she would have to--she would catch the
general note, grow blunted as those other people were blunted, and
gradually come to wonder at her own revolt, as Strefford now honestly
wondered at it. She felt as though she were on the point of losing some
new-found treasure, a treasure precious only to herself, but beside
which all he offered her was nothing, the triumph of her wounded pride
nothing, the security of her future nothing.

"What is it, Susy?" he asked, with the same puzzled gentleness.

Ah, the loneliness of never being able to make him understand! She had
felt lonely enough when the flaming sword of Nick's indignation had shut
her out from their Paradise; but there had been a cruel bliss in the
pain. Nick had not opened her eyes to new truths, but had waked in her
again something which had lain unconscious under years of accumulated
indifference. And that re-awakened sense had never left her since,
and had somehow kept her from utter loneliness because it was a secret
shared with Nick, a gift she owed to Nick, and which, in leaving her, he
could not take from her. It was almost, she suddenly felt, as if he had
left her with a child.

"My dear girl," Strefford said, with a resigned glance at his watch,
"you know we're dining at the Embassy...."

At the Embassy? She looked at him vaguely: then she remembered. Yes,
they were dining that night at the Ascots', with Strefford's cousin, the
Duke of Dunes, and his wife, the handsome irreproachable young Duchess;
with the old gambling Dowager Duchess, whom her son and daughter-in-law
had come over from England to see; and with other English and French
guests of a rank and standing worthy of the Duneses. Susy knew that her
inclusion in such a dinner could mean but one thing: it was her definite
recognition as Altringham's future wife. She was "the little American"
whom one had to ask when one invited him, even on ceremonial occasions.
The family had accepted her; the Embassy could but follow suit.

"It's late, dear; and I've got to see someone on business first,"
Strefford reminded her patiently.

"Oh, Streff--I can't, I can't!" The words broke from her without her
knowing what she was saying. "I can't go with you--I can't go to the
Embassy. I can't go on any longer like this...." She lifted her eyes
to his in desperate appeal. "Oh, understand-do please understand!" she
wailed, knowing, while she spoke, the utter impossibility of what she
asked.

Strefford's face h