oing it--"

"Oh, how horrible--how horrible!" she groaned.

"Horrible? What's horrible?"

"Why, your not seeing... not feeling..." she began impetuously; and then
stopped. How could she explain to him that what revolted her was not so
much the fact of his having given the little house, as soon as she and
Nick had left it, to those two people of all others--though the vision
of them in the sweet secret house, and under the plane-trees of the
terrace, drew such a trail of slime across her golden hours? No, it was
not that from which she most recoiled, but from the fact that Strefford,
living in luxury in Nelson Vanderlyn's house, should at the same time
have secretly abetted Ellie Vanderlyn's love-affairs, and allowed
her--for a handsome price--to shelter them under his own roof. The
reproach trembled on her lip--but she remembered her own part in the
wretched business, and the impossibility of avowing it to Strefford, and
of revealing to him that Nick had left her for that very reason. She was
not afraid that the discovery would diminish her in Strefford's eyes: he
was untroubled by moral problems, and would laugh away her avowal, with
a sneer at Nick in his new part of moralist. But that was just what she
could not bear: that anyone should cast a doubt on the genuineness of
Nick's standards, or should know how far below them she had fallen.

She remained silent, and Strefford, after a moment, drew her gently down
to the seat beside him. "Susy, upon my soul I don't know what you're
driving at. Is it me you're angry with-or yourself? And what's it all
about! Are you disgusted because I let the villa to a couple who weren't
married! But, hang it, they're the kind that pay the highest price and
I had to earn my living somehow! One doesn't run across a bridal pair
every day...."

She lifted her eyes to his puzzled incredulous face. Poor Streff! No,
it was not with him that she was angry. Why should she be? Even that
ill-advised disclosure had told her nothing she had not already known
about him. It had simply revealed to her once more the real point of
view of the people he and she lived among had shown her that, in spite
of the superficial difference, he felt as they felt, judged as they
judged, was blind as they were-and as she would be expected to be,
should she once again become one of them. What was the use of being
placed by fortune above such shifts and compromises, if in one's heart
one still condoned them? And