f in her confusion and eagerness
she should happen not instantly to satisfy the doubt behind each
question. He tormented her; he tormented himself. She suffered
from humiliation; but she suffered more because she saw how his
suspicions were torturing him. And in her humility and
helplessness and inexperience, she felt no sense of right to
resist, no impulse to resist.

And she forced herself to look on his spasms of jealousy as the
occasional storms which occur even in the best climates. She
reminded herself that she was secure of his love, secure in his
love; and in her sad mood she reproached herself for not being
content when at bottom everything was all right. After what she
had been through, to be sad because the man she loved loved her
too well! It was absurd, ungrateful.

He pried into every nook and corner of her being with that
ingenious and tireless persistence human beings reserve for
searches for what they do not wish to find. At last he contrived
to find, or to imagine he had found, something that justified
his labors and vindicated his disbelief in her.

They were walking in Fifth Avenue one afternoon, at the hour
when there is the greatest press of equipages whose expensively
and showily dressed occupants are industriously engaged in the
occupation of imagining they are doing something when in fact
they are doing nothing. What a world! What a grotesque confusing
of motion and progress! What fantastic delusions that one is
busy when one is merely occupied! They were between Forty-sixth
Street and Forty-seventh, on the west side, when a small
victoria drew up at the curb and a woman descended and crossed
the sidewalk before them to look at the display in a milliner's
window. Susan gave her the swift, seeing glance which one woman
always gives another--the glance of competitors at each other's
offerings. Instead of glancing away, Susan stopped short and
gazed. Forgetting Rod, she herself went up to the millinery
display that she might have a fuller view of the woman who had
fascinated her.

"What's the matter?" cried Spenser. "Come on. You don't want any
of those hats."

But Susan insisted that she must see, made him linger until the
woman returned to her carriage and drove away. She said to Rod:

"Did you see her?"

"Yes. Rather pretty--nothing to scream about."

"But her _style!_" cried Susan.

"Oh, she was nicely dressed--in a quiet way. You'll see
thousands a lot more ex