hey
were respectable and paid regularly.

"What's left of the two hundred and fifty will not last long,"
said Spenser to Susan, when they were established and alone.
"But we'll have another five hundred as soon as the play's
done, and that'll be in less than a month. We're to begin
tomorrow. In less than two months the play'll be on and the
royalties will be coming in. I wonder how much I owe the
doctor and the hospital."

"That's settled," said Susan.

He glanced at her with a frown. "How much was it? You had no
right to pay!"

"You couldn't have got either doctor or room without payment
in advance." She spoke tranquilly, with a quiet assurance of
manner that was new in her, the nervous and sensitive about
causing displeasure in others. She added, "Don't be cross,
Rod. You know it's only pretense."

"Don't you believe anybody has any decency?" demanded he.

"It depends on what you mean by decency," replied she. "But
why talk of the past? Let's forget it."

"I would that I could!" exclaimed he.

She laughed at his heroics. "Put that in your play," said
she. "But this isn't the melodrama of the stage. It's the
farce comedy of life."

"How you have changed! Has all the sweetness, all the
womanliness, gone out of your character?"

She showed how little she was impressed. "I've learned to
take terrible things--really terrible things--without making
a fuss--or feeling like making a fuss. You can't expect me to
get excited over mere staginess. They're fond of fake
emotions up in this part of town. But down where I've been so
long the real horrors come too thick and fast for there to be
any time to fake."

He continued to frown, presently came out of a deep study to
say, "Susie, I see I've got to have a serious talk with you."

"Wait till you're well, my dear," said she. "I'm afraid I'll
not be very sympathetic with your seriousness."

"No--today. I'm not an invalid. And our relations worry me,
whenever I think of them."

He observed her as she sat with hands loosely clasped in her
lap; there was an inscrutable look upon her delicate face,
upon the clear-cut features so attractively framed by her
thick dark hair, brown in some lights, black in others.

"Well?" said she.

"To begin, I want you to stop rouging your lips. It's the
only sign of--of what you were. I'd a little rather you
didn't smoke. But as respectable women smoke nowadays, why I
don't seriously object. And when y