 Part 1 Chapter 9 of The Glimpses of the Moon. Nelson Van Derlin, still in his travelling clothes, paused on the threshold of his own dining-room and surveyed the scene with pardonable satisfaction. He was a short, round man with a grizzled head, small facetious eyes, and a large and credulous smile. At the luncheon table sat his wife, between Charlie Strefford and Nick Lansing. Next to Strefford, perched on her high chair, Clarissa throned in infant beauty, while Susie Lansing cut up a peach for her. Through wide orange awnings the sun slanted in upon the white-clad group. Well, well, well! So I've caught you at it!" cried the happy father, whose inveterate habit it was to address his wife and friends, as if he had surprised them at an inopportune moment. Stealing up from behind, he lifted his daughter into the air, while a chorus of—'Hello, old Nelson!' hailed his appearance. It was two or three years since Nick Lansing had seen Mr. Van Derlin, who was now the London representative of the Big New York Bank of Van Derlin and Company, and had exchanged his sumptuous house in Fifth Avenue for another, more sumptuous still, in Mayfair, and the young man looked curiously and attentively at his host. Mr. Van Derlin had grown older and stouter, but his face still kept its look of somewhat worn optimism. He embraced his wife, greeted Susie affectionately, and distributed cordial hand grasps to the two men. "'Hello!' he exclaimed, suddenly noticing a pearl and coral trinket hanging from Clarissa's neck. "'Who's been giving my daughter jewelry, I'd like to know?' "'Oh, Streffi did. Just think, Father, because I said I'd rather have it than a book, you know,' Clarissa lucidly explained, her arms tight about her father's neck, her beaming eyes on Strefford. Nelson Van Derlin's own eyes took on the look of shrewdness which came into them whenever there was a question of material values. "'What, Streffi? Can't you add a day? Upon my soul, spoiling the brat like that, you'd know business to, my dear chap, a lovely baroque pearl?' he protested, with the half-apologetic tone of the rich man embarrassed by too costly a gift from an impicunious friend. "'Oh, hadn't I? Why? Because it's too good for Clarissa, or too expensive for me. Of course you daren't imply the first, and as for me, I've had a windfall, and I'm blowing it on the ladies.' Strefford, Lansing had noticed, always used American slang when he was slightly at a loss, and wished to divert attention from the main point. But why was he embarrassed, whose attention did he wish to divert? It was plain that Van Derlin's protest had been merely formal, like most of the wealthy, he had only the dimmest notion of what money represented to the poor. But it was unusual for Strefford to give any one a present, and especially an expensive one. Perhaps that was what had fixed Van Derlin's attention. "'A windfall,' he gaily repeated. "'No, a tiny one. I was offered a thumping rent for my little place at Como, and dashed over here to squander my millions with the rest of you,' said Strefford imperturbably. Van Derlin's look immediately became interested and sympathetic. What! the scene of the honeymoon!' he included Nick and Susie in his friendly smile. "'Just so. The reward of virtue. I say, give me a cigar, will you, old man. I left some awfully good ones at Como. Worse luck. And I don't mind telling you that Ellie's no judge of tobacco, and that Nick's too far gone in bliss to care what he smokes,' Strefford grumbled, stretching a hand toward his host's cigar-case. "'I do like jewelry best,' Clarissa murmured, hugging her father. Nelson Van Derlin's first word to his wife had been that he had brought her all her tawgory, and she had welcomed him with appropriate enthusiasm. In fact, to the looker's on, her joy at seeing him seemed rather too patently in proportion to her satisfaction at getting her clothes. But no such suspicion appeared to Marr Mr. Van Derlin's happiness in being, for once, and for nearly twenty-four hours, under the same roof with his wife and child. He did not conceal his regret at having promised his mother to join her the next day, and added with a wistful glance at Ellie, if only I'd known you meant to wait for me. But being a man of duty, in domestic as well as business affairs, he did not even consider the possibility of disappointing the exacting old lady to whom he owed his being. Mother cares for so few people, he used to say, not without a touch of filial pride in the parental exclusiveness, that I have to be with her rather more than if she were more sociable. And with smiling resignation he gave orders that Clarissa should be ready to start the next evening. And meanwhile, he concluded, we'll have all the good time that's going. The ladies of the party seemed united in the desire to further this resolve, and it was settled that as soon as Mr. Van Derlin had dispatched a hasty luncheon, his wife, Clarissa, and Susie should carry him off for a tea-pick-nick at Torcello. They did not even suggest that Strefford or Nick should be of the party, or that any of the other young men of the group should be summoned. As Susie said, Nelson wanted to go off alone with his harem, and Lansing and Strefford were left to watch the departure of the happy Pasha ensconced between attentive beauties. Well, that's what you call being married," Strefford commented, waving his battered Panama at Clarissa. Oh, no, I don't," Lansing laughed. He does. But do you know? Strefford paused and swung about on his companion. Do you know, when the rude awakening comes, I don't care to be there. I believe there'll be some crockery broken. Shouldn't wonder, Lansing answered indifferently. He wandered away to his own room, leaving Strefford to philosophize to his pipe. Lansing had always known about poor old Nelson. Who hadn't, except poor old Nelson? The case had once seemed amusing because it was so typical. Now it rather irritated Nick that Vanderland should be so complete an ass. But he would be off the next day, and so would Ellie. And then, for many enchanted weeks the palace would once more be the property of Nick and Susie. Of all the people who came and went in it, they were the only ones who appreciated it, or knew how it was meant to be lived in, and that made it theirs in the only valid sense. In this light it became easy to regard the Vanderlands as mere transient intruders. Having relegated them to this convenient distance, Lansing shut himself up with his book. He had returned to it with fresh energy after his few weeks of holiday-making, and was determined to finish it quickly. He did not expect that it would bring in much money. But if it were moderately successful, it might give him an opening in the reviews and magazines, and in that case he meant to abandon archaeology for novels, since it was only as a purveyor of fiction that he could count on earning a living for himself and Susie. Late in the afternoon he laid down his pen and wandered out of doors. He loved the increasing heat of the Venetian summer, the bruised peach-tints of worn house fronts, the enameling of sunlight on dark green canals, the smell of half-taked fruits and flowers thickening the languid air. What visions could he build if he dared, of being tucked away with Susie in the attic of some tumble-down palace, above a jade-green waterway, with a terrace overhanging a scrap of neglected garden, and checks from the publishers dropping in at convenient intervals? Why should they not settle in Venice if he pulled it off? He found himself before the church of the Scalzi, and pushing open the leather door wandered up the nave under the whirl of rose and lemon angels and Tiepolo's great fault. It was not a church in which one was likely to run across sightseers, but he presently remarked a young lady standing alone near the choir, and assiduously applying her field-glass to the celestial vortex, from which she occasionally glanced down at an open manual. As Lansing's steps sounded on the pavement, the young lady, turning, revealed herself as Miss Hicks. Ah! you like this, too! It's several centuries out of your line, though, isn't it? Nick asked as they shook hands. She gazed at him gravely. Why shouldn't one like things that are out of one's line? She answered, and he agreed, with a laugh, that it was often an incentive. She continued to fix her grave eyes on him, and after one or two remarks about the Tiepolo's, he perceived that she was feeling her way toward a subject of more personal interest. I'm glad to see you alone, she said at length, with an abruptness that might have seemed awkward, had it not been so completely unconscious. She turned toward a cluster of straw chairs, and signed to Nick to seat himself beside her. I seldom do, she added, with the serious smile that made her heavy face almost handsome, and as she went on, giving him no time to protest, I wanted to speak to you, to explain about Father's invitation to go with us to Persia and Turkestan. To explain? Yes. You found the letter when you arrived here just after your marriage, didn't you? You must have thought it odd, our asking you just then, but we hadn't heard that you were married. Oh, I guessed as much. It happened very quietly, and I was remiss about announcing it even to old friends. Lansing frowned. His thoughts had wandered away to the evening when he had found Mrs. Hicks's letter in the mail awaiting him at Venice. The day was associated in his mind with the ridiculous and mortifying episode of the cigars—the expensive cigars that Suzy had wanted to carry away from Strefford's villa. Their brief exchange of views on the subject had left the first blur on the perfect surface of his happiness, and he still felt an uncomfortable heat at the remembrance. For a few hours the prospect of life with Suzy had seemed unendurable, and it was just at that moment that he had found the letter from Mrs. Hicks, with its almost irresistible invitation, if only her daughter had known how nearly he had accepted it. It was a dreadful temptation, he said, smiling. To go with us. Then why—oh, everything's different now. I've got to stick to my writing. Miss Hicks still bent on him the same unblinking scrutiny. Does that mean that you're going to give up your real work? Am I real work? Archaeology? He smiled again to hide a twitch of regret. Why, I'm afraid it hardly produces a living wage, and I've got to think of that. He collared suddenly, as if suspecting that Miss Hicks might consider the avowal an opening for he hardly knew what ponderous offer of aid. The Hicks' munificence was too uncalculating not to be occasionally oppressive. But looking at her again he saw that her eyes were full of tears. I thought it was your vocation, she said. So did I, but life comes along and upsets things. Oh, I understand. There may be things worth giving up all other things for. There are, cried Nick, with beaming emphasis. He was conscious that Miss Hicks' eyes demanded of him even more than this sweeping affirmation. But your novel may fail, she said with her odd harshness. It may. It probably will, he agreed. But if one stopped to consider such possibilities, don't you have to, with a wife? Oh, my dear Coral, how old are you? Not twenty. He questioned, laying a brotherly hand on hers. She stared at him a moment, and sprang up clumsily from her chair. I was never young, if that's what you mean. It's lucky, isn't it, that my parents gave me such a grand education. Because, you see, art's a wonderful resource." She pronounced it, resource. He continued to look at her kindly. You won't need it, or any other, when you grow young, as you will someday, he assured her. Do you mean when I fall in love? But I am in love. Oh, there is Eldorada and Mr. Beck. She broke off with a jerk, signaling with her field-glass to the pair who had just appeared at the farther end of the nave. I told them that if they'd meet me here to-day I'd try to make them understand Tiepolo. Because, you see, at home, we never have really understood Tiepolo, and Mr. Beck and Eldorada are the only ones to realize it. Mr. Buttle simply won't. She turned to Lansing and held out her hand. I am in love, she repeated earnestly, and that's the reason why I find art such a resource. She restored her eyeglasses, opened her manual, and strode across the church to the expectant neophytes. Lansing, looking after her, wondered for half a moment whether Mr. Beck were the object of this apparently unrequited sentiment. Then, with a queer start of introspection, abruptly decided that—no, he certainly was not. But then—but then—well, there was no use in following up such conjectures. He turned homeward, wondering if the picnickers had already reached Palazzo Vanderland. They got back only in time for a late dinner, full of chaff and laughter, and apparently still enchanted with each other's society. Lansing, Vanderland beamed on his wife, sent his daughter off to bed with a kiss, and leaning back in his armchair before the fruit-and-flower-laden table, declared that he'd never spent a jollier day in his life. Susie seemed to come in for a full share of his approbation, and Lansing thought that Ellie was unusually demonstrative to her friend. Strefford, from his hostess's side, glanced across now and then at young Mrs. Lansing, and his glance seemed to Lansing a confidential comment on the Vanderland raptures. But then Strefford was always having private jokes with people or about them, and Lansing was irritated with himself for perpetually suspecting his best friends of vague complicities at his expense. If I'm going to be jealous of Streffie now, he concluded with the grimace of self-derision. Certainly Susie looked lovely enough to justify the most irrational pangs. As a girl she had been, for some people's taste, a trifle fine drawn and sharp edged. Now, to her old likeness of line was added a shadowy bloom, a sort of star-reflecting depth. Her movements were slower, less angular. Her mouth had a kneading droop. Her lid seemed weighed down by their lashes, and then suddenly the old spirit would reveal itself through the new langer, like the tartness at the core of a sweet fruit. As her husband looked at her across the flowers and lights, he laughed inwardly at the nothingness of all things else. Vanderland and Clarissa left be times the next morning, and Mrs. Vanderland, who was to start for San Maritz in the afternoon, devoted her last hours to anxious conferences with her maid and Susie. Strefford, with Fred Gillow and the others, had gone for a swim at the Lido, and Lansing seized the opportunity to get back to his book. The quietness of the great echoing place gave him a foretaste of the solitude to come. By mid-August all their party would be scattered. The Hicks is off on a cruise to Crete and the Aegean. Fred Gillow on the way to his moor. Strefford to stay with friends in Capri till his annual visit to Northumberland in September. One by one the others would follow, and Lansing and Susie be left alone in the great Sunproof Palace, alone under the star-laden skies, alone with the great orange moons, still theirs, above the bell-tower of San Giorgio. The novel in that blessed quiet would unfold itself as harmoniously as his dreams. He wrote on, forgetful of the passing hours, till the door opened and he heard a step behind him. The next moment two hands were clasped over his eyes, and the air was full of Mrs. Vanderland's last new scent. You dear thing! I'm just off, you know," she said. Susie told me you were working, and I forbade her to call you down. She and Streffie are waiting to take me to the station, and I've run up to say good-bye. Ellie dear! Full of compunction, Lansing pushed aside his writing and started up, but she pressed him back into his seat. No, no! I should never forgive myself if I'd interrupted you. I oughtn't to have come up. Susie didn't want me to. But I had to tell you, you dear! I had to thank you. In her dark travelling dress and hat, so discreetly conspicuous, so negligent and so studied, with a veil masking her paint and gloves hiding her rings, she looked younger, simpler, more natural than he had ever seen her. Poor Ellie! Such a good fellow, after all. To thank me! For what? For being so happy here! He laughed, taking her hands. She looked at him, laughed back, and flung her arms about his neck. For helping me to be so happy elsewhere! You and Susie, you two-blessed darlings! She cried with a kiss on his cheek. Their eyes met for a second. Then her arms slipped slowly downward, dropping to her sides. Lansing sat before her like a stone. Oh! she gasped. Why do you stare so? Didn't you know? They heard Strefford's shrill voice on the stairs. Ellie! Where the dew saw you? Susie's in the gondola. You'll miss the train. Lansing stood up and caught Mrs. Vanderland by the wrist. What do you mean? What are you talking about? Oh! nothing! But you were both such bricks about the letters, and when Nelson was here, too— Nick, don't hurt my wrist so! I must run! He dropped her hand and stood motionless, staring after her and listening to the click of her high heels as she fled across the room and along the echoing corridor. When he turned back to the table, he noticed that a small Morocco case had fallen among his papers. In falling it had opened, and before him, on the pale velvet lining, lay a scarf-pin set with a perfect pearl. He picked the box up, and was about to hasten after Mrs. Vanderland. It was so like her to shed jewels on her path, when he noticed his own initials on the cover. He dropped the box as if it had been a hot coal, and sat for a long while gazing at the gold N.L., which seemed to have burnt itself into his flesh. At last he roused himself and stood up. With a sigh of relief, Susie drew the pins from her hat and threw herself down on the lounge. The ordeal she had dreaded was over, and Mr. and Mrs. Vanderland had safely gone their several ways. Poor Ellie was not noted for prudence, and when life smiled on her, she was given to betraying her gratitude too openly. But thanks to Susie's vigilance—and, no doubt, to Strefford's tacit cooperation—the dreaded twenty-four hours were happily over. Nelson Vanderland had departed without a shadow on his brow, and though Ellie's, when she came down from bidding Nick goodbye, had seemed to Susie less serene than usual, she became her normal self as soon as it was discovered that the red Morocco bag with her jewel-box was missing. Before it had been discovered in the depths of the gondola, they had reached the station, and there was just time to thrust her into her sleeper, from which she was seen to wave an unperturbed farewell to her friends. Well, my dear, we've been it through! Strefford remarked with a deep breath as the San Moritz Express rolled away. Oh! Susie sighed in mute complicity. Then, as if to cover herself betrayal, poor darling, she does so like what she likes. Yes, even if it's a rotten bounder, Strefford agreed. A rotten bounder? Why, I thought, that it was still young Davenant. Lord know, not for the last six months. Didn't she tell you? Susie felt herself redden. I didn't ask her. Ask her. You mean you didn't let her? I didn't let her. And I don't let you. Susie added sharply as he helped her into the gondola. I will write. I dare say you'll write. It simplifies things. Strefford placidly equiessed. She made no answer, and in silence they glided homeward. Now, in the quiet of her own room, Susie lay and pondered on the distance she had traveled during the last year. Strefford had read her mind with his usual penetration. It was true that there had been a time when she would have thought it perfectly natural that Ellie should tell her everything—that the name of young Davenant's successor should be confided to her as a matter of course. Apparently even Ellie had been obscurely aware of the change. For after a first attempt to force her confidences on Susie, she had contented herself with vague expressions of gratitude, elusive smiles and sighs, and the pretty surprise of the sapphire bangle slipped onto her friend's wrist in the act of their farewell embrace. The bangle was extremely handsome. Susie, who had an auctioneer's eye for values, knew to a fraction the worth of those deep convex stones alternating with small emeralds and brilliance. She was glad to own the bracelet, and enchanted with the effect it produced on her slim wrist. Yet even while admiring it, and rejoicing that it was hers, she had already transmuted it into specie, and reckoned just how far it would go toward the paying of domestic necessities. For whatever came to her now interested her only as something more to be offered up to Nick. The door opened and Nick came in. Dusk had fallen, and she could not see his face, but something in the jerk of the door-handle roused her ever-wakeful apprehension. She hurried toward him with outstretched wrist. Look, dearest! Wasn't it too darling of Ellie? She pressed the button of the lamp that lit her dressing-table, and her husband's face started unfamiliarly out of the twilight. She slipped off the bracelet and held it up to him. Oh, I can go you one better! he said with a laugh, and pulling a Morocco case from his pocket, he flung it down among the scent-bottles. Susie opened the case automatically, staring at the pearl because she was afraid to look again at Nick. Ellie gave you this, she asked at length. Yes, she gave me this. There was a pause. Would you mind telling me—lensing continued in the same dead-level tone—exactly for what services we've both been so handsomely paid? The pearl is beautiful! Susie murmured, to gain time, while her head spun round with unimaginable tears. So are your sapphires, though on closer examination my services would appear to have been valued rather higher than yours. Would you be kind enough to tell me just what they were? Susie threw her head back and looked at him. What on earth are you talking about, Nick? Why should Ellie have given us these things? Do you forget that it's like I were giving her a pen-wiper or a button-hook? What is it you are trying to suggest? It had cost her a considerable effort to hold his eyes while she put the question. Something had happened between him and Ellie. That was evident. One of those hideous, unforeseeable blunders that may cause one's cleverest plans to crumble at a stroke. And again Susie shuddered at the frailty of her bliss. But her old training stood her in good stead. There had been more than one moment in her past when everything—somebody else's everything—had depended on her keeping a cool head and a clear glance. It would have been a wonder if now, when she felt her own everything at stake, she had not been able to put up as good a defence. What is it? She repeated impatiently, as Lansing continued to remain silent. That's what I'm here to ask. He returned, keeping his eyes as steady as she kept hers. There's no reason on earth, as you say, why Ellie shouldn't give us presents—as expensive presents as she likes—and the pearl is a beauty. All I ask is, for what specific services were they given? For allowing for all the absence of scruble that marks the intercourse of truly civilised people, you'll probably agree that there are limits—at least up to now there have been limits. I really don't know what you mean. I suppose Ellie wanted to show that she was grateful to us for looking after Clarissa. But she gave us all this in exchange for that, didn't she? He suggested, with a sweep of the hand around the beautiful shadowy room—a whole summer of it, if we choose. Susie smiled. Apparently she didn't think that enough. What a doting mother! It shows the store she sets upon her child. Well, don't you set store upon Clarissa? Clarissa is exquisite, but her mother didn't mention her own offering me this recompense. Susie lifted her head again. Whom did she mention? Van der Lin, said Lansing. Van der Lin? Nelson? Yes. And some letters—something about letters. What is it, my dear, that you and I have been hired to hide from Van der Lin? Because I should like to know—nick broke out savagely—if we've been adequately paid. Susie was silent. She needed time to reckon up her forces and study her next move, and her brain was in such a whirl of fear that she could only at last retort. What is it that Ellie said to you? Lansing laughed again. That's just what you'd like to find out, isn't it, in order to know the line to take in making your explanation. The sneer had an effect that he could not have foreseen, and that Susie herself had not expected. Oh, don't—don't let us speak to each other like that! She cried, and sinking down by the dressing-table, she hit her face and her hands. It seemed to her, now, that nothing mattered except that their love for each other, their faith in each other, should be saved from some unhealable hurt. She was willing to tell Nick everything. She wanted to tell him everything, if only she could be sure of reaching a responsive cord in him. But the scene of the cigars came back to her, and benumbed her. If only she could make him see that nothing was of any account as long as they continued to love each other. His touch fell compassionately on her shoulder. Poor child—don't, he said. Their eyes met, but his expression checked the smile breaking through her tears. Don't you see, he continued, that we've got to have this thing out. She continued to stare at him through a prism of tears. I can't—while you stand up like that—she stammered childishly. She had cowered down again into a corner of the lounge, but Lansing did not seat himself at her side. He took a chair facing her, like a collar on the farther side of a stately tea-tray. Will that do? he asked, with a stiff smile, as if to humor her. Nothing will do, as long as you're not you. Not me—she shook her head wearily. What's the use? You accept things theoretically, and then when they happen—what things? What has happened? A sudden impatience mastered her. What did he suppose, after all? But you know all about Ellie. We used to talk about her often enough in old times, she said. Ellie and young Davenant. Young Davenant? Or the others? Or the others? But what business was it of ours? Ah, that's just what I think! She cried, springing up with an explosion of relief. Lansing stood up also, but there was no answering light in his face. We're outside of all that. We've nothing to do with it, have we? He pursued. Nothing whatever. Then what on earth is the meaning of Ellie's gratitude? Gratitude for what we've done about some letters, and about Vanderlyn. Oh, not you! Susie cried involuntarily. Not I. Then you! He came close and took her by the wrist. Answer me! Have you been mixed up in some dirty business of Ellie's? There was a pause. She found it impossible to speak with that burning grasp on the wrist where the bangle had been. Had length he let her go and moved away. Answer, he repeated. I've told you it was my business and not yours. He received this in silence. Then he questioned. You've been sending letters for her, I suppose. To whom? Oh, why do you torment me? Nelson was not supposed to know that she'd been away. He left me the letters to post to him once a week. I found them here the night we arrived. It was the price. For this. Oh, Nick, say it's been worth it! Say at least that it's been worth it! She implored him. He stood motionless, unresponding. One hand drummed on the corner of her dressing-table, making the jeweled bangle dance. How many letters? I don't know. Four, five, what does it matter? And once a week, for six weeks? Yes. And you took it all as a matter of course? No, I hated it. But what can I do? What could you do? When our being together depended on it. Oh, Nick, how could you think I'd give you up? Give me up, he echoed. Well, doesn't our being together depend on—and what we can get out of people? And hasn't there always got to be some give and take? Did you ever in your life get anything for nothing? She cried with sudden exasperation. You've lived among these people as long as I have. I suppose it's not the first time. By God, but it is! he exclaimed, flushing. And that's the difference—the fundamental difference! The difference? Between you and me. I've never in my life done people's dirty work for them, least of all for favors and return. I suppose you guessed it, or you wouldn't have hidden this beastly business from me. The blood rose to Susie's temples also. Yes, she had guessed it. Instinctively, from the day she had first visited him in his bare lodgings, she had been aware of his stricter standard. But how could she tell him that under his influence her standard had become stricter too, and that it was as much to hide her humiliation from herself as to escape his anger that she had held her tongue? You knew I wouldn't have stayed here another day if I'd known, he continued. Yes. And then where in the world should we have gone? You mean that, in one way or another, what you call give and take is the price of our remaining together? Well, isn't it? she faltered. Then we'd better part, hadn't we? He spoke in a low tone, thoughtfully and deliberately, as if this had been the inevitable conclusion to which their passionate argument had led. Susie made no answer. For a moment she ceased to be conscious of the causes of what had happened, the thing itself seemed to have smothered her under its ruins. Nick wandered away from the dressing-table and stood gazing out of the window at the darkening canal, flecked with lights. She looked at his back, and wondered what would happen if she were to go up to him and fling her arms about him. But even if her touch could have broken the spell, she was not sure she would have chosen that way of breaking it. Beneath her speechless anguish there burned the half-conscious sense of having been unfairly treated. When they had entered into their queer compact, Nick had known, as well as she on what compromises and concessions the life they were to live together must be based, that he should have forgotten it seemed so unbelievable, that she wondered with a new leap of fear, if he were using the wretched alleys and discretions, as a means of escape from a tie already wearied of. Suddenly she raised her head with a laugh. After all, you were right when you wanted me to be your mistress. He turned on her with an astonished stare. You! my mistress! Through all her pain she thrilled with pride at the discovery that such a possibility had long since become unthinkable to him. But she insisted. That day at the Fulmers, have you forgotten? When you said it would be sheer madness for us to marry. Lansing stood leaning in the embrasure of the window, his eyes fixed on the mosaic fallutes of the floor. I was right enough when I said it would be sheer madness for us to marry. He rejoined at length. She sprang up trembling. Well, that's easily settled. Our compact. Oh, that compact! He interrupted her with an impatient laugh. Aren't you asking me to carry it out now? Because I said we'd better part. He paused. But the compact—I'd almost forgotten it—was to the effect, wasn't it, that we were to give each other a helping hand if either of us had a better chance. The thing was absurd, of course, a mere joke. From my point of view, at least, I shall never want any better chance, any other chance. Oh, Nick! Oh, Nick! But then—she was close to him, his face looming down through her tears, but he put her back. It would have been easy enough, wouldn't it? He rejoined, if we'd been as detachable as all that. As it is, it's going to hurt horribly. But talking it over won't help. You were right just now when you asked how else we were going to live. We're born parasites—both, I suppose—or we'd have found out some way long ago. But I find there are things I might put up with for myself at a pinch, and should probably, in time, that I can't let you put up with for me—ever. Those cigars at Como. Do you suppose I didn't know it was for me? And this, too. Well, it won't do. It won't do. He stopped as if his courage failed him, and she moaned out, but you're writing. If your book's a success—my poor Susie, that's all part of the humbug. We both know that my sort of writing will never pay. And what's the alternative, except more of the same kind of baseness, and getting more and more blunted to it? At least, till now, I've minded certain things. I don't want to go on until I find myself taking them for granted. She reached out to Tim at hand. But you needn't ever, dear, if you'd only leave it to me. He drew back sharply. That seems simple to you, I suppose. Well, men are different. He walked toward the dressing-table, and glanced at the little enameled clock, which had been one of her wedding-presence. Time to dress, isn't it? Shall you mind if I leave you to dine with Streffie, and whoever else is coming? I'd rather like a long tramp, and no more talking, just at present, except with myself. He passed her by and walked rapidly out of the room. Susie stood motionless, unable to lift a detaining hand or to find a final word of appeal. On her disordered dressing-table, Mrs. Vanderlin's gift glittered in the rosy lamp-light. Yes, men were different, as he said. RECORDING BY ELIZABETH CLETTE THE GLIMPSES OF THE MOON BY EDITH WORTON PART ONE CHAPTER XI But there were necessary accommodations. There always had been. Nick, in old times, had been the first to own it. How they had laughed at the perpendicular people, the people who went by on the other side, since you couldn't be a good Samaritan without stooping over and poking into heaps of you didn't know what—and now Nick had suddenly become perpendicular. Susie, that evening at the head of the dinner-table, saw, in the breaks between her scutting thoughts, the nauseatingly familiar faces of the people she called her friends—Strefford, Fred Gillow, a giggling fool of a young Breckenridge of their New York group, who had arrived that day—and Prince Naron Altenari, Ursulus Prince, who in Ursula's absence at a tiresome cure, had quite simply and naturally preferred to join her husband at Venice. Susie looked from one to the other of them, as if with newly opened eyes, and wondered what life would be like with no faces but such as theirs to furnish it. Ah! Nick had become perpendicular. After all, most people went through life making a given set of gestures, like dance steps learned in advance. If you were dancing manual told you at a given time to be perpendicular, you had to be automatically—and that was Nick. But what on earth, Susie? Gillow's puzzled voice suddenly came to her as from immeasurable distances. Are you going to do in this beastly stifling hole for the rest of the summer? Ask Nick, my dear fellow—Strefford answered for her—and, by the way, where is Nick, if one may ask?—young Breckenridge interposed, glancing up to take belated note of his host's absence. Dining out, said Susie glibly, people turned up, blighting bores they wouldn't have dared to inflict on you. How easily the old familiar fibbing came to her. The kind to whom you say, now mind you look me up, and then spend the rest of your life dodging like our good Hickses!—Strefford amplified. The Hickses! But, of course, Nick was with the Hickses. It went through Susie like a knife, and the dinner she had so lightly fibbed became a hateful truth. She sat to herself feverishly. I'll call him up there after dinner, and then he will feel silly. But only to remember that the Hickses, in their medieval setting, had, of course, sternly denied themselves a telephone. The fact of Nick's temporary inaccessibility, since she was now convinced that he really was at the Hickses, turned her to stress into a mocking irritation. Ah! that was where he carried his principles, his standards, or whatever he called the new set of rules he had suddenly begun to apply to the old game. It was stupid of her not to have guessed it at once. Oh! the Hickses! Nick adores them, you know. He's going to marry Coral next. She laughed out, flashing the joke around the table with all her practised flippancy. Lord! gasped Gillo, inarticulate, while the Prince displayed the unsurprised smile which Susie accused him of practising every morning with her's Mueller exercises. Suddenly Susie felt Strefford's eyes upon her. What's the matter with me? Too much rouge! she asked, passing her arm in his as they left the table. No! too little! Look at yourself! he answered in a low tone. Oh! in these cadaverous old looking glasses everybody looks fished up from the canal. She jerked away from him to spin down the long floor of the salon, hands on hips, whistling a ragtime tune. The Prince and young Breckenridge caught her up, and she spun back with the latter, while Gillo, it was believed to be his sole accomplishment, snapped his fingers in simulation of bones, and shuffled after the couple on stamping feet. Susie sank down on a sofa near the window, fanning herself with a floating scarf, and the men forged for cigarettes and rang for the gondoliers, who came in with trays of cooling drinks. Well, what next? This ain't all, is it? Gillo presently queried, from the divan where he lulled half asleep with dripping brow. Fred Gillo, like nature, abhorred a void, and it was inconceivable to him that every hour of man's rational existence should not furnish a motive for getting up and going somewhere else. Young Breckenridge, who took the same view, and the Prince, who earnestly desired to, reminded the company that somebody they knew was giving a dance that night at the Lido. Strefford vetoed the Lido, on the ground that he'd just come back from there, and proposed that they should go out on foot for a change. Why not? What fun! Susie was up in an instant. Let's pay somebody a surprise visit. I don't know who. Streffie, Prince, can't you think of somebody who'd be particularly annoyed by our arrival? No, the list's too long. Let's start and choose our victim on the way, Strefford suggested. Susie ran to her room for a light cloak, and without changing her high-heeled satin slippers, went out with the four men. There was no moon—thank heaven there was no moon—but the stars hung over them as close as fruit, and secret fragrances dropped on them from garden walls. Susie's heart tightened with memories of Como. They wandered on, laughing and dawdling, and yielding to the drifting whims of aimless people. Presently someone proposed taking a nearer look at the façade of San Giorgio Maggiore, and they hailed a gondola, and were rode out through the bobbing lanterns and twanging guitar strings. When they landed again, Gillo, always acutely bored by scenery, and particularly resentful of midnight aesthetics, suggested a nightclub near at hand, which was said to be jolly. The Prince warmly supported this proposal, but on Susie's curt refusal they started their rambling again, circuitously threading the vague dark lanes, and making for the piazza and Florian's ices. Suddenly at a calais corner, unfamiliar and yet somehow known to her, Susie paused to stare about her with a laugh. But the Hickses! Surely that's their palace! And the windows all lit up! They must be giving a party! Oh, do let's go up and surprise them! The idea struck her as one of the drollas that she had ever originated, and she wondered that her companion should respond to languidly. I can't see anything very thrilling and surprising the Hickses! Gillo protested, defrauded of possible excitements, and Strafford added, it would surprise me more than them if I went. But Susie insisted feverishly, you don't know, it may be awfully exciting. I have an idea that Coral's announcing her engagement, her engagement to Nick. Come, give me a hand, Straff, and you the other, Fred. She began to hum the first bars of Donna Anna's entrance in Don Giovanni. Pity I haven't got a black cloak and a mask. No, your face will do," said Strafford, laying his hand on her arm. She drew back, flushing crimson. Breckinridge and the Prince had sprung on ahead, and Gillo, lumbering after them, was already half way up the stairs. My face? My face? What's the matter with my face? Do you know any reason why I shouldn't go to the Hickses to-night? Susie broke out in sudden wrath. None whatever, except that if you do it will bore me to death. Strafford returned with serenity. Oh, in that case! No, come on! I hear those fools banging on the door already. He caught her by the hand, and they started up the stairway. But on the first landing she paused, twisted her hand out of his, and without a word, without a conscious thought, dashed down the long flight, across the great, resounding vestibule, and out into the darkness of the collie. Strafford caught up with her, and they stood a moment silent in the night. Susie, what the devil's the matter? The matter? Can't you see, that I'm tired, that I've got a splitting headache, that you bore me to death, one and all of you? She turned and laid a deprecating hand on his arm. Straffie, old dear, don't mind me, but for God's sake find a gondola and send me home. Alone? Alone. It was never any concern of Straff's if people wanted to do things he did not understand, and she knew that she could count on his obedience. They walked on in silence to the next canal, and he picked up a passing gondola and put her in it. Now go and amuse yourself, she called after him, as the boat shot under the nearest bridge. Anything, anything to be alone, away from the folly and futility that would be all she had left if Nick were to drop out of her life. But perhaps he's dropped already. Dropped for good, she thought, as she set her foot on the van der Linde threshold. The short summer night was already growing transparent. A newborn breeze stirred the soiled surface of the water, and sent it lapping freshly against the old palace doorways. Nearly two o'clock. Nick had no doubt come back long ago. Susie hurried up the stairs, reassured by the mere thought of his nearness. She knew that when their eyes and their lips met, it would be impossible for anything to keep them apart. The gondolier dosing on the landing roused himself to receive her, and to proffer two envelopes. The upper one was a telegram for Strefford. She threw it down again, and paused under the lantern hanging from the painted vault, the other envelope in her hand. The address at Boer was in Nick's writing. When did the senior leave this for me? Has he gone out again? Gone out again? But the senior had not come in since dinner. Or that the gondolier was positive, as he had been on duty all the evening. A boy had brought the letter, an unknown boy, he had left it without waiting. It must have been about half an hour after the senora had herself gone out with her guests. Susie, hardly hearing him, fled on to her own room, and there, beside the very lamp which, two months before, had illuminated Ellie Vanderlyn's fatal letter, she opened Nick's. Don't think me hard on you, dear, but I've got to work this thing out by myself. The sooner the better, don't you agree? So I'm taking the express to Milan presently. You'll get a proper letter in a day or two. I wish I could think now of something to say that would show you I'm not a brute. But I can't. N.L. There was not much of the night left in which to sleep, even had a semblance of sleep been achievable. The letter fell from Susie's hands, and she crept out on to the balcony and cowered there, her forehead pressed against the balustrade, the dawn wind stirring in her thin laces. Through her closed eyelids and the tightly clenched fingers pressed against them, she felt the penetration of the growing light, the relentless advance of another day, a day without purpose, and without meaning—a day without Nick. At length she dropped her hands, and staring from dry lids saw a rim of fire above the roofs across the grand canal. She sprang up, ran back into her room, and dragging the heavy curtain shut across the windows, stumbled over in the darkness to the lounge, and fell among its pillows face downward, groping, delving for a deeper night. She started up, stiff and aching, to see a golden wedge of sun on the floor at her feet. She had slept then. Was it possible? It must be eight or nine o'clock already. She had slept, slept like a drunkard, with that letter on the table at her elbow. Ah! Now she remembered. She had dreamed that the letter was a dream. But there inexorably it lay, and she picked it up, and slowly, painfully re-read it. Then she toured into shreds, hunted for a match, and kneeling before the empty hearth, as though she were accomplishing some funeral rite. She burnt every shred of it to ashes. Nick would thank her for that some day. After a bath and a hurried toilet, she began to be aware of feeling younger and more hopeful. After all, Nick had merely said that he was going away for a day or two, and the letter was not cruel. There were tender things in it, showing through the curt words. She smiled at herself a little stiffly in the glass, put a dash of red on her colorless lips, and rang for the maid. Coffee, Giovanna, please, and will you tell Mr. Strefford that I should like to see him presently? If Nick really kept to his intentions of staying away for a few days, she must trump up some explanation of his absence. But her mind refused to work, and the only thing she could think of was to take Strefford into her confidence. She knew that he could be trusted in a real difficulty. His impish malice transformed itself into a resourceful ingenuity when his friends required it. The maid stood looking at her with a puzzled gaze, and Susy somewhat sharply repeated her order. But don't wake him on purpose, she added, foreseeing the probable effect on Strefford's temper. But, Signora, the gentleman is already out. Already out? Strefford, who could hardly be routed from his bed before lunch and time. Is it so late? Susy cried incredulous. After nine, and the gentleman took the eight o'clock train for England, Gervaiso said he had received a telegram. He left word that he would write to the Signora. The door closed upon the maid, and Susy continued to gaze at her painted image in the glass, as if she had been trying to outstare an important stranger. There was no one left for her to take counsel of, then. No one, but poor Fred Gillow. She made a grimace at the idea. But what on earth could have summoned Strefford back to England? End of CHAPTER XI. Nick Lansing, in the Milan Express, was roused by the same bar of sunshine lying across his knees. He yawned, looked with disgust at his stolidly sleeping neighbours, and wondered why he had decided to go to Milan, and what on earth he should do when he got there. The difficulty about trenchant decisions was that the next morning they generally left one facing a void. When the train drew into the station at Milan, he scrambled out, got some coffee, and, having drunk it, decided to continue his journey to Genoa. The state of being carried passively onward postponed action and dulled thought, and after twelve hours of furious mental activity that was exactly what he wanted. He fell into a dose again, waking now and then to haggard intervals of more thinking, and then dropping off to the clank and rattle of the train. Inside his head, in his waking intervals, the same clanking and grinding of wheels and chains went on unremittingly. He had done all his lucid thinking within an hour of leaving the Palazzo Vanderland the night before. Since then, his brain had simply continued to revolve indefatigably about the same old problem. His cup of coffee, instead of clearing his thoughts, had merely accelerated their pace. At Genoa he wandered about in the hot streets, bought a cheap suitcase and some underclothes, and then went down to the port in search of a little hotel he remembered there. An hour later he was sitting in the coffee-room, smoking and glancing vacantly over the papers while he waited for dinner, when he became aware of being timidly but intently examined by a small, round-faced gentleman with eyeglasses who sat alone at the adjoining table. Hello! Bottles! Lansing exclaimed, recognizing with surprise the recalcitrant secretary who had resisted Miss Hicks's endeavour to convert him to Tiepolo. Mr. Bottles, blushing to the roots of his scant hair, half rose and bowed ceremoniously. Nick Lansing's first feeling was of annoyance at being disturbed in his solitary broodings, his next of relief at having to postpone them even to converse with Mr. Bottles. No idea you were here. Is the yacht in the harbour? he asked, remembering that the ibis must be just about to spread her wings. Mr. Bottles, at salute behind his chair, signed a mutinigation, for the moment he seemed to embarrass to speak. Ah! your here is an advanced guard! I remember now. I saw Miss Hicks in Venice the day before yesterday. Lansing continued, dazed at the thought that hardly forty-eight hours had passed since his encounter with Coral in the Scalzi. Mr. Bottles, instead of speaking, had tentatively approached his table. May I take this seat for a moment, Mr. Lansing? Thank you. No, I am not here as an advanced guard, though I believe the ibis is due some time to-morrow. He cleared his throat, wiped his eyeglasses on a silk handkerchief, replaced them on his nose, and went on solemnly. Perhaps, to clear up any possible misunderstanding, I ought to say that I am no longer in the employ of Mr. Hicks. Lansing glanced at him sympathetically. It was clear that he suffered horribly in imparting this information, though his compact face did not lend itself to any dramatic display of emotion. Really! Nick smiled and then ventured. I hope it's not owing to conscientious objections to Tiepolo. Mr. Bottles' blush became a smoldering agony. Ah! Miss Hicks, mentioned to you—told you—no, Mr. Lansing, I am principled against the effete art of Tiepolo, and of all his contemporaries I confess. But if Miss Hicks chooses to surrender herself momentarily to the unwholesome spell of the Italian decadence, it is not for me to protest or to criticise. Her intellectual and aesthetic range so far exceeds my humble capacity that it would be ridiculous, unbecoming. He broke off, and once more wiped a faint moisture from his eyeglasses. It was evident that he was suffering from a distress which he longed and yet dreaded to communicate. But Nick made no farther effort to bridge the gulf of his own preoccupations, and Mr. Bottles, after an expectant pause, went on— If you see me here to-day, it is only because, after a somewhat abrupt departure, I find myself unable to take leave of our friends without a last look at the ibis, the scene of so many stimulating hours. But I must beg you, he added earnestly, should you see Miss Hicks, or any other member of the party, to make no allusion to my presence in Genoa? I wish, said Mr. Bottles with simplicity, to preserve the strictis in Cognito. Lansing glanced at him kindly. Oh! But isn't that a little unfriendly? No other course is possible, Mr. Lansing, said the ex-secretary, and I commit myself to your discretion. The truth is, if I am here it is not to look once more at the ibis, but at Miss Hicks, once only. You will understand me and appreciate what I am suffering. He bowed again, and trotted away on his small tightly booted feet, pausing on the threshold to say, from the first, it was hopeless. Before he disappeared through the glass doors. A gleam of commiseration flashed through Nick's mind. There was something quaintly poignant in the sight of the brisk and efficient Mr. Bottles reduced to a limp image of unrequited passion. And what a painful surprise to the Hicks's to be thus suddenly deprived of the secretary who possessed the foreign languages. Mr. Beck kept the accounts and settled with the hotelkeepers. But it was Mr. Bottles' loftier task to entertain in their own tongue the unknown geniuses who flocked about the Hicks's, and Nick could imagine how disconcerting his departure must be on the eve of their Grecian cruise, which Mrs. Hicks would certainly call an odyssey. The next moment the vision of Coral's hopeless suitor had faded, and Nick was once more spinning around on the wheel of his own woes. The night before when he had sent his note to Susie from a little restaurant close to Palazzo Vanderland that they often patronized, he had done so with the firm intention of going away for a day or two in order to collect his wits and think over the situation. But after his letter had been entrusted to the landlord's little son, who was a particular friend of Susie's, Nick had decided to await the lad's return. The messenger had not been bidden to ask for an answer, but Nick, knowing the friendly and inquisitive Italian mind, was almost sure that the boy, in the hope of catching a glimpse of Susie, would linger about while the letter was carried up, and he pictured the maid knocking in his wife's darkened room, and Susie dashing some powder on her tear-stained face before she turned on the light. Poor foolish child! The boy had returned rather sooner than Nick expected, and he had brought no answer, but merely the statement that the senora was out, that everybody was out. Everybody? The senora and the four gentlemen who were dining at the palace, they all went out together on foot soon after dinner. There was no one to whom I could give the note, but they gondolier on the landing, for the senora had said she would be very late, and had said the maid to bed, and the maid had, of course, gone out immediately with her enamorato. Ah! said Nick, slipping his reward into the boy's hand, and walking out of the restaurant. Susie had gone out, gone out with their usual band, as she did every night in these sultry summer weeks, gone out after her talk with Nick, as if nothing had happened, as if his whole world and hers had not crashed in ruins at their feet. Ah! Poor Susie! After all, she had merely obeyed the instinct of self-preservation, the old hard habit of keeping up, going ahead and hiding her troubles. Unless, indeed, the habit had already engendered in difference, and it had become as easy for her as for most of her friends to pass from drama to dancing, from sorrow to the cinema. What of soul was left, he wondered. His train did not start till midnight, and after leaving the restaurant, Nick tramped the sultry by-ways till his tired legs brought him to a standstill under the vine-covered pergola of a gondolier's wine-shop at a landing close to the piazzetta. There he could absorb the cooling drinks until it was time to go to the station. It was after eleven, and he was beginning to look about for a boat, when a black prow pushed up to the steps, and with much chaff and laughter a party of young people in evening-dress jumped out. Nick, from under the darkness of the vine, saw that there was only one lady among them, and it did not need the lamp above the landing to reveal her identity. Susie, bare-headed and laughing, a light scarf slipping from her bare shoulders, a cigarette between her fingers, took Strefford's arm and turned in the direction of Florian's, with Gillo, the prince, and young Breckenridge in her wake. Nick had relived this rapid scene hundreds of times during his hours in the train, and his aimless trampings through the streets of Genoa. In that squirrel wheel of a world of his and Susie's, you had to keep going, or drop out, and Susie it was evident had chosen to keep going. Under the lamp-flare on the landing he had had a good look at her face, and he had seen that the mask of paint and powder was carefully enough adjusted to hide any ravages the scene between them might have left. He even fancied that she had dropped a little atropine into her eyes. There was no time to spare if he meant to catch the midnight train, and no gondola inside but that which his wife had just left. He sprang into it, and bad the gondolier carry him to the station. The cushions, as he leaned back, gave out a breath of her scent, and in the glare of electric light at the station he saw at his feet a rose which had fallen from her dress. He ground his heel into it as he got out. There it was, then. That was the last picture he was to have of her, for he knew now that he was not going back—at least not to take up their life together. He supposed he should have to see her once to talk things over, settle something for their future. He'd been sincere in saying that he bore her no ill will, only that he could never go back into that slough again. If he did, he knew he would inevitably be drawn under, slipping downward from concession to concession. The noises of a hot summer night in the port of Genoa would have kept the most carefree from slumber. But though Nick lay awake he did not notice them, for the tumult in his brain was more deafening. Dawn brought a negative relief, and out of sheer weariness he dropped into a heavy sleep. When he woke it was nearly noon, and from his window he saw the well-known outline of the ibis, standing up dark against the glitter of the harbor. He had no fear of meeting her owners, who had doubtless long since landed and be taken themselves to cooler and more fashionable regions. Oddly enough, the fact seemed to accentuate his loneliness, his sense of having no one on earth to turn to. He dressed, and wandered out disconsolently to pick up a cup of coffee in some shady corner. As he drank his coffee his thoughts gradually cleared. It became obvious to him that he'd behaved like a madman, or a petulant child. He preferred to think it was like a madman. If he and Susie were to separate there was no reason why it should not be done decently and quietly, as such transactions were habitually managed among people of their kind. It seemed grotesque to introduce melodrama into their little world of unruffled ciberites, and he felt inclined now to smile at the incongruity of his gesture. But suddenly his eyes filled with tears. The future without Susie was unbearable, inconceivable. Why, after all, should they separate? At the question, her soft face seemed close to his, and that slight lift of the upper lip that made her smile so exquisite. Well, he would go back. But not with any presence of going to talk things over, come to an agreement, wind up their joint life like a business association. No. If he went back, he would go without conditions, for good, for ever. Only what about the future? What about the not far distant day when the wedding checks would have been spent, and Granny's pearls sold, and nothing left except unconcealed and unconditional dependence on rich friends, the role of the acknowledged hangers on? Was there no other possible solution? No new way of ordering their lives? No. There was none. He could not picture Susie out of her setting of luxury and leisure, could not picture either of them living such a life as the Nat Fulmers, for instance. He remembered the shabby, untidy bungalow in New Hampshire, the slatternly servants, un-eatable food, and ubiquitous children. How could he ask Susie to share such a life with him? If he did, she would probably have the sense to refuse. Their alliance had been based on a moment's midsummer madness. Now the score must be paid. He decided to write. If they were to part, he could not trust himself to see her. He called a waiter, asked for pen and paper, and pushed a side of pile of unread newspapers on the corner of the table where his coffee had been served. As he did so, his eye lit on a daily mail of two days before. As a pretext for postponing his letter, he took up the paper and glanced down the first page. He read, Tragic yachting-accident in the Solent, the Earl of Altingham, and his son Viscount Domblay, drowned in a midnight collision. Both bodies recovered. He read on. He grasped the fact that the disaster had happened the night before he had left Venice, and that, as the result of a fog in the Solent, their old friend Strefford was now Earl of Altingham, and possessor of one of the largest private fortunes in England. It was vertiginous to think of their old and pecunious Streff as the hero of such an adventure. And what irony in that double turn of the wheel, which in one day had plunged him, Nick Lansing, into nethermost misery, while it tossed the other to the stars. With an intense apprecision, he saw again Susie's descent from the gondola at the Calais steps, the sound of her laughter and of Strefford's chaff, the way she had caught his arm and clung to it, sweeping the other men on in her train. Strefford. Susie and Strefford. More than once Nick had noticed the softer inflections of his friend's voice when he spoke to Susie, the brooding look in his lazy eyes when they rested on her. In the security of his wetted bliss Nick had made light of those signs. The only real jealousy he had felt had been of Fred Gillow, because of his unlimited power to satisfy a woman's whims. Yet Nick knew that such material advantages would never again suffice for Susie. With Strefford it was different. She had delighted in his society while he was notoriously ineligible—might not she find him irresistible now. The forgotten terms of their bridal compact came back to Nick, the absurd agreement on which he and Susie had solemnly pledged their faith. But was it so absurd, after all? It had been Susie's suggestion—not his, thank God—and perhaps in making it she had been more serious than he imagined. Perhaps, even if their rupture had not occurred, Strefford's sudden honors might have caused her to ask for her freedom. Money, luxury, fashion, pleasure—those were the four cornerstones of her existence. He had always known it. She herself had always acknowledged it, even in their last dreadful talk together, and for once he had gloried in her frankness. How could he ever have imagined that, to have her fill of these things, she would not in time stoop lower than she had yet stooped? Perhaps in giving her up to Strefford he might be saving her. At any rate, the taste of the past was now so bitter to him that he was moved to thank whatever gods there were for pushing that mortuary paragraph under his eye. Susie, dear, he wrote, the fate seemed to have taken our future in hand, and spared us the trouble of unraveling it. If I have sometimes been selfish enough to forget the conditions on which you agreed to marry me, they have come back to me during these two days of solitude. You've given me the best a man can have, and nothing else will ever be worth much to me. But since I haven't the ability to provide you with what you want, I recognize that I've no right to stand in your way. We must owe no more Venetian palaces to underhand services. I see by the newspapers that Streff can now give you as many palaces as you want. Let him have the chance. I fancy he'll jump at it, and he's the best man in sight. I wish I were in his shoes. I'll write again in a day or two when I've collected my wits and can give you an address. Nick. He added a line on the subject of their modest funds, put the letter into an envelope, and addressed it to Mrs. Nicholas Lansing. As he did so, he reflected that it was the first time he had ever written his wife's married name. Well, by God, no other woman shall have it after her. He vowed, as he groped in his pocket book for a stamp. He stood up with a stretch of weariness, the heat was stifling, and put the letter in his pocket. I'll post it myself. It's safer," he thought. And then what in the name of goodness shall I do next, I wonder? He jammed his hat down in his head, and walked out into the sun-blaze. As he was turning away from the square by the General Post Office, a white parasol waved from the passing cab, and Coral Hicks leaned forward with an outstretched hand. I knew I'd find you, she triumphed. I've been driving up and down in this broiling sun for hours, shopping and watching for you at the same time. He stared at her blankly, too bewildered even to wonder how she knew he was in Genoa, and she continued with the kind of shy imperiousness that always made him feel in her presence, like a member of an orchestra under a masterful baton. Now please get right into this carriage, and don't keep me roasting here another minute. To the cab driver she called out, Al Porto. Nick Lansing sank down beside her. As he did so, he noticed a heap of bundles at her feet, and felt that he had simply added one more to the number. He supposed that she was taking her spoils to the ibis, and that he would be carried up to the deck-house to be displayed with the others. Well, it would all help to pass the day, and by night he would have reached some kind of a decision about his future. On the third day after Nick's departure, the post brought to the Palazzo Vanderland three letters from Mrs. Lansing. The first to arrive was a word from Strefford, scribbled in the train, and posted at Turin. In it he briefly said that he had been called home by the dreadful accident of which Susie had probably read in the daily papers. He added that he would write again from England, and then, in a blotted post-script, I wanted uncommonly badly to see you for good-bye, but the hour was impossible. Regards to Nick, do write me just a word to Waltringham. The other two letters which came together in the afternoon were both from Genoa. Susie scanned the addresses and fell upon the one in her husband's writing. Her hand trembled so much that, for a moment, she could not open the envelope. When she had done so, she devoured the letter in a flash, and then sat and brooded over the outspread page as it lay on her knee. It might mean so many things. She could read into it so many harrowing alternatives of indifference and despair, of irony and tenderness. Was he suffering tortures when he wrote it, or seeking only to inflict them upon her? Or did the words represent his actual feelings, no more and no less, and did he really intend her to understand that he considered it his duty to abide by the letter of their preposterous compact? He had left her in wrath and indignation. Yet, as a closer scrutiny revealed, there was not a word of approach in his brief lines. Perhaps that was why, in the last issue, they seemed so cold to her. She shivered and turned to the other envelope. The large, stilted characters, though half familiar, called up no definite image. She opened the envelope and discovered a postcard of the ibis, canvas spread, bounding over a rippled sea. On the back was written, So awfully dear of you to lend us Mr. Lansing for a little cruise, you may count on our taking the best of care of him. Coral End of Chapter 12 End of Part 1 Part 2 Chapter 13 Of The Glimpses of the Moon This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Elizabeth Clett The Glimpses of the Moon By Edith Wharton Part 2 Chapter 13 When Violet Melrose had said to Susie Branch the winter before in New York, But why on earth don't you and Nick go to my little place at first sigh for the honeymoon? I'm off to China, and you could have it to yourselves all summer. The offer had been tempting enough to make the lovers waver. It was such an artless and genuine little house, so full of the demoralizing simplicity of great wealth, that it seemed to Susie just the kind of place in which to take the first steps in renunciation. But Nick had objected that Paris, at that time of year, would be swarming with acquaintances who would hunt them down at all hours, and Susie's own experience had led her to remark that there was nothing the very rich enjoyed more than taking potluck with the very poor. They therefore gave Strefford's Villa the preference, with an inward proviso, on Susie's part, that Violet's house might very conveniently serve their purpose at another season. These thoughts were in her mind as she drove up to Mrs. Melrose's door on a rainy afternoon late in August. Her boxes piled high on the roof of the cab she had taken at the station. She had travelled straight through from Venice, stopping in Milan just long enough to pick up a reply to the telegram she had dispatched to the perfect housekeeper, whose permanent presence enabled Mrs. Melrose to say, Oh, when I'm sick of everything I just rush off without warning to my little shanty at Versailles, and live there all alone on scrambled eggs. The perfect housekeeper had replied to Susie's enquiry, I'm sure Mrs. Melrose most happy, and Susie, without further thought, had jumped into a Versailles train, and now stood in the thin rain before the sphinx-guarded threshold of the pavilion. The revolving year had brought round the season at which Mrs. Melrose's house might be convenient. No visitors were to be feared at Versailles at the end of August, and though Susie's reasons for seeking solitude were so remote from those she had once prefigured, they were none the less cogent. To be alone. Alone. After those first exposed days when, in the persistent presence of Fred Gillow in his satellites, and in the mocking radiance of late summer on the lagoons, she had fumed and turned about in her agony like a trapped animal in a cramping cage. To be alone had seemed the only respite, the one craving. To be alone somewhere in a setting as unlike as possible to the sensual splendors of Venice, under skies as unlike its azure roof. If she could have chosen she would have crawled away into a dingy inn in a rainy northern town where she had never been and no one knew her. Failing that unobtainable luxury, here she was on the threshold of an empty house, in a deserted place, under lowering skies. She had shaken off Fred Gillow, sulkily departing for his moor, where she had half-promised to join him in September. The Prince, young Breckenridge, and the few remaining survivors of the Venetian group had dispersed in the direction of the Engadine or Buritz, and now she could at least collect her wits, take stock of herself, and prepare the countenance with which she was to face the next stage in her career. Thank God it was raining at Versailles. The door opened, she heard voices in the drawing-room, and a slender languishing figure appeared on the threshold. Darling! Violet Melrose cried in an embrace, drawing her into the dusky perfumed room. But I thought you were in China! Susie stammered. In China! In China! Mrs. Melrose stared with dreamy eyes, and Susie remembered her drifting, disorganized life, a life more planless, more inexplicable than that of any of the other ephemeral beings blown about upon the same winds of pleasure. Well, madam, I thought so myself until I got a wire from Mrs. Melrose last evening, remarked the perfect housekeeper, following with Susie's handbag. Mrs. Melrose clutched her cavernous temples in her attenuated hands. Of course! Of course! I had meant to go to China! No! India! But I've discovered a genius, and genius, you know! Unable to complete her thought, she sank down upon a pillow-way divan, stretched out an arm, cried, Fulmer! Fulmer! And while Susie Lansing stood in the middle of the room with widening eyes, a man emerged from a more deeply cushioned and scented twilight of some inner apartment, and she saw with surprise Nat Fulmer, the good Nat Fulmer of the New Hampshire bungalow, and the ubiquitous progeny, standing before her in lordly ease, his hands in his pockets, a cigarette between his lips, his feet solidly planted in the insidious depths of one of Violet Melrose's white leopard skins. Susie! he shouted with open arms, and Mrs. Melrose murmured, You didn't know, then? You hadn't heard of his masterpieces? In spite of herself, Susie burst into a laugh. Is Nat your genius? Mrs. Melrose looked at her reproachfully. Fulmer laughed. No, I'm Grace's. But Mrs. Melrose has been our providence, and— Providence! his hostess interrupted. Don't talk as if you were at a prayer meeting. He had an exhibition in New York. It was the most fabulous success. He's come abroad to make studies for the decoration of my music room in New York. Ursula Gillow has given him her garden house at Roslyn to do, and Mrs. Baughheimer's ballroom. Oh, Fulmer, where are the cartoons? She sprang up, tossed about some fashion papers heaped on a lacquer table, and sank back exhausted by the effort. I'd got as far as Brindisi. I've travelled day and night to be here to meet him. She declared. But you, darling—and she held out a caressing hand to Susie. I'm forgetting to ask if you've had tea. An hour later, over the tea-table, Susie already felt herself mysteriously reabsorbed into what had so long been her native element. Ellie Van Der Lin had brought a breath of it to Venice, but Susie was then nourished on another air—the air of Nick's presence and personality. Now that she was abandoned, left again to her own devices, she felt herself suddenly at the mercy of the influences from which she thought she had escaped. In the queer social whirligig from which she had so lately fled, it seemed natural enough that a shake of the box should have tossed Nat Fulmer into celebrity, and sent Violet Melrose chasing back from the ends of the earth to bask in his success. Susie knew that Mrs. Melrose belonged to the class of moral parasites, for in that strange world the parts were sometimes reversed, and the wealthy preyed upon the pauper. Wherever there was a reputation to baton on, there, poor Violet appeared, a harmless vampire in pearls, who sought only to feed on the notoriety which all her millions could not create for her. Anyone less versed than Susie in the shallow mystery as her little world would have seen in Violet Melrose a baleful enchantress in Nat Fulmer, her helpless victim. Susie knew better. Violet, poor Violet, was not even that. The insignificant Ellie Vanderlin with her brief trivial passions, her artless mixture of amorous and social interests, was a woman with a purpose, a creature who fulfilled herself, but Violet was only a drifting interrogation. And what of Fulmer? Mustering with new eyes, his short, sturdily built figure, his nondescript bearded face, and the eyes that dreamed and wandered, and then suddenly sank into you like claws. Susie seemed to have found the key to all his years of dogged toil, his indifference to neglect, indifference to poverty, indifference to the needs of his growing family. Yes, for the first time she saw that he looked commonplace enough to be a genius—was a genius, perhaps, even though it was Violet Melrose who affirmed it. Susie looked steadily at Fulmer, their eyes met, and he smiled at her faintly through his beard. Yes, I did discover him, I did—Mrs. Melrose was insisting, from the depths of the black velvet divan in which she lay sunk like a wand near it in a midnight sea. You mustn't believe a word that Ursula Gillow tells you about having pounced on his spring snowstorm in a dark corner of the American Artists' exhibition. Skied, if you please, they skied him less than a year ago. And naturally Ursa never in her life looked higher than the first line at a picture show. And now she actually pretends. Oh, for pity's sake, don't say it doesn't matter, Fulmer. You're saying that just encourages her and makes people think she did—where in reality any one who saw me at the exhibition on varnishing day. Who? Well, Eddie Breckenridge, for instance. He was in Egypt, you say, perhaps he was, as if one could remember the people about one when suddenly one comes upon a great work of art as St. Paul did. Didn't he? And the scales fell from his eyes. Well, that's exactly what happened to me that day. And Ursula, everybody knows, was down at Roslyn at the time and didn't come up for the opening of the exhibition at all. And Fulmer sits there and laughs and says it doesn't matter, and that he'll paint another picture any day for me to discover. Susy had wrung the doorbell with a hand trembling with eagerness—eagerness to be alone, to be quiet, to stare her situation in the face, and collect herself before she came out again among her kind. She had stood on the doorstep, cowering among her bags, counting the instance till a step sounded and the doorknob turned, letting her in from the searching glare of the outer world. And now she had sat for an hour in Violet's drawing-room in the very house where her honeymoon might have been spent, and no one had asked her where she had come from, or why she was alone, or what was the key to the tragedy written on her shrinking face. That was the way of the world they lived in. Nobody questioned, nobody wondered any more, because nobody had time to remember. The old risk of prying curiosity of malicious gossip was virtually over. One was left with one's drama, one's disaster on one's hands, because there was nobody to stop and notice the little shrouded object one was carrying. As Susie watched the two people before her, each so frankly unaffected by her presence, Violet Melrose so engrossed in her feverish pursuit of notoriety, fulmer so plunged in the golden sea of his success, she felt like a ghost making inaudible and imperceptible appeals to the grosser senses of the living. If I wanted to be alone, she thought, I'm alone enough, in all conscience. There was a deathly chill in such security. She turned to fulmer. And Grace—he beamed back without sign of embarrassment. Oh, she's here, naturally—we're in Paris, kids and all—in a pension where we can polish up the lingo. But I hardly ever lay eyes on her, because she's as deep in music as I am in paint. It was as big a chance for her as for me, you see, and she's making the most of it, fiddling and listening to the fiddlers. Well, it's a considerable change from New Hampshire. He looked at her dreamily, as if making an intense effort to detach himself from his dream, and situate her in the fading past. Remember the bungalow. And Nick—aw, how's Nick? he brought out triumphantly. Oh, yes, darling Nick! Mrs. Melrose chimed in, and Susie, her head erect, her cheeks aflame, declared with resonance, most awfully well, splendidly. He's not here, though, from fulmer. No, he's off travelling, cruising. Mrs. Melrose's attention was faintly roused. With anybody interesting? No, you wouldn't know them. People we met. She did not have to continue, for her hostess's gaze had again strayed. And you've come for your clothes, I suppose, darling. Don't listen to people who say that skirts are to be wider. I've discovered a new woman, a genius, and she absolutely swathes you. Her name's my secret, but we'll go to her together. Susie rose from her engulfing armchair. Do you mind if I go up to my room? I'm rather tired, coming straight through. Of course, dear. I think there are some people coming to dinner. Mrs. Match will tell you. She has such a memory. Fulmer, where on earth are those cartoons of the music-room? Their voices pursued Susie upstairs, as, in Mrs. Match's perpendicular wake, she mounted to the white-paneled room with its gaolin in hangings, and the low bed heaped with more cushions. If we'd come here, she thought, everything might have been different. And she shuddered at the sumptuous memories of the Palazzo Vanderlin and the great painted bedroom where she had met her doom. Mrs. Match, hoping she would find everything and mentioning that dinner was not till nine, shut her softly in among her terrors. Find everything—Susie echoed the phrase. Oh, yes, she would always find everything. Every time the door shut on her now, and the sound of voices ceased, her memories would be there waiting for her, every one of them, waiting quietly, patiently, obstinately, like poor people in a doctor's office, the people who are always last to be attended to, but whom nothing will discourage or drive away, people to whom time is nothing, fatigue nothing, hunger nothing, other engagements nothing, who just wait. Thank heaven after all that she had not found the house empty, if, whenever she returned to her room, she was to meet her memories there. It was just a week since Nick had left her. During that week, crammed with people, questions, packing, explaining, evading, she had believed that in solitude lay her salvation. Now she understood that there was nothing she was so unprepared for, so unfitted for. When, in all her life, had she ever been alone? And how was she to bear it now, with all these ravening memories besetting her? Dinner not till nine. What on earth was she to do till nine o'clock? She knelt before her boxes, and feverishly began to unpack. Gradually, imperceptibly, the subtle influences of her old life were stealing into her. As she pulled out her tossed and crumpled dresses, she remembered Violet's emphatic warning. Don't believe the people who tell you that skirts are going to be wider! Were hers perhaps too wide as it was? She looked at her limp raiment, piling itself up on bed and sofa, and understood that, according to Violet's standards, and that of all of her set, these dresses, which Nick had thought so original and exquisite, were already commonplace and dowdy, fit only to be passed on to poor relations or given to one's maid, and Susie would have to go on wearing them till they fell to bits, or else—well, or else begin the old life again in some new form. She laughed aloud at the turn of her thoughts—dresses, how little they had mattered a few short weeks ago—and now perhaps they would again be one of the most foremost considerations of her life. How could it be otherwise, if she were to return again to her old dependence on Ellie Vanderlyn, Ursula Gillow, Violet Melrose? And beyond that, only the Bachheimers and their kind awaited her. A knock at the door. What a relief! It was Mrs. Match again with a telegram. To whom had Susie given her new address? With a throbbing heart she tore open the envelope and read, Shall be in Paris, Friday, for twenty-four hours. Where can I see you? write Nouveau-Locques. Ah, yes. She remembered now. She had written to Strefford. And this was his answer. He was coming. She dropped into a chair and tried to think. What on earth had she said in her letter? It had been mainly, of course, one of condolence. But now she remembered having added in a precipitant post-script. I can't give your message to Nick, for he's gone off with the Hickses. I don't know where, or for how long. It's all right, of course. It was in our bargain. She had not meant to put in that last phrase. But as she sealed her letter to Strefford, her eyes had fallen on Nick's missive, which lay beside it. Nothing in her husband's brief lines had embittered her as much as the illusion to Strefford. It seemed to imply that Nick's own plans were made, that his own future was secure, and that he could therefore freely and handsomely take thought for hers, and give her a pointer in the right direction. Sudden rage had possessed her at the thought. Where she had at first read jealousy, she now saw only a cold providence, and in a blur of tears she had scrawled her post-script to Strefford. She remembered that she had not even asked him to keep her secret. Well, after all, what would it matter if people should already know that Nick had left her? Their parting could not long remain a mystery, and the fact that it was known might help her to keep up a pretense of indifference. It was in the bargain. In the bargain. Ranging through her brain as she reread Strefford's telegram, she understood that he had snatched the time for this hasty trip solely in the hope of seeing her, and her eyes filled. The more bitterly she thought of Nick, the more this proof of Strefford's friendship moved her. The clock to her relief reminded her that it was time to dress for dinner. She would go down presently, chat with Violet and Fulmer, and with Violet's other guests, who would probably be odd and amusing, and too much out of her world to embarrass her by awkward questions. She would sit at a softly-lit table, breathe delicate scents, eat exquisite food—trust Mrs. Match—and be gradually drawn again under the spell of her old associations. Anything. Anything but to be alone. She dressed with even more than her habitual care, reddened her lips attentively, brushed the faintest bloom of pink over her drawn cheeks, and went down to meet Mrs. Match coming up with a tray. Oh, madam, I thought you were too tired. I was bringing it up to you myself, just a little morsel of chicken. Susy, glancing past her, saw through the open door that the lamps were not lit in the drawing-room. Oh, no, I'm not tired, thank you. I thought Mrs. Melrose expected friends at dinner. Friends at dinner to-night—Mrs. Match heaved a despairing sigh. Sometimes, the sigh seemed to say, her mistress put too great a strain upon her. Why, Mrs. Melrose and Mr. Fulmer were engaged to Dine in Paris. They left an hour ago. Mrs. Melrose told me she'd told you. The housekeeper wailed. Susy kept her little fixed smile. I must have misunderstood. In that case—well, yes, if it's no trouble, I believe I will have my tray upstairs. Slowly she turned, and followed the housekeeper up into the dread solitude she had just left. End of Chapter 13. The next day a lot of people turned up unannounced for luncheon. They were not of the far-fetched and the exotic in whom Mrs. Melrose now specialized, but merely commonplace fashionable people belonging to Susy's own group, people familiar with the amusing romance of her penniless marriage, and to whom she had to explain—though none of them really listened to the explanation—that Nick was not with her just now, but had gone off cruising—cruising in the Aegean with friends, getting up material for his book. This detail had occurred to her in the night. It was the kind of encounter she had most dreaded, but it proved, after all, easy enough to go through compared with those endless hours of turning to and fro, the night before, in the cage of her lonely room—anything—anything but to be alone. Gradually, from the force of habit, she found herself actually in tune with the talk of the luncheon-table, interested in the references to absent friends, the light allusions to last year's loves and quarrels, scandals and absurdities. The women in their pale summer dresses were so graceful, indolent, and sure of themselves—the men so easy and good-humored. Perhaps, after all, Susy reflected, it was the world she was meant for, since the other, the brief paradise of her dreams, had already shut its golden doors upon her. And then, as they sat on the terrace after luncheon, looking across at the yellow treetops of the park, one of the women said something, made just an allusion, that Susy would have let pass unnoticed in the old days, but that now filled her with a sudden deep disgust. She stood up and wandered away, away from them all through the fading garden. Two days later, Susy and Strefford sat on the terrace of the twelery above the sun. She had asked him to meet her there, with the desire to avoid the crowded halls and drawing-room of the nouveau luxe, where even at that supposedly dead season, people one knew were always drifting to and fro. And they sat on the bench in the pale sunlight, the discolored leaves heaped at their feet, and no one to share their solitude but a lame working man and a haggard woman, who were lunching together mournfully at the other end of the majestic vista. Strefford, in his new morning, looked unnaturally prosperous and well-validate, but his ugly, untidy features remained as undisciplined, his smile as whimsical as of old. He had been on cool, though friendly terms with the pompous uncle and the poor, sickly cousin, whose joint disappearance had so abruptly transformed his future, and it was his way to understate his feelings, rather than to pretend more than he felt. Nevertheless, beneath his habitual bantering tone, Susie discerned a change. The disaster had shocked him profoundly. Already in his brief sojourn amongst his people, and among the great possessions so tragically acquired, old instincts had been awakened, forgotten associations had spoken in him. Susie listened to him wistfully, silenced by her imaginative perception of the distance that these things had put between them. It was horrible. Bringing them both there together, laid out in that hideous Pugin chapel at Aldringham, the poor boy especially. I suppose that's really what's cutting me up now," he murmured, almost apologetically. "'Oh, it's more than that. More than you know,' she insisted, but he jerked back. "'Now, my dear, don't be edifying, please,' and fumbled for a cigarette in the pocket, which was already beginning to bulge with his miscellaneous properties. "'And now about you, for that's what I came for,' he continued, turning to her with one of his sudden movements. "'I couldn't make head or tail of your letter.' She paused a moment to steady her voice. "'Couldn't you? I suppose you'd forgotten my bargain with Nick. He hadn't, and he's asked me to fulfil it.' Strefford stared. "'What? That nonsense about your setting each other free if either of you had the chance to make a good match?' She sighed. "'Yes.' "'And he's actually asked you?' "'Well, practically. He's gone off with the Hickses. Before going, he wrote me that we'd better both consider ourselves free, and Coral sent me a postcard to say that she would take the best of care of him.' Strefford mused, his eyes upon a cigarette. "'But what the deuce led up to all this? It can't have happened like that out of a clear sky.' Susie flushed, hesitated, looked away. She had meant to tell Strefford the whole story. It had been one of her chief reasons for wishing to see him again, and half unconsciously, perhaps, she had hoped, in his laxer atmosphere, to recover something of her shattered self-esteem. But now she suddenly felt the impossibility of confessing to any one the depths to which Nick's wife had stooped. She fancied that her companion guessed the nature of her hesitation. "'Don't tell me anything you don't want to, you know, my dear.' "'No. I do want to. Only it's difficult. You see, we had so very little money.' "'Yes.' "'And Nick, who was thinking of his book and of all sorts of big things, fine things, didn't realize, left it all to me—to manage.' She stumbled over the word, remembering how Nick had always winced at it. But Strefford did not seem to notice her, and she hurried on, unfolding in short, awkward sentences the avowal of their pecuniary difficulties, and of Nick's inability to understand that, to keep on with the kind of life they were leading, one had to put up with things, except favors. "'Borrow money, you mean?' "'Well—yes—and all the rest.' "'No. Decidedly she could not reveal to Strefford the episode of Ellie's letters. Nick suddenly felt, I suppose, that he couldn't stand it, she continued, and instead of asking me to try—to try to live differently, go off somewhere with him and live, like work-people, in two rooms, without a servant, as I was ready to do—well, instead he wrote to me that it had all been a mistake from the beginning, that we couldn't keep it up, and it better recognize the fact. And he went off on the Hicks's yacht. The last evening that you were in Venice, the day he didn't come back to dinner, he had gone off to Genoa to meet them. I suppose he intends to marry Coral." Strefford received this in silence. "'Well, it was your bargain, wasn't it?' he said at length. "'Yes, but—exactly. I always told you so. You weren't ready to have him go yet, that's all.' She flushed to the forehead. "'Oh, Streff, is it really all?' "'A question of time. If you doubt it, I'd like to see you try, for a while, those two rooms without a servant, and then let me hear from you. Why, my dear, it's only a question of time in a palace, with a steam-yart lying off the doorstep, and a flock of motors in the garage. Look around you and see. And did you ever imagine that you and Nick of all people were going to escape the common doom, and survive like Mr. and Mrs. Tithonus, while all about you the eternal passions were crumbling to pieces, and your native divorce-states piling up their revenues?' She sat with bent head, the weight of the long years to come pressing like a leaden load on her shoulders. "'But I'm so young—life so long—what does last, then?' "'Ah, you're too young to believe me, if I were to tell you, though you're intelligent enough to understand.' "'What does, then?' "'Why, the hold of the things we all think we could do without. Habits—they outstand the pyramids. Comforts, luxuries, the atmosphere of ease. Above all, the power to get away from dullness and monotony, from constraints and ugliness. You chose that power instinctively before you were even grown up. And so did Nick. And the only difference between you is that he's had the sense to see sooner than you that those are the things that last, the prime necessities. I don't believe it. Of course you don't. At your age one doesn't reason once materialism. And besides, you're mortally hurt that Nick has found out sooner than you, and hasn't disguised his discovery under any hypocritical phrases. "'But surely there are people?' "'Yes. Saints and geniuses and heroes—all the fanatics. To which of their categories do you suppose we soft people belong? And the heroes and the geniuses—haven't they their enormous frailties and their giant appetites? And how should we escape being the victims of our little ones?' She sat for a while without speaking. "'But, Streff, how can you say such things when I know you care—care for me, for instance?' "'Care?' he put his hand on hers. "'But, my dear, it's just the fugitiveness of mortal caring that makes it so exquisite. It's because we know we can't hold fast to it, or to each other, or to anything.' "'Yes. Yes, but hush, please. Oh, don't say it!' she stood up, the tears in her throat, and he rose also. "'Come along, then. Where do we lunch?' he said with a smile, slipping his hand through her arm. "'Oh, I don't know. Nowhere. I think I'm going back to Versailles. Because I've discussed to do so deeply. Just my luck. When I came over to ask you to marry me,' she laughed, but he had suddenly become grave. Upon my soul, I did. "'Dear Streff, as if—now!' "'Oh, not now, I know. I'm aware that even with your accelerated divorce methods—it's not that. I told you it was no use, Streff. I told you long ago in Venice.' He shrugged ironically. "'It's not Streff who's asking you now. Streff was not a marrying man. He was only trifling with you. The present offer comes from an elderly peer of independent means. Think it over, my dear, as many days out as you like, and five footmen kept. There's not the least hurry, of course, but I rather think Nick himself would advise it.'" She flushed to the temples, remembering that Nick had, and the remembrance made Strefford's sneering philosophy seem less unbearable. Why should she not lunch with him after all? In the first days of his morning he had come to Paris expressly to see her, and to offer her one of the oldest names and one of the greatest fortunes in England. She thought of Ursula Gillow, Ellie Vanderlin, Violet Melrose, of their condescending kindnesses, their last year's dresses, their Christmas checks, and all the careless bounties that were so easy to bestow and so hard to accept. I should rather enjoy paying them back, something in her maliciously murmured. She did not mean to marry Strefford. She had not even got as far as contemplating the possibility of a divorce, but it was undeniable that this sudden prospect of wealth and freedom was like fresh air in her lungs. She laughed again, but now without bitterness. Very good, then. We'll lunch together. But it's Streff I want to lunch with today. Ah, well! her companion agreed. I rather think that for tet-à-tet he's better company. During their repast in a little restaurant over the sun, where she insisted on the cheapest dishes because she was lunching with Streff, he became again his old whimsical companionable self. Once or twice she tried to turn the talk to his altered future and the obligations and interests that lay before him, but he shrugged away from the subject, telling her instead about the motley company at Violet Melrose's, and fitting a droll or malicious anecdote to each of the people she named. It was not till they had finished their coffee, and she was glancing at her watch with a vague notion of taking the next train, that he asked abruptly, "'But what are you going to do? You can't stay forever at Violet's.' "'Oh, no,' she cried with a shiver. "'Well, then. You've got some plan, I suppose.' "'Have I?' she wondered, jerked back into grim reality from the soothing interlude of their hour together. "'You can't drift indefinitely, can you? Unless you mean to go back to the old sort of life once for all.' She reddened, and her eyes filled. "'I can't do that, Streff. I know I can't.' "'And then what?' She hesitated and brought out with lowered head. "'Nick said he would write again. In a few days. I must wait.' "'Oh, naturally. Don't do anything in a hurry.' Strefford also glanced at his watch. "'Gosson à d'iciol. I'm taking the train back to-night, and I have a lot of things left to do. But look here, my dear. When you come to a decision one way or the other, let me know, will you? Oh, I don't mean in the matter I've most at heart. We'll consider that closed for the present. But at least I can be of use in other ways. Hang it, you know. I can even lend you money. There's a new sensation for our jaded pallets.' "'Oh, Streff. Streff!' she could only falter, and he pressed on gaily. "'Try it. Now do try it. I assure you there'll be no interest to pay and no conditions attached, and promise to let me know when you've decided anything.' She looked into his humorously puckered eyes, answering their friendly smile with hers. "'I promise,' she said." This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Elizabeth Klett. THE GLIMPSES OF THE MOON. By Edith Wharton. PART 2. CHAPTER XV. That hour with Strefford had altered her whole perspective. Instead of possible dependence, and in forced return to the old life of connivances and concessions she saw before her whenever she chose to take them—freedom, power, and dignity. Dignity. It was odd what weight that word had come to have for her. She had dimly felt its significance, felt the need of its presence in her inmost soul, even in the young thoughtless days when she had seemed to sacrifice so little to the austere divinities. And since she had been Nic Lansing's wife, she had consciously acknowledged it, had suffered and agonized when she fell beneath its standard. Yes, to marry Strefford would give her that sense of self-respect, which, in a world such as theirs, only wealth and position could ensure. If she had not the mental or moral training to attain independence in any other way, was she to blame for seeking it on such terms? Of course there was always the chance that Nic would come back, would find life without her as intolerable as she was finding it without him. If that happened—ah, if that happened—then she would cease to strain her eyes into the future, would seize upon the present moment and plunge into it to the very bottom of oblivion. Nothing on earth would matter then—money or freedom or pride, or her precious moral dignity—if only she were in Nic's arms again. But there was Nic's icy letter. There was Coral Hicks's insolent postcard, to show how little chance there was of such a solution. Suzy understood that, even before the discovery of her transaction with Ellie Vanderlin, Nic had secretly wearied, if not of his wife, at least of the life that their marriage compelled him to lead. His passion was not strong enough, had never been strong enough, to outweigh his prejudices, scruples, principles, or whatever one chose to call them. Suzy's dignity might go up like tinder in the blaze of her love, but his was made of a less combustible substance. She had felt in their last talk together that she had forever destroyed the inner harmony between them. Well, there it was, and the fault was doubtless neither hers nor his, but that of the world they had grown up in, of their own moral contempt for it, and physical dependence on it, of his half-talents and her half-principles, of the something in them both that was not stout enough to resist nor yet pliant enough to yield. She stared at the fact on the journey back to Versailles, and all that sleepless night in her room. And the next morning, when the housemaid came in with her breakfast tray, she felt the factitious energy that comes from having decided, however half-heartedly, on a definite course. She had said to herself, if there's no letter from Nic 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 Nic 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 that Mrs. Melrose is drifted by as they had been won't to drift, when under the roofs of the rich, Susie 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 in 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 Susie 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 Susie to Paris, and they devoted several long and hectic mornings to the dressmakers, where Susie 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-entered Susie'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 prosperity, and she vaguely felt that it would be refreshing to see someone who had never been afraid of poverty. The airless pension-sitting-room, where she waited while a reluctant maid-servant screamed about the house for Mrs. Fulmer, did not have the hoped-for effect. It was one thing for Grace to put up with such quarters when she shared them with Fulmer, but to live there while he, basked in the lingering radiance of Versailles, or rolled from Chateau to picture-gallery in Mrs. Melrose's motor, showed a courage that Susie felt unable to emulate. "'My dear! I knew you'd look me up!' Grace's joyous voice ran down the stairway, and in another moment she was clasping Susie to her tumbled person. Nat couldn't remember if he'd given you our address, though he promised me he would the last time he was here.' She held Susie at arm's length, beaming upon her with blinking, short-sighted eyes. The same old dishevelled Grace, so careless of her neglected beauty and her squandered youth, so amused and absent-minded and improvident, that the boisterous air of the New Hampshire bungalow seemed to enter with her into the little air-tight salon. While she poured out the tale of Nat's sudden celebrity, and its unexpected consequences, Susie marveled and dreamed. Was the secret of his triumph perhaps due to those long, hard, unrewarded years, the steadfast scorn of popularity, the indifference to every kind of material ease in which his wife had so gaily abetted him? Had it been bought at the cost of her own freshness and her own talent, of the children's advantages, of everything except the closeness of the tie between husband and wife? Well, it was worth the price, no doubt. But what if, now that honors and prosperity had come, the tie were snapped, and Grace were left alone among the ruins? There was nothing in her tone or words to suggest such a possibility. Susie noticed that her ill-assorted raiment was costlier in quality, and more professional in cut than the homemade garments which had draped her growing bulk at the bungalow. It was clear that she was trying to dress up to Nat's new situation. But above all she was rejoicing in it, filling her hungry lungs with the strong air of his success. It had evidently not occurred to her as yet that those who consented to share the bread of adversity may want the whole cake of prosperity for themselves. My dear, it's too wonderful! He's told me to take as many concerted opera tickets as I like. He lets me take all the children with me. The big concerts don't begin till later, but of course the opera is always going. And there are little things. There's music in Paris at all seasons. And later it's just possible we may get to Munich for a week. Oh, Susie! her hands clasped, her eyes brimming. She drank the new wine of life almost sacramentally. Do you remember, Susie, when you and Nick came to stay at the bungalow? Nat said you'd be horrified by our primitiveness, but I knew better. And I was right, wasn't I? Seeing us so happy made you and Nick decide to follow our example, didn't it? She glowed with remembrance. And now what are your plans? Is Nick's book nearly done? I suppose you'll have to live very economically till he finds a publisher. And the baby, darling, when is that to be? If you're coming home soon I could let you have a lot of the children's little old things. You're always so dear, Grace, but we haven't any special plans as yet, not even for a baby, and I wish you'd tell me all of yours instead. Mrs. Fulmer asked nothing better. Susie perceived that so far the greater part of her European experience had consisted in talking about what it was to be. Well, you see, Nat has so taken up all day with sightseeing and galleries and meeting important people that he hasn't had time to go about with us. And as so few theaters are open and there's so little music, I've taken the opportunity to catch up with my mending. Junie helps me with it now. She's our eldest, do you remember? She's grown into a big girl since you saw her. And later, perhaps, were to travel, and the most wonderful thing of all, next to Nat's recognition, I mean, is not having to contrive and skimp and give up something every single minute. Just think! Nat has even made special arrangements here in the pension, so that the children all have second helpings to everything. And when I go up to bed, I can think of my music, instead of lying awake, calculating, and wondering how I can make things come out at the end of the month. Oh, Susie, that's simply heaven. Susie's heart contracted. She had come to her friend to be taught again the lesson of indifference to material things, and instead she was hearing from Grace Fulmer's lips the long repressed avowal of their tyranny. After all, that battle with poverty on the New Hampshire hillside had not been the easy smiling business that Grace and Nat had made it appear. And yet—and yet—Susie stood up abruptly, and straightened the expensive hat which hung irresponsibly over Grace's left ear. What's wrong with it? Junie helped me choose it, and she generally knows. Mrs. Fulmer wailed with helpless hands. It's the way you wear it, dearest, and the bow is rather top-heavy. Let me have it a minute, please. Susie lifted the hat from her friend's head and began to manipulate its trimming. This is the way Maria Guy or Suzanne would do it. And now go on about Nat. She listened musingly while Grace poured forth the tale of her husband's triumph, of the notices in the papers, the demand for his work, the fine ladies' battles over their priority in discovering him, and the multiplied orders that had resulted from their rivalry. Of course, they're simply furious with each other—Mrs. Melrose and Mrs. Gillow especially—because each one pretends to have been the first to notice his spring snowstorm, and in reality it wasn't either of them, but only poor Bill Haslett, an art critic we've known for years, who chanced on the picture and rushed off to tell the dealer who was looking for a new painter to push. Grace suddenly raised her soft, myopic eyes to Susie's face. But do you know—the funny thing is that I believe Nat is beginning to forget this, and to believe that it was Mrs. Melrose who stopped short in front of his picture on the opening day and screamed out, This is genius! It seems funny he should care so much, when I've always known he had genius, and he has known it too. But they're all so kind to him, and Mrs. Melrose especially, and I suppose it makes a thing sound new to hear it said in a new voice. Susie looked at her meditatively. And how should you feel if Nat liked too much to hear Mrs. Melrose say it? Too much, I mean, to care any longer what you felt or thought. Her friend's worn face flushed quickly, and then paled. Susie almost repented the question. But Mrs. Fulmer met it with a tranquil dignity. You haven't been married long enough dear to understand how people like Nat and me feel about such things, or how trifling they seem in the balance—the balance of one's memories. Susie stood up again and flung her arms about her friend. Oh, Grace! she laughed with wet eyes. How can you be as wise as that, and yet not have sense enough to buy a decent hat? She gave Mrs. Fulmer a quick embrace and hurried away. She had learned her lesson after all, but it was not exactly the one she had come to seek. The week she had allowed herself had passed, and still there was no word from Nick. She allowed herself yet another day, and that too went by without a letter. She then decided on a step from which her pride had hitherto recoiled. She would call at the bank and ask for Nick's address. She called, embarrassed and hesitating, and was told, after inquiries in the post-office department, that Mr. Nicholas Lansing had given no address since that of the Palazzo Vanderlin, three months previously. She went back to Versailles that afternoon with the definite intention of writing to Strefford, unless the morning's post brought a letter. The next morning brought nothing from Nick, but a scribbled message from Mrs. Melrose. Would Susie, as soon as possible, come into her room for a word? Susie jumped up, hurried through her bath, and knocked at her hostess's door. In the immense low bed that faced the rich umbridge of the park, Mrs. Melrose laced smoking cigarettes and glancing over her letters. She looked up with her vague smile and said dreamily, "'Susie, darling, have you any particular plans? For the next few months, I mean.'" Susie coloured. She knew the intonation of old, and fancy she understood what it implied. "'Plans, dearest? Any number? I'm tearing myself away the day after to-morrow, to the Gillows more very probably,' she hastened to announce. Instead of the relief she had expected to read on Mrs. Melrose's dramatic countenance, she discovered there the blankest disappointment. "'Oh, really? That's too bad. Is it absolutely settled?' "'As far as I'm concerned,' said Susie crisply. The other side. "'I'm too sorry. You see, dear, I'd meant to ask you to stay on here quietly and look after the Fulmer children. Fulmer and I are going to Spain next week. I want to be with him when he makes his studies, receives his first impressions, such a marvellous experience to be there when he and Velazquez meet.' She broke off, lost in prospective ecstasy. "'And you see, as Grace Fulmer insists on coming with us?' "'Ah, I see.' "'Well, there are the five children. Such a problem,' sighed the benefactress. "'If you were at a loose end, you know, dear, while Nick's away with his friends, I could really make it worth your while. So awfully good of you, Violet. Only I'm not, as it happens.' "'Oh, the relief of being able to say that, gaily, firmly, and even truthfully, take charge of the Fulmer children, indeed. Susie remembered how Nick and she had fled from them that autumn afternoon in New Hampshire. The offer gave her a salutary glimpse of the way in which, as the years passed, and she lost her freshness and novelty, she would more and more be used as a convenience, a stop-gap, writer of notes, runner of errands, nursery governess, or companion. She called to mind several elderly women of her acquaintance, pensioners of her own group, who still wore its livery, struck its attitudes, and chattered its jargon, but had long since been ruthlessly relegated to these slave-ant offices. Never in the world would she join their numbers. Mrs. Melrose's face fell, and she looked at Susie with the plaintive bewilderment of the wielder of millions, to whom everything that cannot be bought is imperceptible. "'But I can't see why you can't change your plans,' she murmured with a soft persistency. "'Ah, well, you know,' Susie paused on a slow inward smile. "'They're not mine only, as it happens.' Mrs. Melrose's brow clouded. The unforeseen complication of Mrs. Fulmer's presence on the journey had evidently tried her nerves, and this new obstacle to her arrangements shook her faith in the divine order of things. "'Your plans are not yours only. But surely you won't let Ursula Gillow dictate to you? There's my jade pendant, the one you said you liked the other day. The Fulmers won't go with me, you understand, unless they're satisfied about the children. The whole plan will fall through.' "'Susie, darling, you were always too unselfish. I hate to see you sacrificed to Ursula.'" Susie's smile lingered. Time was, when she might have been glad to add the jade pendant to the collection already enriched by Ellie Vanderland's sapphires. More recently she would have resented the offer as an insult to her newly found principles. But already the mere fact that she might henceforth, if she chose, be utterly out of reach of such bribes, enabled her to look down on them with tolerance. Oh, the blessed moral freedom that wealth conferred. She recalled Mrs. Fulmer's uncontrollable cry. The most wonderful thing of all is not having to contrive and skimp and give up something every single minute. Yes, it was only on such terms that one could call one's soul one's own. The sense of it gave Susie the grace to answer amicably. If I could possibly help you out, Violet, I shouldn't want a present to persuade me. And as you say, there's no reason why I should sacrifice myself to Ursula or to anybody else. Only, as it happens, she paused and took the plunge. I'm going to England because I've promised to see a friend." That night she wrote to Strefford.