ment, drew her gently down to the seat beside him. "Susy, upon my soul I don't know what you're driving at. Is it me you're angry with—or yourself? And what's it all about! Are you disgusted because I let the villa to a couple who weren't married! But, hang it, they're the kind that pay the highest price and I had to earn my living somehow! One doesn't run across a bridal pair every day. . . ."
She lifted her eyes to his puzzled incredulous face. Poor Streff! No, it was not with him that she was angry. Why should she be? Even that ill-advised disclosure had told her nothing she had not already known about him. It had simply revealed to her once more the real point of view of the people he and she lived among, had shown her that, in spite of the superficial difference, he felt as they felt, judged as they judged, was blind as they were—and as she would be expected to be, should she once again become one of them. What was the use of being placed by fortune above such shifts and compromises, if in one's heart one still condoned them? And she would have to—she would catch the general note, grow blunted as those other people were blunted, and gradually come to wonder at her own revolt, as Strefford now honestly wondered at it. She felt as though she were on the point of losing some new-found treasure, a treasure precious only to herself, but beside which all he offered her was nothing, the
