But I can't live without a little fun--and Mrs.G.is a bit slow for me....Still, it's no use talking about having you out there.She ought to be able to understand that an active man needs two women.One for the quiet side of his nature, the other for the lively side.Sometimes I think she--like a lot of wives--wouldn't object if it wasn't that she was afraid the other lady would get me away altogether and she'd be left stranded.""Naturally," said Susan.
"Not at all!" cried he."Don't you get any such notion in that lovely little head of yours, my dear.You women don't understand honor--a man's sense of honor.""Naturally," repeated Susan.
He gave a glance of short disapproval.Her voice was not to his liking."Let's drop Mrs.G.out of this," said he."As I was saying, I've arranged for you to take a place here--easy work--something to occupy you--and I'll foot the bills over and above----"He stopped short or, rather, was stopped by the peculiar smile Susan had turned upon him.Before it he slowly reddened, and his eyes reluctantly shifted.He had roused her from listlessness, from indifference.The poisons in her blood were burned up by the fresh, swiftly flowing currents set in motion by his words, by the helpfulness of his expression, of his presence.She became again the intensely healthy, therefore intensely alive, therefore energetic and undaunted Susan Lenox, who, when still a child, had not hesitated to fly from home, from everyone she knew, into an unknown world.
"What are you smiling at me that way for?" demanded he in a tone of extreme irritation.
"So you look on me as your mistress?" And never in all her life had her eyes been so gray--the gray of cruelest irony.
"Now what's the use discussing those things? You know the world.You're a sensible woman."Susan made closer and more secure the large loose coil of her hair, rose and leaned against the table."You don't understand.You couldn't.I'm not one of those respectable women, like your Mrs.G., who belong to men.And I'm not one of the other kind who also throw in their souls with their bodies for good measure.Do _you_ think you had _me?_" She laughed with maddening gentle mockery, went on: "I don't hate you.I don't despise you even.You mean well.But the sight of you makes me sick.It makes me feel as I do when I think of a dirty tenement I used to have to live in, and of the things that I used to have to let crawl over me.So I want to forget you as soon as I can--and that will be soon after you get out of my sight."Her 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.
