Chapter 19

XIX

JUST such a revolt as she had felt as a girl, such a disgusted
recoil from the standards and ideals of everybody about her as
had flung her into her mad marriage with Nick, now flamed in
Susy Lansing's bosom.

How could she ever go back into that world again? How echo its
appraisals of life and bow down to its judgments? Alas, it was
only by marrying according to its standards that she could
escape such subjection. Perhaps the same thought had actuated
Nick: perhaps he had understood sooner than she that to attain
moral freedom they must both be above material cares.
Perhaps ...

Her talk with Ellie Vanderlyn had left Susy so oppressed and
humiliated that she almost shrank from her meeting with
Altringham the next day. She knew that he was coming to Paris
for his final answer; he would wait as long as was necessary if
only she would consent to take immediate steps for a divorce.
She was staying at a modest hotel in the Faubourg St. Germain,
and had once more refused his suggestion that they should lunch
at the Nouveau Luxe, or at some fashionable restaurant of the
Boulevards. As before, she insisted on going to an out-of-the-
way place near the Luxembourg, where the prices were moderate
enough for her own purse.

"I can't understand," Strefford objected, as they turned from
her hotel door toward this obscure retreat, "why you insist on
giving me bad food, and depriving me of the satisfaction of
being seen with you. Why must we be so dreadfully clandestine?
Don't people know by this time that we're to be married?"

Susy winced a little: she wondered if the word would always
sound so unnatural on his lips.

"No," she said, with a laugh, "they simply think, for the
present, that you're giving me pearls and chinchilla cloaks."

He wrinkled his brows good-humouredly. "Well, so I would, with
joy--at this particular minute. Don't you think perhaps you'd
better take advantage of it? I don't wish to insist--but I
foresee that I'm much too rich not to become stingy."

She gave a slight shrug. "At present there's nothing I loathe
more than pearls and chinchilla, or anything else in the world
that's expensive and enviable ...."

Suddenly she broke off, colouring with the consciousness that
she had said exactly the kind of thing that all the women who
were trying for him (except the very cleverest) would be sure to
say; and that he would certainly suspect her of attempting the
conventional comedy of disinterestedness, than which nothing was
less likely to deceive or to flatter him.

His twinkling eyes played curiously over her face, and she went
on, meeting them with a smile: "But don't imagine, all the
same, that if I should ... decide