Ellie and Bockheimer! How she hated the conjunction of the
names! Their case always seemed to her like a caricature of her
own, and she felt an unreasoning resentment against Ellie for
having selected the same season for her unmating and re-mating.

"I wish you wouldn't speak of them, Streff ... as if they were
like us! I can hardly bear to sit in the same room with Ellie
Vanderlyn."

"Hullo? What's wrong? You mean because of her giving up
Clarissa?"

"Not that only .... You don't know .... I can't tell you ...."
She shivered at the memory, and rose restlessly from the bench
where they had been sitting.

Strefford gave his careless shrug. "Well, my dear, you can
hardly expect me to agree, for after all it was to Ellie I owed
the luck of being so long alone with you in Venice. If she and
Algie hadn't prolonged their honeymoon at the villa--"

He stopped abruptly, and looked at Susy. She was conscious that
every drop of blood had left her face. She felt it ebbing away
from her heart, flowing out of her as if from all her severed
arteries, till it seemed as though nothing were left of life in
her but one point of irreducible pain.

"Ellie--at your villa? What do you mean? Was it Ellie and
Bockheimer who--?"