o
love him. So I say, you are killing him. . . . Don't think he
has told me----"

"I know he didn't," she interrupted curtly. "He does not whine."

She hadn't a doubt of the truth of her loyal defense. And
Drumley could not have raised a doubt, even if she had been
seeing the expression of his face. His long practice of the
modern editorial art of clearness and brevity and compact
statement had enabled him to put into those few sentences more
than another might have been unable to express in hours of
explanation and appeal. And the ideas were not new to her. Rod
had often talked them in a general way and she had thought much
about them. Until now she had never seen how they applied to Rod
and herself. But she was seeing and feeling it now so acutely
that if she had tried to speak or to move she could not have
done so.

After a long pause, Drumley said: "Do you comprehend what I mean?"

She was silent--so it was certain that she comprehended.
"But you don't believe?. . . He began to borrow money almost
immediately on his arrival here last summer. He has been
borrowing ever since--from everybody and anybody. He owes now,
as nearly as I can find out, upwards of three thousand dollars."

Susan made a slight but sharp movement.

"You don't believe me?"

"Yes. Go on."

"He has it in him, I'm confident, to write plays--strong plays.
Does he ever write except ephemeral space stuff for the paper?"

"No."

"And he never will so long as he has you to go home to. He lives
beyond his means because he will have you in comfortable
surroundings and dressed to stimulate his passion. If he would
marry you, it might be a little better--though still he would
never amount to anything as long as his love lasted--the kind of
love you inspire. But he will never marry you. I learned that
from what I know of his ideas and from what I've observed as to
your relations--not from anything he ever said about you."

If Susan had been of the suspicious temperament, or if she had
been a few years older, the manner of this second protest might
have set her to thinking how unlike Drumley, the inexpert in
matters of love and passion, it was to analyze thus and to form
such judgments. And thence she might have gone on to consider
that Drumley's speeches sounded strangely like paraphrases of
Spenser's eloquent outbursts when he "got going." But she had
not a suspicion. Besides, her whole being was concentrated upon
the i