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She stumbled over the word, remembering how Nick had always winced at it. But Strefford did not seem to notice her, and she hurried on, unfolding in short awkward sentences the avowal of their pecuniary difficulties, and of Nick's inability to understand that, to keep on with the kind of life they were leading, one had to put up with things... accept favours.... "Borrow money, you mean?"
She paused a moment to steady her voice. "Couldn't you? I suppose you'd forgotten my bargain with Nick. He hadn't-and he's asked me to fulfil it." Strefford stared. "What that nonsense about your setting each other free if either of you had the chance to make a good match?" She signed "Yes." "And he's actually asked you ?" "Well: practically. He's gone off with the Hickses.
With a throbbing heart she tore open the envelope and read: "Shall be in Paris Friday for twenty-four hours where can I see you write Nouveau Luxe." Ah, yes she remembered now: she had written to Strefford! And this was his answer: he was coming. She dropped into a chair, and tried to think. What on earth had she said in her letter?
She did not mean to marry Strefford she had not even got as far as contemplating the possibility of a divorce but it was undeniable that this sudden prospect of wealth and freedom was like fresh air in her lungs. She laughed again, but now without bitterness. "Very good, then; we'll lunch together. But it's Streff I want to lunch with to-day."
What's he writing? He's breaking you in, my dear; that's what he's doing: establishing an alibi. What'll you bet he's just sitting there smoking and reading Le Rire? Let's go and see." But Susy was firm. "He's read me his first chapter: it's wonderful. It's a philosophic romance rather like Marius, you know." "Oh, yes I do!" said Strefford, with a laugh that she thought idiotic.
The upper one was a telegram for Strefford: she threw it down again and paused under the lantern hanging from the painted vault, the other envelope in her hand. The address it bore was in Nick's writing. "When did the signore leave this for me? Has he gone out again?" Gone out again?
Nicholas Lansing, who arrived in London last week from Paris." Nick threw down the paper. It was just a month since he had left the Palazzo Vanderlyn and flung himself into the night express for Milan. A whole month and Susy had not written. Only a month and Susy and Strefford were already together! SUSY had decided to wait for Strefford in London.
Well, she would try not to want him! There lay all the old expedients at her hand the rouge for her white lips, the atropine for her blurred eyes, the new dress on her bed, the thought of Strefford and his guests awaiting her, and of the conclusions that the diners of the Nouveau Luxe would draw from seeing them together.
"I'm getting really fond of the Hickses; I believe I should be nice to them even if they were staying at Danieli's," Susy said to Strefford. "And even if you owned the yacht?" he answered; and for once his banter struck her as beside the point.
Two days later Susy and Strefford sat on the terrace of the Tuileries above the Seine.
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