n you at St. Moritz?" Susy asked, surprised.

"Heavens, no! He's coming here to pick up Clarissa and take her to some
stuffy cure in Austria with his mother. It's too lucky: there's just
time to telegraph him to bring my things. I didn't mean to wait for him;
but it won't delay me more than day or two."

Susy's heart sank. She was not much afraid of Ellie alone, but Ellie and
Nelson together formed an incalculable menace. No one could tell what
spark of truth might dash from their collision. Susy felt that she could
deal with the two dangers separately and successively, but not together
and simultaneously.

"But, Ellie, why should you wait for Nelson? I'm certain to find someone
here who's going to St. Moritz and will take your things if he brings
them. It's a pity to risk losing your rooms."

This argument appealed for a moment to Mrs. Vanderlyn. "That's
true; they say all the hotels are jammed. You dear, you're always
so practical!" She clasped Susy to her scented bosom. "And you know,
darling, I'm sure you'll be glad to get rid of me--you and Nick! Oh,
don't be hypocritical and say 'Nonsense!' You see, I understand... I
used to think of you so often, you two... during those blessed weeks
when we two were alone...."

The sudden tears, brimming over Ellie's lovely eyes, and threatening to
make the blue circles below them run into the adjoining carmine, filled
Susy with compunction.

"Poor thing--oh, poor thing!" she thought; and hearing herself called
by Nick, who was waiting to take her out for their usual sunset on the
lagoon, she felt a wave of pity for the deluded creature who would
never taste that highest of imaginable joys. "But all the same," Susy
reflected, as she hurried down to her husband, "I'm glad I persuaded her
not to wait for Nelson."

Some days had elapsed since Susy and Nick had had a sunset to
themselves, and in the interval Susy had once again learned the superior
quality of the sympathy that held them together. She now viewed all the
rest of life as no more than a show: a jolly show which it would have
been a thousand pities to miss, but which, if the need arose, they could
get up and leave at any moment--provided that they left it together.

In the dusk, while their prow slid over inverted palaces, and through
the scent of hidden gardens, she leaned against him and murmured, her
mind returning to the recent scene with Ellie: "Nick, should you hate me
dreadfully if I had no clothes?"

H