pathetic mood, was busy with his own
wounds to vanity and perhaps to heart. He thought her
heartless--good and sweet and friendly, but without sentiment.
She refused to help him make a scene; she refused to say she
would write to him, and asked him not to write to her. "You know
we'll probably see each other soon."

"Not till the long vacation--not till nearly July."

"Only three months."

"Oh, if you look at it that way!" said he, piqued and sullen.
Girls had always been more than kind, more than eager, when he
had shown interest.

Etta, leaving on a later train, was even more depressed about
Susan's heart. She wept hysterically, wished Susan to do the
same; but Susan stood out firmly against a scene, and would not
have it that Etta was shamefully deserting her, as Etta
tearfully accused herself. "You're going to be happy," she
said. "And I'm not so selfish as to be wretched about it. And
don't you worry a minute on my account. I'm better off in every
way than I've ever been. I'll get on all right."

"I know you gave up John to help me with August. I know you mean
to break off everything. Oh, Lorna, you mustn't--you mustn't."

"Don't talk nonsense," was Susan's unsatisfactory reply.

When it came down to the last embrace and the last kiss, Etta
did feel through Susan's lips and close encircling arms a
something that dried up her hysterical tears and filled her
heart with an awful aching. It did not last long. No matter how
wildly shallow waters are stirred, they soon calm and murmur
placidly on again. The three who had left her would have been
amazed could they have seen her a few minutes after Etta's train
rolled out of the Union Station. The difference between strong
natures and weak is not that the strong are free from cowardice
and faint-heartedness, from doubt and foreboding, from love and
affection, but that they do not stay down when they are crushed
down, stagger up and on.

Susan hurried to the room they had helped her find the day
before--a room in a house where no questions were asked or
answered. She locked herself in and gave way to the agonies of
her loneliness. And when her grief had exhausted her, she lay
upon the bed staring at the wall with eyes that looked as though
her soul had emptied itself through them of all that makes life
endurable, even of hope. For the first time in her life she
thought of suicide--not suicide the vague possibility, not
suicide the remote way of