!"
+
+Susy still wavered; but, after all, if Strefford were really
+bound for Ruan, why not see him there, agreeably and at leisure,
+instead of spending a dreary day with him in roaming the wet
+London streets, or screaming at him through the rattle of a
+restaurant orchestra?  She knew he would not be likely to
+postpone his visit to Ruan in order to linger in London with
+her:  such concessions had never been his way, and were less
+than ever likely to be, now that he could do so thoroughly and
+completely as he pleased.
+
+For the first time she fully understood how different his
+destiny had become.  Now of course all his days and hours were
+mapped out in advance:  invitations assailed him, opportunities
+pressed on him, he had only to choose ....  And the women!  She
+had never before thought of the women.  All the girls in England
+would be wanting to marry him, not to mention her own
+enterprising compatriots.  And there were the married women, who
+were even more to be feared.  Streff might, for the time, escape
+marriage; though she could guess the power of persuasion, family
+pressure, all the converging traditional influences he had so
+often ridiculed, yet, as she knew, had never completely thrown
+off ....  Yes, those quiet invisible women at Altringham-his
+uncle's widow, his mother, the spinster sisters--it was not
+impossible that, with tact and patience--and the stupidest women
+could be tactful and patient on such occasions--they might
+eventually persuade him that it was his duty, they might put
+just the right young loveliness in his way ....  But meanwhile,
+now, at once, there were the married women.  Ah, they wouldn't
+wait, they were doubtless laying their traps already!  Susy
+shivered at the thought.  She knew too much about the way the
+trick was done, had followed, too often, all the sinuosities of
+such approaches.  Not that they were very sinuous nowadays:
+more often there was just a swoop and a pounce when the time
+came; but she knew all the arts and the wiles that led up to it.
+She knew them, oh, how she knew them--though with Streff, thank
+heaven, she had never been called upon to exercise them!  His
+love was there for the asking:  would she not be a fool to
+refuse it?
+
+Perhaps; though on that point her mind still wavered.  But at
+any rate she saw that, decidedly, it would be better to yield to
+Ursula's pressure; better to meet him at Ruan, in a congenial
+setting, where she would have time to get her bearings, observe
+what dangers threatened him, and make up her mind whether, after
+all, it was to be her mission to save him from the other women.
+
+"Well, if you like, then, Ursula ...."
+
+"Oh, you angel, you!  I'm so glad!  We'll go to the nearest post
+office, and send off the wire ourselves."
+
+As they got into the motor Mrs. Gillow seized Susy's arm with a
+pleading pressure.  "And you will let Fred make love to you a
+little, won't you, darling?"
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+"BUT I can't think," said Ellie Vanderlyn earnestly, "why you
+don't announce your engagement before waiting for your divorce.
+People are beginning to do it, I assure you--it's so much
+safer!"
+
+Mrs. Vanderlyn, on the way back from St. Moritz to England, had
+paused in Paris to renew the depleted wardrobe which, only two
+months earlier, had filled so many trunks to bursting.  Other
+ladies, flocking there from all points of the globe for the same
+purpose, disputed with her the Louis XVI suites of the Nouveau
+Luxe, the pink-candled tables in the restaurant, the hours for
+trying-on at the dressmakers'; and just because they were so
+many, and all feverishly fighting to get the same things at the
+same time, they were all excited, happy and at ease.  It was the
+most momentous period of the year:  the height of the "dress
+makers' season."
+
+Mrs. Vanderlyn had run across Susy Lansing at one of the Rue de
+la Paix openings, where rows of ladies wan with heat and emotion
+sat for hours in rapt attention while spectral apparitions in
+incredible raiment tottered endlessly past them on aching feet.
+
+Distracted from the regal splendours of a chinchilla cloak by
+the sense that another lady was also examining it, Mrs.
+Vanderlyn turned in surprise at sight of Susy, whose head was
+critically bent above the fur.
+
+"Susy!  I'd no idea you were here!  I saw in the papers that you
+were with the Gillows."  The customary embraces followed; then
+Mrs. Vanderlyn, her eyes pursuing the matchless cloak as it
+disappeared down a vista of receding mannequins, interrogated
+sharply:  "Are you shopping for Ursula?  If you mean to order
+that cloak for her I'd rather know."
+
+Susy smiled, and paused a moment before answering.  During the
+pause she took in all the exquisite details of Ellie Vanderlyn's
+perpetually youthful person, from the plumed crown of her head
+to the perfect arch of her patent-leather shoes.  At last she
+said quietly:  "No--to-day I'm shopping for myself."
+
+"Yourself?  Yourself?"  Mrs. Vanderlyn echoed with a stare of
+incredulity.
+
+"Yes; just for a change," Susy serenely acknowledged.
+
+"But the cloak--I meant the chinchilla cloak ... the one with
+the ermine lining ...."
+
+"Yes; it is awfully good, isn't it?  But I mean to look
+elsewhere before I decide."
+
+Ah, how often she had heard her friends use that phrase; and how
+amusing it was, now, to see Ellie's amazement as she heard it
+tossed off in her own tone of contemptuous satiety!  Susy was
+becoming more and more dependent on such diversions; without
+them her days, crowded as they were, would nevertheless have
+dragged by heavily.  But it still amused her to go to the big
+dressmakers', watch the mannequins sweep by, and be seen by her
+friends superciliously examining all the most expensive dresses
+in the procession.  She knew the rumour was abroad that she and
+Nick were to be divorced, and that Lord Altringham was "devoted"
+to her.  She neither confirmed nor denied the report:  she just
+let herself be luxuriously carried forward on its easy tide.
+But although it was now three months since Nick had left the
+Palazzo Vanderlyn she had not yet written to him-nor he to her.
+
+Meanwhile, in spite of all that she packed into them, the days
+passed more and more slowly, and the excitements she had counted
+on no longer excited her.  Strefford was hers:  she knew that he
+would marry her as soon as she was free.  They had been together
+at Ruan for ten days, and after that she had motored south with
+him, stopping on the way to see Altringham, from which, at the
+moment, his mourning relatives were absent.
+
+At Altringham they had parted; and after one or two more visits
+in England she had come back to Paris, where he was now about to
+join her.  After her few hours at Altringham she had understood
+that he would wait for her as long as was necessary:  the fear
+of the "other women" had ceased to trouble her.  But, perhaps
+for that very reason, the future seemed less exciting than she
+had expected.  Sometimes she thought it was the sight of that
+great house which had overwhelmed her:  it was too vast, too
+venerable, too like a huge monument built of ancient territorial
+traditions and obligations.  Perhaps it had been lived in for
+too long by too many serious-minded and conscientious women:
+somehow she could not picture it invaded by bridge and debts and
+adultery.  And yet that was what would have to be, of course ...
+she could hardly picture either Strefford or herself continuing
+there the life of heavy county responsibilities, dull parties,
+laborious duties, weekly church-going, and presiding over local
+committees ....  What a pity they couldn't sell it and have a
+little house on the Thames!
+
+Nevertheless she was not sorry to let it be known that
+Altringham was hers when she chose to take it.  At times she
+wondered whether Nick knew ... whether rumours had reached him.
+If they had, he had only his own letter to thank for it.  He had
+told her what course to pursue; and she was pursuing it.
+
+For a moment the meeting with Ellie Vanderlyn had been a shock
+to her; she had hoped never to see Ellie again.  But now that
+they were actually face to face Susy perceived how dulled her
+sensibilities were.  In a few moments she had grown used to
+Ellie, as she was growing used to everybody and to everything in
+the old life she had returned to.  What was the use of making
+such a fuss about things?  She and Mrs. Vanderlyn left the
+dress-maker's together, and after an absorbing session at a new
+milliner's were now taking tea in Ellie's drawing-room at the
+Nouveau Luxe.
+
+Ellie, with her spoiled child's persistency, had come back to
+the question of the chinchilla cloak.  It was the only one she
+had seen that she fancied in the very least, and as she hadn't a
+decent fur garment left to her name she was naturally in
+somewhat of a hurry ... but, of course, if Susy had been
+choosing that model for a friend ....
+
+Susy, leaning back against her cushions, examined through half-
+closed lids Mrs. Vanderlyn's small delicately-restored
+countenance, which wore the same expression of childish
+eagerness as when she discoursed of the young Davenant of the
+moment.  Once again Susy remarked that, in Ellie's agitated
+existence, every interest appeared to be on exactly the same
+plane.
+
+"The poor shivering dear," she answered laughing, "of course it
+shall have its nice warm winter cloak, and I'll choose another
+one instead."
+
+"Oh, you darling, you!  If you would!  Of course, whoever you
+were ordering it for need never know ...."
+
+"Ah, you can't comfort yourself with that, I'm afraid.  I've
+already told you that I was ordering it for myself."  Susy
+paused to savour to the full Ellie's look of blank bewilderment;
+then her amusement was checked by an indefinable change in her
+friend's expression.
+
+"Oh, dearest--seriously?  I didn't know there was someone ...."
+
+Susy flushed to the forehead.  A horror of humiliation
+overwhelmed her.  That Ellie should dare to think that of her--
+that anyone should dare to!
+
+"Someone buying chinchilla cloaks for me?  Thanks!"  she flared
+out.  "I suppose I ought to be glad that the idea didn't
+immediately occur to you.  At least there was a decent interval
+of doubt ...."  She stood up, laughing again, and began to
+wander about the room.  In the mirror above the mantel she
+caught sight of her flushed angry face, and of Mrs. Vanderlyn's
+disconcerted stare.  She turned toward her friend.
+
+"I suppose everybody else will think it if you do; so perhaps
+I'd better explain."  She paused, and drew a quick breath.
+"Nick and I mean to part--have parted, in fact.  He's decided
+that the whole thing was a mistake.  He will probably; marry
+again soon--and so shall I."
+
+She flung the avowal out breathlessly, in her nervous dread of
+letting Ellie Vanderlyn think for an instant longer that any
+other explanation was conceivable.  She had not meant to be so
+explicit; but once the words were spoken she was not altogether
+sorry.  Of course people would soon begin to wonder why she was
+again straying about the world alone; and since it was by Nick's
+choice, why should she not say so?  Remembering the burning
+anguish of those last hours in Venice she asked herself what
+possible consideration she owed to the man who had so humbled
+her.
+
+Ellie Vanderlyn glanced at her in astonishment.  "You?  You and
+Nick--are going to part?"  A light appeared to dawn on her.
+"Ah--then that's why he sent me back my pin, I suppose?"
+
+"Your pin?"  Susy wondered, not at once remembering.
+
+"The poor little scarf-pin I gave him before I left Venice.  He
+sent it back almost at once, with the oddest note--just:  'I
+haven't earned it, really.'  I couldn't think why he didn't care
+for the pin.  But, now I suppose it was because you and he had
+quarrelled; though really, even so, I can't see why he should
+bear me a grudge ...."
+
+Susy's quick blood surged up.  Nick had sent back the pin-the
+fatal pin!  And she, Susy, had kept the bracelet--locked it up
+out of sight, shrunk away from the little packet whenever her
+hand touched it in packing or unpacking--but never thought of
+returning it, no, not once!  Which of the two, she wondered, had
+been right?  Was it not an indirect slight to her that Nick
+should fling back the gift to poor uncomprehending Ellie?  Or
+was it not rather another proof of his finer moral
+sensitiveness! ... And how could one tell, in their bewildering
+world, "It was not because we've quarrelled; we haven't
+quarrelled," she said slowly, moved by the sudden desire to
+defend her privacy and Nick's, to screen from every eye their
+last bitter hour together.  "We've simply decided that our
+experiment was impossible-for two paupers."
+
+"Ah, well--of course we all felt that at the time.  And now
+somebody else wants to marry you!  And it's your trousseau you
+were choosing that cloak for?"  Ellie cried in incredulous
+rapture; then she flung her arms about Susy's shrinking
+shoulders.  "You lucky lucky girl!  You clever clever darling!
+But who on earth can he be?"
+
+And it was then that Susy, for the first time, had pronounced
+the name of Lord Altringham.
+
+"Streff--Streff?  Our dear old Streff, You mean to say he wants
+to marry you?"  As the news took possession of her mind Ellie
+became dithyrambic.  "But, my dearest, what a miracle of luck!
+Of course I always knew he was awfully gone on you:  Fred
+Davenant used to say so, I remember ... and even Nelson, who's
+so stupid about such things, noticed it in Venice ....  But then
+it was so different.  No one could possibly have thought of
+marrying him then; whereas now of course every woman is trying
+for him.  Oh, Susy, whatever you do, don't miss your chance!
+You can't conceive of the wicked plotting and intriguing there
+will be to get him--on all sides, and even where one least
+suspects it.  You don't know what horrors women will do-and
+even girls!"  A shudder ran through her at the thought, and she
+caught Susy's wrists in vehement fingers.  "But I can't think,
+my dear, why you don't announce your engagement at once.  People
+are beginning to do it, I assure you--it's so much safer!"
+
+Susy looked at her, wondering.  Not a word of sympathy for the
+ruin of her brief bliss, not even a gleam of curiosity as to its
+cause!  No doubt Ellie Vanderlyn, like all Susy's other friends,
+had long since "discounted" the brevity of her dream, and
+perhaps planned a sequel to it before she herself had seen the
+glory fading.  She and Nick had spent the greater part of their
+few weeks together under Ellie Vanderlyn's roof; but to Ellie,
+obviously, the fact meant no more than her own escapade, at the
+same moment, with young Davenant's supplanter--the "bounder"
+whom Strefford had never named.  Her one thought for her friend
+was that Susy should at last secure her prize--her incredible
+prize.  And therein at any rate Ellie showed the kind of cold
+disinterestedness that raised her above the smiling perfidy of
+the majority of her kind.  At least her advice was sincere; and
+perhaps it was wise.  Why should Susy not let every one know
+that she meant to marry Strefford as soon as the "formalities"
+were fulfilled?
+
+She did not immediately answer Mrs. Vanderlyn's question; and
+the latter, repeating it, added impatiently:  "I don't
+understand you; if Nick agrees-"
+
+"Oh, he agrees," said Susy.
+
+"Then what more do you want!  Oh, Susy, if you'd only follow my
+example!"
+
+"Your example?"  Susy paused, weighed the word, was struck by
+something embarrassed, arch yet half-apologetic in her friend's
+expression.  "Your example?" she repeated.  "Why, Ellie, what on
+earth do you mean?  Not that you're going to part from poor
+Nelson?"
+
+Mrs. Vanderlyn met her reproachful gaze with a crystalline
+glance.  "I don't want to, heaven knows--poor dear Nelson!  I
+assure you I simply hate it.  He's always such an angel to
+Clarissa ... and then we're used to each other.  But what in the
+world am I to do?  Algie's so rich, so appallingly rich, that I
+have to be perpetually on the watch to keep other women away
+from him--and it's too exhausting ...."
+
+"Algie?"
+
+Mrs. Vanderlyn's lovely eyebrows rose.  "Algie:  Algie
+Bockheimer.  Didn't you know, I think he said you've dined with
+his parents.  Nobody else in the world is as rich as the
+Bockheimers; and Algie's their only child.  Yes, it was with
+him ... with him I was so dreadfully happy last spring ... and
+now I'm in mortal terror of losing him.  And I do assure you
+there's no other way of keeping them, when they're as hideously
+rich as that!"
+
+Susy rose to her feet.  A little shudder ran over her.  She
+remembered, now, having seen Algie Bockheimer at one of his
+parents' first entertainments, in their newly-inaugurated marble
+halls in Fifth Avenue.  She recalled his too faultless clothes
+and his small glossy furtive countenance.  She looked at Ellie
+Vanderlyn with sudden scorn.
+
+"I think you're abominable," she exclaimed.
+
+The other's perfect little face collapsed.  "A-bo-minable?
+A-bo-mi-nable?  Susy!"
+
+"Yes ... with Nelson ... and Clarissa ... and your past
+together ... and all the money you can possibly want ... and
+that man!  Abominable."
+
+Ellie stood up trembling: she was not used to scenes, and they
+disarranged her thoughts as much as her complexion.
+
+"You're very cruel, Susy--so cruel and dreadful that I hardly
+know how to answer you," she stammered.  "But you simply don't
+know what you're talking about.  As if anybody ever had all the
+money they wanted!"  She wiped her dark-rimmed eyes with a
+cautious handkerchief, glanced at herself in the mirror, and
+added magnanimously:  "But I shall try to forget what you've
+said."
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+JUST such a revolt as she had felt as a girl, such a disgusted
+recoil from the standards and ideals of everybody about her as
+had flung her into her mad marriage with Nick, now flamed in
+Susy Lansing's bosom.
+
+How could she ever go back into that world again?  How echo its
+appraisals of life and bow down to its judgments?  Alas, it was
+only by marrying according to its standards that she could
+escape such subjection.  Perhaps the same thought had actuated
+Nick:  perhaps he had understood sooner than she that to attain
+moral freedom they must both be above material cares.
+Perhaps ...
+
+Her talk with Ellie Vanderlyn had left Susy so oppressed and
+humiliated that she almost shrank from her meeting with
+Altringham the next day.  She knew that he was coming to Paris
+for his final answer; he would wait as long as was necessary if
+only she would consent to take immediate steps for a divorce.
+She was staying at a modest hotel in the Faubourg St. Germain,
+and had once more refused his suggestion that they should lunch
+at the Nouveau Luxe, or at some fashionable restaurant of the
+Boulevards.  As before, she insisted on going to an out-of-the-
+way place near the Luxembourg, where the prices were moderate
+enough for her own purse.
+
+"I can't understand," Strefford objected, as they turned from
+her hotel door toward this obscure retreat, "why you insist on
+giving me bad food, and depriving me of the satisfaction of
+being seen with you.  Why must we be so dreadfully clandestine?
+Don't people know by this time that we're to be married?"
+
+Susy winced a little:  she wondered if the word would always
+sound so unnatural on his lips.
+
+"No," she said, with a laugh, "they simply think, for the
+present, that you're giving me pearls and chinchilla cloaks."
+
+He wrinkled his brows good-humouredly.  "Well, so I would, with
+joy--at this particular minute.  Don't you think perhaps you'd
+better take advantage of it?  I don't wish to insist--but I
+foresee that I'm much too rich not to become stingy."
+
+She gave a slight shrug.  "At present there's nothing I loathe
+more than pearls and chinchilla, or anything else in the world
+that's expensive and enviable ...."
+
+Suddenly she broke off, colouring with the consciousness that
+she had said exactly the kind of thing that all the women who
+were trying for him (except the very cleverest) would be sure to
+say; and that he would certainly suspect her of attempting the
+conventional comedy of disinterestedness, than which nothing was
+less likely to deceive or to flatter him.
+
+His twinkling eyes played curiously over her face, and she went
+on, meeting them with a smile:  "But don't imagine, all the
+same, that if I should ... decide ... it would be altogether for
+your beaux yeux ...."
+
+He laughed, she thought, rather drily.  "No," he said, "I don't
+suppose that's ever likely to happen to me again."
+
+"Oh, Streff--" she faltered with compunction.  It was odd-once
+upon a time she had known exactly what to say to the man of the
+moment, whoever he was, and whatever kind of talk he required;
+she had even, in the difficult days before her marriage, reeled
+off glibly enough the sort of lime-light sentimentality that
+plunged poor Fred Gillow into such speechless beatitude.  But
+since then she had spoken the language of real love, looked with
+its eyes, embraced with its hands; and now the other trumpery
+art had failed her, and she was conscious of bungling and
+groping like a beginner under Strefford's ironic scrutiny.
+
+They had reached their obscure destination and he opened the
+door and glanced in.
+
+"It's jammed--not a table.  And stifling!  Where shall we go?
+Perhaps they could give us a room to ourselves--" he suggested.
+
+She assented, and they were led up a cork-screw staircase to a
+squat-ceilinged closet lit by the arched top of a high window,
+the lower panes of which served for the floor below.  Strefford
+opened the window, and Susy, throwing her cloak on the divan,
+leaned on the balcony while he ordered luncheon.
+
+On the whole she was glad they were to be alone.  Just because
+she felt so sure of Strefford it seemed ungenerous to keep him
+longer in suspense.  The moment had come when they must have a
+decisive talk, and in the crowded rooms below it would have been
+impossible.
+
+Strefford, when the waiter had brought the first course and left
+them to themselves, made no effort to revert to personal
+matters.  He turned instead to the topic always most congenial
+to him:  the humours and ironies of the human comedy, as
+presented by his own particular group.  His malicious commentary
+on life had always amused Susy because of the shrewd flashes of
+philosophy he shed on the social antics they had so often
+watched together.  He was in fact the one person she knew
+(excepting Nick) who was in the show and yet outside of it; and
+she was surprised, as the talk proceeded, to find herself so
+little interested in his scraps of gossip, and so little amused
+by his comments on them.
+
+With an inward shrug of discouragement she said to herself that
+probably nothing would ever really amuse her again; then, as she
+listened, she began to understand that her disappointment arose
+from the fact that Strefford, in reality, could not live without
+these people whom he saw through and satirized, and that the
+rather commonplace scandals he narrated interested him as much
+as his own racy considerations on them; and she was filled with
+terror at the thought that the inmost core of the richly-
+decorated life of the Countess of Altringham would be just as
+poor and low-ceilinged a place as the little room in which he
+and she now sat, elbow to elbow yet so unapproachably apart.
+
+If Strefford could not live without these people, neither could
+she and Nick; but for reasons how different!  And if his
+opportunities had been theirs, what a world they would have
+created for themselves!  Such imaginings were vain, and she
+shrank back from them into the present.  After all, as Lady
+Altringham she would have the power to create that world which
+she and Nick had dreamed ... only she must create it alone.
+Well, that was probably the law of things.  All human happiness
+was thus conditioned and circumscribed, and hers, no doubt, must
+always be of the lonely kind, since material things did not
+suffice for it, even though it depended on them as Grace
+Fulmer's, for instance, never had.  Yet even Grace Fulmer had
+succumbed to Ursula's offer, and had arrived at Ruan the day
+before Susy left, instead of going to Spain with her husband and
+Violet Melrose.  But then Grace was making the sacrifice for her
+children, and somehow one had the feeling that in giving up her
+liberty she was not surrendering a tittle of herself.  All the
+difference was there ....
+
+"How I do bore you!"  Susy heard Strefford exclaim.  She became
+aware that she had not been listening:  stray echoes of names of
+places and people--Violet Melrose, Ursula, Prince Altineri,
+others of their group and persuasion--had vainly knocked at her
+barricaded brain; what had he been telling her about them?  She
+turned to him and their eyes met; his were full of a melancholy
+irony.
+
+"Susy, old girl, what's wrong?"
+
+She pulled herself together.  "I was thinking, Streff, just
+now--when I said I hated the very sound of pearls and
+chinchilla--how impossible it was that you should believe me; in
+fact, what a blunder I'd made in saying it."
+
+He smiled.  "Because it was what so many other women might be
+likely to say so awfully unoriginal, in fact?"
+
+She laughed for sheer joy at his insight.  "It's going to be
+easier than I imagined," she thought.  Aloud she rejoined:  "Oh,
+Streff--how you're always going to find me out!  Where on earth
+shall I ever hide from you?"
+
+"Where?"  He echoed her laugh, laying his hand lightly on hers.
+"In my heart, I'm afraid."
+
+In spite of the laugh his accent shook her:  something about it
+took all the mockery from his retort, checked on her lips the:
+"What?  A valentine!" and made her suddenly feel that, if he
+were afraid, so was she.  Yet she was touched also, and wondered
+half exultingly if any other woman had ever caught that
+particular deep inflexion of his shrill voice.  She had never
+liked him as much as at that moment; and she said to herself,
+with an odd sense of detachment, as if she had been rather
+breathlessly observing the vacillations of someone whom she
+longed to persuade but dared not:  "Now--NOW, if he speaks, I
+shall say yes!"
+
+He did not speak; but abruptly, and as startlingly to her as if
+she had just dropped from a sphere whose inhabitants had other
+methods of expressing their sympathy, he slipped his arm around
+her and bent his keen ugly melting face to hers ....
+
+It was the lightest touch--in an instant she was free again.
+But something within her gasped and resisted long after his arm
+and his lips were gone, and he was proceeding, with a too-
+studied ease, to light a cigarette and sweeten his coffee.
+
+He had kissed her ....  Well, naturally:  why not?  It was not
+the first time she had been kissed.  It was true that one didn't
+habitually associate Streff with such demonstrations; but she
+had not that excuse for surprise, for even in Venice she had
+begun to notice that he looked at her differently, and avoided
+her hand when he used to seek it.
+
+No--she ought not to have been surprised; nor ought a kiss to
+have been so disturbing.  Such incidents had punctuated the
+career of Susy Branch:  there had been, in particular, in far-
+off discarded times, Fred Gillow's large but artless embraces.
+Well--nothing of that kind had seemed of any more account than
+the click of a leaf in a woodland walk.  It had all been merely
+epidermal, ephemeral, part of the trivial accepted "business" of
+the social comedy.  But this kiss of Strefford's was what Nick's
+had been, under the New Hampshire pines, on the day that had
+decided their fate.  It was a kiss with a future in it:  like a
+ring slipped upon her soul.  And now, in the dreadful pause that
+followed--while Strefford fidgeted with his cigarette-case and
+rattled the spoon in his cup, Susy remembered what she had seen
+through the circle of Nick's kiss:  that blue illimitable
+distance which was at once the landscape at their feet and the
+future in their souls ....
+
+Perhaps that was what Strefford's sharply narrowed eyes were
+seeing now, that same illimitable distance that she had lost
+forever--perhaps he was saying to himself, as she had said to
+herself when her lips left Nick's:  "Each time we kiss we shall
+see it all again ...."  Whereas all she herself had felt was the
+gasping recoil from Strefford's touch, and an intenser vision of
+the sordid room in which he and she sat, and of their two
+selves, more distant from each other than if their embrace had
+been a sudden thrusting apart ....
+
+The moment prolonged itself, and they sat numb.  How long had it
+lasted?  How long ago was it that she had thought:  "It's going
+to be easier than I imagined"?  Suddenly she felt Strefford's
+queer smile upon her, and saw in his eyes a look, not of
+reproach or disappointment, but of deep and anxious
+comprehension.  Instead of being angry or hurt, he had seen, he
+had understood, he was sorry for her!
+
+Impulsively she slipped her hand into his, and they sat silent
+for another moment.  Then he stood up and took her cloak from
+the divan.  "Shall we go now!  I've got cards for the private
+view of the Reynolds exhibition at the Petit Palais.  There are
+some portraits from Altringham.  It might amuse you."
+
+In the taxi she had time, through their light rattle of talk, to
+readjust herself and drop back into her usual feeling of
+friendly ease with him.  He had been extraordinarily
+considerate, for anyone who always so undisguisedly sought his
+own satisfaction above all things; and if his considerateness
+were just an indirect way of seeking that satisfaction now,
+well, that proved how much he cared for her, how necessary to
+his happiness she had become.  The sense of power was undeniably
+pleasant; pleasanter still was the feeling that someone really
+needed her, that the happiness of the man at her side depended
+on her yes or no.  She abandoned herself to the feeling,
+forgetting the abysmal interval of his caress, or at least
+saying to herself that in time she would forget it, that really
+there was nothing to make a fuss about in being kissed by anyone
+she liked as much as Streff ....
+
+She had guessed at once why he was taking her to see the
+Reynoldses.  Fashionable and artistic Paris had recently
+discovered English eighteenth century art.  The principal
+collections of England had yielded up their best examples of the
+great portrait painter's work, and the private view at the Petit
+Palais was to be the social event of the afternoon.  Everybody--
+Strefford's everybody and Susy's--was sure to be there; and
+these, as she knew, were the occasions that revived Strefford's
+intermittent interest in art.  He really liked picture shows as
+much as the races, if one could be sure of seeing as many people
+there.  With Nick how different it would have been!  Nick hated
+openings and varnishing days, and worldly aesthetics in general;
+he would have waited till the tide of fashion had ebbed, and
+slipped off with Susy to see the pictures some morning when they
+were sure to have the place to themselves.
+
+But Susy divined that there was another reason for Strefford's
+suggestion.  She had never yet shown herself with him publicly,
+among their own group of people:  now he had determined that she
+should do so, and she knew why.  She had humbled his pride; he
+had understood, and forgiven her.  But she still continued to
+treat him as she had always treated the Strefford of old,
+Charlie Strefford, dear old negligible impecunious Streff; and
+he wanted to show her, ever so casually and adroitly, that the
+man who had asked her to marry him was no longer Strefford, but
+Lord Altringham.
+
+At the very threshold, his Ambassador's greeting marked the
+difference:  it was followed, wherever they turned, by
+ejaculations of welcome from the rulers of the world they moved
+in.  Everybody rich enough or titled enough, or clever enough or
+stupid enough, to have forced a way into the social citadel, was
+there, waving and flag-flying from the battlements; and to all
+of them Lord Altringham had become a marked figure.  During
+their slow progress through the dense mass of important people
+who made the approach to the pictures so well worth fighting
+for, he never left Susy's side, or failed to make her feel
+herself a part of his triumphal advance.  She heard her name
+mentioned:  "Lansing--a Mrs. Lansing--an American ... Susy
+Lansing?  Yes, of course ....  You remember her?  At Newport, At
+St. Moritz?  Exactly....  Divorced already?  They say so ...
+Susy darling!  I'd no idea you were here ... and Lord
+Altringham!  You've forgotten me, I know, Lord Altringham ....
+Yes, last year, in Cairo ... or at Newport ... or in Scotland
+... Susy, dearest, when will you bring Lord Altringham to dine?
+Any night that you and he are free I'll arrange to be ...."
+
+"You and he":  they were "you and he" already!
+
+"Ah, there's one of them--of my great-grandmothers," Strefford
+explained, giving a last push that drew him and Susy to the
+front rank, before a tall isolated portrait which, by sheer
+majesty of presentment, sat in its great carved golden frame as
+on a throne above the other pictures.
+
+Susy read on the scroll beneath it:  "The Hon'ble Diana Lefanu,
+fifteenth Countess of Altringham"--and heard Strefford say:  "Do
+you remember?  It hangs where you noticed the empty space above
+the mantel-piece, in the Vandyke room.  They say Reynolds
+stipulated that it should be put with the Vandykes."
+
+She had never before heard him speak of his possessions, whether
+ancestral or merely material, in just that full and satisfied
+tone of voice:  the rich man's voice.  She saw that he was
+already feeling the influence of his surroundings, that he was
+glad the portrait of a Countess of Altringham should occupy the
+central place in the principal room of the exhibition, that the
+crowd about it should be denser there than before any of the
+other pictures, and that he should be standing there with Susy,
+letting her feel, and letting all the people about them guess,
+that the day she chose she could wear the same name as his
+pictured ancestress.
+
+On the way back to her hotel, Strefford made no farther allusion
+to their future; they chatted like old comrades in their
+respective corners of the taxi.  But as the carriage stopped at
+her door he said:  "I must go back to England the day after to-
+morrow, worse luck!  Why not dine with me to-night at the
+Nouveau Luxe?  I've got to have the Ambassador and Lady Ascot,
+with their youngest girl and my old Dunes aunt, the Dowager
+Duchess, who's over here hiding from her creditors; but I'll try
+to get two or three amusing men to leaven the lump.  We might go
+on to a boite afterward, if you're bored.  Unless the dancing
+amuses you more ...."
+
+She understood that he had decided to hasten his departure
+rather than linger on in uncertainty; she also remembered having
+heard the Ascots' youngest daughter, Lady Joan Senechal, spoken
+of as one of the prettiest girls of the season; and she recalled
+the almost exaggerated warmth of the Ambassador's greeting at
+the private view.
+
+"Of course I'll come, Streff dear!" she cried, with an effort at
+gaiety that sounded successful to her own strained ears, and
+reflected itself in the sudden lighting up of his face.
+
+She waved a good-bye from the step, saying to herself, as she
+looked after him:  "He'll drive me home to-night, and I shall
+say 'yes'; and then he'll kiss me again. But the next time it
+won't be nearly as disagreeable."
+
+She turned into the hotel, glanced automatically at the empty
+pigeon-hole for letters under her key-hook, and mounted the
+stairs following the same train of images.  "Yes, I shall say
+'yes' to-night," she repeated firmly, her hand on the door of
+her room.  "That is, unless, they've brought up a letter ...."
+She never re-entered the hotel without imagining that the letter
+she had not found below had already been brought up.
+
+Opening the door, she turned on the light and sprang to the
+table on which her correspondence sometimes awaited her.
+
+There was no letter; but the morning papers, still unread, lay
+at hand, and glancing listlessly down the column which
+chronicles the doings of society, she read:
+
+"After an extended cruise in the AEgean and the Black Sea on
+their steam-yacht Ibis, Mr. and Mrs. Mortimer Hicks and their
+daughter are established at the Nouveau Luxe in Rome.  They have
+lately had the honour of entertaining at dinner the Reigning
+Prince of Teutoburger-Waldhain and his mother the Princess
+Dowager, with their suite.  Among those invited to meet their
+Serene Highnesses were the French and Spanish Ambassadors, the
+Duchesse de Vichy, Prince and Princess Bagnidilucca, Lady
+Penelope Pantiles--" Susy's eye flew impatiently on over the
+long list of titles--"and Mr. Nicholas Lansing of New York, who
+has been cruising with Mr. and Mrs. Hicks on the Ibis for the
+last few months."
+
+
+
+XX
+
+THE Mortimer Hickses were in Rome; not, as they would in former
+times have been, in one of the antiquated hostelries of the
+Piazza di Spagna or the Porta del Popolo, where of old they had
+so gaily defied fever and nourished themselves on local colour;
+but spread out, with all the ostentation of philistine
+millionaires, under the piano nobile ceilings of one of the
+high-perched "Palaces," where, as Mrs. Hicks shamelessly
+declared, they could "rely on the plumbing," and "have the
+privilege of over-looking the Queen Mother's Gardens."
+
+It was that speech, uttered with beaming aplomb at a dinner-
+table surrounded by the cosmopolitan nobility of the Eternal
+City, that had suddenly revealed to Lansing the profound change
+in the Hicks point of view.
+
+As he looked back over the four months since he had so
+unexpectedly joined the Ibis at Genoa, he saw that the change,
+at first insidious and unperceived, dated from the ill-fated day
+when the Hickses had run across a Reigning Prince on his
+travels.
+
+Hitherto they had been proof against such perils:  both Mr. and
+Mrs. Hicks had often declared that the aristocracy of the
+intellect was the only one which attracted them.  But in this
+case the Prince possessed an intellect, in addition to his few
+square miles of territory, and to one of the most beautiful
+Field Marshal's uniforms that had ever encased a royal warrior.
+The Prince was not a warrior, however; he was stooping, pacific
+and spectacled, and his possession of the uniform had been
+revealed to Mrs. Hicks only by the gift of a full-length
+photograph in a Bond Street frame, with Anastasius written
+slantingly across its legs.  The Prince--and herein lay the
+Hickses' undoing--the Prince was an archaeologist:  an earnest
+anxious enquiring and scrupulous archaeologist.  Delicate health
+(so his suite hinted) banished him for a part of each year from
+his cold and foggy principality; and in the company of his
+mother, the active and enthusiastic Dowager Princess, he
+wandered from one Mediterranean shore to another, now assisting
+at the exhumation of Ptolemaic mummies, now at the excavation of
+Delphic temples or of North African basilicas.  The beginning of
+winter usually brought the Prince and his mother to Rome or
+Nice, unless indeed they were summoned by family duties to
+Berlin, Vienna or Madrid; for an extended connection with the
+principal royal houses of Europe compelled them, as the Princess
+Mother said, to be always burying or marrying a cousin.  At
+other moments they were seldom seen in the glacial atmosphere of
+courts, preferring to royal palaces those of the other, and more
+modern type, in one of which the Hickses were now lodged.
+
+Yes:  the Prince and his mother (they gaily avowed it) revelled
+in Palace Hotels; and, being unable to afford the luxury of
+inhabiting them, they liked, as often as possible, to be invited
+to dine there by their friends--"or even to tea, my dear," the
+Princess laughingly avowed, "for I'm so awfully fond of buttered
+scones; and Anastasius gives me so little to eat in the desert."
+
+The encounter with these ambulant Highnesses had been fatal--
+Lansing now perceived it--to Mrs. Hicks's principles.  She had
+known a great many archaeologists, but never one as agreeable as
+the Prince, and above all never one who had left a throne to
+camp in the desert and delve in Libyan tombs.  And it seemed to
+her infinitely pathetic that these two gifted beings, who
+grumbled when they had to go to "marry a cousin" at the Palace
+of St. James or of Madrid, and hastened back breathlessly to the
+far-off point where, metaphorically speaking, pick-axe and spade
+had dropped from their royal hands--that these heirs of the ages
+should be unable to offer themselves the comforts of up-to-date
+hotel life, and should enjoy themselves "like babies" when they
+were invited to the other kind of "Palace," to feast on buttered
+scones and watch the tango.
+
+She simply could not bear the thought of their privations; and
+neither, after a time, could Mr. Hicks, who found the Prince
+more democratic than anyone he had ever known at Apex City, and
+was immensely interested by the fact that their spectacles came
+from the same optician.
+
+But it was, above all, the artistic tendencies of the Prince and
+his mother which had conquered the Hickses.  There was
+fascination in the thought that, among the rabble of vulgar
+uneducated royalties who overran Europe from Biarritz to the
+Engadine, gambling, tangoing, and sponging on no less vulgar
+plebeians, they, the unobtrusive and self-respecting Hickses,
+should have had the luck to meet this cultivated pair, who
+joined them in gentle ridicule of their own frivolous kinsfolk,
+and whose tastes were exactly those of the eccentric, unreliable
+and sometimes money-borrowing persons who had hitherto
+represented the higher life to the Hickses.
+
+Now at last Mrs. Hicks saw the possibility of being at once
+artistic and luxurious, of surrendering herself to the joys of
+modern plumbing and yet keeping the talk on the highest level.
+"If the poor dear Princess wants to dine at the Nouveau Luxe why
+shouldn't we give her that pleasure?"  Mrs. Hicks smilingly
+enquired; "and as for enjoying her buttered scones like a baby,
+as she says, I think it's the sweetest thing about her."
+
+Coral Hicks did not join in this chorus; but she accepted, with
+her curious air of impartiality, the change in her parents'
+manner of life, and for the first time (as Nick observed)
+occupied herself with her mother's toilet, with the result that
+Mrs. Hicks's outline became firmer, her garments soberer in hue
+and finer in material; so that, should anyone chance to detect
+the daughter's likeness to her mother, the result was less
+likely to be disturbing.
+
+Such precautions were the more needful--Lansing could not but
+note because of the different standards of the society in which
+the Hickses now moved.  For it was a curious fact that admission
+to the intimacy of the Prince and his mother-- who continually
+declared themselves to be the pariahs, the outlaws, the
+Bohemians among crowned heads nevertheless involved not only
+living in Palace Hotels but mixing with those who frequented
+them.  The Prince's aide-de-camp--an agreeable young man of easy
+manners--had smilingly hinted that their Serene Highnesses,
+though so thoroughly democratic and unceremonious, were yet
+accustomed to inspecting in advance the names of the persons
+whom their hosts wished to invite with them; and Lansing noticed
+that Mrs. Hicks's lists, having been "submitted," usually came
+back lengthened by the addition of numerous wealthy and titled
+guests.  Their Highnesses never struck out a name; they welcomed
+with enthusiasm and curiosity the Hickses' oddest and most
+inexplicable friends, at most putting off some of them to a
+later day on the plea that it would be "cosier" to meet them on
+a more private occasion; but they invariably added to the list
+any friends of their own, with the gracious hint that they
+wished these latter (though socially so well-provided for) to
+have the "immense privilege" of knowing the Hickses.  And thus
+it happened that when October gales necessitated laying up the
+Ibis, the Hickses, finding again in Rome the august travellers
+from whom they had parted the previous month in Athens, also
+found their visiting-list enlarged by all that the capital
+contained of fashion.
+
+It was true enough, as Lansing had not failed to note, that the
+Princess Mother adored prehistoric art, and Russian music, and
+the paintings of Gauguin and Matisse; but she also, and with a
+beaming unconsciousness of perspective, adored large pearls and
+powerful motors, caravan tea and modern plumbing, perfumed
+cigarettes and society scandals; and her son, while apparently
+less sensible to these forms of luxury, adored his mother, and
+was charmed to gratify her inclinations without cost to
+himself--"Since poor Mamma," as he observed, "is so courageous
+when we are roughing it in the desert."
+
+The smiling aide-de-camp, who explained these things to Lansing,
+added with an intenser smile that the Prince and his mother were
+under obligations, either social or cousinly, to most of the
+titled persons whom they begged Mrs. Hicks to invite; "and it
+seems to their Serene Highnesses," he added, "the most
+flattering return they can make for the hospitality of their
+friends to give them such an intellectual opportunity."
+
+The dinner-table at which their Highnesses' friends were seated
+on the evening in question represented, numerically, one of the
+greatest intellectual opportunities yet afforded them.  Thirty
+guests were grouped about the flower-wreathed board, from which
+Eldorada and Mr. Beck had been excluded on the plea that the
+Princess Mother liked cosy parties and begged her hosts that
+there should never be more than thirty at table.  Such, at
+least, was the reason given by Mrs. Hicks to her faithful
+followers; but Lansing had observed that, of late, the same
+skilled hand which had refashioned the Hickses' social circle
+usually managed to exclude from it the timid presences of the
+two secretaries.  Their banishment was the more displeasing to
+Lansing from the fact that, for the last three months, he had
+filled Mr. Buttles's place, and was himself their salaried
+companion.  But since he had accepted the post, his obvious duty
+was to fill it in accordance with his employers' requirements;
+and it was clear even to Eldorada and Mr. Beck that he had, as
+Eldorada ungrudgingly said, "Something of Mr. Buttles's
+marvellous social gifts. "
+
+During the cruise his task had not been distasteful to him.  He
+was glad of any definite duties, however trivial, he felt more
+independent as the Hickses' secretary than as their pampered
+guest, and the large cheque which Mr. Hicks handed over to him
+on the first of each month refreshed his languishing sense of
+self-respect.
+
+He considered himself absurdly over-paid, but that was the
+Hickses' affair; and he saw nothing humiliating in being in the
+employ of people he liked and respected.  But from the moment of
+the ill-fated encounter with the wandering Princes, his position
+had changed as much as that of his employers.  He was no longer,
+to Mr. and Mrs. Hicks, a useful and estimable assistant, on the
+same level as Eldorada and Mr. Beck; he had become a social
+asset of unsuspected value, equalling Mr. Buttles in his
+capacity for dealing with the mysteries of foreign etiquette,
+and surpassing him in the art of personal attraction.  Nick
+Lansing, the Hickses found, already knew most of the Princess
+Mother's rich and aristocratic friends.  Many of them hailed him
+with enthusiastic "Old Nicks", and he was almost as familiar as
+His Highness's own aide-de-camp with all those secret
+ramifications of love and hate that made dinner-giving so much
+more of a science in Rome than at Apex City.
+
+Mrs. Hicks, at first, had hopelessly lost her way in this
+labyrinth of subterranean scandals, rivalries and jealousies;
+and finding Lansing's hand within reach she clung to it with
+pathetic tenacity.  But if the young man's value had risen in
+the eyes of his employers it had deteriorated in his own.  He
+was condemned to play a part he had not bargained for, and it
+seemed to him more degrading when paid in bank-notes than if his
+retribution had consisted merely in good dinners and luxurious
+lodgings.  The first time the smiling aide-de-camp had caught
+his eye over a verbal slip of Mrs. Hicks's, Nick had flushed to
+the forehead and gone to bed swearing that he would chuck his
+job the next day.
+
+Two months had passed since then, and he was still the paid
+secretary.  He had contrived to let the aide-de-camp feel that
+he was too deficient in humour to be worth exchanging glances
+with; but even this had not restored his self-respect, and on
+the evening in question, as he looked about the long table, he
+said to himself for the hundredth time that he would give up his
+position on the morrow.
+
+Only--what was the alternative?  The alternative, apparently,
+was Coral Hicks.  He glanced down the line of diners, beginning
+with the tall lean countenance of the Princess Mother, with its
+small inquisitive eyes perched as high as attic windows under a
+frizzled thatch of hair and a pediment of uncleaned diamonds;
+passed on to the vacuous and overfed or fashionably haggard
+masks of the ladies next in rank; and finally caught, between
+branching orchids, a distant glimpse of Miss Hicks.
+
+In contrast with the others, he thought, she looked surprisingly
+noble.  Her large grave features made her appear like an old
+monument in a street of Palace Hotels; and he marvelled at the
+mysterious law which had brought this archaic face out of Apex
+City, and given to the oldest society of Europe a look of such
+mixed modernity.
+
+Lansing perceived that the aide-de-camp, who was his neighbour,
+was also looking at Miss Hicks.  His expression was serious, and
+even thoughtful; but as his eyes met Lansing's he readjusted his
+official smile.
+
+"I was admiring our hostess's daughter.  Her absence of jewels
+is--er--an inspiration," he remarked in the confidential tone
+which Lansing had come to dread.
+
+"Oh, Miss Hicks is full of inspirations," he returned curtly,
+and the aide-de-camp bowed with an admiring air, as if
+inspirations were rarer than pearls, as in his milieu they
+undoubtedly were.  "She is the equal of any situation, I am
+sure," he replied; and then abandoned the subject with one of
+his automatic transitions.
+
+After dinner, in the embrasure of a drawing-room window, he
+surprised Nick by returning to the same topic, and this time
+without thinking it needful to readjust his smile.  His face
+remained serious, though his manner was studiously informal.
+
+"I was admiring, at dinner, Miss Hicks's invariable sense of
+appropriateness.  It must permit her friends to foresee for her
+almost any future, however exalted."
+
+Lansing hesitated, and controlled his annoyance.  Decidedly he
+wanted to know what was in his companion's mind.
+
+"What do you mean by exalted?" he asked, with a smile of faint
+amusement.
+
+"Well--equal to her marvellous capacity for shining in the
+public eye."
+
+Lansing still smiled.  "The question is, I suppose, whether her
+desire to shine equals her capacity."
+
+The aide-de-camp stared.  "You mean, she's not ambitious?"
+
+"On the contrary; I believe her to be immeasurably ambitious."
+
+"Immeasurably?"  The aide-de-camp seemed to try to measure it.
+"But not, surely, beyond--" "beyond what we can offer," his eyes
+completed the sentence; and it was Lansing's turn to stare.  The
+aide-de-camp faced the stare.  "Yes," his eyes concluded in a
+flash, while his lips let fall:  "The Princess Mother admires
+her immensely."  But at that moment a wave of Mrs. Hicks's fan
+drew them hurriedly from their embrasure.
+
+"Professor Darchivio had promised to explain to us the
+difference between the Sassanian and Byzantine motives in
+Carolingian art; but the Manager has sent up word that the two
+new Creole dancers from Paris have arrived, and her Serene
+Highness wants to pop down to the ball-room and take a peep at
+them ....  She's sure the Professor will understand ...."
+
+"And accompany us, of course," the Princess irresistibly added.
+
+Lansing's brief colloquy in the Nouveau Luxe window had lifted
+the scales from his eyes.  Innumerable dim corners of memory had
+been flooded with light by that one quick glance of the aide-de-
+camp's:  things he had heard, hints he had let pass, smiles,
+insinuations, cordialities, rumours of the improbability of the
+Prince's founding a family, suggestions as to the urgent need of
+replenishing the Teutoburger treasury ....
+
+Miss Hicks, perforce, had accompanied her parents and their
+princely guests to the ballroom; but as she did not dance, and
+took little interest in the sight of others so engaged, she
+remained aloof from the party, absorbed in an archaeological
+discussion with the baffled but smiling savant who was to have
+enlightened the party on the difference between Sassanian and
+Byzantine ornament.
+
+Lansing, also aloof, had picked out a post from which he could
+observe the girl:  she wore a new look to him since he had seen
+her as the centre of all these scattered threads of intrigue.
+Yes; decidedly she was growing handsomer; or else she had
+learned how to set off her massive lines instead of trying to
+disguise them.  As she held up her long eye-glass to glance
+absently at the dancers he was struck by the large beauty of her
+arm and the careless assurance of the gesture.  There was
+nothing nervous or fussy about Coral Hicks; and he was not
+surprised that, plastically at least, the Princess Mother had
+discerned her possibilities.
+
+Nick Lansing, all that night, sat up and stared at his future.
+He knew enough of the society into which the Hickses had drifted
+to guess that, within a very short time, the hint of the
+Prince's aide-de-camp would reappear in the form of a direct
+proposal.  Lansing himself would probably--as the one person in
+the Hicks entourage with whom one could intelligibly commune-be
+entrusted with the next step in the negotiations:  he would be
+asked, as the aide-de-camp would have said, "to feel the
+ground."  It was clearly part of the state policy of Teutoburg
+to offer Miss Hicks, with the hand of its sovereign, an
+opportunity to replenish its treasury.
+
+What would the girl do?  Lansing could not guess; yet he dimly
+felt that her attitude would depend in a great degree upon his
+own.  And he knew no more what his own was going to be than on
+the night, four months earlier, when he had flung out of his
+wife's room in Venice to take the midnight express for Genoa.
+
+The whole of his past, and above all the tendency, on which he
+had once prided himself, to live in the present and take
+whatever chances it offered, now made it harder for him to act.
+He began to see that he had never, even in the closest relations
+of life, looked ahead of his immediate satisfaction.  He had
+thought it rather fine to be able to give himself so intensely
+to the fullness of each moment instead of hurrying past it in
+pursuit of something more, or something else, in the manner of
+the over-scrupulous or the under-imaginative, whom he had always
+grouped together and equally pitied.  It was not till he had
+linked his life with Susy's that he had begun to feel it
+reaching forward into a future he longed to make sure of, to
+fasten upon and shape to his own wants and purposes, till, by an
+imperceptible substitution, that future had become his real
+present, his all-absorbing moment of time.
+
+Now the moment was shattered, and the power to rebuild it failed
+him.  He had never before thought about putting together broken
+bits:  he felt like a man whose house has been wrecked by an
+earthquake, and who, for lack of skilled labour, is called upon
+for the first time to wield a trowel and carry bricks.  He
+simply did not know how.
+
+Will-power, he saw, was not a thing one could suddenly decree
+oneself to possess.  It must be built up imperceptibly and
+laboriously out of a succession of small efforts to meet
+definite objects, out of the facing of daily difficulties
+instead of cleverly eluding them, or shifting their burden on
+others.  The making of the substance called character was a
+process about as slow and arduous as the building of the
+Pyramids; and the thing itself, like those awful edifices, was
+mainly useful to lodge one's descendants in, after they too were
+dust.  Yet the Pyramid-instinct was the one which had made the
+world, made man, and caused his fugitive joys to linger like
+fading frescoes on imperishable walls ....
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+ON the drive back from her dinner at the Nouveau Luxe, events
+had followed the course foreseen by Susy.
+
+She had promised Strefford to seek legal advice about her
+divorce, and he had kissed her; and the promise had been easier
+to make than she had expected, the kiss less difficult to
+receive.
+
+She had gone to the dinner a-quiver with the mortification of
+learning that her husband was still with the Hickses.  Morally
+sure of it though she had been, the discovery was a shock, and
+she measured for the first time the abyss between fearing and
+knowing.  No wonder he had not written--the modern husband did
+not have to:  he had only to leave it to time and the newspapers
+to make known his intentions.  Susy could imagine Nick's saying
+to himself, as he sometimes used to say when she reminded him of
+an unanswered letter:  "But there are lots of ways of answering
+a letter--and writing doesn't happen to be mine."
+
+Well--he had done it in his way, and she was answered.  For a
+minute, as she laid aside the paper, darkness submerged her, and
+she felt herself dropping down into the bottomless anguish of
+her dreadful vigil in the Palazzo Vanderlyn.  But she was weary
+of anguish:  her healthy body and nerves instinctively rejected
+it.  The wave was spent, and she felt herself irresistibly
+struggling back to light and life and youth.  He didn't want
+her!  Well, she would try not to want him!  There lay all the
+old expedients at her hand--the rouge for her white lips, the
+atropine for her blurred eyes, the new dress on her bed, the
+thought of Strefford and his guests awaiting her, and of the
+conclusions that the diners of the Nouveau Luxe would draw from
+seeing them together.  Thank heaven no one would say:  "Poor old
+Susy--did you know Nick had chucked her?"  They would all say:
+"Poor old Nick!  Yes, I daresay she was sorry to chuck him; but
+Altringham's mad to marry her, and what could she do? "
+
+And once again events had followed the course she had foreseen.
+Seeing her at Lord Altringham's table, with the Ascots and the
+old Duchess of Dunes, the interested spectators could not but
+regard the dinner as confirming the rumour of her marriage.  As
+Ellie said, people didn't wait nowadays to announce their
+"engagements" till the tiresome divorce proceedings were over.
+Ellie herself, prodigally pearled and ermined, had floated in
+late with Algie Bockheimer in her wake, and sat, in conspicuous
+tete-a-tete, nodding and signalling her sympathy to Susy.
+Approval beamed from every eye:  it was awfully exciting, they
+all seemed to say, seeing Susy Lansing pull it off!  As the
+party, after dinner, drifted from the restaurant back into the
+hall, she caught, in the smiles and hand-pressures crowding
+about her, the scarcely-repressed hint of official
+congratulations; and Violet Melrose, seated in a corner with
+Fulmer, drew her down with a wan jade-circled arm, to whisper
+tenderly:  "It's most awfully clever of you, darling, not to be
+wearing any jewels."
+
+In all the women's eyes she read the reflected lustre of the
+jewels she could wear when she chose:  it was as though their
+glitter reached her from the far-off bank where they lay sealed
+up in the Altringham strong-box.  What a fool she had been to
+think that Strefford would ever believe she didn't care for
+them!
+
+The Ambassadress, a blank perpendicular person, had been a shade
+less affable than Susy could have wished; but then there was
+Lady Joan--and the girl was handsome, alarmingly handsome to
+account for that:  probably every one in the room had guessed
+it.  And the old Duchess of Dunes was delightful.  She looked
+rather like Strefford in a wig and false pearls (Susy was sure
+they were as false as her teeth); and her cordiality was so
+demonstrative that the future bride found it more difficult to
+account for than Lady Ascot's coldness, till she heard the old
+lady, as they passed into the hall, breathe in a hissing whisper
+to her nephew:  "Streff, dearest, when you have a minute's time,
+and can drop in at my wretched little pension, I know you can
+explain in two words what I ought to do to pacify those awful
+money-lenders ....  And you'll bring your exquisite American to
+see me, won't you! ...  No, Joan Senechal's too fair for my
+taste ....  Insipid..."
+"
+
+Yes:  the taste of it all was again sweet on her lips.  A few
+days later she began to wonder how the thought of Strefford's
+endearments could have been so alarming.  To be sure he was not
+lavish of them; but when he did touch her, even when he kissed
+her, it no longer seemed to matter.  An almost complete absence
+of sensation had mercifully succeeded to the first wild flurry
+of her nerves.
+
+And so it would be, no doubt, with everything else in her new
+life.  If it failed to provoke any acute reactions, whether of
+pain or pleasure, the very absence of sensation would make for
+peace.  And in the meanwhile she was tasting what, she had begun
+to suspect, was the maximum of bliss to most of the women she
+knew:  days packed with engagements, the exhilaration of
+fashionable crowds, the thrill of snapping up a jewel or a
+bibelot or a new "model" that one's best friend wanted, or of
+being invited to some private show, or some exclusive
+entertainment, that one's best friend couldn't get to.  There
+was nothing, now, that she couldn't buy, nowhere that she
+couldn't go:  she had only to choose and to triumph.  And for a
+while the surface-excitement of her life gave her the illusion
+of enjoyment.
+
+Strefford, as she had expected, had postponed his return to
+England, and they had now been for nearly three weeks together
+in their new, and virtually avowed, relation.  She had fancied
+that, after all, the easiest part of it would be just the being
+with Strefford--the falling back on their old tried friendship
+to efface the sense of strangeness.  But, though she had so soon
+grown used to his caresses, he himself remained curiously
+unfamiliar:  she was hardly sure, at times, that it was the old
+Strefford she was talking to.  It was not that his point of view
+had changed, but that new things occupied and absorbed him.  In
+all the small sides of his great situation he took an almost
+childish satisfaction; and though he still laughed at both its
+privileges and its obligations, it was now with a jealous
+laughter.
+
+It amused him inexhaustibly, for instance, to be made up to by
+all the people who had always disapproved of him, and to unite
+at the same table persons who had to dissemble their annoyance
+at being invited together lest they should not be invited at
+all.  Equally exhilarating was the capricious favouring of the
+dull and dowdy on occasions when the brilliant and disreputable
+expected his notice.  It enchanted him, for example, to ask the
+old Duchess of Dunes and Violet Melrose to dine with the Vicar
+of Altringham, on his way to Switzerland for a month's holiday,
+and to watch the face of the Vicar's wife while the Duchess
+narrated her last difficulties with book-makers and money-
+lenders, and Violet proclaimed the rights of Love and Genius to
+all that had once been supposed to belong exclusively to
+Respectability and Dulness.
+
+Susy had to confess that her own amusements were hardly of a
+higher order; but then she put up with them for lack of better,
+whereas Strefford, who might have had what he pleased, was
+completely satisfied with such triumphs.
+
+Somehow, in spite of his honours and his opportunities, he
+seemed to have shrunk.  The old Strefford had certainly been a
+larger person, and she wondered if material prosperity were
+always a beginning of ossification.  Strefford had been much
+more fun when he lived by his wits.  Sometimes, now, when he
+tried to talk of politics, or assert himself on some question of
+public interest, she was startled by his limitations.  Formerly,
+when he was not sure of his ground, it had been his way to turn
+the difficulty by glib nonsense or easy irony; now he was
+actually dull, at times almost pompous.  She noticed too, for
+the first time, that he did not always hear clearly when several
+people were talking at once, or when he was at the theatre; and
+he developed a habit of saying over and over again:  "Does so-
+and-so speak indistinctly?  Or am I getting deaf, I wonder?"
+which wore on her nerves by its suggestion of a corresponding
+mental infirmity.
+
+These thoughts did not always trouble her.  The current of idle
+activity on which they were both gliding was her native element
+as well as his; and never had its tide been as swift, its waves
+as buoyant.  In his relation to her, too, he was full of tact
+and consideration.  She saw that he still remembered their
+frightened exchange of glances after their first kiss; and the
+sense of this little hidden spring of imagination in him was
+sometimes enough for her thirst.
+
+She had always had a rather masculine punctuality in keeping her
+word, and after she had promised Strefford to take steps toward
+a divorce she had promptly set about doing it.  A sudden
+reluctance prevented her asking the advice of friends like Ellie
+Vanderlyn, whom she knew to be in the thick of the same
+negotiations, and all she could think of was to consult a young
+American lawyer practicing in Paris, with whom she felt she
+could talk the more easily because he was not from New York, and
+probably unacquainted with her history.
+
+She was so ignorant of the procedure in such matters that she
+was surprised and relieved at his asking few personal questions;
+but it was a shock to learn that a divorce could not be
+obtained, either in New York or Paris, merely on the ground of
+desertion or incompatibility.
+
+"I thought nowadays ... if people preferred to live apart ... it
+could always be managed," she stammered, wondering at her own
+ignorance, after the many conjugal ruptures she had assisted at.
+
+The young lawyer smiled, and coloured slightly.  His lovely
+client evidently intimidated him by her grace, and still more by
+her inexperience.
+
+"It can be--generally," he admitted; "and especially so if ...
+as I gather is the case ... your husband is equally
+anxious ...."
+
+"Oh, quite!" she exclaimed, suddenly humiliated by having to
+admit it.
+
+"Well, then--may I suggest that, to bring matters to a point,
+the best way would be for you to write to him?"
+
+She recoiled slightly.  It had never occurred to her that the
+lawyers would not "manage it" without her intervention.
+
+"Write to him ... but what about?"
+
+"Well, expressing your wish ... to recover your freedom ....
+The rest, I assume," said the young lawyer, "may be left to Mr.
+Lansing."
+
+She did not know exactly what he meant, and was too much
+perturbed by the idea of having to communicate with Nick to
+follow any other train of thought.  How could she write such a
+letter?  And yet how could she confess to the lawyer that she
+had not the courage to do so?  He would, of course, tell her to
+go home and be reconciled.  She hesitated perplexedly.
+
+"Wouldn't it be better," she suggested, "if the letter were to
+come from--from your office?"
+
+He considered this politely.  "On the whole:  no.  If, as I take
+it, an amicable arrangement is necessary--to secure the
+requisite evidence then a line from you, suggesting an
+interview, seems to me more advisable."
+
+"An interview?  Is an interview necessary?"  She was ashamed to
+show her agitation to this cautiously smiling young man, who
+must wonder at her childish lack of understanding; but the break
+in her voice was uncontrollable.
+
+"Oh, please write to him--I can't!  And I can't see him!  Oh,
+can't you arrange it for me?" she pleaded.
+
+She saw now that her idea of a divorce had been that it was
+something one went out--or sent out--to buy in a shop:
+something concrete and portable, that Strefford's money could
+pay for, and that it required no personal participation to
+obtain.  What a fool the lawyer must think her!  Stiffening
+herself, she rose from her seat.
+
+"My husband and I don't wish to see each other again ....  I'm
+sure it would be useless ... and very painful."
+
+"You are the best judge, of course.  But in any case, a letter
+from you, a friendly letter, seems wiser ... considering the
+apparent lack of evidence ...."
+
+"Very well, then; I'll write," she agreed, and hurried away,
+scarcely hearing his parting injunction that she should take a
+copy of her letter.
+
+That night she wrote.  At the last moment it might have been
+impossible, if at the theatre little Breckenridge had not bobbed
+into her box.  He was just back from Rome, where he had dined
+with the Hickses ("a bang-up show--they're really lances-you
+wouldn't know them!"), and had met there Lansing, whom he
+reported as intending to marry Coral "as soon as things were
+settled".  "You were dead right, weren't you, Susy," he
+snickered, "that night in Venice last summer, when we all
+thought you were joking about their engagement?  Pity now you
+chucked our surprise visit to the Hickses, and sent Streff up to
+drag us back just as we were breaking in!  You remember?"
+
+He flung off the "Streff" airily, in the old way, but with a
+tentative side-glance at his host; and Lord Altringham, leaning
+toward Susy, said coldly:  "Was Breckenridge speaking about me?
+I didn't catch what he said.  Does he speak indistinctly--or am
+I getting deaf, I wonder?"
+
+After that it seemed comparatively easy, when Strefford had
+dropped her at her hotel, to go upstairs and write.  She dashed
+off the date and her address, and then stopped; but suddenly she
+remembered Breckenridge's snicker, and the words rushed from
+her.  "Nick dear, it was July when you left Venice, and I have
+had no word from you since the note in which you said you had
+gone for a few days, and that I should hear soon again.
+
+"You haven't written yet, and it is five months since you left
+me.  That means, I suppose, that you want to take back your
+freedom and give me mine.  Wouldn't it be kinder, in that case,
+to tell me so?  It is worse than anything to go on as we are
+now.  I don't know how to put these things but since you seem
+unwilling to write to me perhaps you would prefer to send your
+answer to Mr. Frederic Spearman, the American lawyer here.  His
+address is 100, Boulevard Haussmann. I hope--"
+
+She broke off on the last word.  Hope?  What did she hope,
+either for him or for herself?  Wishes for his welfare would
+sound like a mockery--and she would rather her letter should
+seem bitter than unfeeling.  Above all, she wanted to get it
+done.  To have to re-write even those few lines would be
+torture.  So she left "I hope," and simply added:  "to hear
+before long what you have decided."
+
+She read it over, and shivered.  Not one word of the past-not
+one allusion to that mysterious interweaving of their lives
+which had enclosed them one in the other like the flower in its
+sheath!  What place had such memories in such a letter?  She had
+the feeling that she wanted to hide that other Nick away in her
+own bosom, and with him the other Susy, the Susy he had once
+imagined her to be ....  Neither of them seemed concerned with
+the present business.
+
+The letter done, she stared at the sealed envelope till its
+presence in the room became intolerable, and she understood that
+she must either tear it up or post it immediately.  She went
+down to the hall of the sleeping hotel, and bribed the night-
+porter to carry the letter to the nearest post office, though he
+objected that, at that hour, no time would be gained.  "I want
+it out of the house," she insisted: and waited sternly by the
+desk, in her dressing-gown, till he had performed the errand.
+
+As she re-entered her room, the disordered writing-table struck
+her; and she remembered the lawyer's injunction to take a copy
+of her letter.  A copy to be filed away with the documents in
+"Lansing versus Lansing!"  She burst out laughing at the idea.
+What were lawyers made of, she wondered?  Didn't the man guess,
+by the mere look in her eyes and the sound of her voice, that
+she would never, as long as she lived, forget a word of that
+letter--that night after night she would lie down, as she was
+lying down to-night, to stare wide-eyed for hours into the
+darkness, while a voice in her brain monotonously hammered out:
+"Nick dear, it was July when you left me ..." and so on, word
+after word, down to the last fatal syllable?
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+STREFFORD was leaving for England.
+
+Once assured that Susy had taken the first step toward freeing
+herself, he frankly regarded her as his affianced wife, and
+could see no reason for further mystery.  She understood his
+impatience to have their plans settled; it would protect him
+from the formidable menace of the marriageable, and cause
+people, as he said, to stop meddling.  Now that the novelty of
+his situation was wearing off, his natural indolence reasserted
+itself, and there was nothing he dreaded more than having to be
+on his guard against the innumerable plans that his well-wishers
+were perpetually making for him.  Sometimes Susy fancied he was
+marrying her because to do so was to follow the line of least
+resistance.
+
+"To marry me is the easiest way of not marrying all the others,"
+she laughed, as he stood before her one day in a quiet alley of
+the Bois de Boulogne, insisting on the settlement of various
+preliminaries.  "I believe I'm only a protection to you."
+
+An odd gleam passed behind his eyes, and she instantly guessed
+that he was thinking:  "And what else am I to you?"
+
+She changed colour, and he rejoined, laughing also:  "Well,
+you're that at any rate, thank the Lord!"
+
+She pondered, and then questioned:  "But in the interval-how
+are you going to defend yourself for another year?"
+
+"Ah, you've got to see to that; you've got to take a little
+house in London.  You've got to look after me, you know."
+
+It was on the tip of her tongue to flash back:  "Oh, if that's
+all you care--!"  But caring was exactly the factor she wanted,
+as much as possible, to keep out of their talk and their
+thoughts.  She could not ask him how much he cared without
+laying herself open to the same question; and that way terror
+lay.  As a matter of fact, though Strefford was not an ardent
+wooer--perhaps from tact, perhaps from temperament, perhaps
+merely from the long habit of belittling and disintegrating
+every sentiment and every conviction--yet she knew he did care
+for her as much as he was capable of caring for anyone.  If the
+element of habit entered largely into the feeling--if he liked
+her, above all, because he was used to her, knew her views, her
+indulgences, her allowances, knew he was never likely to be
+bored, and almost certain to be amused, by her; why, such
+ingredients though not of the fieriest, were perhaps those most
+likely to keep his feeling for her at a pleasant temperature.
+She had had a taste of the tropics, and wanted more equable
+weather; but the idea of having to fan his flame gently for a
+year was unspeakably depressing to her.  Yet all this was
+precisely what she could not say.  The long period of probation,
+during which, as she knew, she would have to amuse him, to guard
+him, to hold him, and to keep off the other women, was a
+necessary part of their situation.  She was sure that, as little
+Breckenridge would have said, she could "pull it off"; but she
+did not want to think about it.  What she would have preferred
+would have been to go away--no matter where and not see
+Strefford again till they were married.  But she dared not tell
+him that either.
+
+"A little house in London--?"  She wondered.
+
+"Well, I suppose you've got to have some sort of a roof over
+your head."
+
+"I suppose so."
+
+He sat down beside her.  "If you like me well enough to live at
+Altringham some day, won't you, in the meantime, let me provide
+you with a smaller and more convenient establishment?"
+
+Still she hesitated.  The alternative, she knew, would be to
+live on Ursula Gillow, Violet Melrose, or some other of her rich
+friends, any one of whom would be ready to lavish the largest
+hospitality on the prospective Lady Altringham.  Such an
+arrangement, in the long run, would be no less humiliating to
+her pride, no less destructive to her independence, than
+Altringham's little establishment.  But she temporized.  "I
+shall go over to London in December, and stay for a while with
+various people--then we can look about."
+
+"All right; as you like."  He obviously considered her
+hesitation ridiculous, but was too full of satisfaction at her
+having started divorce proceedings to be chilled by her reply.
+
+"And now, look here, my dear; couldn't I give you some sort of a
+ring?"
+
+"A ring?"  She flushed at the suggestion.  "What's the use,
+Streff, dear?  With all those jewels locked away in London--"
+
+"Oh, I daresay you'll think them old-fashioned.  And, hang it,
+why shouldn't I give you something new, I ran across Ellie and
+Bockheimer yesterday, in the rue de la Paix, picking out
+sapphires.  Do you like sapphires, or emeralds?  Or just a
+diamond?  I've seen a thumping one ....  I'd like you to have
+it."
+
+Ellie and Bockheimer!   How she hated the conjunction of the
+names!  Their case always seemed to her like a caricature of her
+own, and she felt an unreasoning resentment against Ellie for
+having selected the same season for her unmating and re-mating.
+
+"I wish you wouldn't speak of them, Streff ... as if they were
+like us!  I can hardly bear to sit in the same room with Ellie
+Vanderlyn."
+
+"Hullo?  What's wrong?  You mean because of her giving up
+Clarissa?"
+
+"Not that only ....  You don't know ....  I can't tell you ...."
+She shivered at the memory, and rose restlessly from the bench
+where they had been sitting.
+
+Strefford gave his careless shrug.  "Well, my dear, you can
+hardly expect me to agree, for after all it was to Ellie I owed
+the luck of being so long alone with you in Venice.  If she and
+Algie hadn't prolonged their honeymoon at the villa--"
+
+He stopped abruptly, and looked at Susy.  She was conscious that
+every drop of blood had left her face.  She felt it ebbing away
+from her heart, flowing out of her as if from all her severed
+arteries, till it seemed as though nothing were left of life in
+her but one point of irreducible pain.
+
+"Ellie--at your villa?  What do you mean?  Was it Ellie and
+Bockheimer who--?"
+
+Strefford still stared.  "You mean to say you didn't know?"
+
+"Who came after Nick and me...?" she insisted.
+
+"Why, do you suppose I'd have turned you out otherwise?  That
+beastly Bockheimer simply smothered me with gold.  Ah, well,
+there's one good thing:  I shall never have to let the villa
+again!  I rather like the little place myself, and I daresay
+once in a while we might go there for a day or two ....  Susy,
+what's the matter?" he exclaimed.
+
+She returned his stare, but without seeing him.  Everything swam
+and danced before her eyes.
+
+"Then she was there while I was posting all those letters for
+her--?"
+
+"Letters--what letters?  What makes you look so frightfully
+upset?"
+
+She pursued her thought as if he had not spoken.  "She and Algie
+Bockheimer arrived there the very day that Nick and I left?"
+
+"I suppose so.  I thought she'd told you.  Ellie always tells
+everybody everything."
+
+"She would have told me, I daresay--but I wouldn't let her."
+
+"Well, my dear, that was hardly my fault, was it?  Though I
+really don't see--"
+
+But Susy, still blind to everything but the dance of dizzy
+sparks before her eyes, pressed on as if she had not heard him.
+"It was their motor, then, that took us to Milan!  It was Algie
+Bockheimer's motor!"  She did not know why, but this seemed to
+her the most humiliating incident in the whole hateful business.
+She remembered Nick's reluctance to use the motor-she
+remembered his look when she had boasted of her "managing."  The
+nausea mounted to her throat.
+
+Strefford burst out laughing.  "I say--you borrowed their motor?
+And you didn't know whose it was?"
+
+"How could I know?  I persuaded the chauffeur ... for a little
+tip ....  It was to save our railway fares to Milan ... extra
+luggage costs so frightfully in Italy ...."
+
+"Good old Susy!  Well done!  I can see you doing it--"
+
+"Oh, how horrible--how horrible!" she groaned.
+
+"Horrible?  What's horrible?"
+
+"Why, your not seeing ... not feeling ..." she began
+impetuously; and then stopped.  How could she explain to him
+that what revolted her was not so much the fact of his having
+given the little house, as soon as she and Nick had left it, to
+those two people of all others--though the vision of them in the
+sweet secret house, and under the plane-trees of the terrace,
+drew such a trail of slime across her golden hours?  No, it was
+not that from which she most recoiled, but from the fact that
+Strefford, living in luxury in Nelson Vanderlyn's house, should
+at the same time have secretly abetted Ellie Vanderlyn's love-
+affairs, and allowed her--for a handsome price--to shelter them
+under his own roof.  The reproach trembled on her lip--but she
+remembered her own part in the wretched business, and the
+impossibility of avowing it to Strefford, and of revealing to
+him that Nick had left her for that very reason.  She was not
+afraid that the discovery would diminish her in Strefford's
+eyes:  he was untroubled by moral problems, and would laugh away
+her avowal, with a sneer at Nick in his new part of moralist.
+But that was just what she could not bear:  that anyone should
+cast a doubt on the genuineness of Nick's standards, or should
+know how far below them she had fallen.
+
+She remained silent, and Strefford, after a moment, drew her
+gently down to the seat beside him.  "Susy, upon my soul I don't
+know what you're driving at.  Is it me you're angry with-or
+yourself?  And what's it all about!  Are you disgusted because I
+let the villa to a couple who weren't married!  But, hang it,
+they're the kind that pay the highest price and I had to earn my
+living somehow!  One doesn't run across a bridal pair every
+day ...."
+
+She lifted her eyes to his puzzled incredulous face.  Poor
+Streff!  No, it was not with him that she was angry.  Why should
+she be?  Even that ill-advised disclosure had told her nothing
+she had not already known about him.  It had simply revealed to
+her once more the real point of view of the people he and she
+lived among, had shown her that, in spite of the superficial
+difference, he felt as they felt, judged as they judged, was
+blind as they were-and as she would be expected to be, should
+she once again become one of them.  What was the use of being
+placed by fortune above such shifts and compromises, if in one's
+heart one still condoned them?  And she would have to--she would
+catch the general note, grow blunted as those other people were
+blunted, and gradually come to wonder at her own revolt, as
+Strefford now honestly wondered at it.  She felt as though she
+were on the point of losing some new-found treasure, a treasure
+precious only to herself, but beside which all he offered her
+was nothing, the triumph of her wounded pride nothing, the
+security of her future nothing.
+
+"What is it, Susy?" he asked, with the same puzzled gentleness.
+
+Ah, the loneliness of never being able to make him understand!
+She had felt lonely enough when the flaming sword of Nick's
+indignation had shut her out from their Paradise; but there had
+been a cruel bliss in the pain.  Nick had not opened her eyes to
+new truths, but had waked in her again something which had lain
+unconscious under years of accumulated indifference.  And that
+re-awakened sense had never left her since, and had somehow kept
+her from utter loneliness because it was a secret shared with
+Nick, a gift she owed to Nick, and which, in leaving her, he
+could not take from her.  It was almost, she suddenly felt, as
+if he had left her with a child.
+
+"My dear girl," Strefford said, with a resigned glance at his
+watch, "you know we're dining at the Embassy ...."
+
+At the Embassy?  She looked at him vaguely:  then she
+remembered.  Yes, they were dining that night at the Ascots',
+with Strefford's cousin, the Duke of Dunes, and his wife, the
+handsome irreproachable young Duchess; with the old gambling
+Dowager Duchess, whom her son and daughter-in-law had come over
+from England to see; and with other English and French guests of
+a rank and standing worthy of the Duneses.  Susy knew that her
+inclusion in such a dinner could mean but one thing:  it was her
+definite recognition as Altringham's future wife.  She was "the
+little American" whom one had to ask when one invited him, even
+on ceremonial occasions.  The family had accepted her; the
+Embassy could but follow suit.
+
+"It's late, dear; and I've got to see someone on business
+first," Strefford reminded her patiently.
+
+"Oh, Streff--I can't, I can't!"  The words broke from her
+without her knowing what she was saying.  "I can't go with
+you--I can't go to the Embassy.  I can't go on any longer like
+this ...."  She lifted her eyes to his in desperate appeal.
+"Oh, understand-do please understand!" she wailed, knowing,
+while she spoke, the utter impossibility of what she asked.
+
+Strefford's face had gradually paled and hardened.  From sallow
+it turned to a dusky white, and lines of obstinacy deepened
+between the ironic eyebrows and about the weak amused mouth.
+
+"Understand?  What do you want me to understand," He laughed.
+"That you're trying to chuck me already?"
+
+She shrank at the sneer of the "already," but instantly
+remembered that it was the only thing he could be expected to
+say, since it was just because he couldn't understand that she
+was flying from him.
+
+"Oh, Streff--if I knew how to tell you!"
+
+"It doesn't so much matter about the how.  Is that what you're
+trying to say?"
+
+Her head drooped, and she saw the dead leaves whirling across
+the path at her feet, lifted on a sudden wintry gust.
+
+"The reason," he continued, clearing his throat with a stiff
+smile, "is not quite as important to me as the fact."
+
+She stood speechless, agonized by his pain.  But still, she
+thought, he had remembered the dinner at the Embassy.  The
+thought gave her courage to go on.
+
+"It wouldn't do, Streff.  I'm not a bit the kind of person to
+make you happy."
+
+"Oh, leave that to me, please, won't you?"
+
+"No, I can't.  Because I should be unhappy too."
+
+He clicked at the leaves as they whirled past.  "You've taken a
+rather long time to find it out."  She saw that his new-born
+sense of his own consequence was making him suffer even more
+than his wounded affection; and that again gave her courage.
+
+"If I've taken long it's all the more reason why I shouldn't
+take longer.  If I've made a mistake it's you who would have
+suffered from it ...."
+
+"Thanks," he said, "for your extreme solicitude."
+
+She looked at him helplessly, penetrated by the despairing sense
+of their inaccessibility to each other.  Then she remembered
+that Nick, during their last talk together, had seemed as
+inaccessible, and wondered if, when human souls try to get too
+near each other, they do not inevitably become mere blurs to
+each other's vision.  She would have liked to say this to
+Streff-but he would not have understood it either.  The sense
+of loneliness once more enveloped her, and she groped in vain
+for a word that should reach him.
+
+"Let me go home alone, won't you?" she appealed to him.
+
+"Alone?"
+
+She nodded. "To-morrow--to-morrow ...."
+
+He tried, rather valiantly, to smile.  "Hang tomorrow!  Whatever
+is wrong, it needn't prevent my seeing you home."  He glanced
+toward the taxi that awaited them at the end of the deserted
+drive.
+
+"No, please.  You're in a hurry; take the taxi.  I want
+immensely a long long walk by myself ... through the streets,
+with the lights coming out ...."
+
+He laid his hand on her arm.  "I say, my dear, you're not ill?"
+
+"No; I'm not ill.  But you may say I am, to-night at the
+Embassy."
+
+He released her and drew back.  "Oh, very well," he answered
+coldly; and she understood by his tone that the knot was cut,
+and that at that moment he almost hated her.  She turned away,
+hastening down the deserted alley, flying from him, and knowing,
+as she fled, that he was still standing there motionless,
+staring after her, wounded, humiliated, uncomprehending.  It was
+neither her fault nor his ....
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+AS she fled on toward the lights of the streets a breath of
+freedom seemed to blow into her face.
+
+Like a weary load the accumulated hypocrisies of the last months
+had dropped from her:  she was herself again, Nick's Susy, and
+no one else's.  She sped on, staring with bright bewildered eyes
+at the stately facades of the La Muette quarter, the
+perspectives of bare trees, the awakening glitter of shop-
+windows holding out to her all the things she would never again
+be able to buy ....
+
+In an avenue of shops she paused before a milliner's window, and
+said to herself:  "Why shouldn't I earn my living by trimming
+hats?"  She met work-girls streaming out under a doorway, and
+scattering to catch trams and omnibuses; and she looked with
+newly-wakened interest at their tired independent faces.  "Why
+shouldn't I earn my living as well as they do?" she thought.  A
+little farther on she passed a Sister of Charity with softly
+trotting feet, a calm anonymous glance, and hands hidden in her
+capacious sleeves.  Susy looked at her and thought:  "Why
+shouldn't I be a Sister, and have no money to worry about, and
+trot about under a white coif helping poor people?"
+
+All these strangers on whom she smiled in passing, and glanced
+back at enviously, were free from the necessities that enslaved
+her, and would not have known what she meant if she had told
+them that she must have so much money for her dresses, so much
+for her cigarettes, so much for bridge and cabs and tips, and
+all kinds of extras, and that at that moment she ought to be
+hurrying back to a dinner at the British Embassy, where her
+permanent right to such luxuries was to be solemnly recognized
+and ratified.
+
+The artificiality and unreality of her life overcame her as with
+stifling fumes.  She stopped at a street-corner, drawing long
+panting breaths as if she had been running a race.  Then, slowly
+and aimlessly, she began to saunter along a street of small
+private houses in damp gardens that led to the Avenue du Bois.
+She sat down on a bench.  Not far off, the Arc de Triomphe
+raised its august bulk, and beyond it a river of lights streamed
+down toward Paris, and the stir of the city's heart-beats
+troubled the quiet in her bosom.  But not for long.  She seemed
+to be looking at it all from the other side of the grave; and as
+she got up and wandered down the Champs Elysees, half empty in
+the evening lull between dusk and dinner, she felt as if the
+glittering avenue were really changed into the Field of Shadows
+from which it takes its name, and as if she were a ghost among
+ghosts.
+
+Halfway home, a weakness of loneliness overcame her, and she
+seated herself under the trees near the Rond Point.  Lines of
+motors and carriages were beginning to animate the converging
+thoroughfares, streaming abreast, crossing, winding in and out
+of each other in a tangle of hurried pleasure-seeking.  She
+caught the light on jewels and shirt-fronts and hard bored eyes
+emerging from dim billows of fur and velvet.  She seemed to hear
+what the couples were saying to each other, she pictured the
+drawing-rooms, restaurants, dance-halls they were hastening to,
+the breathless routine that was hurrying them along, as Time,
+the old vacuum-cleaner, swept them away with the dust of their
+carriage-wheels.  And again the loneliness vanished in a sense
+of release ....
+
+At the corner of the Place de la Concorde she stopped,
+recognizing a man in evening dress who was hailing a taxi.
+Their eyes met, and Nelson Vanderlyn came forward.  He was the
+last person she cared to run across, and she shrank back
+involuntarily.  What did he know, what had he guessed, of her
+complicity in his wife's affairs?  No doubt Ellie had blabbed it
+all out by this time; she was just as likely to confide her
+love-affairs to Nelson as to anyone else, now that the
+Bockheimer prize was landed.
+
+"Well--well--well--so I've caught you at it!  Glad to see you,
+Susy, my dear."  She found her hand cordially clasped in
+Vanderlyn's, and his round pink face bent on her with all its
+old urbanity.  Did nothing matter, then, in this world she was
+fleeing from, did no one love or hate or remember?
+
+"No idea you were in Paris--just got here myself," Vanderlyn
+continued, visibly delighted at the meeting.  "Look here, don't
+suppose you're out of a job this evening by any chance, and
+would come and cheer up a lone bachelor, eh?  No?  You are?
+Well, that's luck for once!  I say, where shall we go?  One of
+the places where they dance, I suppose?  Yes, I twirl the light
+fantastic once in a while myself.  Got to keep up with the
+times!  Hold on, taxi!  Here--I'll drive you home first, and
+wait while you jump into your toggery.  Lots of time."  As he
+steered her toward the carriage she noticed that he had a gouty
+limp, and pulled himself in after her with difficulty.
+
+"Mayn't I come as I am, Nelson, I don't feel like dancing.
+Let's go and dine in one of those nice smoky little restaurants
+by the Place de la Bourse."
+
+He seemed surprised but relieved at the suggestion, and they
+rolled off together.  In a corner at Bauge's they found a quiet
+table, screened from the other diners, and while Vanderlyn
+adjusted his eyeglasses to study the carte Susy stole a long
+look at him.  He was dressed with even more than his usual
+formal trimness, and she detected, in an ultra-flat wrist-watch
+and discreetly expensive waistcoat buttons, an attempt at
+smartness altogether new.  His face had undergone the same
+change:  its familiar look of worn optimism had been, as it
+were, done up to match his clothes, as though a sort of moral
+cosmetic had made him pinker, shinier and sprightlier without
+really rejuvenating him.  A thin veil of high spirits had merely
+been drawn over his face, as the shining strands of hair were
+skilfully brushed over his baldness.
+
+"Here!  Carte des vins, waiter!  What champagne, Susy?"  He
+chose, fastidiously, the best the cellar could produce,
+grumbling a little at the bourgeois character of the dishes.
+"Capital food of its kind, no doubt, but coarsish, don't you
+think?  Well, I don't mind ... it's rather a jolly change from
+the Luxe cooking.  A new sensation--I'm all for new sensations,
+ain't you, my dear?"  He re-filled their champagne glasses,
+flung an arm sideways over his chair, and smiled at her with a
+foggy benevolence.
+
+As the champagne flowed his confidences flowed with it.
+
+"Suppose you know what I'm here for--this divorce business?  We
+wanted to settle it quietly without a fuss, and of course Paris
+is the best place for that sort of job.  Live and let live; no
+questions asked.  None of your dirty newspapers.  Great country,
+this.  No hypocrisy ... they understand Life over here!"
+
+Susy gazed and listened.  She remembered that people had thought
+Nelson would make a row when he found out.  He had always been
+addicted to truculent anecdotes about unfaithful wives, and the
+very formula of his perpetual ejaculation-- "Caught you at it,
+eh?"--seemed to hint at a constant preoccupation with such
+ideas.  But now it was evident that, as the saying was, he had
+"swallowed his dose" like all the others.  No strong blast of
+indignation had momentarily lifted him above his normal stature:
+he remained a little man among little men, and his eagerness to
+rebuild his life with all the old smiling optimism reminded Susy
+of the patient industry of an ant remaking its ruined ant-heap.
+
+"Tell you what, great thing, this liberty!  Everything's changed
+nowadays; why shouldn't marriage be too?  A man can get out of a
+business partnership when he wants to; but the parsons want to
+keep us noosed up to each other for life because we've blundered
+into a church one day and said 'Yes' before one of 'em.  No,
+no--that's too easy.  We've got beyond that.  Science, and all
+these new discoveries ....  I say the Ten Commandments were made
+for man, and not man for the Commandments; and there ain't a
+word against divorce in 'em, anyhow!  That's what I tell my poor
+old mother, who builds everything on her Bible.  Find me the
+place where it says:  'Thou shalt not sue for divorce.'  It
+makes her wild, poor old lady, because she can't; and she
+doesn't know how they happen to have left it out....  I rather
+think Moses left it out because he knew more about human nature
+than these snivelling modern parsons do.  Not that they'll
+always bear investigating either; but I don't care about that.
+Live and let live, eh, Susy?  Haven't we all got a right to our
+Affinities?  I hear you're following our example yourself.
+First-rate idea:  I don't mind telling you I saw it coming on
+last summer at Venice.  Caught you at it, so to speak!  Old
+Nelson ain't as blind as people think.  Here, let's open another
+bottle to the health of Streff and Mrs. Streff!"
+
+She caught the hand with which he was signalling to the
+sommelier.  This flushed and garrulous Nelson moved her more
+poignantly than a more heroic figure.  "No more champagne,
+please, Nelson.  Besides," she suddenly added, "it's not true."
+
+He stared.  "Not true that you're going to marry Altringham?"
+
+"No."
+
+"By George then what on earth did you chuck Nick for?  Ain't you
+got an Affinity, my dear?"
+
+She laughed and shook her head.
+
+"Do you mean to tell me it's all Nick's doing, then?"
+
+"I don't know.  Let's talk of you instead, Nelson.  I'm glad
+you're in such good spirits.  I rather thought--"
+
+He interrupted her quickly.  "Thought I'd cut up a rumpus-do
+some shooting?  I know--people did."  He twisted his moustache,
+evidently proud of his reputation.  "Well, maybe I did see red
+for a day or two--but I'm a philosopher, first and last.  Before
+I went into banking I'd made and lost two fortunes out West.
+Well, how did I build 'em up again?  Not by shooting anybody
+even myself.  By just buckling to, and beginning all over again.
+That's how ... and that's what I am doing now.  Beginning all
+over again.    "  His voice dropped from boastfulness to a note
+of wistful melancholy, the look of strained jauntiness fell from
+his face like a mask, and for an instant she saw the real man,
+old, ruined, lonely.  Yes, that was it:  he was lonely,
+desperately lonely, foundering in such deep seas of solitude
+that any presence out of the past was like a spar to which he
+clung.  Whatever he knew or guessed of the part she had played
+in his disaster, it was not callousness that had made him greet
+her with such forgiving warmth, but the same sense of smallness,
+insignificance and isolation which perpetually hung like a cold
+fog on her own horizon.  Suddenly she too felt old--old and
+unspeakably tired.
+
+"It's been nice seeing you, Nelson.  But now I must be getting
+home."
+
+He offered no objection, but asked for the bill, resumed his
+jaunty air while he scattered largesse among the waiters, and
+sauntered out behind her after calling for a taxi.
+
+They drove off in silence.  Susy was thinking:  "And Clarissa?"
+but dared not ask.  Vanderlyn lit a cigarette, hummed a dance-
+tune, and stared out of the window.  Suddenly she felt his hand
+on hers.
+
+"Susy--do you ever see her?"
+
+"See--Ellie?"
+
+He nodded, without turning toward her.
+
+"Not often ... sometimes ...."
+
+"If you do, for God's sake tell her I'm happy ... happy as a
+king ... tell her you could see for yourself that I was ...."
+His voice broke in a little gasp.  "I ... I'll be damned if ...
+if she shall ever be unhappy about me ... if I can help it ...."
+The cigarette dropped from his fingers, and with a sob he
+covered his face.
+
+"Oh, poor Nelson--poor Nelson, " Susy breathed.  While their cab
+rattled across the Place du Carrousel, and over the bridge, he
+continued to sit beside her with hidden face.  At last he pulled
+out a scented handkerchief, rubbed his eyes with it, and groped
+for another cigarette.
+
+"I'm all right!  Tell her that, will you, Susy?  There are some
+of our old times I don't suppose I shall ever forget; but they
+make me feel kindly to her, and not angry.  I didn't know it
+would be so, beforehand--but it is ....  And now the thing's
+settled I'm as right as a trivet, and you can tell her so ....
+Look here, Susy ..." he caught her by the arm as the taxi drew
+up at her hotel ....  "Tell her I understand, will you?  I'd
+rather like her to know that .... "
+
+"I'll tell her, Nelson," she promised; and climbed the stairs
+alone to her dreary room.
+
+Susy's one fear was that Strefford, when he returned the next
+day, should treat their talk of the previous evening as a fit of
+"nerves" to be jested away.  He might, indeed, resent her
+behaviour too deeply to seek to see her at once; but his
+easygoing modern attitude toward conduct and convictions made
+that improbable.  She had an idea that what he had most minded
+was her dropping so unceremoniously out of the Embassy Dinner.
+
+But, after all, why should she see him again?  She had had
+enough of explanations during the last months to have learned
+how seldom they explain anything.  If the other person did not
+understand at the first word, at the first glance even,
+subsequent elucidations served only to deepen the obscurity.
+And she wanted above all--and especially since her hour with
+Nelson Vanderlyn--to keep herself free, aloof, to retain her
+hold on her precariously recovered self.  She sat down and wrote
+to Strefford--and the letter was only a little less painful to
+write than the one she had despatched to Nick.  It was not that
+her own feelings were in any like measure engaged; but because,
+as the decision to give up Strefford affirmed itself, she
+remembered only his kindness, his forbearance, his good humour,
+and all the other qualities she had always liked in him; and
+because she felt ashamed of the hesitations which must cause him
+so much pain and humiliation.  Yes:  humiliation chiefly.  She
+knew that what she had to say would hurt his pride, in whatever
+way she framed her renunciation; and her pen wavered, hating its
+task.  Then she remembered Vanderlyn's words about his wife:
+"There are some of our old times I don't suppose I shall ever
+forget--" and a phrase of Grace Fulmer's that she had but half
+grasped at the time:  "You haven't been married long enough to
+understand how trifling such things seem in the balance of one's
+memories."
+
+Here were two people who had penetrated farther than she into
+the labyrinth of the wedded state, and struggled through some of
+its thorniest passages; and yet both, one consciously, the other
+half-unaware, testified to the mysterious fact which was already
+dawning on her:  that the influence of a marriage begun in
+mutual understanding is too deep not to reassert itself even in
+the moment of flight and denial.
+
+"The real reason is that you're not Nick" was what she would
+have said to Strefford if she had dared to set down the bare
+truth; and she knew that, whatever she wrote, he was too acute
+not to read that into it.
+
+"He'll think it's because I'm still in love with Nick ... and
+perhaps I am.  But even if I were, the difference doesn't seem
+to lie there, after all, but deeper, in things we've shared that
+seem to be meant to outlast love, or to change it into something
+different."  If she could have hoped to make Strefford
+understand that, the letter would have been easy enough to
+write--but she knew just at what point his imagination would
+fail, in what obvious and superficial inferences it would rest
+
+
+"Poor Streff--poor me!" she thought as she sealed the letter.
+
+After she had despatched it a sense of blankness descended on
+her.  She had succeeded in driving from her mind all vain
+hesitations, doubts, returns upon herself:  her healthy system
+naturally rejected them.  But they left a queer emptiness in
+which her thoughts rattled about as thoughts might, she
+supposed, in the first moments after death--before one got used
+to it.  To get used to being dead:  that seemed to be her
+immediate business.  And she felt such a novice at it--felt so
+horribly alive!  How had those others learned to do without
+living?  Nelson--well, he was still in the throes; and probably
+never would understand, or be able to communicate, the lesson
+when he had mastered it.  But Grace Fulmer--she suddenly
+remembered that Grace was in Paris, and set forth to find her.
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+NICK LANSING had walked out a long way into the Campagna.  His
+hours were seldom his own, for both Mr. and Mrs. Hicks were
+becoming more and more addicted to sudden and somewhat imperious
+demands upon his time; but on this occasion he had simply
+slipped away after luncheon, and taking the tram to the Porta
+Salaria, had wandered on thence in the direction of the Ponte
+Nomentano.
+
+He wanted to get away and think; but now that he had done it the
+business proved as unfruitful as everything he had put his hand
+to since he had left Venice.  Think--think about what?  His
+future seemed to him a negligible matter since he had received,
+two months earlier, the few lines in which Susy had asked him
+for her freedom.
+
+The letter had been a shock--though he had fancied himself so
+prepared for it--yet it had also, in another sense, been a
+relief, since, now that at last circumstances compelled him to
+write to her, they also told him what to say. And he had said it
+as briefly and simply as possible, telling her that he would put
+no obstacle in the way of her release, that he held himself at
+her lawyer's disposal to answer any further communication--and
+that he would never forget their days together, or cease to
+bless her for them.
+
+That was all.  He gave his Roman banker's address, and waited
+for another letter; but none came.  Probably the "formalities,"
+whatever they were, took longer than he had supposed; and being
+in no haste to recover his own liberty, he did not try to learn
+the cause of the delay.  From that moment, however, he
+considered himself virtually free, and ceased, by the same
+token, to take any interest in his own future.  His life seemed
+as flat as a convalescent's first days after the fever has
+dropped.
+
+The only thing he was sure of was that he was not going to
+remain in the Hickses' employ:  when they left Rome for Central
+Asia he had no intention of accompanying them.  The part of Mr.
+Buttles' successor was becoming daily more intolerable to him,
+for the very reasons that had probably made it most gratifying
+to Mr. Buttles.  To be treated by Mr. and Mrs. Hicks as a paid
+oracle, a paraded and petted piece of property, was a good deal
+more distasteful than he could have imagined any relation with
+these kindly people could be.  And since their aspirations had
+become frankly social he found his task, if easier, yet far less
+congenial than during his first months with them.  He preferred
+patiently explaining to Mrs. Hicks, for the hundredth time, that
+Sassanian and Saracenic were not interchangeable terms, to
+unravelling for her the genealogies of her titled guests, and
+reminding her, when she "seated" her dinner-parties, that Dukes
+ranked higher than Princes.  No--the job was decidedly
+intolerable; and he would have to look out for another means of
+earning his living.  But that was not what he had really got
+away to think about.  He knew he should never starve; he had
+even begun to believe again in his book.  What he wanted to
+think of was Susy--or rather, it was Susy that he could not help
+thinking of, on whatever train of thought he set out.
+
+Again and again he fancied he had established a truce with the
+past:  had come to terms--the terms of defeat and failure with
+that bright enemy called happiness.  And, in truth, he had
+reached the point of definitely knowing that he could never
+return to the kind of life that he and Susy had embarked on.  It
+had been the tragedy, of their relation that loving her roused
+in him ideals she could never satisfy.  He had fallen in love
+with her because she was, like himself, amused, unprejudiced and
+disenchanted; and he could not go on loving her unless she
+ceased to be all these things.  From that circle there was no
+issue, and in it he desperately revolved.
+
+If he had not heard such persistent rumours of her re-marriage
+to Lord Altringham he might have tried to see her again; but,
+aware of the danger and the hopelessness of a meeting, he was,
+on the whole, glad to have a reason for avoiding it.  Such, at
+least, he honestly supposed to be his state of mind until he
+found himself, as on this occasion, free to follow out his
+thought to its end.  That end, invariably, was Susy; not the
+bundle of qualities and defects into which his critical spirit
+had tried to sort her out, but the soft blur of identity, of
+personality, of eyes, hair, mouth, laugh, tricks of speech and
+gesture, that were all so solely and profoundly her own, and yet
+so mysteriously independent of what she might do, say, think, in
+crucial circumstances.  He remembered her once saying to him:
+"After all, you were right when you wanted me to be your
+mistress," and the indignant stare of incredulity with which he
+had answered her.  Yet in these hours it was the palpable image
+of her that clung closest, till, as invariably happened, his
+vision came full circle, and feeling her on his breast he wanted
+her also in his soul.
+
+Well--such all-encompassing loves were the rarest of human
+experiences; he smiled at his presumption in wanting no other.
+Wearily he turned, and tramped homeward through the winter
+twilight ....
+
+At the door of the hotel he ran across the Prince of Teutoburg's
+aide-de-camp.  They had not met for some days, and Nick had a
+vague feeling that if the Prince's matrimonial designs took
+definite shape he himself was not likely, after all, to be their
+chosen exponent.  He had surprised, now and then, a certain
+distrustful coldness under the Princess Mother's cordial glance,
+and had concluded that she perhaps suspected him of being an
+obstacle to her son's aspirations.  He had no idea of playing
+that part, but was not sorry to appear to; for he was sincerely
+attached to Coral Hicks, and hoped for her a more human fate
+than that of becoming Prince Anastasius's consort.
+
+This evening, however, he was struck by the beaming alacrity of
+the aide-de-camp's greeting.  Whatever cloud had hung between
+them had lifted:  the Teutoburg clan, for one reason or another,
+no longer feared or distrusted him.  The change was conveyed in
+a mere hand-pressure, a brief exchange of words, for the aide-
+de-camp was hastening after a well-known dowager of the old
+Roman world, whom he helped into a large coronetted brougham
+which looked as if it had been extracted, for some ceremonial
+purpose, from a museum of historic vehicles.  And in an instant
+it flashed on Lansing that this lady had been the person chosen
+to lay the Prince's offer at Miss Hicks's feet.
+
+The discovery piqued him; and instead of making straight for his
+own room he went up to Mrs. Hicks's drawing-room.
+
+The room was empty, but traces of elaborate tea pervaded it, and
+an immense bouquet of stiff roses lay on the centre table.  As
+he turned away, Eldorada Tooker, flushed and tear-stained,
+abruptly entered.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Lansing--we were looking everywhere for you."
+
+"Looking for me?"
+
+"Yes.  Coral especially ... she wants to see you.  She wants you
+to come to her own sitting-room."
+
+She led him across the ante-chamber and down the passage to the
+separate suite which Miss Hicks inhabited.  On the threshold
+Eldorada gasped out emotionally:  "You'll find her looking
+lovely--" and jerked away with a sob as he entered.
+
+Coral Hicks was never lovely:  but she certainly looked
+unusually handsome.  Perhaps it was the long dress of black
+velvet which, outlined against a shaded lamp, made her strong
+build seem slenderer, or perhaps the slight flush on her dusky
+cheek:  a bloom of womanhood hung upon her which she made no
+effort to dissemble.  Indeed, it was one of her originalities
+that she always gravely and courageously revealed the utmost of
+whatever mood possessed her.
+
+"How splendid you look!" he said, smiling at her.
+
+She threw her head back and gazed him straight in the eyes.
+"That's going to be my future job."
+
+"To look splendid?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And wear a crown?"
+
+"And wear a crown ...."
+
+They continued to consider each other without speaking.  Nick's
+heart contracted with pity and perplexity.
+
+"Oh, Coral--it's not decided?"
+
+She scrutinized him for a last penetrating moment; then she
+looked away.  "I'm never long deciding."
+
+He hesitated, choking with contradictory impulses, and afraid to
+formulate any, lest they should either mislead or pain her.
+
+"Why didn't you tell me?" he questioned lamely; and instantly
+perceived his blunder.
+
+She sat down, and looked up at him under brooding lashes--had he
+ever noticed the thickness of her lashes before?
+
+"Would it have made any difference if I had told you?"
+
+"Any difference--?"
+
+"Sit down by me," she commanded.  "I want to talk to you.  You
+can say now whatever you might have said sooner.  I'm not
+married yet:  I'm still free."
+
+"You haven't given your answer?"
+
+"It doesn't matter if I have."
+
+The retort frightened him with the glimpse of what she still
+expected of him, and what he was still so unable to give.
+
+"That means you've said yes?" he pursued, to gain time.
+
+"Yes or no--it doesn't matter.  I had to say something.  What I
+want is your advice."
+
+"At the eleventh hour?"
+
+"Or the twelfth."  She paused.  "What shall I do?" she
+questioned, with a sudden accent of helplessness.
+
+He looked at her as helplessly.  He could not say:  "Ask
+yourself--ask your parents."  Her next word would sweep away
+such frail hypocrisies.  Her "What shall I do?" meant "What are
+you going to do?" and he knew it, and knew that she knew it.
+
+"I'm a bad person to give any one matrimonial advice," he began,
+with a strained smile; "but I had such a different vision for
+you."
+
+"What kind of a vision?" She was merciless.
+
+"Merely what people call happiness, dear."
+
+"'People call'--you see you don't believe in it yourself!  Well,
+neither do I--in that form, at any rate. "
+
+He considered. "I believe in trying for it--even if the trying's
+the best of it."
+
+"Well, I've tried, and failed.  And I'm twenty-two, and I never
+was young.  I suppose I haven't enough imagination."  She drew a
+deep breath.  "Now I want something different."  She appeared to
+search for the word.  "I want to be--prominent," she declared.
+
+"Prominent?"
+
+She reddened swarthily.  "Oh, you smile--you think it's
+ridiculous:  it doesn't seem worth while to you.  That's because
+you've always had all those things.  But I haven't.  I know what
+father pushed up from, and I want to push up as high again--
+higher.  No, I haven't got much imagination.  I've always liked
+Facts.  And I find I shall like the fact of being a Princess--
+choosing the people I associate with, and being up above all
+these European grandees that father and mother bow down to,
+though they think they despise them.  You can be up above these
+people by just being yourself; you know how.  But I need a
+platform--a sky-scraper.  Father and mother slaved to give me my
+education.  They thought education was the important thing; but,
+since we've all three of us got mediocre minds, it has just
+landed us among mediocre people.  Don't you suppose I see
+through all the sham science and sham art and sham everything
+we're surrounded with?  That's why I want to buy a place at the
+very top, where I shall be powerful enough to get about me the
+people I want, the big people, the right people, and to help
+them I want to promote culture, like those Renaissance women
+you're always talking about.  I want to do it for Apex City; do
+you understand?  And for father and mother too.  I want all
+those titles carved on my tombstone.  They're facts, anyhow!
+Don't laugh at me ...."  She broke off with one of her clumsy
+smiles, and moved away from him to the other end of the room.
+
+He sat looking at her with a curious feeling of admiration.  Her
+harsh positivism was like a tonic to his disenchanted mood, and
+he thought:  "What a pity!"
+
+Aloud he said:  "I don't feel like laughing at you.  You're a
+great woman."
+
+"Then I shall be a great Princess."
+
+"Oh--but you might have been something so much greater!"
+
+Her face flamed again.  "Don't say that!"
+
+He stood up involuntarily, and drew near her.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because you're the only man with whom I can imagine the other
+kind of greatness."
+
+It moved him--moved him unexpectedly.  He got as far as saying
+to himself:  "Good God, if she were not so hideously rich--" and
+then of yielding for a moment to the persuasive vision of all
+that he and she might do with those very riches which he
+dreaded.  After all, there was nothing mean in her ideals they
+were hard and material, in keeping with her primitive and
+massive person; but they had a certain grim nobility.  And when
+she spoke of "the other kind of greatness" he knew that she
+understood what she was talking of, and was not merely saying
+something to draw him on, to get him to commit himself.  There
+was not a drop of guile in her, except that which her very
+honesty distilled.
+
+"The other kind of greatness?" he repeated.
+
+"Well, isn't that what you said happiness was?  I wanted to be
+happy ... but one can't choose."
+
+He went up to her.  "No, one can't choose.  And how can anyone
+give you happiness who hasn't got it himself?"  He took her
+hands, feeling how large, muscular and voluntary they were, even
+as they melted in his palms.
+
+"My poor Coral, of what use can I ever be to you?  What you need
+is to be loved."
+
+She drew back and gave him one of her straight strong glances:
+"No," she said gallantly, "but just to love."
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+XXV
+
+IN the persistent drizzle of a Paris winter morning Susy Lansing
+walked back alone from the school at which she had just
+deposited the four eldest Fulmers to the little house in Passy
+where, for the last two months, she had been living with them.
+
+She had on ready-made boots, an old waterproof and a last year's
+hat; but none of these facts disturbed her, though she took no
+particular pride in them.  The truth was that she was too busy
+to think much about them.  Since she had assumed the charge of
+the Fulmer children, in the absence of both their parents in
+Italy, she had had to pass through such an arduous
+apprenticeship of motherhood that every moment of her waking
+hours was packed with things to do at once, and other things to
+remember to do later.  There were only five Fulmers; but at
+times they were like an army with banners, and their power of
+self-multiplication was equalled only by the manner in which
+they could dwindle, vanish, grow mute, and become as it were a
+single tumbled brown head bent over a book in some corner of the
+house in which nobody would ever have thought of hunting for
+them--and which, of course, were it the bonne's room in the
+attic, or the subterranean closet where the trunks were kept,
+had been singled out by them for that very reason.
+
+These changes from ubiquity to invisibility would have seemed to
+Susy, a few months earlier, one of the most maddening of many
+characteristics not calculated to promote repose.  But now she
+felt differently.  She had grown interested in her charges, and
+the search for a clue to their methods, whether tribal or
+individual, was as exciting to her as the development of a
+detective story.
+
+What interested her most in the whole stirring business was the
+discovery that they had a method.  These little creatures,
+pitched upward into experience on the tossing waves of their
+parents' agitated lives, had managed to establish a rough-and-
+ready system of self-government.  Junie, the eldest (the one who
+already chose her mother's hats, and tried to put order in her
+wardrobe) was the recognized head of the state.  At twelve she
+knew lots of things which her mother had never thoroughly
+learned, and Susy, her temporary mother, had never even guessed
+at:  she spoke with authority on all vital subjects, from
+castor-oil to flannel under-clothes, from the fair sharing of
+stamps or marbles to the number of helpings of rice-pudding or
+jam which each child was entitled to.
+
+There was hardly any appeal from her verdict; yet each of her
+subjects revolved in his or her own orbit of independence,
+according to laws which Junie acknowledged and respected; and
+the interpreting of this mysterious charter of rights and
+privileges had not been without difficulty for Susy.
+
+Besides this, there were material difficulties to deal with.
+The six of them, and the breathless bonne who cooked and slaved
+for them all, had but a slim budget to live on; and, as Junie
+remarked, you'd have thought the boys ate their shoes, the way
+they vanished.  They ate, certainly, a great deal else, and
+mostly of a nourishing and expensive kind.  They had definite
+views about the amount and quality of their food, and were
+capable of concerted rebellion when Susy's catering fell beneath
+their standard.  All this made her life a hurried and harassing
+business, but never-- what she had most feared it would be a
+dull or depressing one.
+
+It was not, she owned to herself, that the society of the Fulmer
+children had roused in her any abstract passion for the human
+young.  She knew--had known since Nick's first kiss--how she
+would love any child of his and hers; and she had cherished poor
+little Clarissa Vanderlyn with a shrinking and wistful
+solicitude.  But in these rough young Fulmers she took a
+positive delight, and for reasons that were increasingly clear
+to her.  It was because, in the first place, they were all
+intelligent; and because their intelligence had been fed only on
+things worth caring for.  However inadequate Grace Fulmer's
+bringing-up of her increasing tribe had been, they had heard in
+her company nothing trivial or dull:  good music, good books and
+good talk had been their daily food, and if at times they
+stamped and roared and crashed about like children unblessed by
+such privileges, at others they shone with the light of poetry
+and spoke with the voice of wisdom.
+
+That had been Susy's discovery:  for the first time she was
+among awakening minds which had been wakened only to beauty.
+>From their cramped and uncomfortable household Grace and Nat
+Fulmer had managed to keep out mean envies, vulgar admirations,
+shabby discontents; above all the din and confusion the great
+images of beauty had brooded, like those ancestral figures that
+stood apart on their shelf in the poorest Roman households.
+
+No, the task she had undertaken for want of a better gave Susy
+no sense of a missed vocation:  "mothering" on a large scale
+would never, she perceived, be her job.  Rather it gave her, in
+odd ways, the sense of being herself mothered, of taking her
+first steps in the life of immaterial values which had begun to
+seem so much more substantial than any she had known.
+
+On the day when she had gone to Grace Fulmer for counsel and
+comfort she had little guessed that they would come to her in
+this form.  She had found her friend, more than ever distracted
+and yet buoyant, riding the large untidy waves of her life with
+the splashed ease of an amphibian.  Grace was probably the only
+person among Susy's friends who could have understood why she
+could not make up her mind to marry Altringham; but at the
+moment Grace was too much absorbed in her own problems to pay
+much attention to her friend's, and, according to her wont, she
+immediately "unpacked" her difficulties.
+
+Nat was not getting what she had hoped out of his European
+opportunity.  Oh, she was enough of an artist herself to know
+that there must be fallow periods--that the impact of new
+impressions seldom produced immediate results.  She had allowed
+for all that.  But her past experience of Nat's moods had taught
+her to know just when he was assimilating, when impressions were
+fructifying in him.  And now they were not, and he knew it as
+well as she did.  There had been too much rushing about, too
+much excitement and sterile flattery ... Mrs. Melrose?  Well,
+yes, for a while ... the trip to Spain had been a love-journey,
+no doubt.  Grace spoke calmly, but the lines of her face
+sharpened:  she had suffered, oh horribly, at his going to Spain
+without her.  Yet she couldn't, for the children's sake, afford
+to miss the big sum that Ursula Gillow had given her for her
+fortnight at Ruan.  And her playing had struck people, and led,
+on the way back, to two or three profitable engagements in
+private houses in London.  Fashionable society had made "a
+little fuss" about her, and it had surprised and pleased Nat,
+and given her a new importance in his eyes.  "He was beginning
+to forget that I wasn't only a nursery-maid, and it's been a
+good thing for him to be reminded ... but the great thing is
+that with what I've earned he and I can go off to southern Italy
+and Sicily for three months.  You know I know how to manage ...
+and, alone with me, Nat will settle down to work:  to observing,
+feeling, soaking things in.  It's the only way. Mrs. Melrose
+wants to take him, to pay all the expenses again-well she
+shan't.  I'll pay them."  Her worn cheek flushed with triumph.
+"And you'll see what wonders will come of it ....  Only there's
+the problem of the children.  Junie quite agrees that we can't
+take them ...."
+
+Thereupon she had unfolded her idea.  If Susy was at a loose
+end, and hard up, why shouldn't she take charge of the children
+while their parents were in Italy?  For three months at most-
+Grace could promise it shouldn't be longer.  They couldn't pay
+her much, of course, but at least she would be lodged and fed.
+"And, you know, it will end by interesting you--I'm sure it
+will," the mother concluded, her irrepressible hopefulness
+rising even to this height, while Susy stood before her with a
+hesitating smile.
+
+Take care of five Fulmers for three months!  The prospect cowed
+her.  If there had been only Junie and Geordie, the oldest and
+youngest of the band, she might have felt less hesitation.  But
+there was Nat, the second in age, whose motor-horn had driven
+her and Nick out to the hill-side on their fatal day at the
+Fulmers' and there were the twins, Jack and Peggy, of whom she
+had kept memories almost equally disquieting.  To rule this
+uproarious tribe would be a sterner business than trying to
+beguile Clarissa Vanderlyn's ladylike leisure; and she would
+have refused on the spot, as she had refused once before, if the
+only possible alternatives had not come to seem so much less
+bearable, and if Junie, called in for advice, and standing
+there, small, plain and competent, had not said in her quiet
+grown-up voice:  "Oh, yes, I'm sure Mrs. Lansing and I can
+manage while you're away--especially if she reads aloud well."
+
+Reads aloud well!  The stipulation had enchanted Susy.  She had
+never before known children who cared to be read aloud to; she
+remembered with a shiver her attempts to interest Clarissa in
+anything but gossip and the fashions, and the tone in which the
+child had said, showing Strefford's trinket to her father:
+"Because I said I'd rather have it than a book."
+
+And here were children who consented to be left for three months
+by their parents, but on condition that a good reader was
+provided for them!
+
+"Very well--I will!  But what shall I be expected to read to
+you?" she had gaily questioned; and Junie had answered, after
+one of her sober pauses of reflection:  "The little ones like
+nearly everything; but Nat and I want poetry particularly,
+because if we read it to ourselves we so often pronounce the
+puzzling words wrong, and then it sounds so horrid."
+
+"Oh, I hope I shall pronounce them right," Susy murmured,
+stricken with self-distrust and humility.
+
+Apparently she did; for her reading was a success, and even the
+twins and Geordie, once they had grown used to her, seemed to
+prefer a ringing page of Henry V, or the fairy scenes from the
+Midsummer Night's Dream, to their own more specialized
+literature, though that had also at times to be provided.
+
+There were, in fact, no lulls in her life with the Fulmers; but
+its commotions seemed to Susy less meaningless, and therefore
+less fatiguing, than those that punctuated the existence of
+people like Altringham, Ursula Gillow, Ellie Vanderlyn and their
+train; and the noisy uncomfortable little house at Passy was
+beginning to greet her with the eyes of home when she returned
+there after her tramps to and from the children's classes.  At
+any rate she had the sense of doing something useful and even
+necessary, and of earning her own keep, though on so modest a
+scale; and when the children were in their quiet mood, and
+demanded books or music (or, even, on one occasion, at the
+surprising Junie's instigation, a collective visit to the
+Louvre, where they recognized the most unlikely pictures, and
+the two elders emitted startling technical judgments, and called
+their companion's attention to details she had not observed); on
+these occasions, Susy had a surprised sense of being drawn back
+into her brief life with Nick, or even still farther and deeper,
+into those visions of Nick's own childhood on which the trivial
+later years had heaped their dust.
+
+It was curious to think that if he and she had remained
+together, and she had had a child--the vision used to come to
+her, in her sleepless hours, when she looked at little Geordie,
+in his cot by her bed--their life together might have been very
+much like the life she was now leading, a small obscure business
+to the outer world, but to themselves how wide and deep and
+crowded!
+
+She could not bear, at that moment, the thought of giving up
+this mystic relation to the life she had missed.  In spite of
+the hurry and fatigue of her days, the shabbiness and discomfort
+of everything, and the hours when the children were as "horrid"
+as any other children, and turned a conspiracy of hostile faces
+to all her appeals; in spite of all this she did not want to
+give them up, and had decided, when their parents returned, to
+ask to go back to America with them.  Perhaps, if Nat's success
+continued, and Grace was able to work at her music, they would
+need a kind of governess-companion.  At any rate, she could
+picture no future less distasteful.
+
+She had not sent to Mr. Spearman Nick's answer to her letter.
+In the interval between writing to him and receiving his reply
+she had broken with Strefford; she had therefore no object in
+seeking her freedom.  If Nick wanted his, he knew he had only to
+ask for it; and his silence, as the weeks passed, woke a faint
+hope in her.  The hope flamed high when she read one day in the
+newspapers a vague but evidently "inspired" allusion to the
+possibility of an alliance between his Serene Highness the
+reigning Prince of Teutoburg-Waldhain and Miss Coral Hicks of
+Apex City; it sank to ashes when, a few days later, her eye lit
+on a paragraph wherein Mr. and Mrs. Mortimer Hicks "requested to
+state" that there was no truth in the report.
+
+On the foundation of these two statements Susy raised one watch-
+tower of hope after another, feverish edifices demolished or
+rebuilt by every chance hint from the outer world wherein Nick's
+name figured with the Hickses'.  And still, as the days passed
+and she heard nothing, either from him or from her lawyer, her
+flag continued to fly from the quaking structures.
+
+Apart from the custody of the children there was indeed little
+to distract her mind from these persistent broodings.  She
+winced sometimes at the thought of the ease with which her
+fashionable friends had let her drop out of sight.  In the
+perpetual purposeless rush of their days, the feverish making of
+winter plans, hurrying off to the Riviera or St. Moritz, Egypt
+or New York, there was no time to hunt up the vanished or to
+wait for the laggard.  Had they learned that she had broken her
+"engagement" (how she hated the word!) to Strefford, and had the
+fact gone about that she was once more only a poor hanger-on, to
+be taken up when it was convenient, and ignored in the
+intervals?  She did not know; though she fancied Strefford's
+newly-developed pride would prevent his revealing to any one
+what had passed between them.  For several days after her abrupt
+flight he had made no sign; and though she longed to write and
+ask his forgiveness she could not find the words.  Finally it
+was he who wrote:  a short note, from Altringham, typical of all
+that was best in the old Strefford.  He had gone down to
+Altringham, he told her, to think quietly over their last talk,
+and try to understand what she had been driving at.  He had to
+own that he couldn't; but that, he supposed, was the very head
+and front of his offending.  Whatever he had done to displease
+her, he was sorry for; but he asked, in view of his invincible
+ignorance, to be allowed not to regard his offence as a cause
+for a final break.  The possibility of that, he found, would
+make him even more unhappy than he had foreseen; as she knew,
+his own happiness had always been his first object in life, and
+he therefore begged her to suspend her decision a little longer.
+He expected to be in Paris within another two months, and before
+arriving he would write again, and ask her to see him.
+
+The letter moved her but did not make her waver.  She simply
+wrote that she was touched by his kindness, and would willingly
+see him if he came to Paris later; though she was bound to tell
+him that she had not yet changed her mind, and did not believe
+it would promote his happiness to have her try to do so.
+
+He did not reply to this, and there was nothing further to keep
+her thoughts from revolving endlessly about her inmost hopes and
+fears.
+
+On the rainy afternoon in question, tramping home from the
+"cours" (to which she was to return at six), she had said to
+herself that it was two months that very day since Nick had
+known she was ready to release him--and that after such a delay
+he was not likely to take any further steps.  The thought filled
+her with a vague ecstasy.  She had had to fix an arbitrary date
+as the term of her anguish, and she had fixed that one; and
+behold she was justified.  For what could his silence mean but
+that he too ....
+
+On the hall-table lay a typed envelope with the Paris postage-
+mark.  She opened it carelessly, and saw that the letter-head
+bore Mr. Spearman's office address.  The words beneath spun
+round before her eyes ....  "Has notified us that he is at your
+disposal ... carry out your wishes ... arriving in Paris ... fix
+an appointment with his lawyers ...."
+
+Nick--it was Nick the words were talking of!  It was the fact of
+Nick's return to Paris that was being described in those
+preposterous terms!  She sank down on the bench beside the
+dripping umbrella-stand and stared vacantly before her.  It had
+fallen at last--this blow in which she now saw that she had
+never really believed!  And yet she had imagined she was
+prepared for it, had expected it, was already planning her
+future life in view of it--an effaced impersonal life in the
+service of somebody else's children--when, in reality, under
+that thin surface of abnegation and acceptance, all the old
+hopes had been smouldering red-hot in their ashes!  What was the
+use of any self-discipline, any philosophy, any experience, if
+the lawless self underneath could in an instant consume them
+like tinder?
+
+She tried to collect herself--to understand what had happened.
+Nick was coming to Paris--coming not to see her but to consult
+his lawyer!  It meant, of course, that he had definitely
+resolved to claim his freedom; and that, if he had made up his
+mind to this final step, after more than six months of inaction
+and seeming indifference, it could be only because something
+unforeseen and decisive had happened to him.  Feverishly, she
+put together again the stray scraps of gossip and the newspaper
+paragraphs that had reached her in the last months.  It was
+evident that Miss Hicks's projected marriage with the Prince of
+Teutoburg-Waldhain had been broken off at the last moment; and
+broken off because she intended to marry Nick.  The announcement
+of his arrival in Paris and the publication of Mr. and Mrs.
+Hicks's formal denial of their daughter's betrothal coincided
+too closely to admit of any other inference.  Susy tried to
+grasp the reality of these assembled facts, to picture to
+herself their actual tangible results.  She thought of Coral
+Hicks bearing the name of Mrs. Nick Lansing--her name, Susy's
+own!--and entering drawing-rooms with Nick in her wake, gaily
+welcomed by the very people who, a few months before, had
+welcomed Susy with the same warmth.  In spite of Nick's growing
+dislike of society, and Coral's attitude of intellectual
+superiority, their wealth would fatally draw them back into the
+world to which Nick was attached by all his habits and
+associations.  And no doubt it would amuse him to re-enter that
+world as a dispenser of hospitality, to play the part of host
+where he had so long been a guest; just as Susy had once fancied
+it would amuse her to re-enter it as Lady Altringham ....  But,
+try as she would, now that the reality was so close on her, she
+could not visualize it or relate it to herself.  The mere
+juxtaposition of the two names--Coral, Nick--which in old times
+she had so often laughingly coupled, now produced a blur in her
+brain.
+
+She continued to sit helplessly beside the hall-table, the tears
+running down her cheeks.  The appearance of the bonne aroused
+her.  Her youngest charge, Geordie, had been feverish for a day
+or two; he was better, but still confined to the nursery, and he
+had heard Susy unlock the house-door, and could not imagine why
+she had not come straight up to him.  He now began to manifest
+his indignation in a series of racking howls, and Susy, shaken
+out of her trance, dropped her cloak and umbrella and hurried
+up.
+
+"Oh, that child!" she groaned.
+
+Under the Fulmer roof there was little time or space for the
+indulgence of private sorrows.  From morning till night there
+was always some immediate practical demand on one's attention;
+and Susy was beginning to see how, in contracted households,
+children may play a part less romantic but not less useful than
+that assigned to them in fiction, through the mere fact of
+giving their parents no leisure to dwell on irremediable
+grievances.  Though her own apprenticeship to family life had
+been so short, she had already acquired the knack of rapid
+mental readjustment, and as she hurried up to the nursery her
+private cares were dispelled by a dozen problems of temperature,
+diet and medicine.
+
+Such readjustment was of course only momentary; yet each time it
+happened it seemed to give her more firmness and flexibility of
+temper.  "What a child I was myself six months ago!" she
+thought, wondering that Nick's influence, and the tragedy of
+their parting, should have done less to mature and steady her
+than these few weeks in a house full of children.
+
+Pacifying Geordie was not easy, for he had long since learned to
+use his grievances as a pretext for keeping the offender at his
+beck with a continuous supply of stories, songs and games.
+"You'd better be careful never to put yourself in the wrong with
+Geordie," the astute Junie had warned Susy at the outset,
+"because he's got such a memory, and he won't make it up with
+you till you've told him every fairy-tale he's ever heard
+before."
+
+But on this occasion, as soon as he saw her, Geordie's
+indignation melted.  She was still in the doorway, compunctious,
+abject and racking her dazed brain for his favourite stories,
+when she saw, by the smoothing out of his mouth and the sudden
+serenity of his eyes, that he was going to give her the
+delicious but not wholly reassuring shock of being a good boy.
+
+Thoughtfully he examined her face as she knelt down beside the
+cot; then he poked out a finger and pressed it on her tearful
+cheek.
+
+"Poor Susy got a pain too," he said, putting his arms about her;
+and as she hugged him close, he added philosophically: "Tell
+Geordie a new story, darling, and you'll forget all about it."
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+NICK Lansing arrived in Paris two days after his lawyer had
+announced his coming to Mr. Spearman.
+
+He had left Rome with the definite purpose of freeing himself
+and Susy; and though he was not pledged to Coral Hicks he had
+not concealed from her the object of his journey.  In vain had
+he tried to rouse in himself any sense of interest in his own
+future.  Beyond the need of reaching a definite point in his
+relation to Susy his imagination could not travel.  But he had
+been moved by Coral's confession, and his reason told him that
+he and she would probably be happy together, with the temperate
+happiness based on a community of tastes and an enlargement of
+opportunities.  He meant, on his return to Rome, to ask her to
+marry him; and he knew that she knew it.  Indeed, if he had not
+spoken before leaving it was with no idea of evading his fate,
+or keeping her longer in suspense, but simply because of the
+strange apathy that had fallen on him since he had received
+Susy's letter.  In his incessant self-communings he dressed up
+this apathy as a discretion which forbade his engaging Coral's
+future till his own was assured.  But in truth he knew that
+Coral's future was already engaged, and his with it:  in Rome
+the fact had seemed natural and even inevitable.
+
+In Paris, it instantly became the thinnest of unrealities.  Not
+because Paris was not Rome, nor because it was Paris; but
+because hidden away somewhere in that vast unheeding labyrinth
+was the half-forgotten part of himself that was Susy ....  For
+weeks, for months past, his mind had been saturated with Susy:
+she had never seemed more insistently near him than as their
+separation lengthened, and the chance of reunion became less
+probable.  It was as if a sickness long smouldering in him had
+broken out and become acute, enveloping him in the Nessus-shirt
+of his memories.  There were moments when, to his memory, their
+actual embraces seemed perfunctory, accidental, compared with
+this deep deliberate imprint of her soul on his.
+
+Yet now it had become suddenly different.  Now that he was in
+the same place with her, and might at any moment run across her,
+meet her eyes, hear her voice, avoid her hand--now that
+penetrating ghost of her with which he had been living was
+sucked back into the shadows, and he seemed, for the first time
+since their parting, to be again in her actual presence.  He
+woke to the fact on the morning of his arrival, staring down
+from his hotel window on a street she would perhaps walk through
+that very day, and over a limitless huddle of roofs, one of
+which covered her at that hour.  The abruptness of the
+transition startled him; he had not known that her mere
+geographical nearness would take him by the throat in that way.
+What would it be, then, if she were to walk into the room?
+
+Thank heaven that need never happen!  He was sufficiently
+informed as to French divorce proceedings to know that they
+would not necessitate a confrontation with his wife; and with
+ordinary luck, and some precautions, he might escape even a
+distant glimpse of her.  He did not mean to remain in Paris more
+than a few days; and during that time it would be easy--knowing,
+as he did, her tastes and Altringham's--to avoid the places
+where she was likely to be met.  He did not know where she was
+living, but imagined her to be staying with Mrs. Melrose, or
+some other rich friend, or else lodged, in prospective
+affluence, at the Nouveau Luxe, or in a pretty flat of her own.
+Trust Susy--ah, the pang of it--to "manage"!
+
+His first visit was to his lawyer's; and as he walked through
+the familiar streets each approaching face, each distant figure
+seemed hers.  The obsession was intolerable.  It would not last,
+of course; but meanwhile he had the exposed sense of a fugitive
+in a nightmare, who feels himself the only creature visible in a
+ghostly and besetting multitude.  The eye of the metropolis
+seemed fixed on him in an immense unblinking stare.
+
+At the lawyer's he was told that, as a first step to freedom, he
+must secure a domicile in Paris.  He had of course known of this
+necessity:  he had seen too many friends through the Divorce
+Court, in one country or another, not to be fairly familiar with
+the procedure.  But the fact presented a different aspect as
+soon as he tried to relate it to himself and Susy:  it was as
+though Susy's personality were a medium through which events
+still took on a transfiguring colour.  He found the "domicile"
+that very day:  a tawdrily furnished rez-de-chaussee, obviously
+destined to far different uses.  And as he sat there, after the
+concierge had discreetly withdrawn with the first quarter's
+payment in her pocket, and stared about him at the vulgar plushy
+place, he burst out laughing at what it was about to figure in
+the eyes of the law:  a Home, and a Home desecrated by his own
+act!  The Home in which he and Susy had reared their precarious
+bliss, and seen it crumble at the brutal touch of his
+unfaithfulness and his cruelty--for he had been told that he
+must be cruel to her as well as unfaithful!  He looked at the
+walls hung with sentimental photogravures, at the shiny bronze
+"nudes," the moth-eaten animal-skins and the bedizened bed-and
+once more the unreality, the impossibility, of all that was
+happening to him entered like a drug into his veins.
+
+To rouse himself he stood up, turned the key on the hideous
+place, and returned to his lawyer's.  He knew that in the hard
+dry atmosphere of the office the act of giving the address of
+the flat would restore some kind of reality to the phantasmal
+transaction.  And with wonder he watched the lawyer, as a matter
+of course, pencil the street and the number on one of the papers
+enclosed in a folder on which his own name was elaborately
+engrossed.
+
+As he took leave it occurred to him to ask where Susy was
+living.  At least he imagined that it had just occurred to him,
+and that he was making the enquiry merely as a measure of
+precaution, in order to know what quarter of Paris to avoid; but
+in reality the question had been on his lips since he had first
+entered the office, and lurking in his mind since he had emerged
+from the railway station that morning.  The fact of not knowing
+where she lived made the whole of Paris a meaningless
+unintelligible place, as useless to him as the face of a huge
+clock that has lost its hour hand.
+
+The address in Passy surprised him:  he had imagined that she
+would be somewhere in the neighborhood of the Champs Elysees or
+the Place de l'Etoile.  But probably either Mrs. Melrose or
+Ellie Vanderlyn had taken a house at Passy.  Well--it was
+something of a relief to know that she was so far off.  No
+business called him to that almost suburban region beyond the
+Trocadero, and there was much less chance of meeting her than if
+she had been in the centre of Paris.
+
+All day he wandered, avoiding the fashionable quarters, the
+streets in which private motors glittered five deep, and furred
+and feathered silhouettes glided from them into tea-rooms,
+picture-galleries and jewellers' shops.  In some such scenes
+Susy was no doubt figuring:  slenderer, finer, vivider, than the
+other images of clay, but imitating their gestures, chattering
+their jargon, winding her hand among the same pearls and sables.
+He struck away across the Seine, along the quays to the Cite,
+the net-work of old Paris, the great grey vaults of St.
+Eustache, the swarming streets of the Marais.  He gazed at
+monuments dawdled before shop-windows, sat in squares and on
+quays, watching people bargain, argue, philander, quarrel, work-
+girls stroll past in linked bands, beggars whine on the bridges,
+derelicts doze in the pale winter sun, mothers in mourning
+hasten by taking children to school, and street-walkers beat
+their weary rounds before the cafes.
+
+The day drifted on.  Toward evening he began to grow afraid of
+his solitude, and to think of dining at the Nouveau Luxe, or
+some other fashionable restaurant where he would be fairly sure
+to meet acquaintances, and be carried off to a theatre, a boite
+or a dancing-hall.  Anything, anything now, to get away from the
+maddening round of his thoughts.  He felt the same blank fear of
+solitude as months ago in Genoa ....  Even if he were to run
+across Susy and Altringham, what of it?  Better get the job
+over.  People had long since ceased to take on tragedy airs
+about divorce:  dividing couples dined together to the last, and
+met afterward in each other's houses, happy in the consciousness
+that their respective remarriages had provided two new centres
+of entertainment.  Yet most of the couples who took their re-
+matings so philosophically had doubtless had their hour of
+enchantment, of belief in the immortality of loving; whereas he
+and Susy had simply and frankly entered into a business contract
+for their mutual advantage.  The fact gave the last touch of
+incongruity to his agonies and exaltations, and made him appear
+to himself as grotesque and superannuated as the hero of a
+romantic novel.
+
+He stood up from a bench on which he had been lounging in the
+Luxembourg gardens, and hailed a taxi.  Dusk had fallen, and he
+meant to go back to his hotel, take a rest, and then go out to
+dine.  But instead, he threw Susy's address to the driver, and
+settled down in the cab, resting both hands on the knob of his
+umbrella and staring straight ahead of him as if he were
+accomplishing some tiresome duty that had to be got through with
+before he could turn his mind to more important things.
+
+"It's the easiest way," he heard himself say.
+
+At the street-corner--her street-corner--he stopped the cab, and
+stood motionless while it rattled away.  It was a short vague
+street, much farther off than he had expected, and fading away
+at the farther end in a dusky blur of hoardings overhung by
+trees.  A thin rain was beginning to fall, and it was already
+night in this inadequately lit suburban quarter.  Lansing walked
+down the empty street.  The houses stood a few yards apart, with
+bare-twigged shrubs between, and gates and railings dividing
+them from the pavement.  He could not, at first, distinguish
+their numbers; but presently, coming abreast of a street-lamp,
+he discovered that the small shabby facade it illuminated was
+precisely the one he sought.  The discovery surprised him.  He
+had imagined that, as frequently happened in the outlying
+quarters of Passy and La Muette, the mean street would lead to a
+stately private hotel, built upon some bowery fragment of an old
+country-place.  It was the latest whim of the wealthy to
+establish themselves on these outskirts of Paris, where there
+was still space for verdure; and he had pictured Susy behind
+some pillared house-front, with lights pouring across glossy
+turf to sculptured gateposts.  Instead, he saw a six-windowed
+house, huddled among neighbours of its kind, with the family
+wash fluttering between meagre bushes.  The arc-light beat
+ironically on its front, which had the worn look of a tired
+work-woman's face; and Lansing, as he leaned against the
+opposite railing, vainly tried to fit his vision of Susy into so
+humble a setting.
+
+The probable explanation was that his lawyer had given him the
+wrong address; not only the wrong number but the wrong street.
+He pulled out the slip of paper, and was crossing over to
+decipher it under the lamp, when an errand-boy appeared out of
+the obscurity, and approached the house.  Nick drew back, and
+the boy, unlatching the gate, ran up the steps and gave the bell
+a pull.
+
+Almost immediately the door opened; and there stood Susy, the
+light full upon her, and upon a red-checked child against her
+shoulder.  The space behind them was dark, or so dimly lit that
+it formed a black background to her vivid figure.  She looked at
+the errand-boy without surprise, took his parcel, and after he
+had turned away, lingered a moment in the door, glancing down
+the empty street.
+
+That moment, to her watcher, seemed quicker than a flash yet as
+long as a life-time.  There she was, a stone's throw away, but
+utterly unconscious of his presence:  his Susy, the old Susy,
+and yet a new Susy, curiously transformed, transfigured almost,
+by the new attitude in which he beheld her.
+
+In the first shock of the vision he forgot his surprise at her
+being in such a place, forgot to wonder whose house she was in,
+or whose was the sleepy child in her arms.  For an instant she
+stood out from the blackness behind her, and through the veil of
+the winter night, a thing apart, an unconditioned vision, the
+eternal image of the woman and the child; and in that instant
+everything within him was changed and renewed.  His eyes were
+still absorbing her, finding again the familiar curves of her
+light body, noting the thinness of the lifted arm that upheld
+the little boy, the droop of the shoulder he weighed on, the
+brooding way in which her cheek leaned to his even while she
+looked away; then she drew back, the door closed, and the
+street-lamp again shone on blankness.
+
+"But she's mine!"  Nick cried, in a fierce triumph of
+recovery ...
+
+His eyes were so full of her that he shut them to hold in the
+crowding vision.
+
+It remained with him, at first, as a complete picture; then
+gradually it broke up into its component parts, the child
+vanished, the strange house vanished, and Susy alone stood
+before him, his own Susy, only his Susy, yet changed, worn,
+tempered--older, even--with sharper shadows under the cheek-
+bones, the brows drawn, the joint of the slim wrist more
+prominent.  It was not thus that his memory had evoked her, and
+he recalled, with a remorseful pang, the fact that something in
+her look, her dress, her tired and drooping attitude, suggested
+poverty, dependence, seemed to make her after all a part of the
+shabby house in which, at first sight, her presence had seemed
+so incongruous.
+
+"But she looks poor!" he thought, his heart tightening.  And
+instantly it occurred to him that these must be the Fulmer
+children whom she was living with while their parents travelled
+in Italy.  Rumours of Nat Fulmer's sudden ascension had reached
+him, and he had heard that the couple had lately been seen in
+Naples and Palermo.  No one had mentioned Susy's name in
+connection with them, and he could hardly tell why he had
+arrived at this conclusion, except perhaps because it seemed
+natural that, if Susy were in trouble, she should turn to her
+old friend Grace.
+
+But why in trouble?  What trouble?  What could have happened to
+check her triumphant career?
+
+"That's what I mean to find out!" he exclaimed.
+
+His heart was beating with a tumult of new hopes and old
+memories.  The sight of his wife, so remote in mien and manner
+from the world in which he had imagined her to be re-absorbed,
+changed in a flash his own relation to life, and flung a mist of
+unreality over all that he had been trying to think most solid
+and tangible.  Nothing now was substantial to him but the stones
+of the street in which he stood, the front of the house which
+hid her, the bell-handle he already felt in his grasp.  He
+started forward, and was halfway to the threshold when a private
+motor turned the corner, the twin glitter of its lamps carpeting
+the wet street with gold to Susy's door.
+
+Lansing drew back into the shadow as the motor swept up to the
+house.  A man jumped out, and the light fell on Strefford's
+shambling figure, its lazy disjointed movements so unmistakably
+the same under his fur coat, and in the new setting of
+prosperity.
+
+Lansing stood motionless, staring at the door.  Strefford rang,
+and waited.  Would Susy appear again?  Perhaps she had done so
+before only because she had been on the watch ....
+
+But no:  after a slight delay a bonne appeared --the breathless
+maid-of-all-work of a busy household--and at once effaced
+herself, letting the visitor in.  Lansing was sure that not a
+word passed between the two, of enquiry on Lord Altringham's
+part, or of acquiescence on the servant's.  There could be no
+doubt that he was expected.
+
+The door closed on him, and a light appeared behind the blind of
+the adjoining window.  The maid had shown the visitor into the
+sitting-room and lit the lamp.  Upstairs, meanwhile, Susy was no
+doubt running skilful fingers through her tumbled hair and
+daubing her pale lips with red.  Ah, how Lansing knew every
+movement of that familiar rite, even to the pucker of the brow
+and the pouting thrust-out of the lower lip!  He was seized with
+a sense of physical sickness as the succession of remembered
+gestures pressed upon his eyes ....  And the other man?  The
+other man, inside the house, was perhaps at that very instant
+smiling over the remembrance of the same scene!
+
+At the thought, Lansing plunged away into the night.
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+SUSY and Lord Altringham sat in the little drawing-room, divided
+from each other by a table carrying a smoky lamp and heaped with
+tattered school-books.
+
+In another half hour the bonne, despatched to fetch the children
+from their classes, would be back with her flock; and at any
+moment Geordie's imperious cries might summon his slave up to
+the nursery.  In the scant time allotted them, the two sat, and
+visibly wondered what to say.
+
+Strefford, on entering, had glanced about the dreary room, with
+its piano laden with tattered music, the children's toys
+littering the lame sofa, the bunches of dyed grass and impaled
+butterflies flanking the cast-bronze clock.  Then he had turned
+to Susy and asked simply:  "Why on earth are you here?"
+
+She had not tried to explain; from the first, she had understood
+the impossibility of doing so.  And she would not betray her
+secret longing to return to Nick, now that she knew that Nick
+had taken definite steps for his release.  In dread lest
+Strefford should have heard of this, and should announce it to
+her, coupling it with the news of Nick's projected marriage, and
+lest, hearing her fears thus substantiated, she should lose her
+self-control, she had preferred to say, in a voice that she
+tried to make indifferent:  "The 'proceedings,' or whatever the
+lawyers call them, have begun.  While they're going on I like to
+stay quite by myself ....  I don't know why ...."
+
+Strefford, at that, had looked at her keenly.  "Ah," he
+murmured; and his lips were twisted into their old mocking
+smile.  "Speaking of proceedings," he went on carelessly, "what
+stage have Ellie's reached, I wonder?  I saw her and Vanderlyn
+and Bockheimer all lunching cheerfully together to-day at
+Larue's."
+
+The blood rushed to Susy's forehead.  She remembered her tragic
+evening with Nelson Vanderlyn, only two months earlier, and
+thought to herself.  "In time, then, I suppose, Nick and I ....
+
+Aloud she said:  "I can't imagine how Nelson and Ellie can ever
+want to see each other again.  And in a restaurant, of all
+places!"
+
+Strefford continued to smile.  "My dear, you're incorrigibly
+old-fashioned.  Why should two people who've done each other the
+best turn they could by getting out of each other's way at the
+right moment behave like sworn enemies ever afterward?  It's too
+absurd; the humbug's too flagrant.  Whatever our generation has
+failed to do, it's got rid of humbug; and that's enough to
+immortalize it.  I daresay Nelson and Ellie never liked each
+other better than they do to-day.  Twenty years ago, they'd have
+been afraid to confess it; but why shouldn't they now?"
+
+Susy looked at Strefford, conscious that under his words was the
+ache of the disappointment she had caused him; and yet conscious
+also that that very ache was not the overwhelming penetrating
+emotion he perhaps wished it to be, but a pang on a par with a
+dozen others; and that even while he felt it he foresaw the day
+when he should cease to feel it.  And she thought to herself
+that this certainty of oblivion must be bitterer than any
+certainty of pain.
+
+A silence had fallen between them.  He broke it by rising from
+his seat, and saying with a shrug:  "You'll end by driving me to
+marry Joan Senechal."
+
+Susy smiled.  "Well, why not?  She's lovely."
+
+"Yes; but she'll bore me."
+
+"Poor Streff!  So should I--"
+
+"Perhaps.  But nothing like as soon--" He grinned sardonically.
+"There'd be more margin."  He appeared to wait for her to speak.
+"And what else on earth are you going to do?" he concluded, as
+she still remained silent.
+
+"Oh, Streff, I couldn't marry you for a reason like that!" she
+murmured at length.
+
+"Then marry me, and find your reason afterward."
+
+Her lips made a movement of denial, and still in silence she
+held out her hand for good-bye.  He clasped it, and then turned
+away; but on the threshold he paused, his screwed-up eyes fixed
+on her wistfully.
+
+The look moved her, and she added hurriedly:  "The only reason I
+can find is one for not marrying you.  It's because I can't yet
+feel unmarried enough."
+
+"Unmarried enough?  But I thought Nick was doing his best to
+make you feel that."
+
+"Yes.  But even when he has--sometimes I think even that won't
+make any difference."
+
+He still scrutinized her hesitatingly, with the gravest eyes she
+had ever seen in his careless face.
+
+"My dear, that's rather the way I feel about you," he said
+simply as he turned to go.
+
+That evening after the children had gone to bed Susy sat up late
+in the cheerless sitting-room.  She was not thinking of
+Strefford but of Nick.  He was coming to Paris--perhaps he had
+already arrived.  The idea that he might be in the same place
+with her at that very moment, and without her knowing it, was so
+strange and painful that she felt a violent revolt of all her
+strong and joy-loving youth.  Why should she go on suffering so
+unbearably, so abjectly, so miserably?  If only she could see
+him, hear his voice, even hear him say again such cruel and
+humiliating words as he had spoken on that dreadful day in
+Venice when that would be better than this blankness, this utter
+and final exclusion from his life!  He had been cruel to her,
+unimaginably cruel:  hard, arrogant, unjust; and had been so,
+perhaps, deliberately, because he already wanted to be free.
+But she was ready to face even that possibility, to humble
+herself still farther than he had humbled her--she was ready to
+do anything, if only she might see him once again.
+
+She leaned her aching head on her hands and pondered.  Do
+anything?  But what could she do?  Nothing that should hurt him,
+interfere with his liberty, be false to the spirit of their
+pact:  on that she was more than ever resolved.  She had made a
+bargain, and she meant to stick to it, not for any abstract
+reason, but simply because she happened to love him in that way.
+Yes--but to see him again, only once!
+
+Suddenly she remembered what Strefford had said about Nelson
+Vanderlyn and his wife.  "Why should two people who've just done
+each other the best turn they could behave like sworn enemies
+ever after?"  If in offering Nick his freedom she had indeed
+done him such a service as that, perhaps he no longer hated her,
+would no longer be unwilling to see her ....  At any rate, why
+should she not write to him on that assumption, write in a
+spirit of simple friendliness, suggesting that they should meet
+and "settle things"?  The business-like word "settle" (how she
+hated it) would prove to him that she had no secret designs upon
+his liberty; and besides he was too unprejudiced, too modern,
+too free from what Strefford called humbug, not to understand
+and accept such a suggestion.  After all, perhaps Strefford was
+right; it was something to have rid human relations of
+hypocrisy, even if, in the process, so many exquisite things
+seemed somehow to have been torn away with it ....
+
+She ran up to her room, scribbled a note, and hurried with it
+through the rain and darkness to the post-box at the corner.  As
+she returned through the empty street she had an odd feeling
+that it was not empty--that perhaps Nick was already there,
+somewhere near her in the night, about to follow her to the
+door, enter the house, go up with her to her bedroom in the old
+way.  It was strange how close he had been brought by the mere
+fact of her having written that little note to him!
+
+In the bedroom, Geordie lay in his crib in ruddy slumber, and
+she blew out the candle and undressed softly for fear of waking
+him.
+
+Nick Lansing, the next day, received Susy's letter, transmitted
+to his hotel from the lawyer's office.
+
+He read it carefully, two or three times over, weighing and
+scrutinizing the guarded words.  She proposed that they should
+meet to "settle things."  What things?  And why should he accede
+to such a request?  What secret purpose had prompted her?  It
+was horrible that nowadays, in thinking of Susy, he should
+always suspect ulterior motives, be meanly on the watch for some
+hidden tortuousness.  What on earth was she trying to "manage"
+now, he wondered.
+
+A few hours ago, at the sight of her, all his hardness had
+melted, and he had charged himself with cruelty, with injustice,
+with every sin of pride against himself and her; but the
+appearance of Strefford, arriving at that late hour, and so
+evidently expected and welcomed, had driven back the rising tide
+of tenderness.
+
+Yet, after all, what was there to wonder at?  Nothing was
+changed in their respective situations.  He had left his wife,
+deliberately, and for reasons which no subsequent experience had
+caused him to modify.  She had apparently acquiesced in his
+decision, and had utilized it, as she was justified in doing, to
+assure her own future.
+
+In all this, what was there to wail or knock the breast between
+two people who prided themselves on looking facts in the face,
+and making their grim best of them, without vain repinings?  He
+had been right in thinking their marriage an act of madness.
+Her charms had overruled his judgment, and they had had their
+year ... their mad year ... or at least all but two or three
+months of it.  But his first intuition had been right; and now
+they must both pay for their madness.  The Fates seldom forget
+the bargains made with them, or fail to ask for compound
+interest.  Why not, then, now that the time had come, pay up
+gallantly, and remember of the episode only what had made it
+seem so supremely worth the cost?
+
+He sent a pneumatic telegram to Mrs. Nicholas Lansing to say
+that he would call on her that afternoon at four.  "That ought
+to give us time," he reflected drily, "to 'settle things,' as
+she calls it, without interfering with Strefford's afternoon
+visit."
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+HER husband's note had briefly said:
+
+"To-day at four o'clock. N.L."
+
+All day she pored over the words in an agony of longing, trying
+to read into them regret, emotion, memories, some echo of the
+tumult in her own bosom.  But she had signed "Susy," and he
+signed "N.L."  That seemed to put an abyss between them.  After
+all, she was free and he was not.  Perhaps, in view of his
+situation, she had only increased the distance between them by
+her unconventional request for a meeting.
+
+She sat in the little drawing-room, and the cast-bronze clock
+ticked out the minutes.  She would not look out of the window:
+it might bring bad luck to watch for him.  And it seemed to her
+that a thousand invisible spirits, hidden demons of good and
+evil, pressed about her, spying out her thoughts, counting her
+heart-beats, ready to pounce upon the least symptom of over-
+confidence and turn it deftly to derision.  Oh, for an altar on
+which to pour out propitiatory offerings!  But what sweeter
+could they have than her smothered heart-beats, her choked-back
+tears?
+
+The bell rang, and she stood up as if a spring had jerked her to
+her feet.  In the mirror between the dried grasses her face
+looked long pale inanimate.  Ah, if he should find her too
+changed--!  If there were but time to dash upstairs and put on a
+touch of red ....
+
+The door opened; it shut on him; he was there.
+
+He said:  "You wanted to see me?"
+
+She answered:  "Yes." And her heart seemed to stop beating.
+
+At first she could not make out what mysterious change had come
+over him, and why it was that in looking at him she seemed to be
+looking at a stranger; then she perceived that his voice sounded
+as it used to sound when he was talking to other people; and she
+said to herself, with a sick shiver of understanding, that she
+had become an "other person" to him.
+
+There was a deathly pause; then she faltered out, not knowing
+what she said:  "Nick--you'll sit down?"
+
+He said:  "Thanks," but did not seem to have heard her, for he
+continued to stand motionless, half the room between them.  And
+slowly the uselessness, the hopelessness of his being there
+overcame her.  A wall of granite seemed to have built itself up
+between them.  She felt as if it hid her from him, as if with
+those remote new eyes of his he were staring into the wall and
+not at her.  Suddenly she said to herself:  "He's suffering more
+than I am, because he pities me, and is afraid to tell me that
+he is going to be married."
+
+The thought stung her pride, and she lifted her head and met his
+eyes with a smile.
+
+"Don't you think," she said, "it's more sensible-with
+everything so changed in our lives--that we should meet as
+friends, in this way?  I wanted to tell you that you needn't
+feel--feel in the least unhappy about me."
+
+A deep flush rose to his forehead.  "Oh, I know--I know that--"
+he declared hastily; and added, with a factitious animation:
+"But thank you for telling me."
+
+"There's nothing, is there," she continued, "to make our meeting
+in this way in the least embarrassing or painful to either of
+us, when both have found ...."  She broke off, and held her hand
+out to him.  "I've heard about you and Coral," she ended.
+
+He just touched her hand with cold fingers, and let it drop.
+"Thank you," he said for the third time.
+
+"You won't sit down?"
+
+He sat down.
+
+"Don't you think," she continued, "that the new way of ... of
+meeting as friends ... and talking things over without ill-
+will ... is much pleasanter and more sensible, after all?"
+
+He smiled.  "It's immensely kind of you to feel that."
+
+"Oh, I do feel it!"  She stopped short, and wondered what on
+earth she had meant to say next, and why she had so abruptly
+lost the thread of her discourse.
+
+In the pause she heard him cough slightly and clear his throat.
+"Let me say, then," he began, "that I'm glad too--immensely glad
+that your own future is so satisfactorily settled."
+
+She lifted her glance again to his walled face, in which not a
+muscle stirred.
+
+"Yes:  it--it makes everything easier for you, doesn't it?"
+
+"For you too, I hope."  He paused, and then went on:  "I want
+also to tell you that I perfectly understand--"
+
+"Oh," she interrupted, "so do I; your point of view, I mean."
+
+They were again silent.
+
+"Nick, why can't we be friends real friends?  Won't it be
+easier?"  she broke out at last with twitching lips.
+
+"Easier--?"
+
+"I mean, about talking things over--arrangements.  There are
+arrangements to be made, I suppose?"
+
+"I suppose so."  He hesitated.  "I'm doing what I'm told-simply
+following out instructions.  The business is easy enough,
+apparently.  I'm taking the necessary steps--"
+
+She reddened a little, and drew a gasping breath.  "The
+necessary steps:  what are they?  Everything the lawyers tell
+one is so confusing ....  I don't yet understand--how it's
+done."
+
+"My share, you mean?  Oh, it's very simple."  He paused, and
+added in a tone of laboured ease:  "I'm going down to
+Fontainebleau to-morrow--"
+
+She stared, not understanding.  "To Fontainebleau--?"
+
+Her bewilderment drew from him his first frank smile.  "Well--
+I chose Fontainebleau--I don't know why ... except that we've
+never been there together."
+
+At that she suddenly understood, and the blood rushed to her
+forehead.  She stood up without knowing what she was doing, her
+heart in her throat.  "How grotesque--how utterly disgusting!"
+
+He gave a slight shrug.  "I didn't make the laws ...."
+
+"But isn't it too stupid and degrading that such things should
+be necessary when two people want to part--?"  She broke off
+again, silenced by the echo of that fatal "want to part." ...
+
+He seemed to prefer not to dwell farther on the legal
+obligations involved.
+
+"You haven't yet told me," he suggested, "how you happen to be
+living here."
+
+"Here--with the Fulmer children?"  She roused herself, trying to
+catch his easier note.  "Oh, I've simply been governessing them
+for a few weeks, while Nat and Grace are in Sicily."  She did
+not say:  "It's because I've parted with Strefford."  Somehow it
+helped her wounded pride a little to keep from him the secret of
+her precarious independence.
+
+He looked his wonder.  "All alone with that bewildered bonne?
+But how many of them are there?  Five?  Good Lord!"  He
+contemplated the clock with unseeing eyes, and then turned them
+again on her face.
+
+"I should have thought a lot of children would rather get on
+your nerves."
+
+"Oh, not these children. They're so good to me."
+
+"Ah, well, I suppose it won't be for long."
+
+He sent his eyes again about the room, which his absent-minded
+gaze seemed to reduce to its dismal constituent elements, and
+added, with an obvious effort at small talk:  "I hear the
+Fulmers are not hitting it off very well since his success.  Is
+it true that he's going to marry Violet Melrose?"
+
+The blood rose to Susy's face.  "Oh, never, never!  He and Grace
+are travelling together now."
+
+"Oh, I didn't know.  People say things ...."  He was visibly
+embarrassed with the subject, and sorry that he had broached it.
+
+"Some of the things that people say are true.  But Grace doesn't
+mind.  She says she and Nat belong to each other.  They can't
+help it, she thinks, after having been through such a lot
+together."
+
+"Dear old Grace!"
+
+He had risen from his chair, and this time she made no effort to
+detain him.  He seemed to have recovered his self-composure, and
+it struck her painfully, humiliatingly almost, that he should
+have spoken in that light way of the expedition to Fontainebleau
+on the morrow ....  Well, men were different, she supposed; she
+remembered having felt that once before about Nick.
+
+It was on the tip of her tongue to cry out:  "But wait--wait!
+I'm not going to marry Strefford after all!"--but to do so would
+seem like an appeal to his compassion, to his indulgence; and
+that was not what she wanted.  She could never forget that he
+had left her because he had not been able to forgive her for
+"managing"--and not for the world would she have him think that
+this meeting had been planned for such a purpose.
+
+"If he doesn't see that I am different, in spite of
+appearances ... and that I never was what he said I was that
+day--if in all these months it hasn't come over him, what's the
+use of trying to make him see it now?" she mused.  And then, her
+thoughts hurrying on:  "Perhaps he's suffering too--I believe he
+is suffering-at any rate, he's suffering for me, if not for
+himself.  But if he's pledged to Coral, what can he do?  What
+would he think of me if I tried to make him break his word to
+her?"
+
+There he stood--the man who was "going to Fontainebleau to-
+morrow"; who called it "taking the necessary steps!"  Who could
+smile as he made the careless statement!  A world seemed to
+divide them already:  it was as if their parting were already
+over.  All the words, cries, arguments beating loud wings in her
+dropped back into silence.  The only thought left was:  "How
+much longer does he mean to go on standing there?"
+
+He may have read the question in her face, for turning back from
+an absorbed contemplation of the window curtains he said:
+"There's nothing else?"
+
+"Nothing else?"
+
+"I mean:  you spoke of things to be settled--"
+
+She flushed, suddenly remembering the pretext she had used to
+summon him.
+
+"Oh," she faltered, "I didn't know ... I thought there might
+be ....  But the lawyers, I suppose ...."
+
+She saw the relief on his contracted face.  "Exactly.  I've
+always thought it was best to leave it to them.  I assure you"--
+again for a moment the smile strained his lips-- "I shall do
+nothing to interfere with a quick settlement."
+
+She stood motionless, feeling herself turn to stone.  He
+appeared already a long way off, like a figure vanishing down a
+remote perspective.
+
+"Then--good-bye," she heard him say from its farther end.
+
+"Oh,--good-bye," she faltered, as if she had not had the word
+ready, and was relieved to have him supply it.
+
+He stopped again on the threshold, looked back at her, began to
+speak.  "I've--" he said; then he repeated "Good-bye," as though
+to make sure he had not forgotten to say it; and the door closed
+on him.
+
+It was over; she had had her last chance and missed it.  Now,
+whatever happened, the one thing she had lived and longed for
+would never be.  He had come, and she had let him go again ....
+
+How had it come about?  Would she ever be able to explain it to
+herself?  How was it that she, so fertile in strategy, so
+practiced in feminine arts, had stood there before him,
+helpless, inarticulate, like a school-girl a-choke with her
+first love-longing?  If he was gone, and gone never to return,
+it was her own fault, and none but hers.  What had she done to
+move him, detain him, make his heart beat and his head swim as
+hers were beating and swimming?  She stood aghast at her own
+inadequacy, her stony inexpressiveness ....
+
+And suddenly she lifted her hands to her throbbing forehead and
+cried out:  "But this is love!  This must be love!"
+
+She had loved him before, she supposed; for what else was she to
+call the impulse that had drawn her to him, taught her how to
+overcome his scruples, and whirled him away with her on their
+mad adventure?  Well, if that was love, this was something so
+much larger and deeper that the other feeling seemed the mere
+dancing of her blood in tune with his ....
+
+But, no!  Real love, great love, the love that poets sang, and
+privileged and tortured beings lived and died of, that love had
+its own superior expressiveness, and the sure command of its
+means.  The petty arts of coquetry were no farther from it than
+the numbness of the untaught girl.  Great love was wise, strong,
+powerful, like genius, like any other dominant form of human
+power.  It knew itself, and what it wanted, and how to attain
+its ends.
+
+Not great love, then ... but just the common humble average of
+human love was hers.  And it had come to her so newly, so
+overwhelmingly, with a face so grave, a touch so startling, that
+she had stood there petrified, humbled at the first look of its
+eyes, recognizing that what she had once taken for love was
+merely pleasure and spring-time, and the flavour of youth.
+
+"But how was I to know?  And now it's too late!" she wailed.
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+THE inhabitants of the little house in Passy were of necessity
+early risers; but when Susy jumped out of bed the next morning
+no one else was astir, and it lacked nearly an hour of the call
+of the bonne's alarm-clock.
+
+For a moment Susy leaned out of her dark room into the darker
+night.  A cold drizzle fell on her face, and she shivered and
+drew back.  Then, lighting a candle, and shading it, as her
+habit was, from the sleeping child, she slipped on her dressing-
+gown and opened the door.  On the threshold she paused to look
+at her watch.  Only half-past five!  She thought with
+compunction of the unkindness of breaking in on Junie Fulmer's
+slumbers; but such scruples did not weigh an ounce in the
+balance of her purpose.  Poor Junie would have to oversleep
+herself on Sunday, that was all.
+
+Susy stole into the passage, opened a door, and cast her light
+on the girl's face.
+
+"Junie!  Dearest Junie, you must wake up!"
+
+Junie lay in the abandonment of youthful sleep; but at the sound
+of her name she sat up with the promptness of a grown person on
+whom domestic burdens have long weighed.
+
+"Which one of them is it?" she asked, one foot already out of
+bed.
+
+"Oh, Junie dear, no ... it's nothing wrong with the children ...
+or with anybody," Susy stammered, on her knees by the bed.
+
+In the candlelight, she saw Junie's anxious brow darken
+reproachfully.
+
+"Oh, Susy, then why--?  I was just dreaming we were all driving
+about Rome in a great big motor-car with father and mother!"
+
+"I'm so sorry, dear.  What a lovely dream!  I'm a brute to have
+interrupted it--"
+
+She felt the little girl's awakening scrutiny.  "If there's
+nothing wrong with anybody, why are you crying, Susy?  Is it you
+there's something wrong with?  What has happened?"
+
+"Am I crying?"  Susy rose from her knees and sat down on the
+counterpane.  "Yes, it is me.  And I had to disturb you."
+
+"Oh, Susy, darling, what is it?"  Junie's arms were about her in
+a flash, and Susy grasped them in burning fingers.
+
+"Junie, listen!  I've got to go away at once-- to leave you all
+for the whole day.  I may not be back till late this evening;
+late to-night; I can't tell.  I promised your mother I'd never
+leave you; but I've got to--I've got to."
+
+Junie considered her agitated face with fully awakened eyes.
+"Oh, I won't tell, you know, you old brick, " she said with
+simplicity.
+
+Susy hugged her.  "Junie, Junie, you darling!  But that wasn't
+what I meant.  Of course you may tell--you must tell.  I shall
+write to your mother myself.  But what worries me is the idea of
+having to go away-- away from Paris--for the whole day, with
+Geordie still coughing a little, and no one but that silly
+Angele to stay with him while you're out--and no one but you to
+take yourself and the others to school.  But Junie, Junie, I've
+got to do it!" she sobbed out, clutching the child tighter.
+
+Junie Fulmer, with her strangely mature perception of the case,
+and seemingly of every case that fate might call on her to deal
+with, sat for a moment motionless in Susy's hold.  Then she
+freed her wrists with an adroit twist, and leaning back against
+the pillows said judiciously:  "You'll never in the world bring
+up a family of your own if you take on like this over other
+people's children."
+
+Through all her turmoil of spirit the observation drew a laugh
+from Susy.  "Oh, a family of my own--I don't deserve one, the
+way I'm behaving to your"
+
+Junie still considered her.  "My dear, a change will do you
+good:  you need it," she pronounced.
+
+Susy rose with a laughing sigh.  "I'm not at all sure it will!
+But I've got to have it, all the same.  Only I do feel
+anxious--and I can't even leave you my address!"
+
+Junie still seemed to examine the case.
+
+"Can't you even tell me where you're going?" she ventured, as if
+not quite sure of the delicacy of asking.
+
+"Well--no, I don't think I can; not till I get back.  Besides,
+even if I could it wouldn't be much use, because I couldn't give
+you my address there.  I don't know what it will be."
+
+"But what does it matter, if you're coming back to-night?"
+
+"Of course I'm coming back!  How could you possibly imagine I
+should think of leaving you for more than a day?"
+
+"Oh, I shouldn't be afraid--not much, that is, with the poker,
+and Nat's water-pistol," emended Junie, still judicious.
+
+Susy again enfolded her vehemently, and then turned to more
+practical matters.  She explained that she wished if possible to
+catch an eight-thirty train from the Gare de Lyon, and that
+there was not a moment to lose if the children were to be
+dressed and fed, and full instructions written out for Junie and
+Angele, before she rushed for the underground.
+
+While she bathed Geordie, and then hurried into her own clothes,
+she could not help wondering at her own extreme solicitude for
+her charges.  She remembered, with a pang, how often she had
+deserted Clarissa Vanderlyn for the whole day, and even for two
+or three in succession--poor little Clarissa, whom she knew to
+be so unprotected, so exposed to evil influences.  She had been
+too much absorbed in her own greedy bliss to be more than
+intermittently aware of the child; but now, she felt, no sorrow
+however ravaging, no happiness however absorbing, would ever
+again isolate her from her kind.
+
+And then these children were so different!  The exquisite
+Clarissa was already the predestined victim of her surroundings:
+her budding soul was divided from Susy's by the same barrier of
+incomprehension that separated the latter from Mrs. Vanderlyn.
+Clarissa had nothing to teach Susy but the horror of her own
+hard little appetites; whereas the company of the noisy
+argumentative Fulmers had been a school of wisdom and
+abnegation.
+
+As she applied the brush to Geordie's shining head and the
+handkerchief to his snuffling nose, the sense of what she owed
+him was so borne in on Susy that she interrupted the process to
+catch him to her bosom.
+
+"I'll have such a story to tell you when I get back to-night, if
+you'll promise me to be good all day," she bargained with him;
+and Geordie, always astute, bargained back:  "Before I promise,
+I'd like to know what story."
+
+At length all was in order.  Junie had been enlightened, and
+Angele stunned, by the minuteness of Susy's instructions; and
+the latter, waterproofed and stoutly shod, descended the
+doorstep, and paused to wave at the pyramid of heads yearning to
+her from an upper window.
+
+It was hardly light, and still raining, when she turned into the
+dismal street.  As usual, it was empty; but at the corner she
+perceived a hesitating taxi, with luggage piled beside the
+driver.  Perhaps it was some early traveller, just arriving, who
+would release the carriage in time for her to catch it, and thus
+avoid the walk to the metro, and the subsequent strap-hanging;
+for it was the work-people's hour.  Susy raced toward the
+vehicle, which, overcoming its hesitation, was beginning to move
+in her direction.  Observing this, she stopped to see where it
+would discharge its load.  Thereupon the taxi stopped also, and
+the load discharged itself in front of her in the shape of Nick
+Lansing.
+
+The two stood staring at each other through the rain till Nick
+broke out:  "Where are you going?  I came to get you."
+
+"To get me?  To get me?" she repeated.  Beside the driver she
+had suddenly remarked the old suit-case from which her husband
+had obliged her to extract Strefford's cigars as they were
+leaving Como; and everything that had happened since seemed to
+fall away and vanish in the pang and rapture of that memory.
+
+"To get you; yes.  Of course."  He spoke the words peremptorily,
+almost as if they were an order.  "Where were you going?" he
+repeated.
+
+Without answering, she turned toward the house.  He followed
+her, and the laden taxi closed the procession.
+
+"Why are you out in such weather without an umbrella?" he
+continued, in the same severe tone, drawing her under the
+shelter of his.
+
+"Oh, because Junie's umbrella is in tatters, and I had to leave
+her mine, as I was going away for the whole day."  She spoke the
+words like a person in a trance.
+
+"For the whole day?  At this hour?  Where?"
+
+They were on the doorstep, and she fumbled automatically for her
+key, let herself in, and led the way to the sitting-room.  It
+had not been tidied up since the night before.  The children's
+school books lay scattered on the table and sofa, and the empty
+fireplace was grey with ashes.  She turned to Nick in the pallid
+light.
+
+"I was going to see you," she stammered, "I was going to follow
+you to Fontainebleau, if necessary, to tell you ... to prevent
+you...."
+
+He repeated in the same aggressive tone:  "Tell me what?
+Prevent what?"
+
+"Tell you that there must be some other way ... some decent
+way ... of our separating ... without that horror.   that horror
+of your going off with a woman ...."
+
+He stared, and then burst into a laugh.  The blood rushed to her
+face.  She had caught a familiar ring in his laugh, and it
+wounded her.  What business had he, at such a time, to laugh in
+the old way?
+
+"I'm sorry; but there is no other way, I'm afraid.  No other way
+but one," he corrected himself.
+
+She raised her head sharply.  "Well?"
+
+"That you should be the woman.  --Oh, my dear!"  He had dropped
+his mocking smile, and was at her side, her hands in his.  "Oh,
+my dear, don't you see that we've both been feeling the same
+thing, and at the same hour?  You lay awake thinking of it all
+night, didn't you?  So did I.  Whenever the clock struck, I said
+to myself:  'She's hearing it too.'  And I was up before
+daylight, and packed my traps--for I never want to set foot
+again in that awful hotel where I've lived in hell for the last
+three days.  And I swore to myself that I'd go off with a woman
+by the first train I could catch--and so I mean to, my dear."
+
+She stood before him numb.  Yes, numb:  that was the worst of
+it!  The violence of the reaction had been too great, and she
+could hardly understand what he was saying.  Instead, she
+noticed that the tassel of the window-blind was torn off again
+(oh, those children!), and vaguely wondered if his luggage were
+safe on the waiting taxi.  One heard such stories ....
+
+His voice came back to her.  "Susy!  Listen!" he was entreating.
+"You must see yourself that it can't be.  We're married--isn't
+that all that matters?  Oh, I know--I've behaved like a brute:
+a cursed arrogant ass!  You couldn't wish that ass a worse
+kicking than I've given him!  But that's not the point, you see.
+The point is that we're married ....  Married ....  Doesn't it
+mean something to you, something--inexorable?  It does to me.  I
+didn't dream it would--in just that way.  But all I can say is
+that I suppose the people who don't feel it aren't really
+married-and they'd better separate; much better.  As for us--"
+
+Through her tears she gasped out:  "That's what I felt ...
+that's what I said to Streff ...."
+
+He was upon her with a great embrace.  "My darling!  My darling!
+You have told him?"
+
+"Yes," she panted.  "That's why I'm living here."  She paused.
+"And you've told Coral?"
+
+She felt his embrace relax.  He drew away a little, still
+holding her, but with lowered head.
+
+
+"No ... I ... haven't."
+
+"Oh, Nick!  But then--?"
+
+He caught her to him again, resentfully.  "Well--then what?
+What do you mean?  What earthly difference does it make?"
+
+"But if you've told her you were going to marry her--" (Try as
+she would, her voice was full of silver chimes.)
+
+"Marry her?  Marry her?" he echoed.  "But how could I?  What
+does marriage mean anyhow?  If it means anything at all it
+means--you!  And I can't ask Coral Hicks just to come and live
+with me, can I?"
+
+Between crying and laughing she lay on his breast, and his hand
+passed over her hair.
+
+They were silent for a while; then he began again:  "You said it
+yourself yesterday, you know."
+
+She strayed back from sunlit distances.  "Yesterday?"
+
+"Yes:  that Grace Fulmer says you can't separate two people
+who've been through a lot of things--"
+
+"Ah, been through them together--it's not the things, you see,
+it's the togetherness," she interrupted.
+
+"The togetherness--that's it!"  He seized on the word as if it
+had just been coined to express their case, and his mind could
+rest in it without farther labour.
+
+The door-bell rang, and they started.  Through the window they
+saw the taxi-driver gesticulating enquiries as to the fate of
+the luggage.
+
+"He wants to know if he's to leave it here," Susy laughed.
+
+"No--no!  You're to come with me," her husband declared.
+
+"Come with you?"  She laughed again at the absurdity of the
+suggestion.
+
+"Of course:  this very instant.  What did you suppose?  That I
+was going away without you?  Run up and pack your things," he
+commanded.
+
+"My things?  My things?  But I can't leave the children!"
+
+He stared, between indignation and amusement.  "Can't leave the
+children?  Nonsense!  Why, you said yourself you were going to
+follow me to Fontainebleau--"
+
+She reddened again, this time a little painfully "I didn't know
+what I was doing ....  I had to find you ... but I should have
+come back this evening, no matter what happened."
+
+"No matter what?"
+
+She nodded, and met his gaze resolutely.
+
+"No; but really--"
+
+"Really, I can't leave the children till Nat and Grace come
+back.  I promised I wouldn't."
+
+"Yes; but you didn't know then ....  Why on earth can't their
+nurse look after them?"
+
+"There isn't any nurse but me."
+
+"Good Lord!"
+
+"But it's only for two weeks more," she pleaded.  "Two weeks!
+Do you know how long I've been without you!"  He seized her by
+both wrists, and drew them against his breast.  "Come with me at
+least for two days--Susy!" he entreated her.
+
+"Oh," she cried, "that's the very first time you've said my
+name!"
+
+"Susy, Susy, then--my Susy--Susy!  And you've only said mine
+once, you know."
+
+"Nick!" she sighed, at peace, as if the one syllable were a
+magic seed that hung out great branches to envelop them.
+
+"Well, then, Susy, be reasonable.  Come!"
+
+"Reasonable--oh, reasonable!" she sobbed through laughter.
+
+"Unreasonable, then! That's even better."
+
+She freed herself, and drew back gently.  "Nick, I swore I
+wouldn't leave them; and I can't.  It's not only my promise to
+their mother--it's what they've been to me themselves.  You
+don't, know ... You can't imagine the things they've taught me.
+They're awfully naughty at times, because they're so clever; but
+when they're good they're the wisest people I know."  She
+paused, and a sudden inspiration illuminated her.  "But why
+shouldn't we take them with us?" she exclaimed.
+
+Her husband's arms fell away from her, and he stood dumfounded.
+
+"Take them with us?"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"All five of them?"
+
+"Of course--I couldn't possibly separate them.  And Junie and
+Nat will help us to look after the young ones."
+
+"Help us!" he groaned.
+
+"Oh, you'll see; they won't bother you.  Just leave it to me;
+I'll manage--"  The word stopped her short, and an agony of
+crimson suffused her from brow to throat.  Their eyes met; and
+without a word he stooped and laid his lips gently on the stain
+of red on her neck.
+
+"Nick," she breathed, her hands in his.
+
+"But those children--"
+
+Instead of answering, she questioned:  "Where are we going?"
+
+His face lit up.
+
+"Anywhere, dearest, that you choose."
+
+"Well--I choose Fontainebleau!" she exulted.
+
+"So do I!  But we can't take all those children to an hotel at
+Fontainebleau, can we?" he questioned weakly.  "You see, dear,
+there's the mere expense of it--"
+
+Her eyes were already travelling far ahead of him.  "The expense
+won't amount to much.  I've just remembered that Angele, the
+bonne, has a sister who is cook there in a nice old-fashioned
+pension which must be almost empty at this time of year.  I'm
+sure I can ma--arrange easily," she hurried on, nearly tripping
+again over the fatal word.  "And just think of the treat it will
+be to them!  This is Friday, and I can get them let off from
+their afternoon classes, and keep them in the country till
+Monday.  Poor darlings, they haven't been out of Paris for
+months!  And I daresay the change will cure Geordie's cough--
+Geordie's the youngest," she explained, surprised to find
+herself, even in the rapture of reunion, so absorbed in the
+welfare of the Fulmers.
+
+She was conscious that her husband was surprised also; but
+instead of prolonging the argument he simply questioned:  "Was
+Geordie the chap you had in your arms when you opened the front
+door the night before last?"
+
+She echoed:  "I opened the front door the night before last?"
+
+"To a boy with a parcel."
+
+"Oh," she sobbed, "you were there?  You were watching?"
+
+He held her to him, and the currents flowed between them warm
+and full as on the night of their moon over Como.
+
+In a trice, after that, she had the matter in hand and her
+forces marshalled.  The taxi was paid, Nick's luggage deposited
+in the vestibule, and the children, just piling down to
+breakfast, were summoned in to hear the news.
+
+It was apparent that, seasoned to surprises as they were, Nick's
+presence took them aback.  But when, between laughter and
+embraces, his identity, and his right to be where he was, had
+been made clear to them, Junie dismissed the matter by asking
+him in her practical way:  "Then I suppose we may talk about you
+to Susy now?"--and thereafter all five addressed themselves to
+the vision of their imminent holiday.
+
+>From that moment the little house became the centre of a
+whirlwind.  Treats so unforeseen, and of such magnitude, were
+rare in the young Fulmers' experience, and had it not been for
+Junie's steadying influence Susy's charges would have got out of
+hand.  But young Nat, appealed to by Nick on the ground of their
+common manhood, was induced to forego celebrating the event on
+his motor horn (the very same which had tortured the New
+Hampshire echoes), and to assert his authority over his juniors;
+and finally a plan began to emerge from the chaos, and each
+child to fit into it like a bit of a picture puzzle.
+
+Susy, riding the whirlwind with her usual firmness, nevertheless
+felt an undercurrent of anxiety.  There had been no time as yet,
+between her and Nick, to revert to money matters; and where
+there was so little money it could not, obviously, much matter.
+But that was the more reason for being secretly aghast at her
+intrepid resolve not to separate herself from her charges.  A
+three days' honey-moon with five children in the party-and
+children with the Fulmer appetite--could not but be a costly
+business; and while she settled details, packed them off to
+school, and routed out such nondescript receptacles as the house
+contained in the way of luggage, her thoughts remained fixed on
+the familiar financial problem.
+
+Yes--it was cruel to have it rear its hated head, even through
+the bursting boughs of her new spring; but there it was, the
+perpetual serpent in her Eden, to be bribed, fed, sent to sleep
+with such scraps as she could beg, borrow or steal for it.  And
+she supposed it was the price that fate meant her to pay for her
+blessedness, and was surer than ever that the blessedness was
+worth it.  Only, how was she to compound the business with her
+new principles?
+
+With the children's things to pack, luncheon to be got ready,
+and the Fontainebleau pension to be telephoned to, there was
+little time to waste on moral casuistry; and Susy asked herself
+with a certain irony if the chronic lack of time to deal with
+money difficulties had not been the chief cause of her previous
+lapses.  There was no time to deal with this question either; no
+time, in short, to do anything but rush forward on a great gale
+of plans and preparations, in the course of which she whirled
+Nick forth to buy some charcuterie for luncheon, and telephone
+to Fontainebleau.
+
+Once he was gone--and after watching him safely round the
+corner--she too got into her wraps, and transferring a small
+packet from her dressing-case to her pocket, hastened out in a
+different direction.
+
+
+
+XXX
+
+IT took two brimming taxi-cabs to carry the Nicholas Lansings to
+the station on their second honey-moon.  In the first were Nick,
+Susy and the luggage of the whole party (little Nat's motor horn
+included, as a last concession, and because he had hitherto
+forborne to play on it); and in the second, the five Fulmers,
+the bonne, who at the eleventh hour had refused to be left, a
+cage-full of canaries, and a foundling kitten who had murderous
+designs on them; all of which had to be taken because, if the
+bonne came, there would be nobody left to look after them.
+
+At the corner Susy tore herself from Nick's arms and held up the
+procession while she ran back to the second taxi to make sure
+that the bonne had brought the house-key.  It was found of
+course that she hadn't but that Junie had; whereupon the caravan
+got under way again, and reached the station just as the train
+was starting; and there, by some miracle of good nature on the
+part of the guard, they were all packed together into an empty
+compartment--no doubt, as Susy remarked, because train officials
+never failed to spot a newly-married couple, and treat them
+kindly.
+
+The children, sentinelled by Junie, at first gave promise of
+superhuman goodness; but presently their feelings overflowed,
+and they were not to be quieted till it had been agreed that Nat
+should blow his motor-horn at each halt, while the twins called
+out the names of the stations, and Geordie, with the canaries
+and kitten, affected to change trains.
+
+Luckily the halts were few; but the excitement of travel,
+combined with over-indulgence in the chocolates imprudently
+provided by Nick, overwhelmed Geordie with a sudden melancholy
+that could be appeased only by Susy's telling him stories till
+they arrived at Fontainebleau.
+
+The day was soft, with mild gleams of sunlight on decaying
+foliage; and after luggage and livestock had been dropped at the
+pension Susy confessed that she had promised the children a
+scamper in the forest, and buns in a tea-shop afterward.  Nick
+placidly agreed, and darkness had long fallen, and a great many
+buns been consumed, when at length the procession turned down
+the street toward the pension, headed by Nick with the sleeping
+Geordie on his shoulder, while the others, speechless with
+fatigue and food, hung heavily on Susy.
+
+It had been decided that, as the bonne was of the party, the
+children might be entrusted to her for the night, and Nick and
+Susy establish themselves in an adjacent hotel.  Nick had
+flattered himself that they might remove their possessions there
+when they returned from the tea-room; but Susy, manifestly
+surprised at the idea, reminded him that her charges must first
+be given their supper and put to bed.  She suggested that he
+should meanwhile take the bags to the hotel, and promised to
+join him as soon as Geordie was asleep.
+
+She was a long time coming, but waiting for her was sweet, even
+in a deserted hotel reading-room insufficiently heated by a
+sulky stove; and after he had glanced through his morning's
+mail, hurriedly thrust into his pocket as he left Paris, he sank
+into a state of drowsy beatitude.  It was all the maddest
+business in the world, yet it did not give him the sense of
+unreality that had made their first adventure a mere golden
+dream; and he sat and waited with the security of one in whom
+dear habits have struck deep roots.  In this mood of
+acquiescence even the presence of the five Fulmers seemed a
+natural and necessary consequence of all the rest; and when Susy
+at length appeared, a little pale and tired, with the brooding
+inward look that busy mothers bring from the nursery, that too
+seemed natural and necessary, and part of the new order of
+things.
+
+They had wandered out to a cheap restaurant for dinner; now, in
+the damp December night, they were walking back to the hotel
+under a sky full of rain-clouds.  They seemed to have said
+everything to each other, and yet barely to have begun what they
+had to tell; and at each step they took, their heavy feet
+dragged a great load of bliss.
+
+In the hotel almost all the lights were already out; and they
+groped their way to the third floor room which was the only one
+that Susy had found cheap enough.  A ray from a street-lamp
+struck up through the unshuttered windows; and after Nick had
+revived the fire they drew their chairs close to it, and sat
+quietly for a while in the dark.
+
+Their silence was so sweet that Nick could not make up his mind
+to break it; not to do so gave his tossing spirit such a sense
+of permanence, of having at last unlimited time before him in
+which to taste his joy and let its sweetness stream through him.
+But at length he roused himself to say:  "It's queer how things
+coincide.  I've had a little bit of good news in one of the
+letters I got this morning."
+
+Susy took the announcement serenely.  "Well, you would, you
+know," she commented, as if the day had been too obviously
+designed for bliss to escape the notice of its dispensers.
+
+"Yes," he continued with a thrill of pardonable pride.  "During
+the cruise I did a couple of articles on Crete--oh, just travel-
+impressions, of course; they couldn't be more.  But the editor
+of the New Review has accepted them, and asks for others.  And
+here's his cheque, if you please!  So you see you might have let
+me take the jolly room downstairs with the pink curtains.  And
+it makes me awfully hopeful about my book."
+
+He had expected a rapturous outburst, and perhaps some
+reassertion of wifely faith in the glorious future that awaited
+The Pageant of Alexander; and deep down under the lover's well-
+being the author felt a faint twinge of mortified vanity when
+Susy, leaping to her feet, cried out, ravenously and without
+preamble:  "Oh, Nick, Nick--let me see how much they've given
+you!"
+
+He flourished the cheque before her in the firelight.  "A couple
+of hundred, you mercenary wretch!"
+
+"Oh, oh--" she gasped, as if the good news had been almost too
+much for her tense nerves; and then surprised him by dropping to
+the ground, and burying her face against his knees.
+
+"Susy, my Susy," he whispered, his hand on her shaking shoulder.
+"Why, dear, what is it?  You're not crying?"
+
+"Oh, Nick, Nick--two hundred?  Two hundred dollars?  Then I've
+got to tell you--oh now, at once!"
+
+A faint chill ran over him, and involuntarily his hand drew back
+from her bowed figure.
+
+"Now?  Oh, why now?" he protested.  "What on earth does it
+matter now--whatever it is?"
+
+"But it does matter--it matters more than you can think!"
+
+She straightened herself, still kneeling before him, and lifted
+her head so that the firelight behind her turned her hair into a
+ruddy halo.  "Oh, Nick, the bracelet--Ellie's bracelet ....
+I've never returned it to her," she faltered out.
+
+He felt himself recoiling under the hands with which she
+clutched his knees.  For an instant he did not remember what she
+alluded to; it was the mere mention of Ellie Vanderlyn's name
+that had fallen between them like an icy shadow.  What an
+incorrigible fool he had been to think they could ever shake off
+such memories, or cease to be the slaves of such a past!
+
+"The bracelet?--Oh, yes," he said, suddenly understanding, and
+feeling the chill mount slowly to his lips.
+
+"Yes, the bracelet ... Oh, Nick, I meant to give it back at
+once; I did--I did; but the day you went away I forgot
+everything else.  And when I found the thing, in the bottom of
+my bag, weeks afterward, I thought everything was over between
+you and me, and I had begun to see Ellie again, and she was kind
+to me and how could I?"  To save his life he could have found no
+answer, and she pressed on:  "And so this morning, when I saw
+you were frightened by the expense of bringing all the children
+with us, and when I felt I couldn't leave them, and couldn't
+leave you either, I remembered the bracelet; and I sent you off
+to telephone while I rushed round the corner to a little
+jeweller's where I'd been before, and pawned it so that you
+shouldn't have to pay for the children ....  But now, darling,
+you see, if you've got all that money, I can get it out of pawn
+at once, can't I, and send it back to her?"
+
+She flung her arms about him, and he held her fast, wondering if
+the tears he felt were hers or his.  Still he did not speak; but
+as he clasped her close she added, with an irrepressible flash
+of her old irony:  "Not that Ellie will understand why I've done
+it.  She's never yet been able to make out why you returned her
+scarf-pin."
+
+For a long time she continued to lean against him, her head on
+his knees, as she had done on the terrace of Como on the last
+night of their honeymoon.  She had ceased to talk, and he sat
+silent also, passing his hand quietly to and fro over her hair.
+The first rapture had been succeeded by soberer feelings.  Her
+confession had broken up the frozen pride about his heart, and
+humbled him to the earth; but it had also roused forgotten
+things, memories and scruples swept aside in the first rush of
+their reunion.  He and she belonged to each other for always:
+he understood that now.  The impulse which had first drawn them
+together again, in spite of reason, in spite of themselves
+almost, that deep-seated instinctive need that each had of the
+other, would never again wholly let them go.  Yet as he sat
+there he thought of Strefford, he thought of Coral Hicks.  He
+had been a coward in regard to Coral, and Susy had been sincere
+and courageous in regard to Strefford.  Yet his mind dwelt on
+Coral with tenderness, with compunction, with remorse; and he
+was almost sure that Susy had already put Strefford utterly out
+of her mind.
+
+It was the old contrast between the two ways of loving, the
+man's way and the woman's; and after a moment it seemed to Nick
+natural enough that Susy, from the very moment of finding him
+again, should feel neither pity nor regret, and that Strefford
+should already be to her as if he had never been.  After all,
+there was something Providential in such arrangements.
+
+He stooped closer, pressed her dreaming head between his hands,
+and whispered:  "Wake up; it's bedtime."
+
+She rose; but as she moved away to turn on the light he caught
+her hand and drew her to the window.  They leaned on the sill in
+the darkness, and through the clouds, from which a few drops
+were already falling, the moon, labouring upward, swam into a
+space of sky, cast her troubled glory on them, and was again
+hidden.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext of The Glimpses of the Moon, by Wharton
+
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