e's different," replied Susan. "He doesn't care much for
people--to have them as intimates. I understand why. Love
and friendship bore one--or fail one--and are
unsatisfactory--and disturbing. But if one centers one's life
about things--books, pictures, art, a career--why, one is
never bored or betrayed. He has solved the secret of
happiness, I think."

"Do you think a woman could fall in love with him?" he asked,
with an air of the accidental and casual.

"If you mean, could I fall in love with him," said she, "I
should say no. I think it would either amuse or annoy him to
find that a woman cared about him."

"Amuse him most of all," said Palmer. "He knows the
ladies--that they love us men for what we can give them."

"Did you ever hear of anyone, man or woman, who cared about a
person who couldn't give them anything?"

Freddie's laugh was admission that he thought her right. "The
way to get on in politics," observed he, "is to show men that
it's to their best interest to support you. And that's the
way to get on in everything else--including love."

Susan knew that this was the truth about life, as it appeared
to her also. But she could not divest herself of the human
aversion to hearing the cold, practical truth. She wanted
sugar coating on the pill, even though she knew the sugar made
the medicine much less effective, often neutralized it
altogether. Thus Palmer's brutally frank cynicism got upon
her nerves, whereas Brent's equally frank cynicism attracted
her because it was not brutal. Both men saw that life was a
coarse practical joke. Palmer put the stress on the
coarseness, Brent upon the humor.

Brent recommended and introduced to her a friend of his, a
young French Jew named Gourdain, an architect on the way up to
celebrity. "You will like his ideas and he will like yours,"
said Brent.

She had acquiesced in his insistent friendship for Palmer and
her, but she had not lowered by an inch the barrier of her
reserve toward him. His speech and actions at all times,
whether Palmer was there or not; suggested that he respected
the barrier, regarded it as even higher and thicker than it
was. Nevertheless she felt that he really regarded the
barrier as non-existent. She said:

"But I've never told you my ideas."

"I can guess what they are. Your surroundings will simply be
an extension of your dress."

She would not have let him see--she would not have admitted to
herself--how pro