er
or masters. Free--free--free! The ecstasy of it surged up in
her, for the moment possessing her and submerging even thought
of how she had been freed.

She who had never acquired the habit of hypocrisy frankly
exulted in countenance exultant beyond laughter. She could
conceal her feelings, could refrain from expressing. But if
she expressed at all, it must be her true self--what she
honestly felt. Garvey hung his head in shame. He would not
have believed Susan could be so unfeeling. He would not let
his eyes see the painful sight. He would try to forget, would
deny to himself that he had seen. For to his shallow,
conventional nature Susan's expression could only mean delight
in wealth, in the opportunity that now offered to idle and to
luxuriate in the dead man's money, to realize the crude dreamings
of those lesser minds whose initial impulses toward growth have
been stifled by the routine our social system imposes upon all
but the few with the strength to persist individual.

Free! She tried to summon the haunting vision of the old
women with the tin cups of whisky reeling and staggering in
time to the hunchback's playing. She could remember every
detail, but these memories would not assemble even into a
vivid picture and the picture would have been far enough from
the horror of actuality in the vision she formerly could not
banish. As a menace, as a prophecy, the old women and the
hunchback and the strumming piano had gone forever.
Free--secure, independent--free!

After a long silence Garvey ventured stammeringly:

"He said to me--he asked me to request--he didn't make it a
condition--just a wish--a hope, Miss Lenox--that if you could,
and felt it strongly enough----"

"Wished what?" said Susan, with a sharp impatience that showed
how her nerves were unstrung.

"That you'd go on--go on with the plays--with the acting."

The violet eyes expressed wonder. "Go on?" she inquired,
"Go on?" Then in a tone that made Clelie sob and Garvey's
eyes fill she said:

"What else is there to live for, now?"

"I'm--I'm glad for his sake," stammered Garvey.

He was disconcerted by her smile. She made no other
answer--aloud. For _his_ sake! For her own sake, rather.
What other life had she but the life _he_ had given her? "And
he knew I would," she said to herself. "He said that merely to
let me know he left me entirely free. How like him, to do that!"

At the hotel she shut herself in; she saw