ons attached. And promise to let me know when you've decided
anything."

She looked into his humorously puckered eyes, answering. Their friendly
smile with hers.

"I promise!" she said.

XV

THAT hour with Strefford had altered her whole perspective. Instead of
possible dependence, an enforced return to the old life of connivances
and concessions, she saw before her--whenever she chose to take
them--freedom, power and dignity. Dignity! It was odd what weight that
word had come to have for her. She had dimly felt its significance,
felt the need of its presence in her inmost soul, even in the young
thoughtless days when she had seemed to sacrifice so little to the
austere divinities. And since she had been Nick Lansing's wife she had
consciously acknowledged it, had suffered and agonized when she fell
beneath its standard. Yes: to marry Strefford would give her that
sense of self-respect which, in such a world as theirs, only wealth and
position could ensure. If she had not the mental or moral training to
attain independence in any other way, was she to blame for seeking it on
such terms?

Of course there was always the chance that Nick would come back, would
find life without her as intolerable as she was finding it without him.
If that happened--ah, if that happened! Then she would cease to strain
her eyes into the future, would seize upon the present moment and plunge
into it to the very bottom of oblivion. Nothing on earth would matter
then--money or freedom or pride, or her precious moral dignity, if only
she were in Nick's arms again!

But there was Nick's icy letter, there was Coral Hicks's insolent
post-card, to show how little chance there was of such a solution. Susy
understood that, even before the discovery of her transaction with Ellie
Vanderlyn, Nick had secretly wearied, if not of his wife, at least of
the life that their marriage compelled him to lead. His passion was not
strong enough-had never been strong enough--to outweigh his prejudices,
scruples, principles, or whatever one chose to call them. Susy's dignity
might go up like tinder in the blaze of her love; but his was made of a
less combustible substance. She had felt, in their last talk together,
that she had forever destroyed the inner harmony between them.

Well--there it was, and the fault was doubtless neither hers nor his,
but that of the world they had grown up in, of their own moral contempt
for it and physical dependence on it,