She was staring into the mirror, her elbows on the table, her
chin upon her interlaced fingers. It would be difficult to
say how much of his gentleness to her was due to her physical
charm for him, and how much to his respect for her mind and
her character. He himself would have said that his weakness
was altogether the result of the spell her physical charm
cast over him. But it is probable that the other element was
the stronger.

"You'll not be selfish, Susan?" urged he. "You'll give me a
square deal."

"Yes--I see that it does look selfish," said she. "A little
while ago I'd not have been able to see any deeper than the
looks of it. Freddie, there are some things no one has a
right to ask of another, and no one has a right to grant."

The ugliness of his character was becoming less easy to
control. This girl whom he had picked up, practically out of
the gutter, and had heaped generosities upon, was trying his
patience too far. But he said, rather amiably:

"Certainly I'm not asking any such thing of you in asking you
to become a respectable married woman, the wife of a rich man."

"Yes--you are, Freddie," replied she gently. "If I married
you, I'd be signing an agreement to lead your life, to give up
my own--an agreement to become a sort of woman I've no desire
to be and no interest in being; to give up trying to become
the only sort of woman I think is worth while. When we were
discussing my coming with you, you made this same proposal in
another form. I refused it then. And I refuse it now. It's
harder to refuse now, but I'm stronger."

"Stronger, thanks to the money you've got from me--the money
and the rest of it," sneered he.

"Haven't I earned all I've got?" said she, so calmly that he
did not realize how the charge of ingratitude, unjust though
it was, had struck into her.

"You have changed!" said he. "You're getting as hard as the
rest of us. So it's all a matter of money, of give and
take--is it? None of the generosity and sentiment you used to
be full of? You've simply been using me."

"It can be put that way," replied she. "And no doubt you
honestly see it that way. But I've got to see my own interest
and my own right, Freddie. I've learned at last that I
mustn't trust to anyone else to look after them for me."

"Are you riding for a fall--Queenie?"

At "Queenie" she smiled faintly. "I'm riding the way I always
have," answered she. "It has carried me down. But--