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324 fears thus substantiated, she should lose her self-control, she had preferred to say, in a voice that she tried to make indifferent: "The 'proceedings,' or whatever the lawyers call them, have begun. While they're going on I like to stay quite by myself. I don't know why. "

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.