ndy, half and half. He
was running to poetry that evening--Keats and Swinburne.
Finally, after some hesitation, he produced a poem by Dowson--"I
ran across it today. It's the only thing of his worth while, I
believe--and it's so fine that Swinburne must have been sore
when he read it because he hadn't thought to write it himself.
Its moral tone is not high, but it's so beautiful, Mrs. Susan,
that I'll venture to show it to you. It comes nearer to
expressing what men mean by the man sort of constancy than
anything I ever read. Listen to this:

"I cried for madder music and for stronger wine,
But when the feast is finished, and the lamps expire,
Then falls thy shadow, Cynara!--the night is thine;
And I am desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, hungry for the lips of my desire;
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara, in my fashion."

Susan took the paper, read the four stanzas several times,
handed it back to him without a word. "Don't you think it fine?"
asked he, a little uneasily--he was always uneasy with a woman
when the conversation touched the relations of the sexes--uneasy
lest he might say or might have said something to send a shiver
through her delicate modesty.

"Fine," Susan echoed absently. "And true. . . . I suppose it is
the best a woman can expect--to be the one he returns to.
And--isn't that enough?"

"You are very different from any woman I ever met," said
Drumley. "Very different from what you were last
fall--wonderfully different. But you were different then, too."

"I'd have been a strange sort of person if it weren't so. I've
led a different life. I've learned--because I've had to learn."

"You've been through a great deal--suffered a great deal for one
of your age?"

Susan shrugged her shoulders slightly. She had her impulses to
confide, but she had yet to meet the person who seriously
tempted her to yield to them. Not even Rod; no, least of all Rod.

"You are--happy?"

"Happy--and more. I'm content."

The reply was the truth, as she saw the truth. Perhaps it was
also the absolute truth; for when a woman has the best she has
ever actually possessed, and when she knows there is nowhere
else on earth for her, she is likely to be content. Their
destiny of subordination has made philosophers of women.

Drumley seemed to be debating how to disclose something he had
in mind. But after several glances at the sweet, delicate face
of the girl, he gave it ov