Did she really love him? She believed she did. Was she right? Love is of many degrees--and kinds. And strange and confused beyond untangling is the mixture of motives and ideas in the mind of any human being as to any other being with whom his or her relations are many sided. Anyone who had not been roughly seized by destiny and forced to fight desperately weaponless might have found it difficult to understand how this intelligent, high-spirited girl could be so reasonable--coarsely practical, many people would have said. A brave soul--truly brave with the unconscious courage that lives heroically without any taint of heroics--such a soul learns to accept the facts of life, to make the best of things, to be grateful for whatever sunshine may be and not to shriek and gesticulate at storm. Suffering had given this sapling of a girl the strong fiber that enables a tree to push majestically up toward the open sky. Because she did not cry out was no sign that she was not hurt; and because she did not wither and die of her wounds was only proof of her strength of soul. The weak wail and the weak succumb; the strong persist--and a world of wailers and weaklings calls them hard, insensible, coarse. Spenser was fond of exhibiting to his men friends--to some of them--this treasure to which he always returned the more enamoured for his vagary and its opportunity of comparison. Women he would not permit. In general, he held that all women, the respectable no less than the other kind, put mischief in each other's heads and egged each other on to carry out the mischief already there in embryo. In particular, he would have felt that he was committing a gross breach of the proprieties, not to say the decencies, had he introduced a woman of Susan's origin, history and present status to the wives and sisters of his friends; and, for reasons which it was not necessary even to pretend to conceal from her, he forbade her having anything to do with the kinds of woman who would not have minded, had they known all about her. Thus, her only acquaintances, her only associates, were certain carefully selected men. He asked to dinner or to the theater or to supper at Jack's or Rector's only such men as he could trust. And trustworthy meant physically unattractive. Having small and dwindling belief in the mentality of women, and no belief whatever in mentality as a force in the relations of the sexes, he was satisfied to have about her any man, however clever, provided he was absolutely devoid of physical charm.