Chapter 15 - Page 2

said to herself: "If there's no letter from Nick this
time next week I'll write to Streff--" and the week had passed,
and there was no letter.

It was now three weeks since he had left her, and she had had no
word but his note from Genoa. She had concluded that,
foreseeing the probability of her leaving Venice, he would write
to her in care of their Paris bank. But though she had
immediately notified the bank of her change of address no
communication from Nick had reached her; and she smiled with a
touch of bitterness at the difficulty he was doubtless finding
in the composition of the promised letter. Her own scrap-
basket, for the first days, had been heaped with the fragments
of the letters she had begun; and she told herself that, since
they both found it so hard to write, it was probably because
they had nothing left to say to each other.

Meanwhile the days at Mrs. Melrose's drifted by as they had been
wont to drift when, under the roofs of the rich, Susy Branch had
marked time between one episode and the next of her precarious
existence. Her experience of such sojourns was varied enough to
make her acutely conscious of their effect on her temporary
hosts; and in the present case she knew that Violet was hardly
aware of her presence. But if no more than tolerated she was at
least not felt to be an inconvenience; when your hostess forgot
about you it proved that at least you were not in her way.

Violet, as usual, was perpetually on the wing, for her profound
indolence expressed itself in a disordered activity. Nat Fulmer
had returned to Paris; but Susy guessed that his benefactress
was still constantly in his company, and that when Mrs. Melrose
was whirled away in her noiseless motor it was generally toward
the scene of some new encounter between Fulmer and the arts. On
these occasions she sometimes offered to carry Susy to Paris,
and they devoted several long and hectic mornings to the dress-
makers, where Susy felt herself gradually succumbing to the
familiar spell of heaped-up finery. It seemed impossible, as
furs and laces and brocades were tossed aside, brought back, and
at last carelessly selected from, that anything but the whim of
the moment need count in deciding whether one should take all or
none, or that any woman could be worth looking at who did not
possess the means to make her choice regardless of cost.

Once alone, and in the street again, the evil fumes would
evaporate, and daylight re-enter Susy's soul; yet she felt that
the old poison was slowly insinuating itself into her system.
To dispel it she decided one day to look up Grace Fulmer. She
was curious to know how the happy-go-lucky companion of Fulmer's
evil days was bearing the weight of his