Chapter 24 - Page 2

Princes. No--the job was decidedly
intolerable; and he would have to look out for another means of
earning his living. But that was not what he had really got
away to think about. He knew he should never starve; he had
even begun to believe again in his book. What he wanted to
think of was Susy--or rather, it was Susy that he could not help
thinking of, on whatever train of thought he set out.

Again and again he fancied he had established a truce with the
past: had come to terms--the terms of defeat and failure with
that bright enemy called happiness. And, in truth, he had
reached the point of definitely knowing that he could never
return to the kind of life that he and Susy had embarked on. It
had been the tragedy, of their relation that loving her roused
in him ideals she could never satisfy. He had fallen in love
with her because she was, like himself, amused, unprejudiced and
disenchanted; and he could not go on loving her unless she
ceased to be all these things. From that circle there was no
issue, and in it he desperately revolved.

If he had not heard such persistent rumours of her re-marriage
to Lord Altringham he might have tried to see her again; but,
aware of the danger and the hopelessness of a meeting, he was,
on the whole, glad to have a reason for avoiding it. Such, at
least, he honestly supposed to be his state of mind until he
found himself, as on this occasion, free to follow out his
thought to its end. That end, invariably, was Susy; not the
bundle of qualities and defects into which his critical spirit
had tried to sort her out, but the soft blur of identity, of
personality, of eyes, hair, mouth, laugh, tricks of speech and
gesture, that were all so solely and profoundly her own, and yet
so mysteriously independent of what she might do, say, think, in
crucial circumstances. He remembered her once saying to him:
"After all, you were right when you wanted me to be your
mistress," and the indignant stare of incredulity with which he
had answered her. Yet in these hours it was the palpable image
of her that clung closest, till, as invariably happened, his
vision came full circle, and feeling her on his breast he wanted
her also in his soul.

Well--such all-encompassing loves were the rarest of human
experiences; he smiled at his presumption in wanting no other.
Wearily he turned, and tramped homeward through the winter
twilight ....

At the door of the hotel he ran across the Prince of Teutoburg's
aide-de-camp. They had not met for some days, and Nick had a
vague feeling that if the Prince's matrimonial designs took
definite shape he himself was not likely, after all, to be their
chosen exponent. He had surprised, now and then, a certain