d they were saying almost
nothing to each other. When he came at night, always very
late, she was in bed and pretended sleep. When he awoke, she
got breakfast in silence; they read the newspapers as they
ate. And he could not spare the time to come to dinner. As
the decisive moment drew near, his fears dried up his
confident volubility. He changed his mind and insisted on her
coming to the theater for the final rehearsals. But
"Shattered Lives" was not the sort of play she cared for, and
she was wearied by the profane and tedious wranglings of the
stage director and the authors, by the stupidity of the actors
who had to be told every little intonation and gesture again
and again. The agitation, the labor seemed grotesquely out of
proportion to the triviality of the matter at issue. At the
first night she sat in a box from which Spenser, in a high
fever and twitching with nervousness, watched the play,
gliding out just before the lights were turned up for the
intermission. The play went better than she had expected, and
the enthusiasm of the audience convinced her that it was a
success before the fall of the curtain on the second act.
With the applause that greeted the chief climax--the end of
the third act--Spenser, Sperry and Fitzalan were convinced.
All three responded to curtain calls. Susan had never seen
Spenser so handsome, and she admired the calmness and the
cleverness of his brief speech of thanks. That line of
footlights between them gave her a new point of view on him,
made her realize how being so close to his weaknesses had
obscured for her his strong qualities--for, unfortunately,
while a man's public life is determined wholly by his strong
qualities, his intimate life depends wholly on his weaknesses.
She was as fond of him as she had ever been; but it was
impossible for her to feel any thrill approaching love. Why?
She looked at his fine face and manly figure; she recalled how
many good qualities he had. Why had she ceased to love him?
She thought perhaps some mystery of physical lack of sympathy
was in part responsible; then there was the fact that she
could not trust him. With many women, trust is not necessary
to love; on the contrary, distrust inflames love. It happened
not to be so with Susan Lenox. "I do not love him. I can
never love him again. And when he uses his power over me, I
shall begin to dislike him." The lost illusion! The dead
love! If she could call it back to l