ince, but there came into her young face a deeper
pathos--and a wan, deprecating, pleading smile. She said:

"Maybe love has washed it away--if it was there. It never seemed
to touch me--any more than the dirt when I had to clean up my room."

"You mustn't talk that way. Why you are perfectly calm! You
don't cry or feel repentant. You don't seem to care."

"It's so--so past--and dead. I feel as if it were another
person. And it was, Rod!"

He shook his head, frowning. "Let's not talk about it," he said
harshly. "If only I could stop thinking about it!"

She effaced herself as far as she could, living in the same room
with him. She avoided the least show of the tenderness she felt,
of the longing to have her wounds soothed. She lay awake the
whole night, suffering, now and then timidly and softly
caressing him when she was sure that he slept. In the morning
she pretended to be asleep, let him call her twice before she
showed that she was awake. A furtive glance at him confirmed the
impression his voice had given. Behind her pale, unrevealing
face there was the agonized throb of an aching heart, but she
had the confidence of her honest, utter love; he would surely
soften, would surely forgive. As for herself--she had, through
loving and feeling that she was loved, almost lost the sense of
the unreality of past and present that made her feel quite
detached and apart from the life she was leading, from the
events in which she was taking part, from the persons most
intimately associated with her. Now that sense of isolation, of
the mere spectator or the traveler gazing from the windows of
the hurrying train--that sense returned. But she fought against
the feeling it gave her.

That evening they went to the theater--to see Modjeska in "Magda."

Susan had never been in a real theater. The only approach to a
playhouse in Sutherland was Masonic Hall. It had a sort of stage
at one end where from time to time wandering players gave poor
performances of poor plays or a minstrel show or a low
vaudeville. But none of the best people of Sutherland went--at
least, none of the women. The notion was strong in Sutherland
that the theater was of the Devil--not so strong as in the days
before they began to tolerate amateur theatricals, but still
vigorous enough to give Susan now, as she sat in the big,
brilliant auditorium, a pleasing sense that she, an outcast, was
at last comfortably at home. Usually the fi