n impulse to turn--departed.

CHAPTER VII

BUT she did not "look out about the booze." Each morning she
awoke in a state of depression so horrible that she wondered
why she could not bring herself to plan suicide. Why was it?
Her marriage? Yes--and she paid it its customary tribute of a
shudder. Yes, her marriage had made all things thereafter
possible. But what else? Lack of courage? Lack of
self-respect? Was it not always assumed that a woman in her
position, if she had a grain of decent instinct, would rush
eagerly upon death? Was she so much worse than others? Or was
what everybody said about these things--everybody who had
experience--was it false, like nearly everything else she had
been taught? She did not understand; she only knew that hope
was as strong within her as health itself--and that she did not
want to die--and that at present she was helpless.

One evening the man she was with--a good-looking and unusually
interesting young chap--suddenly said:

"What a heart action you have got! Let me listen to that again."

"Is it all wrong?" asked Susan, as he pressed his ear against
her chest.

"You ask that as if you rather hoped it was."

"I do--and I don't."

"Well," said he, after listening for a third time, "you'll
never die of heart trouble. I never heard a heart with such a
grand action--like a big, powerful pump, built to last forever.
You're never ill, are you?"

"Not thus far."

"And you'll have a hard time making yourself ill. Health? Why,
your health must be perfect. Let me see." And he proceeded to
thump and press upon her chest with an expertness that proclaimed
the student of medicine. He was all interest and enthusiasm,
took a pencil and, spreading a sheet upon her chest over her
heart, drew its outlines. "There!" he cried.

"What is it?" asked Susan. "I don't understand."

The young man drew a second and much smaller heart within the
outline of hers. "This," he explained, "is about the size of
an ordinary heart. You can see for yourself that yours is
fully one-fourth bigger than the normal."

"What of it?" said Susan.

"Why, health and strength--and vitality--courage--hope--all
one-fourth above the ordinary allowance. Yes, more than a
fourth. I envy you. You ought to live long, stay young until
you're very old--and get pretty much anything you please. You
don't belong to this life. Some accident, I guess. Every once
in a while I run across