Page:Glimpses of the Moon (Wharton 1922).djvu/336

326 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.

That evening after the children had gone to bed Susy sat up late in the cheerless sitting-room. She was not thinking of Strefford but of Nick. He was coming to Paris—perhaps he had already arrived. The idea that he might be in the same place with her at that very moment, and without her knowing it, was so strange and painful that she felt a violent revolt of all her strong and joy-loving youth. Why should she go on suffering so unbearably, so abjectly, so miserably? If only she could see him, hear his voice, even hear him say again such cruel and humiliating words as he had spoken on that dreadful day in Venice—when that would be better than this blankness, this utter and final exclusion from his life! He had