AS she fled on toward the lights of the streets a breath offreedom seemed to blow into her face.

　　Like a weary load the accumulated hypocrisies of the last monthshad dropped from her: she was herself again, Nick's Susy, andno one else's. She sped on, staring with bright bewildered eyesat the stately facades of the La Muette quarter, theperspectives of bare trees, the awakening glitter of shop-windows holding out to her all the things she would never againbe able to buy ....

　　In an avenue of shops she paused before a milliner's window, andsaid to herself: "Why shouldn't I earn my living by trimminghats?" She met work-girls streaming out under a doorway, andscattering to catch trams and omnibuses; and she looked withnewly-wakened interest at their tired independent faces. "Whyshouldn't I earn my living as well as they do?" she thought. Alittle farther on she passed a Sister of Charity with softlytrotting feet, a calm anonymous glance, and hands hidden in hercapacious sleeves. Susy looked at her and thought: "Whyshouldn't I be a Sister, and have no money to worry about, andtrot about under a white coif helping poor people?"All these strangers on whom she smiled in passing, and glancedback at enviously, were free from the necessities that enslavedher, and would not have known what she meant if she had toldthem that she must have so much money for her dresses, so muchfor her cigarettes, so much for bridge and cabs and tips, andall kinds of extras, and that at that moment she ought to behurrying back to a dinner at the British Embassy, where herpermanent right to such luxuries was to be solemnly recognizedand ratified.

　　The artificiality and unreality of her life overcame her as withstifling fumes. She stopped at a street-corner, drawing longpanting breaths as if she had been running a race. Then, slowlyand aimlessly, she began to saunter along a street of smallprivate houses in damp gardens that led to the Avenue du Bois.

　　She sat down on a bench. Not far off, the Arc de Triompheraised its august bulk, and beyond it a river of lights streameddown toward Paris, and the stir of the city's heart-beatstroubled the quiet in her bosom. But not for long. She seemedto be looking at it all from the other side of the grave; and asshe got up and wandered down the Champs Elysees, half empty inthe evening lull between dusk and dinner, she felt as if theglittering avenue were really changed into the Field of Shadowsfrom which it takes its name, and as if she were a ghost amongghosts.

　　Halfway home, a weakness of loneliness overcame her, and sheseated herself under the trees near the Rond Point. Lines ofmotors and carriages were beginning to animate the convergingthoroughfares, streaming abreast, crossing, winding in and outof each other in a tangle of hurried pleasure-seeking. Shecaught the light on jewels and shirt-fronts and hard bored eyesemerging from dim billows of fur and velvet. She seemed to hearwhat the couples were saying to each other, she pictured thedrawing-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 theircarriage-wheels. And again the loneliness vanished in a senseof 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 thelast person she cared to run across, and she shrank backinvoluntarily. What did he know, what had he guessed, of hercomplicity in his wife's affairs? No doubt Ellie had blabbed itall out by this time; she was just as likely to confide herlove-affairs to Nelson as to anyone else, now that theBockheimer 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 inVanderlyn's, and his round pink face bent on her with all itsold urbanity. Did nothing matter, then, in this world she wasfleeing from, did no one love or hate or remember?

　　"No idea you were in Paris--just got here myself," Vanderlyncontinued, visibly delighted at the meeting. "Look here, don'tsuppose you're out of a job this evening by any chance, andwould come and cheer up a lone bachelor, eh? No? You are?

　　Well, that's luck for once! I say, where shall we go? One ofthe places where they dance, I suppose? Yes, I twirl the lightfantastic once in a while myself. Got to keep up with thetimes! Hold on, taxi! Here--I'll drive you home first, andwait while you jump into your toggery. Lots of time." As hesteered her toward the carriage she noticed that he had a goutylimp, 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 restaurantsby the Place de la Bourse."He seemed surprised but relieved at the suggestion, and theyrolled off together. In a corner at Bauge's they found a quiettable, screened from the other diners, and while Vanderlynadjusted his eyeglasses to study the carte Susy stole a longlook at him. He was dressed with even more than his usualformal trimness, and she detected, in an ultra-flat wrist-watchand discreetly expensive waistcoat buttons, an attempt atsmartness altogether new. His face had undergone the samechange: its familiar look of worn optimism had been, as itwere, done up to match his clothes, as though a sort of moralcosmetic had made him pinker, shinier and sprightlier withoutreally rejuvenating him. A thin veil of high spirits had merelybeen drawn over his face, as the shining strands of hair wereskilfully brushed over his baldness.

　　"Here! Carte des vins, waiter! What champagne, Susy?" Hechose, 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 youthink? Well, I don't mind ... it's rather a jolly change fromthe 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 afoggy benevolence.

　　As the champagne flowed his confidences flowed with it.

　　"Suppose you know what I'm here for--this divorce business? Wewanted to settle it quietly without a fuss, and of course Parisis the best place for that sort of job. Live and let live; noquestions 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 thoughtNelson would make a row when he found out. He had always beenaddicted to truculent anecdotes about unfaithful wives, and thevery formula of his perpetual ejaculation-- "Caught you at it,eh?"--seemed to hint at a constant preoccupation with suchideas. But now it was evident that, as the saying was, he had"swallowed his dose" like all the others. No strong blast ofindignation had momentarily lifted him above his normal stature:

　　he remained a little man among little men, and his eagerness torebuild his life with all the old smiling optimism reminded Susyof the patient industry of an ant remaking its ruined ant-heap.

　　"Tell you what, great thing, this liberty! Everything's changednowadays; why shouldn't marriage be too? A man can get out of abusiness partnership when he wants to; but the parsons want tokeep us noosed up to each other for life because we've blunderedinto a church one day and said 'Yes' before one of 'em. No,no--that's too easy. We've got beyond that. Science, and allthese new discoveries .... I say the Ten Commandments were madefor man, and not man for the Commandments; and there ain't aword against divorce in 'em, anyhow! That's what I tell my poorold mother, who builds everything on her Bible. Find me theplace where it says: 'Thou shalt not sue for divorce.' Itmakes her wild, poor old lady, because she can't; and shedoesn't know how............