ou get more clothes, get
quieter ones. Not that you dress loudly or in bad taste----"

"Thank you," murmured Susan.

"What did you say?"

"I didn't mean to interrupt. Go on."

"I admire the way you dress, but it makes me jealous. I want
you to have nice clothes for the house. I like things that
show your neck and suggest your form. But I don't want you
attracting men's eyes and their loose thoughts, in the
street. . . . And I don't want you to look so damnably alluring
about the feet. That's your best trick--and your worst. Why
are you smiling--in that fashion?"

"You talk to me as if I were your wife."

He gazed at her with an expression that was as affectionate as
it was generous--and it was most generous. "Well, you may be
some day--if you keep straight. And I think you will."

The artificial red of her lips greatly helped to make her
sweetly smiling face the perfection of gentle irony. "And
you?" said she.

"You know perfectly well it's different about a man."

"I know nothing of the sort," replied she. "Among certain
kinds of people that is the rule. But I'm not of those kinds.
I'm trying to make my way in the world, exactly like a man.
So I've got to be free from the rules that may be all very
well for ladies. A woman can't fight with her hands tied, any
more than a man can--and you know what happens to the men who
allow themselves to be tied; they're poor downtrodden
creatures working hard at small pay for the men who fight with
their hands free."

"I've taken you out of the unprotected woman class, my dear,"
he reminded her. "You're mine, now, and you're going back
where you belong."

"Back to the cage it's taken me so long to learn to do
without?" She shook her head. "No, Rod--I couldn't possibly
do it--not if I wanted to. . . . You've got several false ideas
about me. You'll have to get rid of them, if we're to get along."

"For instance?"

"In the first place, don't delude yourself with the notion
that I'd marry you. I don't know whether the man I was forced
to marry is dead or whether he's got a divorce. I don't care.
No matter how free I was I shouldn't marry you."

He smiled complacently. She noted it without irritation.
Truly, small indeed is the heat of any kind that can be got
from the warmed-up ashes of a burnt-out passion. She went
easily on:

"You have nothing to offer me--neither love nor money. And a
woman--unless she's a poor excuse--insists on one o