er blazing eyes startled him. Her voice, not lifted above its
usual quiet tones, enraged him. "You--you!" he cried. "You
must be crazy, to talk to _me_ like that!"

She nodded. "Yes--crazy," said she with the same quiet intensity.
"For I know what kind of a beast you are--a clean, good-natured
beast, but still a beast. And how could you understand?"

He had got upon his feet. He looked as if he were going to
strike her.

She made a slight gesture toward the door. He felt at a
hopeless disadvantage with her--with this woman who did not
raise her voice, did not need to raise it to express the
uttermost of any passion. His jagged teeth gleamed through his
mustache; his shrewd little eyes snapped like an angry rat's.
He fumbled about through the steam of his insane rage for
adequate insults--in vain. He rushed from the room and bolted
downstairs.

Within an hour Susan was out, looking for work. There could be
no turning back now. Until she went with Gideon it had been as
if her dead were still unburied and in the house. Now----

Never again could she even indulge in dreams of going to Rod.
That part of her life was finished with all the finality of the
closed grave. Grief--yes. But the same sort of grief as when
a loved one, after a long and painful illness, finds relief in
death. Her love for Rod had been stricken of a mortal illness
the night of their arrival in New York. After lingering for a
year between life and death, after a long death agony, it had
expired. The end came--these matters of the exact moment of
inevitable events are unimportant but have a certain melancholy
interest--the end came when she made choice where there was no
choice, in the cab with Gideon.

For better or for worse she was free. She was ready to begin
her career.

CHAPTER IV

AFTER a few days, when she was viewing her situation in a
calmer, more normal mood with the practical feminine eye, she
regretted that she had refused Gideon's money. She was proud
of that within herself which had impelled and compelled her to
refuse it; but she wished she had it. Taking it, she felt,
would have added nothing to her humiliation in her own sight;
and for what he thought of her, one way or the other, she cared
not a pin. It is one of the familiar curiosities of human
inconsistency which is at bottom so completely consistent, that
she did not regret having refused his far more valuable offer
to aid her.

She did n