he smooth
amber-white skin, of the thick, wavy, dark hair, was in his
nostrils. And in a languorous murmur she soothed his
subjection to a deep sleep with, "As long as you give me what
I want from you, and I give you what you want from me why
should we wrangle?"

And with a smile he acquiesced. She felt that she had ended
the frightful danger--to Brent rather than to herself--that
suddenly threatened from those wicked eyes of Palmer's. But
it might easily come again. She did not dare relax her
efforts, for in the succeeding days she saw that he was like
one annoyed by a constant pricking from a pin hidden in the
clothing and searched for in vain. He was no longer jealous
of Brent. But while he didn't know what was troubling him, he
did know that he was uncomfortable.

CHAPTER XXIII

IN but one important respect was Brent's original plan
modified. Instead of getting her stage experience in France,
Susan joined a London company making one of those dreary,
weary, cheap and trashy tours of the smaller cities of the
provinces with half a dozen plays by Jones, Pinero, and Shaw.

Clelie stayed in London, toiling at the language, determined
to be ready to take the small part of French maid in Brent's
play in the fall. Brent and Palmer accompanied Susan; and
every day for several hours Brent and the stage manager--his
real name was Thomas Boil and his professional name was
Herbert Streathern--coached the patient but most unhappy Susan
line by line, word by word, gesture by gesture, in the little
parts she was playing. Palmer traveled with them, making a
pretense of interest that ill concealed his boredom and
irritation. This for three weeks; then he began to make trips
to London to amuse himself with the sports, amateur and
professional, with whom he easily made friends--some of them
men in a position to be useful to him socially later on. He
had not spoken of those social ambitions of his since Susan
refused to go that way with him--but she knew he had them in
mind as strongly as ever. He was the sort of man who must
have an objective, and what other objective could there be for
him who cared for and believed in the conventional ambitions
and triumphs only--the successes that made the respectable
world gape and grovel and envy?

"You'll not stick at this long," he said to Susan.

"I'm frightfully depressed," she admitted. "It's
tiresome--and hard--and so hideously uncomfortable! And I've
lost