"nerves" to be jested away. He might, indeed, resent her
behaviour too deeply to seek to see her at once; but his
easygoing modern attitude toward conduct and convictions made
that improbable. She had an idea that what he had most minded
was her dropping so unceremoniously out of the Embassy Dinner.

But, after all, why should she see him again? She had had
enough of explanations during the last months to have learned
how seldom they explain anything. If the other person did not
understand at the first word, at the first glance even,
subsequent elucidations served only to deepen the obscurity.
And she wanted above all--and especially since her hour with
Nelson Vanderlyn--to keep herself free, aloof, to retain her
hold on her precariously recovered self. She sat down and wrote
to Strefford--and the letter was only a little less painful to
write than the one she had despatched to Nick. It was not that
her own feelings were in any like measure engaged; but because,
as the decision to give up Strefford affirmed itself, she
remembered only his kindness, his forbearance, his good humour,
and all the other qualities she had always liked in him; and
because she felt ashamed of the hesitations which must cause him
so much pain and humiliation. Yes: humiliation chiefly. She
knew that what she had to say would hurt his pride, in whatever
way she framed her renunciation; and her pen wavered, hating its
task. Then she remembered Vanderlyn's words about his wife:
"There are some of our old times I don't suppose I shall ever
forget--" and a phrase of Grace Fulmer's that she had but half
grasped at the time: "You haven't been married long enough to
understand how trifling such things seem in the balance of one's
memories."