Page:Glimpses of the Moon (Wharton 1922).djvu/119

Rh standard had become stricter too, and that it was as much to hide her humiliation from herself as to escape his anger that she had held her tongue?

"You knew I wouldn't have stayed here another day if I'd known," he continued.

"Yes: and then where in the world should we have gone?"

"You mean that—in one way or another—what you call give-and-take is the price of our remaining together?"

"Well—isn't it," she faltered.

"Then we'd better part, hadn't we?"

He spoke in a low tone, thoughtfully and deliberately, as if this had been the inevitable conclusion to which their passionate argument had led.

Susy made no answer. For a moment she ceased to be conscious of the causes of what had happened; the thing itself seemed to have smothered her under its ruins.

Nick wandered away from the dressing-table and stood gazing out of the window at the darkening canal flecked with lights. She looked at his back, and wondered what would happen if she were to go up to him and fling her arms about him. But even if her touch could have broken the spell, she was not sure she would have chosen that way of breaking it. Beneath her speechless anguish there burned the half-conscious sense of having been unfairly treated. When they had entered into their queer compact, Nick had known as well as she on what compromises and concessions the