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Strefford, from his hostess's side, glanced across now and then at young Mrs. Lansing, and his glance seemed to Lansing a confidential comment on the Vanderlyn raptures. But then Strefford was always having private jokes with people or about them; and Lansing was irritated with himself for perpetually suspecting his best friends of vague complicities at his expense.
It was the old contrast between the two ways of loving, the man's way and the woman's; and after a moment it seemed to Nick natural enough that Susy, from the very moment of finding him again, should feel neither pity nor regret, and that Strefford should already be to her as if he had never been. After all, there was something Providential in such arrangements.
He was a better judge of the book he was trying to write than either Susy or Strefford; he knew its weaknesses, its treacheries, its tendency to slip through his fingers just as he thought his grasp tightest; but he knew also that at the very moment when it seemed to have failed him it would suddenly be back, beating its loud wings in his face.
Strefford, in his new mourning, looked unnaturally prosperous and well-valeted; but his ugly untidy features remained as undisciplined, his smile as whimsical, as of old.
"Oh," Susy sighed in mute complicity; then, as if to cover her self-betrayal: "Poor darling, she does so like what she likes!" "Yes even if it's a rotten bounder," Strefford agreed. "A rotten bounder? Why, I thought " "That it was still young Davenant? Lord, no not for the last six months. Didn't she tell you ?" Susy felt herself redden. "I didn't ask her " "Ask her? You mean you didn't let her!"
Strefford suggested. She laughed. "Poor Coral Hicks! What on earth made you think of the Hickses?" "Because I caught a glimpse of them the other day at Capri. They're cruising about: they said they were coming in here." "What a nuisance! I do hope they won't find us out.
"What was left of soul, I wonder ?" the young composer's voice shrilled through the open windows. Strefford sank into another silence, from which he roused himself only as Susy turned back toward the lighted threshold. "Well, my dear, we'll see it through between us; you and I-and Clarissa," he said with his rasping laugh, rising to follow her.
While they're going on I like to stay quite by myself.... I don't know why...." Strefford, at that, had looked at her keenly. "Ah," he murmured; and his lips were twisted into their old mocking smile. "Speaking of proceedings," he went on carelessly, "what stage have Ellie's reached, I wonder? I saw her and Vanderlyn and Bockheimer all lunching cheerfully together to-day at Larue's."
It seemed to imply that Nick's own plans were made, that his own future was secure, and that he could therefore freely and handsomely take thought for hers, and give her a pointer in the right direction. Sudden rage had possessed her at the thought: where she had at first read jealousy she now saw only a cold providence, and in a blur of tears she had scrawled her postscript to Strefford.
And yet that was what would have to be, of course... she could hardly picture either Strefford or herself continuing there the life of heavy county responsibilities, dull parties, laborious duties, weekly church-going, and presiding over local committees.... What a pity they couldn't sell it and have a little house on the Thames!
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