Susan took the paper, read the four stanzas several times, handed it back to him without a word. "Don't you think it fine?" asked he, a little uneasily--he was always uneasy with a woman when the conversation touched the relations of the sexes--uneasy lest he might say or might have said something to send a shiver through her delicate modesty. "Fine," Susan echoed absently. "And true. . . . I suppose it is the best a woman can expect--to be the one he returns to. And--isn't that enough?" "You are very different from any woman I ever met," said Drumley. "Very different from what you were last fall--wonderfully different. But you were different then, too." "I'd have been a strange sort of person if it weren't so. I've led a different life. I've learned--because I've had to learn." "You've been through a great deal--suffered a great deal for one of your age?" Susan shrugged her shoulders slightly. She had her impulses to confide, but she had yet to meet the person who seriously tempted her to yield to them. Not even Rod; no, least of all Rod. "You are--happy?" "Happy--and more. I'm content." The reply was the truth, as she saw the truth. Perhaps it was also the absolute truth; for when a woman has the best she has ever actually possessed, and when she knows there is nowhere else on earth for her, she is likely to be content. Their destiny of subordination has made philosophers of women. Drumley seemed to be debating how to disclose something he had in mind. But after several glances at the sweet, delicate face of the girl, he gave it over. In the subdued light from the shaded candles on their table, she looked more child-like than he had ever seen. Perhaps her big pale-blue hat and graceful pale-blue summer dress had something to do with it, also. "How old are you?" he asked abruptly. "Nearly nineteen." "I feel like saying, 'So much!'--and also 'So little!' How long have you been married?" "Why all these questions?" demanded she, smiling. He colored with embarrassment. "I didn't mean to be impertinent," said he. "It isn't impertinence--is it?--to ask a woman how long she's been married." But she did not go on to tell him; instead, she pretended to have her attention distracted by a very old man and a very young girl behaving in most lover-like fashion, the girl outdoing the man in enthusiastic determination to convince. She was elegantly and badly dressed in new clothes--and she seemed as new to that kind of clothes as those particular clothes were new to her. After dinner they walked down through the Park by the way they had come; it did not look like the same scene now, with the moonlight upon it, with soft shadows everywhere and in every shadow a pair of lovers. They had nearly reached the entrance when Drumley said: "Let's sit on this bench here. I want to have a serious talk with you."