Twenty years ago, they'd have been afraid to confess it; but why shouldn't they now?"
Susy looked at Strefford, conscious that under his words was the ache of the disappointment she had caused him; and yet conscious also that that very ache was not the overwhelming penetrating emotion he perhaps wished it to be, but a pang on a par with a dozen others; and that even while he felt it he foresaw the day when he should cease to feel it. And she thought to herself that this certainty of oblivion must be bitterer than any certainty of pain.
A silence had fallen between them. He broke it by rising from his seat, and saying with a shrug: "You'll end by driving me to marry Joan Senechal."
Susy smiled. "Well, why not? She's lovely."
"Yes; but she'll bore me."
"Poor Streff! So should I—"
"Perhaps. But nothing like as soon—" He grinned sardonically. "There'd be more margin." He appeared to wait for her to speak. "And what else on earth are you going to do?" he concluded, as she still remained silent.
"Oh, Streff, I couldn't marry you for a reason like that!" she murmured at length.
"Then marry me, and find your reason afterward."
Her lips made a movement of denial, and still in silence she held out her hand for good-bye. He clasped it, and then turned away; but on the
