and she would know it was looked for. She would _give_ it as a singer
gives her most popular song. Mamie Nelson, for example, used to give a
peculiar little throw back of the chin and a laugh.... It was talked
about. People came to see it....

"Of course Mamie Nelson was a very brilliant girl indeed. I suppose in
England you would say we spoilt her. I suppose we did spoil her...."

It came into Mr. Direck's head that for a whole day he had scarcely
given a thought to Mamie Nelson. And now he was thinking of her--calmly.
Why shouldn't one think of Mamie Nelson calmly?

She was a proud imperious thing. There was something Southern in her.
Very dark blue eyes she had, much darker than Miss Corner's....

But how tortuous she had been behind that outward pride of hers! For
four years she had let him think he was the only man who really mattered
in the world, and all the time quite clearly and definitely she had
deceived him. She had made a fool of him and she had made a fool of the
others perhaps--just to have her retinue and play the queen in her
world. And at last humiliation, bitter humiliation, and Mamie with her
chin in the air and her bright triumphant smile looking down on him.

Hadn't he, she asked, had the privilege of loving her?

She took herself at the value they had set upon her.

Well--somehow--that wasn't right....

All the way across the Atlantic Mr. Direck had been trying to forget her