the tone she
knew had the full strength of his will back of it.

Faint angry hissing from the stalls silenced them, but as
soon as they were in the auto Susan resumed. "I have told Mr.
Brent we don't want to meet his friends yet."

"Now what the hell did you do that for?" demanded Freddie. It
was the first time she had crossed him; it was the first time
he had been reminiscent of the Freddie she used to know.

"Because," said she evenly, "I will not meet people under
false pretenses."

"What rot!"

"I will not do it," replied she in the same quiet way.

He assumed that she meant only one of the false pretenses--the
one that seemed the least to her. He said:

"Then we'll draw up and sign a marriage contract and date it
a couple of years ago, before the new marriage law was passed
to save rich men's drunken sons from common law wives."

"I am already married," said Susan. "To a farmer out in Indiana."

Freddie laughed. "Well, I'll be damned! You! You!" He
looked at her ermine-lined cloak and laughed again. "An
Indiana farmer!" Then he suddenly sobered. "Come to think of
it," said he, "that's the first thing you ever told me about
your past."

"Or anybody else," said Susan. Her body was quivering, for we
remember the past events with the sensations they made upon us
at the time. She could smell that little room in the
farmhouse. Allen Street and all the rest of her life in the
underworld had for her something of the vagueness of
dreams--not only now but also while she was living that life.
But not Ferguson, not the night when her innocent soul was
ravished as a wolf rips up and munches a bleating lamb. No
vagueness of dreams about that, but a reality to make her
shudder and reel whenever she thought of it--a reality vivider
now that she was a woman grown in experiences and understanding.

"He's probably dead--or divorced you long ago."

"I do not know."

"I can find out--without stirring things up. What was his name?"

"Ferguson."

"What was his first name?"

She tried to recall. "I think--it was Jim. Yes, it was Jim."
She fancied she could hear the voice of that ferocious sister
snapping out that name in the miserable little coop of a
general room in that hot, foul, farm cottage.

"Where did he live?"

"His farm was at the edge of Zeke Warham's place--not far from
Beecamp, in Jefferson County."

She lapsed into silence, seemed to be watching the gay night
streets of the Montm