window. She shook her head impatiently, drew a long
breath, went on with her toilet.

CHAPTER XXIV

A FEW minutes before the dinner hour she came into the drawing
room. Palmer and Madame Deliere were already there, near
the fire which the unseasonable but by no means unusual
coolness of the London summer evening made extremely
comfortable--and, for Americans, necessary. Palmer stood with
his back to the blaze, moodily smoking a cigarette. That
evening his now almost huge form looked more degenerated than
usual by the fat of high living and much automobiling. His
fleshy face, handsome still and of a refined type, bore the
traces of anxious sorrow. Clelie, sitting at the corner of
the fireplace and absently turning the leaves of an
illustrated French magazine, had in her own way an air as
funereal as Freddie's. As Susan entered, they glanced at her.

Palmer uttered and half suppressed an ejaculation of
amazement. Susan was dressed as for opera or ball--one of her
best evening dresses, the greatest care in arranging her hair
and the details of her toilette. Never had she been more
beautiful. Her mode of life since she came abroad with
Palmer, the thoughts that had been filling her brain and
giving direction to her life since she accepted Brent as her
guide and Brent's plans as her career, had combined to give
her air of distinction the touch of the extraordinary--the
touch that characterizes the comparatively few human beings
who live the life above and apart from that of the common
run--the life illuminated by imagination. At a glance one
sees that they are not of the eaters, drinkers, sleepers, and
seekers after the shallow easy pleasures money provides
ready-made. They shine by their own light; the rest of mankind
shines either by light reflected from them or not at all.

Looking at her that evening as she came into the comfortable,
old-fashioned English room, with its somewhat heavy but
undeniably dignified furniture and draperies, the least
observant could not have said that she was in gala attire
because she was in gala mood. Beneath the calm of her surface
expression lay something widely different. Her face, slim
and therefore almost beyond the reach of the attacks of time
and worry, was of the type to which a haggard expression is
becoming. Her eyes, large and dreamy, seemed to be seeing
visions of unutterable sadness, and the scarlet streak of her
mouth seemed to emphasize their pa