ery. 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-enter Susy'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
some one 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 Susy
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 Susy 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 Susy at arms'
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, Susy marvelled 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 honours and prosperity had come, the tie were