you'll be
tempting her to break the rules." He added, "Not that you
would succeed. She understands what it all means, now--and
nothing could stop her. That's why I feel free to leave her."

"Yes, I understand," said Susan. She was gazing away into
space; at sight of her expression Freddie turned hastily away.

On a Saturday morning Susan and Clelie, after waiting on the
platform at Euston Station until the long, crowded train for
Liverpool and the _Lusitania_ disappeared, went back to the
lodgings in Half Moon Street with a sudden sense of the
vastness of London, of its loneliness and dreariness, of its
awkward inhospitality to the stranger under its pall of foggy
smoke. Susan was thinking of Brent's last words:

She had said, "I'll try to deserve all the pains you've taken,
Mr. Brent."

"Yes, I have done a lot for you," he had replied. "I've put
you beyond the reach of any of the calamities of life--beyond
the need of any of its consolations. Don't forget that if the
steamer goes down with all on board."

And then she had looked at him--and as Freddie's back was half
turned, she hoped he had not seen--in fact, she was sure he
had not, or she would not have dared. And Brent--had returned
her look with his usual quizzical smile; but she had learned
how to see through that mask. Then--she had submitted to
Freddie's energetic embrace--had given her hand to
Brent--"Good-by," she had said; and "Good luck," he.

Beyond the reach of _any_ of the calamities? Beyond the need
of _any_ of the consolations? Yes--it was almost literally
true. She felt the big interest--the career--growing up
within her, and expanding, and already overstepping all other
interests and emotions.

Brent had left her and Clelie more to do than could be done;
thus they had no time to bother either about the absent or
about themselves. Looking back in after years on the days
that Freddie was away, Susan could recall that from time to
time she would find her mind wandering, as if groping in the
darkness of its own cellars or closets for a lost thought, a
missing link in some chain of thought. This even awakened her
several times in the night--made her leap from sleep into
acute and painful consciousness as if she had recalled and
instantly forgotten some startling and terrible thing.

And when Freddie unexpectedly came--having taken passage on the
_Lusitania_ for the return voyage, after only six nights and
five days in New York