mplete stranger. Palmer, she thought, would
be able to attract almost any woman he might want; it seemed
to her that a woman Brent wanted would feel rather helpless
before the onset he would make.

It irritated her, this untimely intrusion of Brent who had the
curious quality of making all other men seem less in the
comparison. Not that he assumed anything, or forced
comparisons; on the contrary, no man could have insisted less
upon himself. Not that he compelled or caused the transfer of
all interest to himself. Simply that, with him there, she
felt less hopeful of Palmer, less confident of his ability to
become what he seemed--and go beyond it. There are occasional
men who have this same quality that Susan was just then
feeling in Brent--men whom women never love yet who make it
impossible for them to begin to love or to continue to love
the other men within their range.

She was not glad to see him. She did not conceal it. Yet she
knew that he would linger--and that she would not oppose. She
would have liked to say to him: "You lost belief in me and
dropped me. I have begun to make a life for myself. Let me
alone. Do not upset me--do not force me to see what I must
not see if I am to be happy. Go away, and give me a chance."
But we do not say these frank, childlike things except in
moments of closest intimacy--and certainly there was no
suggestion of intimacy, no invitation to it, but the reverse,
in the man facing her at the front of the box.

"Then you are to be in Paris some time?" said Brent,
addressing her.

"I think so," said Susan.

"Sure," cried Palmer. "This is the town the world revolves
round. I felt like singing 'Home, Sweet Home' as we drove
from the station."

"I like it better than any place on earth," said Brent.
"Better even than New York. I've never been quite able to
forgive New York for some of the things it made me suffer
before it gave me what I wanted."

"I, too," said Freddie. "My wife can't understand that. She
doesn't know the side of life we know. I'm going to smoke a
cigarette. I'll leave you here, old man, to entertain her."

When he disappeared, Susan looked out over the house with an
expression of apparent abstraction. Brent--she was
conscious--studied her with those seeing eyes--hazel eyes
with not a bit of the sentimentality and weakness of brown in
them. "You and Palmer know no one here?"

"Not a soul."

"I'll be glad to introduce some of my ac