difference, he felt as they felt, judged as they judged, was
blind as they were-and as she would be expected to be, should
she once again become one of them. What was the use of being
placed by fortune above such shifts and compromises, if in one's
heart one still condoned them? And she would have to--she would
catch the general note, grow blunted as those other people were
blunted, and gradually come to wonder at her own revolt, as
Strefford now honestly wondered at it. She felt as though she
were on the point of losing some new-found treasure, a treasure
precious only to herself, but beside which all he offered her
was nothing, the triumph of her wounded pride nothing, the
security of her future nothing.

"What is it, Susy?" he asked, with the same puzzled gentleness.

Ah, the loneliness of never being able to make him understand!
She had felt lonely enough when the flaming sword of Nick's
indignation had shut her out from their Paradise; but there had
been a cruel bliss in the pain. Nick had not opened her eyes to
new truths, but had waked in her again something which had lain
unconscious under years of accumulated indifference. And that
re-awakened sense had never left her since, and had somehow kept
her from utter loneliness because it was a secret shared with
Nick, a gift she owed to Nick, and which, in leaving her, he
could not take from her. It was almost, she suddenly felt, as
if he had left her with a child.

"My dear girl," Strefford said, with a resigned glance at his
watch, "you know we're dining at the Embassy ...."