Chapter 23 - Page 2

carriages were beginning to animate the converging
thoroughfares, streaming abreast, crossing, winding in and out
of each other in a tangle of hurried pleasure-seeking. She
caught the light on jewels and shirt-fronts and hard bored eyes
emerging from dim billows of fur and velvet. She seemed to hear
what the couples were saying to each other, she pictured the
drawing-rooms, restaurants, dance-halls they were hastening to,
the breathless routine that was hurrying them along, as Time,
the old vacuum-cleaner, swept them away with the dust of their
carriage-wheels. And again the loneliness vanished in a sense
of release ....

At the corner of the Place de la Concorde she stopped,
recognizing a man in evening dress who was hailing a taxi.
Their eyes met, and Nelson Vanderlyn came forward. He was the
last person she cared to run across, and she shrank back
involuntarily. What did he know, what had he guessed, of her
complicity in his wife's affairs? No doubt Ellie had blabbed it
all out by this time; she was just as likely to confide her
love-affairs to Nelson as to anyone else, now that the
Bockheimer prize was landed.

"Well--well--well--so I've caught you at it! Glad to see you,
Susy, my dear." She found her hand cordially clasped in
Vanderlyn's, and his round pink face bent on her with all its
old urbanity. Did nothing matter, then, in this world she was
fleeing from, did no one love or hate or remember?

"No idea you were in Paris--just got here myself," Vanderlyn
continued, visibly delighted at the meeting. "Look here, don't
suppose you're out of a job this evening by any chance, and
would come and cheer up a lone bachelor, eh? No? You are?
Well, that's luck for once! I say, where shall we go? One of
the places where they dance, I suppose? Yes, I twirl the light
fantastic once in a while myself. Got to keep up with the
times! Hold on, taxi! Here--I'll drive you home first, and
wait while you jump into your toggery. Lots of time." As he
steered her toward the carriage she noticed that he had a gouty
limp, and pulled himself in after her with difficulty.

"Mayn't I come as I am, Nelson, I don't feel like dancing.
Let's go and dine in one of those nice smoky little restaurants
by the Place de la Bourse."

He seemed surprised but relieved at the suggestion, and they
rolled off together. In a corner at Bauge's they found a quiet
table, screened from the other diners, and while Vanderlyn
adjusted his eyeglasses to study the carte Susy stole a long
look at him. He was dressed with even more than his usual
formal trimness, and she detected, in an ultra-flat wrist-watch
and discreetly expensive waistcoat buttons, an attempt at
smartness altogether new. His face had