JUST such a revolt as she had felt as a girl, such a disgustedrecoil from the standards and ideals of everybody about her ashad flung her into her mad marriage with Nick, now flamed inSusy Lansing's bosom.

　　How could she ever go back into that world again? How echo itsappraisals of life and bow down to its judgments? Alas, it wasonly by marrying according to its standards that she couldescape such subjection. Perhaps the same thought had actuatedNick: perhaps he had understood sooner than she that to attainmoral freedom they must both be above material cares.

　　Perhaps ...

　　Her talk with Ellie Vanderlyn had left Susy so oppressed andhumiliated that she almost shrank from her meeting withAltringham the next day. She knew that he was coming to Parisfor his final answer; he would wait as long as was necessary ifonly 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 lunchat the Nouveau Luxe, or at some fashionable restaurant of theBoulevards. As before, she insisted on going to an out-of-the-way place near the Luxembourg, where the prices were moderateenough for her own purse.

　　"I can't understand," Strefford objected, as they turned fromher hotel door toward this obscure retreat, "why you insist ongiving me bad food, and depriving me of the satisfaction ofbeing 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 alwayssound so unnatural on his lips.

　　"No," she said, with a laugh, "they simply think, for thepresent, that you're giving me pearls and chinchilla cloaks."He wrinkled his brows good-humouredly. "Well, so I would, withjoy--at this particular minute. Don't you think perhaps you'dbetter take advantage of it? I don't wish to insist--but Iforesee that I'm much too rich not to become stingy."She gave a slight shrug. "At present there's nothing I loathemore than pearls and chinchilla, or anything else in the worldthat's expensive and enviable ...."Suddenly she broke off, colouring with the consciousness thatshe had said exactly the kind of thing that all the women whowere trying for him (except the very cleverest) would be sure tosay; and that he would certainly suspect her of attempting theconventional comedy of disinterestedness, than which nothing wasless likely to deceive or to flatter him.

　　His twinkling eyes played curiously over her face, and she wenton, meeting them with a smile: "But don't imagine, all thesame, that if I should ... decide ... it would be altogether foryour beaux yeux ...."He laughed, she thought, rather drily. "No," he said, "I don'tsuppose that's ever likely to happen to me again.""Oh, Streff--" she faltered with compunction. It was odd-onceupon a time she had known exactly what to say to the man of themoment, whoever he was, and whatever kind of talk he required;she had even, in the difficult days before her marriage, reeledoff glibly enough the sort of lime-light sentimentality thatplunged poor Fred Gillow into such speechless beatitude. Butsince then she had spoken the language of real love, looked withits eyes, embraced with its hands; and now the other trumperyart had failed her, and she was conscious of bungling andgroping like a beginner under Strefford's ironic scrutiny.

　　They had reached their obscure destination and he opened thedoor 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 asquat-ceilinged closet lit by the arched top of a high window,the lower panes of which served for the floor below. Streffordopened 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 becauseshe felt so sure of Strefford it seemed ungenerous to keep himlonger in suspense. The moment had come when they must have adecisive talk, and in the crowded rooms below it would have beenimpossible.

　　Strefford, when the waiter had brought the first course and leftthem to themselves, made no effort to revert to personalmatters. He turned instead to the topic always most congenialto him: the humours and ironies of the human comedy, aspresented by his own particular group. His malicious commentaryon life had always amused Susy because of the shrewd flashes ofphilosophy he shed on the social antics they had so oftenwatched together. He was in fact the one person she knew(excepting Nick) who was in the show and yet outside of it; andshe was surprised, as the talk proceeded, to find herself solittle interested in his scraps of gossip, and so little amusedby his comments on them.

　　With an inward shrug of discouragement she said to herself thatprobably nothing would ever really amuse her again; then, as shelistened, she began to understand that her disappointment arosefrom the fact that Strefford, in reality, could not live withoutthese people whom he saw through and satirized, and that therather commonplace scandals he narrated interested him as muchas his own racy considerations on them; and she was filled withterror at the thought that the inmost core of the richly-decorated life of the Countess of Altringham would be just aspoor and low-ceilinged a place as the little room in which heand she now sat, elbow to elbow yet so unapproachably apart.

　　If Strefford could not live without these people, neither couldshe and Nick; but for reasons how different! And if hisopportunities had been theirs, what a world they would havecreated for themselves! Such imaginings were vain, and sheshrank back from them into the present. After all, as LadyAltringham she would have the power to create that world whichshe and Nick had dreamed ... only she must create it alone.

　　Well, that was probably the law of things. All human happinesswas thus conditioned and circumscribed, and hers, no doubt, mustalways be of the lonely kind, since material things did notsuffice for it, even though it depended on them as GraceFulmer's, for instance, never had. Yet even Grace Fulmer hadsuccumbed to Ursula's offer, and had arrived at Ruan the daybefore Susy left, instead of going to Spain with her husband andViolet Melrose. But then Grace was making the sacrifice for herchildren, and somehow one had the feeling that in giving up herliberty she was not surrendering a tittle of herself. All thedifference was there ....

　　"How I do bore you!" Susy heard Strefford exclaim. She becameaware that she had not been listening: stray echoes of names ofplaces and people--Violet Melrose, Ursula, Prince Altineri,others of their group and persuasion--had vainly knocked at herbarricaded brain; what had he been telling her about them? Sheturned to him and their eyes met; his were full of a melancholyirony.

　　"Susy, old girl, what's wrong?"She pulled herself together. "I was thinking, Streff, justnow--when I said I hated the very sound of pearls andchinchilla--how impossible it was that you should believe me; infact, what a blunder I'd made in saying it."He smiled. "Because it was what so many other women might belikely to say so awfully unoriginal, in fact?"She laughed for sheer joy at his insight. "It's going to beeasier than I imagined," she thought. Aloud she rejoined: "Oh,Streff--how you're always going to find me out! Where on earthshall 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 ittook all the mockery from his retort, checked on her lips the:

　　"What? A valentine!" and made her suddenly feel that, if hewere afraid, so was she. Yet she was touched also, and wonderedhalf exultingly if any other woman had ever caught thatparticular deep inflexion of his shrill voice. She had neverliked him as much as at that moment; and she said to herself,with an odd sense of detachment, as if she had been ratherbreathlessly observing the vacillations of someone whom shelonged to persuade but dared not: "Now--NOW, if he speaks, Ishall say yes!"He did not speak; but abruptly, and as startlingly to her as ifshe had just dropped from a sphere whose inhabitants had othermethods of expressing their sympathy, he slipped his arm aroundher 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 armand 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 notthe first time she had been kissed. It was true that one didn'thabitually associate Streff with such demonstrations; but shehad not that excuse for surprise, for even in Venice she hadbegun to notice that he looked at her differently, and avoidedher hand when he used to seek it.

　　No--she ought not to have been surprised; nor ought a kiss tohave been so disturbing. Such incidents had punctuated thecareer of Susy Branch: there had been, in particular, in far-off discarded times, Fred Gillow'............