Chapter 22

XXII

STREFFORD was leaving for England.

Once assured that Susy had taken the first step toward freeing
herself, he frankly regarded her as his affianced wife, and
could see no reason for further mystery. She understood his
impatience to have their plans settled; it would protect him
from the formidable menace of the marriageable, and cause
people, as he said, to stop meddling. Now that the novelty of
his situation was wearing off, his natural indolence reasserted
itself, and there was nothing he dreaded more than having to be
on his guard against the innumerable plans that his well-wishers
were perpetually making for him. Sometimes Susy fancied he was
marrying her because to do so was to follow the line of least
resistance.

"To marry me is the easiest way of not marrying all the others,"
she laughed, as he stood before her one day in a quiet alley of
the Bois de Boulogne, insisting on the settlement of various
preliminaries. "I believe I'm only a protection to you."

An odd gleam passed behind his eyes, and she instantly guessed
that he was thinking: "And what else am I to you?"

She changed colour, and he rejoined, laughing also: "Well,
you're that at any rate, thank the Lord!"

She pondered, and then questioned: "But in the interval-how
are you going to defend yourself for another year?"

"Ah, you've got to see to that; you've got to take a little
house in London. You've got to look after me, you know."

It was on the tip of her tongue to flash back: "Oh, if that's
all you care--!" But caring was exactly the factor she wanted,
as much as possible, to keep out of their talk and their
thoughts. She could not ask him how much he cared without
laying herself open to the same question; and that way terror
lay. As a matter of fact, though Strefford was not an ardent
wooer--perhaps from tact, perhaps from temperament, perhaps
merely from the long habit of belittling and disintegrating
every sentiment and every conviction--yet she knew he did care
for her as much as he was capable of caring for anyone. If the
element of habit entered largely into the feeling--if he liked
her, above all, because he was used to her, knew her views, her
indulgences, her allowances, knew he was never likely to be
bored, and almost certain to be amused, by her; why, such
ingredients though not of the fieriest, were perhaps those most
likely to keep his feeling for her at a pleasant temperature.
She had had a taste of the tropics, and wanted more equable
weather; but the idea of having to fan his flame gently for a
year was unspeakably depressing to her. Yet all this was
precisely what she could not say. The long period of probation,
during which, as she knew, she