the American lawyer
here. His address is 100, Boulevard Haussmann. I hope--"

She broke off on the last word. Hope? What did she hope, either for him
or for herself? Wishes for his welfare would sound like a mockery--and
she would rather her letter should seem bitter than unfeeling. Above
all, she wanted to get it done. To have to re-write even those few
lines would be torture. So she left "I hope," and simply added: "to hear
before long what you have decided."

She read it over, and shivered. Not one word of the past-not one
allusion to that mysterious interweaving of their lives which had
enclosed them one in the other like the flower in its sheath! What place
had such memories in such a letter? She had the feeling that she wanted
to hide that other Nick away in her own bosom, and with him the other
Susy, the Susy he had once imagined her to be.... Neither of them seemed
concerned with the present business.

The letter done, she stared at the sealed envelope till its presence
in the room became intolerable, and she understood that she must either
tear it up or post it immediately. She went down to the hall of the
sleeping hotel, and bribed the night-porter to carry the letter to the
nearest post office, though he objected that, at that hour, no time
would be gained. "I want it out of the house," she insisted: and waited
sternly by the desk, in her dressing-gown, till he had performed the
errand.

As she re-entered her room, the disordered writing-table struck her; and
she remembered the lawyer's injunction to take a copy of her letter. A
copy to be filed away with the documents in "Lansing versus Lansing!"
She burst out laughing at the idea. What were lawyers made of, she
wondered? Didn't the man guess, by the mere look in her eyes and the
sound of her voice, that she would never, as long as she lived, forget
a word of that letter--that night after night she would lie down, as she
was lying down to-night, to stare wide-eyed for hours into the darkness,
while a voice in her brain monotonously hammered out: "Nick dear, it was
July when you left me..." and so on, word after word, down to the last
fatal syllable?

XXII

STREFFORD was leaving for England.

Once assured that Susy had taken the first step toward freeing herself,
he frankly regarded her as his affianced wife, and could see no reason
for further mystery. She understood his impatience to have their
plans settled; it would protect him from the form