e been my only confidant up to now,
and since you have turned against me----"

"I haven't turned against you, mama."

"Oh, yes you have. Let's not talk about it, Suzanne. You have broken my
heart. You are killing me. I just had to go to someone. We have known
Dr. Woolley so long. He is so good and kind."

"Oh, I know, mama, but what good will it do? How can anything he might
say help matters? He isn't going to change me. You're only telling it to
somebody who oughtn't to know anything about it."

"But I thought he might influence you," pleaded Mrs. Dale. "I thought
you would listen to him. Oh, dear, oh, dear. I'm so tired of it all. I
wish I were dead. I wish I had never lived to see this."

"Now there you go, mama," said Suzanne confidently. "I can't see why you
are so distressed about what I am going to do. It is my life that I am
planning to arrange, not yours. I have to live my life, mama, not you."

"Oh, yes, but it is just that that distresses me. What will it be after
you do this--after you throw it away? Oh, if you could only see what you
are contemplating doing--what a wretched thing it will be when it is all
over with. You will never live with him--he is too old for you, too
fickle, too insincere. He will not care for you after a little while,
and then there you will be, unmarried, possibly with a child on your
hands, a social outcast! Where will you go?"

"Mama," said Suzanne calmly, her lips parted in a rosy, baby way, "I
have thought of all this. I see how it is. But I think you and everybody
else make too much ado about these things. You think of everything that
could happen, but it doesn't all happen that way. People do these
things, I'm sure, and nothing much is thought of it."

"Yes, in books," put in Mrs. Dale. "I know where you get all this from.
It's your reading."

"Anyhow, I'm going to. I have made up my mind," added Suzanne. "I have
decided that by September fifteenth I will go to Mr. Witla, and you
might just as well make up your mind to it now." This was August tenth.

"Suzanne," said her mother, staring at her, "I never imagined you could
talk in this way to me. You will do nothing of the kind. How can you be
so hard? I did not know that you had such a terrible will in you.
Doesn't anything I have said about Adele and Ninette or Kinroy appeal to
you? Have you no heart in you? Why don't you wait, as Dr. Woolley
suggests, six months or a year? Why do you talk about jumping into this
wi