"We're both of us ignorant," she hastened to say. "But when we get our bearings—in a day or two—we'll be all right."

"Let's have dinner up here in the sitting-room. I haven't got the nerve to face that gang again today"

"Nonsense!" laughed she. "We mustn't give way to our feelings—not for a minute. There'll be a lot of people as badly off as we are. I saw some this afternoon—and from the way the waiters treated them, I know they had money or something. Put on your evening suit, and you'll be all right. I'm the one that hasn't anything to wear. But I've got to go and study the styles. I must begin to learn what to wear and now to wear it. We've come to the right place, Freddie. Cheer up!"

He felt better when he was in evening clothes which made him handsome indeed, bringing out all his refinement of feature and coloring. He was almost cheerful when Susan came into the sitting-room in the pale gray of her two new toilettes. It might be, as she insisted, that she was not dressed properly for fashionable dining; but there would be no more delicate, no more lady-like loveliness. He quite recovered his nerve when they faced the company that had terrified him in prospect. He saw many commonplace looking people, not a few who were downright dowdy. And presently he had the satisfaction of realizing that not only Susan but he also was getting admiring attention. He no longer floundered panic-stricken; his feet touched bottom and he felt foolish about his sensations of a few minutes before.

After all, the world over, dining in a restaurant is nothing but dining in a restaurant. The waiter and the head waiter spoke English, were gracefully, tactfully, polite; and as he ordered he found his self-confidence returning with the surging rush of a turned tide on a low shore. The food was wonderful, and the champagne, "English taste," was the best he had ever drunk. Halfway through dinner both he and Susan were in the happiest frame of mind. The other people were drinking too, were emerging from caste into humanness. Women gazed languorously and longingly at the handsome young American; men sent stealthy or open smiles of adoration at Susan whenever Freddie's eyes were safely averted. But Susan was more careful than a woman of the world to which she aspired would have been; she ignored the glances and without difficulty assumed the air of wife.

"I don't believe we'll have any trouble getting acquainted with these people," said Freddie.

"We don't want to, yet," replied she.

"Oh, I feel we'll soon be ready for them," said he.

"Yes—that," said she. "But that amounts to nothing. This isn't to be merely a matter of clothes and acquaintances—at least, not with me."

"What then?" inquired he.

"Oh—we'll see as we get our bearings." She could not have put into words the plans she was forming—plans for educating and in every way developing him and herself. She was not sure at what she was aiming, but only of the direction. She had no idea how far she could go herself—or how far he would consent to go. The wise course was just to work along from day to day—keeping the direction.

"All right. I'll do as you say. You've got this game sized up better than I."

Is there any other people that works as hard as do the Parisians? Other peoples work with their bodies; but the Parisians, all classes and masses too, press both mind and body into service. Other peoples, if they think at all, think how to avoid work; the Parisians think incessantly, always, how to provide themselves with more to do. Other peoples drink to stupefy themselves lest peradventure in a leisure moment they might be seized of a thought; Parisians drink to stimulate themselves, to try to think more rapidly, to attract ideas that might not enter and engage a sober and therefore somewhat sluggish brain. Other peoples meet a new idea as if it were a mortal foe; the Parisians as if it were a long-lost friend. Other peoples are agitated chiefly, each man or woman, about themselves; the Parisians are full of their work, their surroundings, bother little about themselves except as means to what they regard as the end and aim of life—to make the world each moment as different as possible from what it was the moment before, to transform the crass and sordid universe of things with the magic of ideas. Being intelligent, they prefer good to evil; but they have God's own horror of that which is neither good nor evil, and spew it out of their mouths.

At the moment of the arrival of Susan and Palmer the world that labors at amusing itself was pausing in Paris on its way from the pleasures of sea and mountains to the pleasures of the Riviera and Egypt. And as the weather held fine, day after day the streets, the cafes, the restaurants, offered the young adventurers an incessant dazzling panorama of all they had come abroad to seek. A week passed before Susan permitted herself to enter any of the shops where she intended to buy dresses, hats and the other and lesser paraphernalia of the woman of fashion.

"I mustn't go until I've seen," said she. "I'd yield to the temptation to buy and would regret it."

And Freddie, seeing her point, restrained his impatience for making radical changes in himself and in her. The fourth day of their stay at Paris he realized that he would buy, and would wish to buy, none of the things that had tempted him the first and second days. Secure in the obscurity of the crowd of strangers, he was losing his extreme nervousness about himself. That sort of emotion is most characteristic of Americans and gets them the reputation for profound snobbishness. In fact, it is not snobbishness at all. In no country on earth is ignorance in such universal disrepute as in America. The American, eager to learn, eager to be abreast of the foremost, is terrified into embarrassment and awe when he finds himself in surroundings where are things that he feels he ought to know about—while a stupid fellow, in such circumstances, is calmly content with himself, wholly unaware of his own deficiencies.

Susan let full two weeks pass before she, with much hesitation, gave her first order toward the outfit on which Palmer insisted upon her spending not less than five thousand dollars. Palmer had been going to the shops with her. She warned him it would make prices higher if she appeared with a prosperous looking man; but he wanted occupation and everything concerning her fascinated him now. His ignorance of the details of feminine dress was giving place rapidly to a knowledge which he thought profound—and it was profound, for a man. She would not permit him to go with her to order, however, or to fittings. All she would tell him in advance about this first dress was that it was for evening wear and that its color was green. "But not a greeny green," said she.

"I understand. A green something like the tint in your skin at the nape of your neck."

"Perhaps," admitted she. "Yes."

"We'll go to the opera the evening it comes home. I'll have my new evening outfit from Charvet's by that time."

It was about ten days after this conversation that she told him she had had a final fitting, had ordered the dress sent home. He was instantly all excitement and rushed away to engage a good box for the opera. With her assistance he had got evening clothes that sent through his whole being a glow of self-confidence—for he knew that in those clothes, he looked what he was striving to be. They were to dine at seven. He dressed early and went into their sitting-room. He was afraid he would spoil his pleasure of complete surprise by catching a glimpse of the grande toilette before it was finished. At a quarter past seven Susan put her head into the sitting-room—only her head. At sight of his anxious face, his tense manner, she burst out laughing. It seemed, and was, grotesque that one so imperturbable of surface should be so upset.

"Can you stand the strain another quarter of an hour?" said she.

"Don't hurry," he urged. "Take all the time you want. Do the thing up right." He rose and came toward her with one hand behind him. "You said the dress was green, didn't you?"

"Yes."

"Well—here's something you may be able to fit in somewhere." And he brought the concealed hand into view and held a jewel box toward her.

She reached a bare arm through the crack in the door and took it. The box, the arm, the head disappeared. Presently there was a low cry of delight that thrilled him. The face reappeared. "Oh—Freddie!" she exclaimed, radiant. "You must have spent a fortune on them."

"No. Twelve thousand—that's all. It was a bargain. Go on dressing. We'll talk about it afterward." And he gently pushed her head back—getting a kiss in the palm of his hand—and drew the door to.

Ten minutes later the door opened part way again. "Brace yourself," she called laughingly. "I'm coming."

A breathless pause and the door swung wide. He stared with eyes amazed and bewitched. There is no more describing the effects of a harmonious combination of exquisite dress and exquisite woman than there is reproducing in words the magic and the thrill of sunrise or sunset, of moonlight's fanciful amorous play, or of starry sky. As the girl stood there, her eyes starlike with excitement, her lips crimson and sensuous against the clear old-ivory pallor of her small face in its frame of glorious dark hair, it seemed to him that her soul, more beautiful counterpart of herself, had come from its dwelling place within and was hovering about her body like an aureole. Round her lovely throat was the string of emeralds. Her shoulders were bare and also her bosom, over nearly half its soft, girlish swell. And draped in light and clinging grace about her slender, sensuous form was the most wonderful garment he had ever seen. The great French designers of dresses and hats and materials have a genius for taking an idea—a pure poetical abstraction—and materializing it, making it visible and tangible without destroying its spirituality. This dress of Susan's did not suggest matter any more than the bar of music suggests the rosined string that has given birth to it. She was carrying the train and a pair of long gloves in one hand. The skirt, thus drawn back, revealed her slim, narrow foot, a slender slipper of pale green satin, a charming instep with a rosiness shimmering through the gossamer web of pale green silk, the outline of a long, slender leg whose perfection was guaranteed by the beauty of her bare arm.

His expression changed slowly from bedazzlement to the nearest approach to the old slumbrous, smiling wickedness she had seen since they started. And her sensitive instinct understood; it was the menace of an insane jealousy, sprung from fear—fear of losing her. The look vanished, and once again he was Freddie Palmer the delighted, the generous and almost romantically considerate, because everything was going as he wished.

"No wonder I went crazy about you," he said.

"Then you're not disappointed?"

He came to her, unclasped the emeralds, stood off and viewed her again. "No—you mustn't wear them," said he.

"Oh!" she cried, protesting. "They're the best of all."

"Not tonight," said he. "They look cheap. They spoil the effect of your neck and shoulders. Another time, when you're not quite so wonderful, but not tonight."

As she could not see herself as he saw her, she pleaded for the jewels. She loved jewels and these were the first she had ever had, except two modest little birthday rings she had left in Sutherland. But he led her to the long mirror and convinced her that he was right. When they descended to the dining-room, they caused a stir. It does not take much to make fashionable people stare; but it does take something to make a whole room full of them quiet so far toward silence that the discreet and refined handling of dishes in a restaurant like the Ritz sounds like a vulgar clatter. Susan and Palmer congratulated themselves that they had been at the hotel long enough to become acclimated and so could act as if they were unconscious of the sensation they were creating. When they finished dinner, they found all the little tables in the long corridor between the restaurant and the entrance taken by people lingering over coffee to get another and closer view. And the men who looked at her sweet dreaming violet-gray eyes said she was innocent; those who looked at her crimson lips said she was gay; those who saw both eyes and lips said she was innocent—as yet. A few very dim-sighted, and very wise, retained their reason sufficiently to say that nothing could be told about a woman from her looks—especially an American woman. She put on the magnificent cloak, white silk, ermine lined, which he had seen at Paquin's and had insisted on buying. And they were off for the opera in the aristocratic looking auto he was taking by the week.

She had a second triumph at the opera—was the center that drew all glasses the instant the lights went up for the intermission. There were a few minutes when her head was quite turned, when it seemed to her that she had arrived very near to the highest goal of human ambition—said goal being the one achieved and so self-complacently occupied by these luxurious, fashionable people who were paying her the tribute of interest and admiration. Were not these people at the top of the heap? Was she not among them, of them, by right of excellence in the things that made them, distinguished them?

Ambition, drunk and heavy with luxury, flies sluggishly and low. And her ambition was—for the moment—in danger of that fate.

During the last intermission the door of their box opened. At once Palmer sprang up and advanced with beaming face and extended hand to welcome the caller.

"Hello, Brent, I am glad to see you! I want to introduce you to Mrs. Palmer"—that name pronounced with the unconscious pride of the possessor of the jewel.

Brent bowed. Susan forced a smile.

"We," Palmer hastened on, "are on a sort of postponed honeymoon. I didn't announce the marriage—didn't want to have my friends out of pocket for presents. Besides, they'd have sent us stuff fit only to furnish out a saloon or a hotel—and we'd have had to use it or hurt their feelings. My wife's a Western girl—from Indiana. She came on to study for the stage. But"—he laughed delightedly—"I persuaded her to change her mind."

"You are from the West?" said Brent in the formal tone one uses in addressing a new acquaintance. "So am I. But that's more years ago than you could count. I live in New York—when I don't live here or in the Riviera."

The moment had passed when Susan could, without creating an impossible scene, admit and compel Brent to admit that they knew each other. What did it matter? Was it not best to ignore the past? Probably Brent had done this deliberately, assuming that she was beginning a new life with a clean slate.

"Been here long?" said Brent to Palmer.

As he and Palmer talked, she contrasted the two men. Palmer was much the younger, much the handsomer. Yet in the comparison Brent had the advantage. He looked as if he amounted to a great deal, as if he had lived and had understood life as the other man could not. The physical difference between them was somewhat the difference between look of lion and look of tiger. Brent looked strong; Palmer, dangerous. She could not imagine either man failing of a purpose he had set his heart upon. She could not imagine Brent reaching for it in any but an open, direct, daring way. She knew that the descendant of the supple Italians, the graduate of the street schools of stealth and fraud, would not care to have anything unless he got it by skill at subtlety. She noted their dress. Brent was wearing his clothes in that elegantly careless way which it was one of Freddie's dreams—one of the vain ones—to attain. Brent's voice was much more virile, was almost harsh, and in pronouncing some words made the nerves tingle with a sensation of mingled irritation and pleasure. Freddie's voice was manly enough, but soft and dangerous, suggestive of hidden danger. She compared the two men, as she knew them. She wondered how they would seem to a complete stranger. Palmer, she thought, would be able to attract almost any woman he might want; it seemed to her that a woman Brent wanted would feel rather helpless before the onset he would make.

It irritated her, this untimely intrusion of Brent who had the curious quality of making all other men seem less in the comparison. Not that he assumed anything, or forced comparisons; on the contrary, no man could have insisted less upon himself. Not that he compelled or caused the transfer of all interest to himself. Simply that, with him there, she felt less hopeful of Palmer, less confident of his ability to become what he seemed—and go beyond it. There are occasional men who have this same quality that Susan was just then feeling in Brent—men whom women never love yet who make it impossible for them to begin to love or to continue to love the other men within their range.

She was not glad to see him. She did not conceal it. Yet she knew that he would linger—and that she would not oppose. She would have liked to say to him: "You lost belief in me and dropped me. I have begun to make a life for myself. Let me alone. Do not upset me—do not force me to see what I must not see if I am to be happy. Go away, and give me a chance." But we do not say these frank, childlike things except in moments of closest intimacy—and certainly there was no suggestion of intimacy, no invitation to it, but the reverse, in the man facing her at the front of the box.

"Then you are to be in Paris some time?" said Brent, addressing her.

"I think so," said Susan.

"Sure," cried Palmer. "This is the town the world revolves round. I felt like singing 'Home, Sweet Home' as we drove from the station."

"I like it better than any place on earth," said Brent. "Better even than New York. I've never been quite able to forgive New York for some of the things it made me suffer before it gave me what I wanted."

"I, too," said Freddie. "My wife can't understand that. She doesn't know the side of life we know. I'm going to smoke a cigarette. I'll leave you here, old man, to entertain her."

When he disappeared, Susan looked out over the house with an expression of apparent abstraction. Brent—she was conscious—studied her with those seeing eyes—hazel eyes with not a bit of the sentimentality and weakness of brown in them. "You and Palmer know no one here?"

"Not a soul."

"I'll be glad to introduce some of my acquaintances to you—French people of the artistic set. They speak English. And you'll soon be learning French."

"I intend to learn as soon as I've finished my fall shopping."

"You are not coming back to America?"

"Not for a long time."

"Then you will find my friends useful."

She turned her eyes upon his. "You are very kind," said she. "But I'd rather—we'd rather—not meet anyone just yet."

His eyes met hers calmly. It was impossible to tell whether he understood or not. After a few seconds he glanced out over the house. "That is a beautiful dress," said he. "You have real taste, if you'll permit me to say so. I was one of those who were struck dumb with admiration at the Ritz tonight."

"It's the first grand dress I ever possessed," said she.

"You love dresses—and jewels—and luxury?"

"As a starving man loves food."

"Then you are happy?"

"Perfectly so—for the first time in my life."

"It is a kind of ecstasy—isn't it? I remember how it was with me. I had always been poor—I worked my way through prep school and college. And I wanted all the luxuries. The more I had to endure—the worse food and clothing and lodgings—the madder I became about them, until I couldn't think of anything but getting the money to buy them. When I got it, I gorged myself. . . . It's a pity the starving man can't keep on loving food—keep on being always starving and always having his hunger satisfied."

"Ah, but he can."

He smiled mysteriously. "You think so, now. Wait till you are gorged."

She laughed. "You don't know! I could never get enough—never!"

His smile became even more mysterious. As he looked away, his profile presented itself to her view—an outline of sheer strength, of tragic sadness—the profile of those who have dreamed and dared and suffered. But the smile, saying no to her confident assertion, still lingered.

"Never!" she repeated. She must compel that smile to take away its disquieting negation, its relentless prophecy of the end of her happiness. She must convince him that he had come back in vain, that he could not disturb her.

"You don't suggest to me the woman who can be content with just people and just things. You will always insist on luxury. But you will demand more." He looked at her again. "And you will get it," he added, in a tone that sent a wave through her nerves.

Her glance fell. Palmer came in, bringing an odor of cologne and of fresh cigarette fumes. Brent rose. Palmer laid a detaining hand on his shoulder. "Do stay on, Brent, and go to supper with us."

"I was about to ask you to supper with me. Have you been to the Abbaye?"

"No. We haven't got round to that yet. Is it lively?"

"And the food's the best in Paris. You'll come?"

Brent was looking at Susan. Palmer, not yet educated in the smaller—and important—refinements of politeness, did not wait for her reply or think that she should be consulted. "Certainly," said he. "On condition that you dine with us tomorrow night."

"Very well," agreed Brent. And he excused himself to take leave of his friends. "Just tell your chauffeur to go to the Abbaye—he'll know," he said as he bowed over Susan's hand. "I'll be waiting. I wish to be there ahead and make sure of a table."

As the door of the box closed upon him Freddie burst out with that enthusiasm we feel for one who is in a position to render us good service and is showing a disposition to do so. "I've known him for years," said he, "and he's the real thing. He used to spend a lot of time in a saloon I used to keep in Allen Street."

"Allen Street?" ejaculated Susan, shivering.

"I was twenty-two then. He used to want to study types, as he called it. And I gathered in types for him—though really my place was for the swell crooks and their ladies. How long ago that seems—and how far away!"

"Another life," said Susan.

"That's a fact. This is my second time on earth. Our second time. I tell you it's fighting for a foothold that makes men and women the wretches they are. Nowadays, I couldn't hurt a fly—could you? But then you never were cruel. That's why you stayed down so long."

Susan smiled into the darkness of the auditorium—the curtain was up, and they were talking in undertones. She said, as she smiled:

"I'll never go down and stay down for that reason again."

Her tone arrested his attention; but he could make nothing of it or of her expression, though her face was clear enough in the reflection from the footlights.

"Anyhow, Brent and I are old pals," continued he, "though we haven't seen so much of each other since he made a hit with the plays. He always used to predict I'd get to the top and be respectable. Now that it's come true, he'll help me. He'll introduce us, if we work it right."

"But we don't want that yet," protested Susan.

"You're ready and so am I," declared Palmer in the tone she knew had the full strength of his will back of it.

Faint angry hissing from the stalls silenced them, but as soon as they were in the auto Susan resumed. "I have told Mr. Brent we don't want to meet his friends yet."

"Now what the hell did you do that for?" demanded Freddie. It was the first time she had crossed him; it was the first time he had been reminiscent of the Freddie she used to know.

"Because," said she evenly, "I will not meet people under false pretenses."

"What rot!"

"I will not do it," replied she in the same quiet way.

He assumed that she meant only one of the false pretenses—the one that seemed the least to her. He said:

"Then we'll draw up and sign a marriage contract and date it a couple of years ago, before the new marriage law was passed to save rich men's drunken sons from common law wives."

"I am already married," said Susan. "To a farmer out in Indiana."

Freddie laughed. "Well, I'll be damned! You! You!" He looked at her ermine-lined cloak and laughed again. "An Indiana farmer!" Then he suddenly sobered. "Come to think of it," said he, "that's the first thing you ever told me about your past."

"Or anybody else," said Susan. Her body was quivering, for we remember the past events with the sensations they made upon us at the time. She could smell that little room in the farmhouse. Allen Street and all the rest of her life in the underworld had for her something of the vagueness of dreams—not only now but also while she was living that life. But not Ferguson, not the night when her innocent soul was ravished as a wolf rips up and munches a bleating lamb. No vagueness of dreams about that, but a reality to make her shudder and reel whenever she thought of it—a reality vivider now that she was a woman grown in experiences and understanding.

"He's probably dead—or divorced you long ago."

"I do not know."

"I can find out—without stirring things up. What was his name?"

"Ferguson."

"What was his first name?"

She tried to recall. "I think—it was Jim. Yes, it was Jim." She fancied she could hear the voice of that ferocious sister snapping out that name in the miserable little coop of a general room in that hot, foul, farm cottage.

"Where did he live?"

"His farm was at the edge of Zeke Warham's place—not far from Beecamp, in Jefferson County."

She lapsed into silence, seemed to be watching the gay night streets of the Montmartre district—the cafes, the music halls, the sidewalk shows, the throngs of people every man and woman of them with his or her own individual variation upon the fascinating, covertly terrible face of the Paris mob. "What are you thinking about?" he asked, when a remark brought no answer.

"The past," said she. "And the future."

"Well—we'll find out in a few days that your farmer's got no claim on you—and we'll attend to that marriage contract and everything'll be all right."

"Do you want to marry me?" she asked, turning on him suddenly.

"We're as good as married already," replied he. "Your tone sounds as if you didn't want to marry me." And he laughed at the absurdity of such an idea.

"I don't know whether I do or not," said she slowly.

He laid a gentle strong hand on her knee. Gentle though it was, she felt its strength through the thickness of her cloak. "When the time comes," said he in the soft voice with the menace hidden in it, "you'll know whether you do or don't. You'll know you do—Queenie."

The auto was at the curb before the Abbaye. And on the steps, in furs and a top hat, stood the tall, experienced looking, cynical looking playwright. Susan's eyes met his, he lifted his hat, formal, polite.

"I'll bet he's got the best table in the place," said Palmer, before opening the door, "and I'll bet it cost him a bunch."



CHAPTER XXI

BRENT had an apartment in the rue de Rivoli, near the Hotel Meurice and high enough to command the whole Tuileries garden. From his balcony he could see to the east the ancient courts of the Louvre, to the south the varied, harmonious facades of the Quay d'Orsay with the domes and spires of the Left Bank behind, to the west the Obelisque, the long broad reaches of the Champs Elysees with the Arc de Triomphe at the boundary of the horizon. On that balcony, with the tides of traffic far below, one had a sense of being at the heart of the world, past, present, and to come. Brent liked to feel at home wherever he was; it enabled him to go tranquilly to work within a few minutes after his arrival, no matter how far he had journeyed or how long he had been away. So he regarded it as an economy, an essential to good work, to keep up the house in New York, a villa in Petite Afrique, with the Mediterranean washing its garden wall, this apartment at Paris; and a telegram a week in advance would reserve him the same quarters in the quietest part of hotels at Luzerne, at St. Moritz and at Biarritz.

Susan admired, as he explained his scheme of life to her and Palmer when they visited his apartment. Always profound tranquillity in the midst of intense activity. He could shut his door and he as in a desert; he could open it, and the most interesting of the sensations created by the actions and reactions of the whole human race were straightway beating upon his senses. As she listened, she looked about, her eyes taking in impressions to be studied at leisure. These quarters of his in Paris were fundamentally different from those in New York, were the expression of a different side of his personality. It was plain that he loved them, that they came nearer to expressing his real—that is, his inmost—self.

"Though I work harder in Paris than in New York," he explained, "I have more leisure because it is all one kind of work—writing—at which I'm never interrupted. So I have time to make surroundings for myself. No one has time for surroundings in New York."

She observed that of the scores of pictures on the walls, tables, shelves of the three rooms they were shown, every one was a face—faces of all nationalities, all ages, all conditions—faces happy and faces tragic, faces homely, faces beautiful, faces irradiating the fascination of those abnormal developments of character, good and bad, which give the composite countenance of the human race its distinction, as the characteristics themselves give it intensities of light and shade. She saw angels, beautiful and ugly, devils beautiful and ugly.

When she began to notice this peculiarity of those rooms, she was simply interested. What an amazing collection! How much time and thought it must have taken! How he must have searched—and what an instinct he had for finding the unusual, the significant! As she sat there and then strolled about and then sat again, her interest rose into a feverish excitement. It was as if the ghosts of all these personalities, not one of them commonplace, were moving through the rooms, were pressing upon her. She understood why Brent had them there—that they were as necessary to him as cadavers and skeletons and physiological charts to an anatomist. But they oppressed, suffocated her; she went out on the balcony and watched the effects of the light from the setting sun upon and around the enormously magnified Arc.

"You don't like my rooms," said Brent.

"They fascinate me," replied she. "But I'd have to get used to these friends of yours. You made their acquaintance one or a few at a time. It's very upsetting, being introduced to all at once."

She felt Brent's gaze upon her—that unfathomable look which made her uneasy, yet was somehow satisfying, too. He said, after a while, "Palmer is to give me his photograph. Will you give me yours?" He was smiling. "Both of you belong in my gallery."

"Of course she will," said Palmer, coming out on the balcony and standing beside her. "I want her to have some taken right away—in the evening dress she wore to the Opera last week. And she must have her portrait painted."

"When we are settled," said Susan. "I've no time for anything now but shopping."

They had come to inspect the apartment above Brent's, and had decided to take it; Susan saw possibilities of making it over into the sort of environment of which she had dreamed. In novels the descriptions of interiors, which weary most readers, interested her more than story or characters. In her days of abject poverty she used these word paintings to construct for herself a room, suites of rooms, a whole house, to replace, when her physical eyes closed and her eyes of fancy opened wide, the squalid and nauseous cell to which poverty condemned her. In the streets she would sometimes pause before a shop window display of interior furnishings; a beautiful table or chair, a design in wall or floor covering had caught her eyes, had set her to dreaming—dreaming on and on—she in dingy skirt and leaky shoes. Now—the chance to realize her dreams had come. Palmer had got acquainted with some high-class sports, American, French and English, at an American bar in the rue Volney. He was spending his afternoons and some of his evenings with them—in the evenings winning large sums from them at cards at which he was now as lucky as at everything else. Palmer, pleased by Brent's manner toward Susan—formal politeness, indifference to sex—was glad to have him go about with her. Also Palmer was one of those men who not merely imagine they read human nature but actually can read it. He knew he could trust Susan. And it had been his habit—as it is the habit of all successful men—to trust human beings, each one up to his capacity for resisting temptation to treachery.

"Brent doesn't care for women—as women," said he. "He never did. Don't you think he's queer?"

"He's different," replied Susan. "He doesn't care much for people—to have them as intimates. I understand why. Love and friendship bore one—or fail one—and are unsatisfactory—and disturbing. But if one centers one's life about things—books, pictures, art, a career—why, one is never bored or betrayed. He has solved the secret of happiness, I think."

"Do you think a woman could fall in love with him?" he asked, with an air of the accidental and casual.

"If you mean, could I fall in love with him," said she, "I should say no. I think it would either amuse or annoy him to find that a woman cared about him."

"Amuse him most of all," said Palmer. "He knows the ladies—that they love us men for what we can give them."

"Did you ever hear of anyone, man or woman, who cared about a person who couldn't give them anything?"

Freddie's laugh was admission that he thought her right. "The way to get on in politics," observed he, "is to show men that it's to their best interest to support you. And that's the way to get on in everything else—including love."

Susan knew that this was the truth about life, as it appeared to her also. But she could not divest herself of the human aversion to hearing the cold, practical truth. She wanted sugar coating on the pill, even though she knew the sugar made the medicine much less effective, often neutralized it altogether. Thus Palmer's brutally frank cynicism got upon her nerves, whereas Brent's equally frank cynicism attracted her because it was not brutal. Both men saw that life was a coarse practical joke. Palmer put the stress on the coarseness, Brent upon the humor.

Brent recommended and introduced to her a friend of his, a young French Jew named Gourdain, an architect on the way up to celebrity. "You will like his ideas and he will like yours," said Brent.

She had acquiesced in his insistent friendship for Palmer and her, but she had not lowered by an inch the barrier of her reserve toward him. His speech and actions at all times, whether Palmer was there or not; suggested that he respected the barrier, regarded it as even higher and thicker than it was. Nevertheless she felt that he really regarded the barrier as non-existent. She said:

"But I've never told you my ideas."

"I can guess what they are. Your surroundings will simply be an extension of your dress."

She would not have let him see—she would not have admitted to herself—how profoundly the subtle compliment pleased her.

Because a man's or a woman's intimate personal taste is good it by no means follows that he or she will build or decorate or furnish a house well. In matters of taste, the greater does not necessarily include the less, nor does the less imply the greater. Perhaps Susan would have shown she did not deserve Brent's compliment, would have failed ignominiously in that first essay of hers, had she not found a Gourdain, sympathetic, able to put into the concrete the rather vague ideas she had evolved in her dreaming. An architect is like a milliner or a dressmaker. He supplies the model, product of his own individual taste. The person who employs him must remold that form into an expression of his own personality—for people who deliberately live in surroundings that are not part of themselves are on the same low level with those who utter only borrowed ideas. That is the object and the aim of civilization—to encourage and to compel each individual to be frankly himself—herself. That is the profound meaning of freedom. The world owes more to bad morals and to bad taste that are spontaneous than to all the docile conformity to the standards of morals and of taste, however good. Truth—which simply means an increase of harmony, a decrease of discord, between the internal man and his environment—truth is a product, usually a byproduct, of a ferment of action.

Gourdain—chiefly, no doubt, because Susan's beauty of face and figure and dress fascinated him—was more eager to bring out her individuality than to show off his own talents. He took endless pains with her, taught her the technical knowledge and vocabulary that would enable her to express herself, then carried out her ideas religiously. "You are right, mon ami," said he to Brent. "She is an orchid, and of a rare species. She has a glorious imagination, like a bird of paradise balancing itself into an azure sky, with every plume raining color and brilliancy."

"Somewhat exaggerated," was Susan's pleased, laughing comment when Brent told her.

"Somewhat," said Brent. "But my friend Gourdain is stark mad about women's dressing well. That lilac dress you had on yesterday did for him. He was your servant; he is your slave."

Abruptly—for no apparent cause, as was often the case—Susan had that sickening sense of the unreality of her luxurious present, of being about to awaken in Vine Street with Etta—or in the filthy bed with old Mrs. Tucker. Absently she glanced down at her foot, holding it out as if for inspection. She saw Brent's look of amusement at her seeming vanity.

"I was looking to see if my shoes were leaky," she explained.

A subtle change came over his face. He understood instantly.

"Have you ever been—cold?" she asked, looking at him strangely.

"One cold February—cold and damp—I had no underclothes—and no overcoat."

"And dirty beds—filthy rooms—filthy people?"

"A ten-cent lodging house with a tramp for bedfellow."

They were looking at each other, with the perfect understanding and sympathy that can come only to two people of the same fiber who have braved the same storms. Each glanced hastily away.

Her enthusiasm for doing the apartment was due full as much to the fact that it gave her definitely directed occupation as to its congeniality. That early training of hers from Aunt Fanny Warham had made it forever impossible for her in any circumstances to become the typical luxuriously sheltered woman, whether legally or illegally kept—the lie-abed woman, the woman who dresses only to go out and show off, the woman who wastes her life in petty, piffling trifles—without purpose, without order or system, without morals or personal self-respect. She had never lost the systematic instinct—the instinct to use time instead of wasting it—that Fanny Warham had implanted in her during the years that determine character. Not for a moment, even without distinctly definite aim, was she in danger of the creeping paralysis that is epidemic among the rich, enfeebling and slowing down mental and physical activity. She had a regular life; she read, she walked in the Bois; she made the best of each day. And when this definite thing to accomplish offered, she did not have to learn how to work before she could begin the work itself.

All this was nothing new to Gourdain. He was born and bred in a country where intelligent discipline is the rule and the lack of it the rare exception—among all classes—even among the women of the well-to-do classes.

The finished apartment was a disappointment to Palmer. Its effects were too quiet, too restrained. Within certain small limits, those of the man of unusual intelligence but no marked originality, he had excellent taste—or, perhaps, excellent ability to recognize good taste. But in the large he yearned for the grandiose. He loved the gaudy with which the rich surround themselves because good taste forbids them to talk of their wealth and such surroundings do the talking for them and do it more effectively. He would have preferred even a vulgar glitter to the unobtrusiveness of those rooms. But he knew that Susan was right, and he was a very human arrant coward about admitting that he had bad taste.

"This is beautiful—exquisite," said he, with feigned enthusiasm. "I'm afraid, though, it'll be above their heads."

"What do you mean?" inquired Susan.

Palmer felt her restrained irritation, hastened to explain. "I mean the people who'll come here. They can't appreciate it. You have to look twice to appreciate this—and people, the best of 'em, look only once and a mighty blind look it is."

But Susan was not deceived. "You must tell me what changes you want," said she. Her momentary irritation had vanished. Since Freddie was paying, Freddie must have what suited him.

"Oh, I've got nothing to suggest. Now that I've been studying it out, I couldn't allow you to make any changes. It does grow on one, doesn't it, Brent?"

"It will be the talk of Paris," replied Brent.

The playwright's tone settled the matter for Palmer. He was content. Said he:

"Thank God she hasn't put in any of those dirty old tapestry rags—and the banged up, broken furniture and the patched crockery."

At the same time she had produced an effect of long tenancy. There was nothing that glittered, nothing with the offensive sheen of the brand new. There was in that delicately toned atmosphere one suggestion which gave the same impression as the artificial crimson of her lips in contrast with the pallor of her skin and the sweet thoughtful melancholy of her eyes. This suggestion came from an all-pervading odor of a heavy, languorously sweet, sensuous perfume—the same that Susan herself used. She had it made at a perfumer's in the faubourg St. Honore by mixing in a certain proportion several of the heaviest and most clinging of the familiar perfumes. "You don't like my perfume?" she said to Brent one day.

He was in the library, was inspecting her selections of books. Instead of answering her question, he said:

"How did you find out so much about books? How did you find time to read so many?"

"One always finds time for what one likes."

"Not always," said he. "I had a hard stretch once—just after I struck New York. I was a waiter for two months. Working people don't find time for reading—and such things."

"That was one reason why I gave up work," said she.

"That—and the dirt—and the poor wages—and the hopelessness—and a few other reasons," said he.

"Why don't you like the perfume I use?"

"Why do you say that?"

"You made a queer face as you came into the drawing-room."

"Do you like it?"

"What a queer question!" she said. "No other man would have asked it."

"The obvious," said he, shrugging his shoulders.

"I couldn't help knowing you didn't like it."

"Then why should I use it?"

His glance drifted slowly away from hers. He lit a cigarette with much attention to detail.

"Why should I use perfume I don't like?" persisted she.

"What's the use of going into that?" said he.

"But I do like it—in a way," she went on after a pause. "It is—it seems to me the odor of myself."

"Yes—it is," he admitted.

She laughed. "Yet you made a wry face."

"I did."

"At the odor?"

"At the odor."

"Do you think I ought to change to another perfume?"

"You know I do not. It's the odor of your soul. It is different at different times—sometimes inspiringly sweet as the incense of heaven, as my metaphoric friend Gourdain would say—sometimes as deadly sweet as the odors of the drugs men take to drag them to hell—sometimes repulsively sweet, making one heart sick for pure, clean smell-less air yet without the courage to seek it. Your perfume is many things, but always—always strong and tenacious and individual."

A flush had overspread the pallor of her skin; her long dark lashes hid her eyes.

"You have never been in love," he went on.

"So you told me once before." It was the first time either had referred to their New York acquaintance.

"You did not believe me then. But you do now?"

"For me there is no such thing as love," replied she. "I understand affection—I have felt it. I understand passion. It is a strong force in my life—perhaps the strongest."

"No," said he, quiet but positive.

"Perhaps not," replied she carelessly, and went on, with her more than manlike candor, and in her manner of saying the most startling things in the calmest way:

"I understand what is called love—feebleness looking up to strength or strength pitying feebleness. I understand because I've felt both those things. But love—two equal people united perfectly, merged into a third person who is neither yet is both—that I have not felt. I've dreamed it. I've imagined it—in some moments of passion. But"—she laughed and shrugged her shoulders and waved the hand with the cigarette between its fingers—"I have not felt it and I shall not feel it. I remain I." She paused, considered, added, "And I prefer that."

"You are strong," said he, absent and reflective. "Yes, you are strong."

"I don't know," replied she. "Sometimes I think so. Again——" She shook her head doubtfully.

"You would be dead if you were not. As strong in soul as in body."

"Probably," admitted she. "Anyhow, I am sure I shall always be—alone. I shall visit—I shall linger on my threshold and talk. Perhaps I shall wander in perfumed gardens and dream of comradeship. But I shall return chez moi."

He rose—sighed—laughed—at her and at himself. "Don't delay too long," said he.

"Delay?"

"Your career."

"My career? Why, I am in the full swing of it. I'm at work in the only profession I'm fit for."

"The profession of woman?"

"Yes—the profession of female."

He winced—and at this sign, if she did not ask herself what pleased her, she did not ask herself why. He said sharply, "I don't like that."

"But you have only to hear it. Think of poor me who have to live it."

"Have to? No," said he.

"Surely you're not suggesting that I drop back into the laboring classes! No, thank you. If you knew, you'd not say anything so stupid."

"I do know, and I was not suggesting that. Under this capitalistic system the whole working class is degraded. They call what they do 'work,' but that word ought to be reserved for what a man does when he exercises mind and body usefully. What the working class is condemned to by capitalism is not work but toil."

"The toil of a slave," said Susan.

"It's shallow twaddle or sheer want to talk about the dignity and beauty of labor under this system," he went on. "It is ugly and degrading. The fools or hypocrites who talk that way ought to be forced to join the gangs of slaves at their tasks in factory and mine and shop, in the fields and the streets. And even the easier and better paid tasks, even what the capitalists themselves do—those things aren't dignified and beautiful. Capitalism divides all men except those of one class—the class to which I luckily belong—divides all other men into three unlovely classes—slave owners, slave drivers and slaves. But you're not interested in those questions."

"In wage slavery? No. I wish to forget about it. Any alternative to being a wage slave or a slave driver—or a slave owner. Any alternative."

"You don't appreciate your own good fortune," said he. "Most human beings—all but a very few—have to be in the slave classes, in one way or another. They have to submit to the repulsive drudgery, with no advancement except to slave driver. As for women—if they have to work, what can they do but sell themselves into slavery to the machines, to the capitalists? But you—you needn't do that. Nature endowed you with talent—unusual talent, I believe. How lucky you are! How superior to the great mass of your fellow beings who must slave or starve, because they have no talent!"

"Talent?—I?" said Susan. "For what, pray?"

"For the stage."

She looked amused. "You evidently don't think me vain—or you'd not venture that jest."

"For the stage," he repeated.

"Thanks," said she drily, "but I'll not appeal from your verdict."

"My verdict? What do you mean?"

"I prefer to talk of something else," said she coldly, offended by his unaccountable disregard of her feelings.

"This is bewildering," said he. And his manner certainly fitted the words.

"That I should have understood? Perhaps I shouldn't—at least, not so quickly—if I hadn't heard how often you have been disappointed, and how hard it has been for you to get rid of some of those you tried and found wanting."

"Believe me—I was not disappointed in you." He spoke earnestly, apparently with sincerity. "The contrary. Your throwing it all up was one of the shocks of my life."

She laughed mockingly—to hide her sensitiveness.

"One of the shocks of my life," he repeated.

She was looking at him curiously—wondering why he was thus uncandid.

"It puzzled me," he went on. "I've been lingering on here, trying to solve the puzzle. And the more I've seen of you the less I understand. Why did you do it? How could you do it?"

He was walking up and down the room in a characteristic pose—hands clasped behind his back as if to keep them quiet, body erect, head powerfully thrust forward. He halted abruptly and wheeled to face her. "Do you mean to tell me you didn't get tired of work and drop it for—" he waved his arm to indicate her luxurious surroundings—"for this?"

No sign of her agitation showed at the surface. But she felt she was not concealing herself from him.

He resumed his march, presently to halt and wheel again upon her. But before he could speak, she stopped him.

"I don't wish to hear any more," said she, the strange look in her eyes. It was all she could do to hide the wild burst of emotion that had followed her discovery. Then she had not been without a chance for a real career! She might have been free, might have belonged to herself——

"It is not too late," cried he. "That's why I'm here."

"It is too late," she said.

"It is not too late," repeated he, harshly, in his way that swept aside opposition. "I shall get you back." Triumphantly, "The puzzle is solved!"

She faced him with a look of defiant negation. "That ocean I crossed—it's as narrow as the East River into which I thought of throwing myself many a time—it's as narrow as the East River beside the ocean between what I am and what I was. And I'll never go back. Never!"

She repeated the "never" quietly, under her breath. His eyes looked as if they, without missing an essential detail, had swept the whole of that to which she would never go back. He said:

"Go back? No, indeed. Who's asking you to go back? Not I. I'm not asking you to go anywhere. I'm simply saying that you will—must—go forward. If you were in love, perhaps not. But you aren't in love. I know from experience how men and women care for each other—how they form these relationships. They find each other convenient and comfortable. But they care only for themselves. Especially young people. One must live quite a while to discover that thinking about oneself is living in a stuffy little cage with only a little light, through slats in the top that give no view. . . . It's an unnatural life for you. It can't last. You—centering upon yourself—upon comfort and convenience. Absurd!"

"I have chosen," said she.

"No—you can't do it," he went on, as if she had not spoken. "You can't spend your life at dresses and millinery, at chattering about art, at thinking about eating and drinking—at being passively amused—at attending to your hair and skin and figure. You may think so, but in reality you are getting ready for me . . . for your career. You are simply educating yourself. I shall have you back."

She held the cigarette to her lips, inhaled the smoke deeply, exhaled it slowly.

"I will tell you why," he went on, as if he were answering a protest. "Every one of us has an individuality of some sort. And in spite of everything and anything, except death or hopeless disease, that individuality will insist upon expressing itself."

"Mine is expressing itself," said she with a light smile—the smile of a light woman.

"You can't rest in this present life of yours. Your individuality is too strong. It will have its way—and for all your mocking smiling, you know I am right. I understand how you were tempted into it——"

She opened her lips—changed her mind and stopped her lips with her cigarette.

"I don't blame you—and it was just as well. This life has taught you—will teach you—will advance you in your career. . . . Tell me, what gave you the idea that I was disappointed?"

She tossed her cigarette into the big ash tray. "As I told you, it is too late." She rose and looked at him with a strange, sweet smile. "I've got any quantity of faults," said she. "But there's one I haven't got. I don't whine."

"You don't whine," assented he, "and you don't lie—and you don't shirk. Men and women have been canonized for less. I understand that for some reason you can't talk about——"

"Then why do you continue to press me?" said she, a little coldly.

He accepted the rebuke with a bow. "Nevertheless," said he, with raillery to carry off his persistence, "I shall get you. If not sooner, then when the specter of an obscure—perhaps poor—old age begins to agitate the rich hangings of youth's banquet hall."

"That'll be a good many years yet," mocked she. And from her lovely young face flashed the radiant defiance of her perfect youth and health.

"Years that pass quickly," retorted he, unmoved.

She was still radiant, still smiling, but once more she was seeing the hideous old women of the tenements. Into her nostrils stole the stench of the foul den in which she had slept with Mrs. Tucker and Mrs. Reardon—and she was hearing the hunchback of the dive playing for the drunken dancing old cronies, with their tin cups of whiskey.

No danger of that now? How little she was saving of her salary from Palmer! She could not "work" men—she simply could not. She would never put by enough to be independent and every day her tastes for luxury had firmer hold upon her. No danger? As much danger as ever—a danger postponed but certain to threaten some day—and then, a fall from a greater height—a certain fall. She was hearing the battered, shattered piano of the dive.

"For pity's sake Mrs. Palmer!" cried Brent, in a low voice.

She started. The beautiful room, the environment of luxury and taste and comfort came back.

Gourdain interrupted and then Palmer.

The four went to the Cafe Anglais for dinner. Brent announced that he was going to the Riviera soon to join a party of friends. "I wish you would visit me later," said he, with a glance that included them all and rested, as courtesy required, upon Susan. "There's room in my villa—barely room."

"We've not really settled here," said Susan. "And we've taken up French seriously."

"The weather's frightful," said Palmer, with a meaning glance at her. "I think we ought to go."

But her expression showed that she had no intention of going, no sympathy with Palmer's desire to use this excellent, easy ladder of Brent's offering to make the ascent into secure respectability.

"Next winter, then," said Brent, who was observing her. "Or—in the early spring, perhaps."

"Oh, we may change our minds and come," Palmer suggested eagerly. "I'm going to try to persuade my wife."

"Come if you can," said Brent cordially. "I'll have no one stopping with me."

When they were alone, Palmer sent his valet away and fussed about impatiently until Susan's maid had unhooked her dress and had got her ready for bed. As the maid began the long process of giving her hair a thorough brushing, he said, "Please let her go, Susan. I want to tell you something."

"She does not know a word of English."

"But these French are so clever that they understand perfectly with their eyes."

Susan sent the maid to bed and sat in a dressing gown brushing her hair. It was long enough to reach to the middle of her back and to cover her bosom. It was very thick and wavy. Now that the scarlet was washed from her lips for the night, her eyes shone soft and clear with no relief for their almost tragic melancholy. He was looking at her in profile. Her expression was stern as well as sad—the soul of a woman who has suffered and has been made strong, if not hard.

"I got a letter from my lawyers today," he began. "It was about that marriage. I'll read."

At the word "marriage," she halted the regular stroke of the brush. Her eyes gazed into the mirror of the dressing table through her reflection deep into her life, deep into the vistas of memory. As he unfolded the letter, she leaned back in the low chair, let her hands drop to her lap.

"'As the inclosed documents show,'" he read, "'we have learned and have legally verified that Jeb—not James—Ferguson divorced his wife Susan Lenox about a year after their marriage, on the ground of desertion; and two years later he fell through the floor of an old bridge near Brooksburg and was killed.'"

The old bridge—she was feeling its loose flooring sag and shift under the cautious hoofs of the horse. She was seeing Rod Spenser on the horse, behind him a girl, hardly more than a child—under the starry sky exchanging confidences—talking of their futures.

"So, you see, you are free," said Palmer. "I went round to an American lawyer's office this afternoon, and borrowed an old legal form book. And I've copied out this form——"

She was hardly conscious of his laying papers on the table before her.

"It's valid, as I've fixed things. The lawyer gave me some paper. It has a watermark five years old. I've dated back two years—quite enough. So when we've signed, the marriage never could be contested—not even by ourselves."

He took the papers from the table, laid them in her lap. She started. "What were you saying?" she asked. "What's this?"

"What were you thinking about?" said he.

"I wasn't thinking," she answered, with her slow sweet smile of self-concealment. "I was feeling—living—the past. I was watching the procession."

He nodded understandingly. "That's a kind of time-wasting that can easily be overdone."

"Easily," she agreed. "Still, there's the lesson. I have to remind myself of it often—always, when there's anything that has to be decided."

"I've written out two of the forms," said he. "We sign both. You keep one, I the other. Why not sign now?"

She read the form—the agreement to take each other as lawful husband and wife and to regard the contract as in all respects binding and legal.

"Do you understand it?" laughed he nervously, for her manner was disquieting.

"Perfectly."

"You stared at the paper as if it were a puzzle."

"It is," said she.

"Come into the library and we'll sign and have it over with."

She laid the papers on the dressing table, took up her brush, drew it slowly over her hair several times.

"Wake up," cried he, good humoredly. "Come on into the library." And he went to the threshold.

She continued brushing her hair. "I can't sign," said she. There was the complete absence of emotion that caused her to be misunderstood always by those who did not know her peculiarities. No one could have suspected the vision of the old women of the dive before her eyes, the sound of the hunchback's piano in her ears, the smell of foul liquors and foul bodies and foul breaths in her nostrils. Yet she repeated:

"No—I can't sign."

He returned to his chair, seated himself, a slight cloud on his brow, a wicked smile on his lips. "Now what the devil!" said he gently, a jeer in his quiet voice. "What's all this about?"

"I can't marry you," said she. "I wish to live on as we are."

"But if we do that we can't get up where we want to go."

"I don't wish to know anyone but interesting men of the sort that does things—and women of my own sort. Those people have no interest in conventionalities."

"That's not the crowd we set out to conquer," said he. "You seem to have forgotten."

"It's you who have forgotten," replied she.

"Yes—yes—I know," he hastened to say. "I wasn't accusing you of breaking your agreement. You've lived up to it—and more. But, Susan, the people you care about don't especially interest me. Brent—yes. He's a man of the world as well as one of the artistic chaps. But the others—they're beyond me. I admit it's all fine, and I'm glad you go in for it. But the only crowd that's congenial to me is the crowd that we've got to be married to get in with."

She saw his point—saw it more clearly than did he. To him the world of fashion and luxurious amusement seemed the only world worth while. He accepted the scheme of things as he found it, had the conventional ambitions—to make in succession the familiar goals of the conventional human success—power, wealth, social position. It was impossible for him to get any other idea of a successful life, of ambitions worthy a man's labor. It was evidence of the excellence of his mind that he was able to tolerate the idea of the possibility of there being another mode of success worth while.

"I'm helping you in your ambitions—in doing what you think is worth while," said he. "Don't you think you owe it to me to help me in mine?"

He saw the slight change of expression that told him how deeply he had touched her.

"If I don't go in for the high society game," he went on, "I'll have nothing to do. I'll be adrift—gambling, drinking, yawning about and going to pieces. A man's got to have something to work for—and he can't work unless it seems to him worth doing."

She was staring into the mirror, her elbows on the table, her chin upon her interlaced fingers. It would be difficult to say how much of his gentleness to her was due to her physical charm for him, and how much to his respect for her mind and her character. He himself would have said that his weakness was altogether the result of the spell her physical charm cast over him. But it is probable that the other element was the stronger.

"You'll not be selfish, Susan?" urged he. "You'll give me a square deal."

"Yes—I see that it does look selfish," said she. "A little while ago I'd not have been able to see any deeper than the looks of it. Freddie, there are some things no one has a right to ask of another, and no one has a right to grant."

The ugliness of his character was becoming less easy to control. This girl whom he had picked up, practically out of the gutter, and had heaped generosities upon, was trying his patience too far. But he said, rather amiably:

"Certainly I'm not asking any such thing of you in asking you to become a respectable married woman, the wife of a rich man."

"Yes—you are, Freddie," replied she gently. "If I married you, I'd be signing an agreement to lead your life, to give up my own—an agreement to become a sort of woman I've no desire to be and no interest in being; to give up trying to become the only sort of woman I think is worth while. When we were discussing my coming with you, you made this same proposal in another form. I refused it then. And I refuse it now. It's harder to refuse now, but I'm stronger."

"Stronger, thanks to the money you've got from me—the money and the rest of it," sneered he.

"Haven't I earned all I've got?" said she, so calmly that he did not realize how the charge of ingratitude, unjust though it was, had struck into her.

"You have changed!" said he. "You're getting as hard as the rest of us. So it's all a matter of money, of give and take—is it? None of the generosity and sentiment you used to be full of? You've simply been using me."

"It can be put that way," replied she. "And no doubt you honestly see it that way. But I've got to see my own interest and my own right, Freddie. I've learned at last that I mustn't trust to anyone else to look after them for me."

"Are you riding for a fall—Queenie?"

At "Queenie" she smiled faintly. "I'm riding the way I always have," answered she. "It has carried me down. But—it has brought me up again." She looked at him with eyes that appealed, without yielding. "And I'll ride that way to the end—up or down," said she. "I can't help it."

"Then you want to break with me?" he asked—and he began to look dangerous.

"No," replied she. "I want to go on as we are. . . . I'll not be interfering in your social ambitions, in any way. Over here it'll help you to have a mistress who—" she saw her image in the glass, threw him an arch glance—"who isn't altogether unattractive won't it? And if you found you could go higher by marrying some woman of the grand world—why, you'd be free to do it."

He had a way of looking at her that gave her—and himself—the sense of a delirious embrace. He looked at her so, now. He said:

"You take advantage of my being crazy about you—damn you!"

"Heaven knows," laughed she, "I need every advantage I can find."

He touched her—the lightest kind of touch. It carried the sense of embrace in his look still more giddily upward. "Queenie!" he said softly.

She smiled at him through half closed eyes that with a gentle and shy frankness confessed the secret of his attraction for her. There was, however, more of strength than of passion in her face as a whole. Said she:

"We're getting on well—as we are aren't we? I can meet the most amusing and interesting people—my sort of people. You can go with the people and to the places you like and you'll not be bound. If you should take a notion to marry some woman with a big position—you'd not have to regret being tied to—Queenie."

"But—I want you—I want you," said he. "I've got to have you."

"As long as you like," said she. "But on terms I can accept—always on terms I can accept. Never on any others—never! I can't help it. I can yield everything but that."

Where she was concerned he was the primitive man only. The higher his passion rose, the stronger became his desire for absolute possession. When she spoke of terms—of the limitations upon his possession of her—she transformed his passion into fury. He eyed her wickedly, abruptly demanded:

"When did you decide to make this kick-up?"

"I don't know. Simply—when you asked me to sign, I found I couldn't."

"You don't expect me to believe that."

"It's the truth." She resumed brushing her hair.

"Look at me!"

She turned her face toward him, met his gaze.

"Have you fallen in love with that young Jew?"

"Gourdain? No."

"Have you a crazy notion that your looks'll get you a better husband? A big fortune or a title?"

"I haven't thought about a husband. Haven't I told you I wish to be free?"

"But that doesn't mean anything."

"It might," said she absently.

"How?"

"I don't know. If one is always free—one is ready for—whatever comes. Anyhow, I must be free—no matter what it costs."

"I see you're bent on dropping back into the dirt I picked you out of."

"Even that," she said. "I must be free."

"Haven't you any desire to be respectable—decent?"

"I guess not," confessed she. "What is there in that direction for me?"

"A woman doesn't stay young and good-looking long."

"No." She smiled faintly. "But does she get old and ugly any slower for being married?"

He rose and stood over her, looked smiling danger down at her. She leaned back in her chair to meet his eyes without constraint. "You're trying to play me a trick," said he. "But you're not going to get away with the goods. I'm astonished that you are so rotten ungrateful."

"Because I'm not for sale?"

"Queenie balking at selling herself," he jeered. "And what's the least you ever did sell for?"

"A half-dollar, I think. No—two drinks of whiskey one cold night. But what I sold was no more myself than—than the coat I'd pawned and drunk up before I did it."

The plain calm way in which she said this made it so terrible that he winced and turned away. "We have seen hell—haven't we?" he muttered. He turned toward her with genuine passion of feeling. "Susan," he cried, "don't be a fool. Let's push our luck, now that things are coming our way. We need each other—we want to stay together—don't we?"

"I want to stay. I'm happy."

"Then—let's put the record straight."

"Let's keep it straight," replied she earnestly. "Don't ask me to go where I don't belong. For I can't, Freddie—honestly, I can't."

A pause. Then, "You will!" said he, not in blustering fury, but in that cool and smiling malevolence which had made him the terror of his associates from his boyhood days among the petty thieves and pickpockets of Grand Street. He laid his hand gently on her shoulder. "You hear me. I say you will."

She looked straight at him. "Not if you kill me," she said. She rose to face him at his own height. "I've bought my freedom with my body and with my heart and with my soul. It's all I've got. I shall keep it."

He measured her strength with an expert eye. He knew that he was beaten. He laughed lightly and went into his dressing-room.



CHAPTER XXII

THEY met the next morning with no sign in the manner of either that there had been a drawn battle, that there was an armed truce. She knew that he, like herself, was thinking of nothing else. But until he had devised some way of certainly conquering her he would wait, and watch, and pretend that he was satisfied with matters as they were. The longer she reflected the less uneasy she became—as to immediate danger. In Paris the methods of violence he might have been tempted to try in New York were out of the question. What remained? He must realize that threats to expose her would be futile; also, he must feel vulnerable, himself, to that kind of attack—a feeling that would act as a restraint, even though he might appreciate that she was the sort of person who could not in any circumstances resort to it. He had not upon her a single one of the holds a husband has upon a wife. True, he could break with her. But she must appreciate how easy it would now be for her in this capital of the idle rich to find some other man glad to "protect" a woman so expert at gratifying man's vanity of being known as the proprietor of a beautiful and fashionable woman. She had discovered how, in the aristocracy of European wealth, an admired mistress was as much a necessary part of the grandeur of great nobles, great financiers, great manufacturers, or merchants, as wife, as heir, as palace, as equipage, as chef, as train of secretaries and courtiers. She knew how deeply it would cut, to find himself without his show piece that made him the envied of men and the desired of women. Also, she knew that she had an even stronger hold upon him—that she appealed to him as no other woman ever had, that she had become for him a tenacious habit. She was not afraid that he would break with her. But she could not feel secure; in former days she had seen too far into the mazes of that Italian mind of his, she knew too well how patient, how relentless, how unforgetting he was. She would have taken murder into account as more than a possibility but for his intense and intelligent selfishness; he would not risk his life or his liberty; he would not deprive himself of his keenest pleasure. He was resourceful; but in the circumstances what resources were there for him to draw upon?

When he began to press upon her more money than ever, and to buy her costly jewelry, she felt still further reassured. Evidently he had been unable to think out any practicable scheme; evidently he was, for the time, taking the course of appeal to her generous instincts, of making her more and more dependent upon his liberality.

Well—was he not right? Love might fail; passion might wane; conscience, aiding self-interest with its usual servility, might overcome the instincts of gratitude. But what power could overcome the loyalty resting upon money interest? No power but that of a longer purse than his. As she was not in the mood to make pretenses about herself to herself, she smiled at this cynical self-measuring. "But I shan't despise myself for being so material," said she to herself, "until I find a genuine case of a woman, respectable or otherwise, who has known poverty and escaped from it, and has then voluntarily given up wealth to go back to it. I should not stay on with him if he were distasteful to me. And that's more than most women can honestly say. Perhaps even I should not stay on if it were not for a silly, weak feeling of obligation—but I can't be sure of that." She had seen too much of men and women preening upon noble disinterested motives when in fact their real motives were the most calculatingly selfish; she preferred doing herself less than justice rather than more.

She had fifty-five thousand francs on deposit at Munroe's—all her very own. She had almost two hundred thousand francs' worth of jewels, which she would be justified in keeping—at least, she hoped she would think so—should there come a break with Freddie. Yet in spite of this substantial prosperity—or was it because of this prosperity?—she abruptly began again to be haunted by the old visions, by warnings of the dangers that beset any human being who has not that paying trade or profession which makes him or her independent—gives him or her the only unassailable independence.

The end with Freddie might be far away. But end, she saw, there would be the day when he would somehow get her in his power and so would drive her to leave him. For she could not again become a slave. Extreme youth, utter inexperience, no knowledge of real freedom—these had enabled her to endure in former days. But she was wholly different now. She could not sink back. Steadily she was growing less and less able to take orders from anyone. This full-grown passion for freedom, this intolerance of the least restraint—how dangerous, if she should find herself in a position where she would have to put up with the caprices of some man or drop down and down!

What real, secure support had she? None. Her building was without solid foundations. Her struggle with Freddie was a revelation and a warning. There were days when, driving about in her luxurious car, she could do nothing but search among the crowds in the streets for the lonely old women in rags, picking and peering along the refuse of the cafes—weazened, warped figures swathed in rags, creeping along, mumbling to themselves, lips folded in and in over toothless gums.

One day Brent saw again the look she often could not keep from her face when that vision of the dance hall in the slums was horrifying her. He said impulsively:

"What is it? Tell me—what is it, Susan?"

It was the first and the last time he ever called her by her only personal name. He flushed deeply. To cover his confusion—and her own—she said in her most frivolous way:

"I was thinking that if I am ever rich I shall have more pairs of shoes and stockings and take care of more orphans than anyone else in the world."

"A purpose! At last a purpose!" laughed he. "Now you will go to work."

Through Gourdain she got a French teacher—and her first woman friend.

The young widow he recommended, a Madame Clelie Deliere, was the most attractive woman she had ever known. She had all the best French characteristics—a good heart, a lively mind, was imaginative yet sensible, had good taste in all things. Like most of the attractive French women, she was not beautiful, but had that which is of far greater importance—charm. She knew not a word of English, and it was perhaps Susan's chief incentive toward working hard at French that she could not really be friends with this fascinating person until she learned to speak her language. Palmer—partly by nature, partly through early experience in the polyglot tenement district of New York—had more aptitude for language than had Susan. But he had been lazy about acquiring French in a city where English is spoken almost universally. With the coming of young Madame Deliere to live in the apartment, he became interested.

It was not a month after her coming when you might have seen at one of the fashionable gay restaurants any evening a party of four—Gourdain was the fourth—talking French almost volubly. Palmer's accent was better than Susan's. She could not—and felt she never could—get the accent of the trans-Alleghany region out of her voice—and so long as that remained she would not speak good French. "But don't let that trouble you," said Clelie. "Your voice is your greatest charm. It is so honest and so human. Of the Americans I have met, I have liked only those with that same tone in their voices."

"But I haven't that accent," said Freddie with raillery.

Madame Clelie laughed. "No—and I do not like you," retorted she. "No one ever did. You do not wish to be liked. You wish to be feared." Her lively brown eyes sparkled and the big white teeth in her generous mouth glistened. "You wish to be feared—and you are feared, Monsieur Freddie."

"It takes a clever woman to know how to flatter with the truth," said he. "Everybody always has been afraid of me—and is—except, of course, my wife."

He was always talking of "my wife" now. The subject so completely possessed his mind that he aired it unconsciously. When she was not around he boasted of "my wife's" skill in the art of dress, of "my wife's" taste, of "my wife's" shrewdness in getting her money's worth. When she was there, he was using the favorite phrase "my wife" this—"my wife" that—"my wife" the other—until it so got on her nerves that she began to wait for it and to wince whenever it came—never a wait of many minutes. At first she thought he was doing this deliberately either to annoy her or in pursuance of some secret deep design. But she soon saw that he was not aware of his inability to keep off the subject or of his obsession for that phrase representing the thing he was intensely wishing and willing—"chiefly," she thought, "because it is something he cannot have." She was amazed at his display of such a weakness. It gave her the chance to learn an important truth about human nature—that self-indulgence soon destroys the strongest nature—and she was witness to how rapidly an inflexible will disintegrates if incessantly applied to an impossibility. When a strong arrogant man, unbalanced by long and successful self-indulgence, hurls himself at an obstruction, either the obstruction yields or the man is destroyed.

One morning early in February, as she was descending from her auto in front of the apartment house, she saw Brent in the doorway. Never had he looked so young or so well. His color was fine, his face had become almost boyish; upon his skin and in his eyes was that gloss of perfect health which until these latter days of scientific hygiene was rarely seen after twenty-five in a woman or after thirty in a man. She gathered in all, to the smallest detail—such as the color of his shirt—with a single quick glance. She knew that he had seen her before she saw him—that he had been observing her. Her happiest friendliest smile made her small face bewitching as she advanced with outstretched hand.

"When did you come?" she asked.

"About an hour ago."

"From the Riviera?"

"No, indeed. From St. Moritz—and skating and skiing and tobogganing. I rather hoped I looked it. Doing those things in that air—it's being born again."

"I felt well till I saw you," said she. "Now I feel dingy and half sick."

He laughed, his glance sweeping her from hat to boots. Certainly his eyes could not have found a more entrancing sight. She was wearing a beautiful dress of golden brown cloth, sable hat, short coat and muff, brown suede boots laced high upon her long slender calves. And when she had descended from the perfect little limousine made to order for her, he had seen a ravishing flutter of lingerie of pale violet silk. The sharp air had brought no color to her cheeks to interfere with the abrupt and fascinating contrast of their pallor with the long crimson bow of her mouth. But her skin seemed transparent and had the clearness of health itself. Everything about her, every least detail, was of Parisian perfection.

"Probably there are not in the world," said he, "so many as a dozen women so well put together as you are. No, not half a dozen. Few women carry the art of dress to the point of genius."

"I see they had only frumps at St. Moritz this season," laughed she.

But he would not be turned aside. "Most of the well dressed women stop short with being simply frivolous in spending so much time at less than perfection—like the army of poets who write pretty good verse, or the swarm of singers who sing pretty well. I've heard of you many times this winter. You are the talk of Paris."

She laughed with frank delight. It was indeed a pleasure to discover that her pains had not been in vain.

"It is always the outsider who comes to the great city to show it its own resources," he went on. "I knew you were going to do this. Still happy?"

"Oh, yes."

But he had taken her by surprise. A faint shadow flitted across her face. "Not so happy, I see."

"You see too much. Won't you lunch with us? We'll have it in about half an hour."

He accepted promptly and they went up together. His glance traveled round the drawing-room; and she knew he had noted all the changes she had made on better acquaintance with her surroundings and wider knowledge of interior furnishing. She saw that he approved, and it increased her good humor. "Are you hurrying through Paris on your way to somewhere else?" she asked.

"No, I stop here—I think—until I sail for America."

"And that will be soon?"

"Perhaps not until July. I have no plans. I've finished a play a woman suggested to me some time ago. And I'm waiting."

A gleam of understanding came into her eyes. There was controlled interest in her voice as she inquired:

"When is it to be produced?"

"When the woman who suggested it is ready to act in it."

"Do I by any chance know her?"

"You used to know her. You will know her again."

She shook her head slowly, a pensive smile hovering about her eyes and lips. "No—not again. I have changed."

"We do not change," said he. "We move, but we do not change. You are the same character you were when you came into the world. And what you were then, that you will be when the curtain falls on the climax of your last act. Your circumstances will change—and your clothes—and your face, hair, figure—but not you."

"Do you believe that?"

"I know it."

She nodded slowly, the violet-gray eyes pensive. "Birds in the strong wind—that's what we are. Driven this way or that—or quite beaten down. But the wind doesn't change sparrow to eagle—or eagle to gull—does it?"

She had removed her coat and was seated on an oval lounge gazing into the open fire. He was standing before it, looking taller and stronger than ever, in a gray lounging suit. A cigarette depended loosely from the corner of his mouth. He said abruptly:

"How are you getting on with your acting?"

She glanced in surprise.

"Gourdain," Brent explained. "He had to talk to somebody about how wonderful you are. So he took to writing me—two huge letters a week—all about you."

"I'm fond of him. And he's fond of Clelie. She's my——"

"I know all," he interrupted. "The tie between them is their fondness for you. Tell me about the acting."

"Oh—Clelie and I have been going to the theater every few days—to help me with French. She is mad about acting, and there's nothing I like better."

"Also, you simply have to have occupation."

She nodded. "I wasn't brought up to fit me for an idler. When I was a child I was taught to keep busy—not at nothing, but at something. Freddie's a lot better at it than I."

"Naturally," said Brent. "You had a home, with order and a system—an old-fashioned American home. He—well, he hadn't."

"Clelie and I go at our make-believe acting quite seriously. We have to—if we're to fool ourselves that it's an occupation."

"Why this anxiety to prove to me that you're not really serious?"

Susan laughed mockingly for answer, and went on:

"You should see us do the two wives in 'L'Enigme'—or mother and daughter in that diary scene in 'L'Autre Danger'!"

"I must. . . . When are you going to resume your career?"

She rose, strolled toward an open door at one end of the salon, closed it—strolled toward the door into the hall, glanced out, returned without having closed it. She then said:

"Could I study here in Paris?"

Triumph gleamed in his eyes. "Yes. Boudrin—a splendid teacher—speaks English. He—and I—can teach you."

"Tell me what I'd have to do."

"We would coach you for a small part in some play that's to be produced here."

"In French?"

"I'll have an American girl written into a farce. Enough to get you used to the stage—to give you practice in what he'll teach you—the trade side of the art."

"And then?"

"And then we shall spend the summer learning your part in my play. Two or three weeks of company rehearsals in New York in September. In October—your name out over the Long Acre Theater in letters of fire."