Strefford, at that, had looked at her keenly. “Ah,” he murmured; and his lips were twisted into their old mocking smile. “Speaking of proceedings,” he went on carelessly, “what stage have Ellie’s reached, I wonder? I saw her and Vanderlyn and Bockheimer all lunching cheerfully together to-day at Larue’s.” The blood rushed to Susy’s forehead. She remembered her tragic evening with Nelson Vanderlyn, only two months earlier, and thought to herself. “In time, then, I suppose, Nick and I....” Aloud she said: “I can’t imagine how Nelson and Ellie can ever want to see each other again. And in a restaurant, of all places!” Strefford continued to smile. “My dear, you’re incorrigibly old-fashioned. Why should two people who’ve done each other the best turn they could by getting out of each other’s way at the right moment behave like sworn enemies ever afterward? It’s too absurd; the humbug’s too flagrant. Whatever our generation has failed to do, it’s got rid of humbug; and that’s enough to immortalize it. I daresay Nelson and Ellie never liked each other better than they do to-day. Twenty years ago, they’d have been afraid to confess it; but why shouldn’t they now?” Susy looked at Strefford, conscious that under his words was the ache of the disappointment she had caused him; and yet conscious also that that very ache was not the overwhelming penetrating emotion he perhaps wished it to be, but a pang on a par with a dozen others; and that even while he felt it he foresaw the day when he should cease to feel it. And she thought to herself that this certainty of oblivion must be bitterer than any certainty of pain. A silence had fallen between them. He broke it by rising from his seat, and saying with a shrug: “You’ll end by driving me to marry Joan Senechal.” Susy smiled. “Well, why not? She’s lovely.” “Yes; but she’ll bore me.” “Poor Streff! So should I--” “Perhaps. But nothing like as soon--” He grinned sardonically. “There’d be more margin.” He appeared to wait for her to speak. “And what else on earth are you going to do?” he concluded, as she still remained silent. “Oh, Streff, I couldn’t marry you for a reason like that!” she murmured at length. “Then marry me, and find your reason afterward.” Her lips made a movement of denial, and still in silence she held out her hand for good-bye. He clasped it, and then turned away; but on the threshold he paused, his screwed-up eyes fixed on her wistfully. The look moved her, and she added hurriedly: “The only reason I can find is one for not marrying you. It’s because I can’t yet feel unmarried enough.” “Unmarried enough? But I thought Nick was doing his best to make you feel that.” “Yes. But even when he has--sometimes I think even that won’t make any difference.” He still scrutinized her hesitatingly, with the gravest eyes she had ever seen in his careless face. “My dear, that’s rather the way I feel about you,” he said simply as he turned to go.