Susan Lenox Her Fall and Rise Part 122

"You wouldn't be here if you weren't."

"Put that out of your head, Rod. It'll only breed trouble.

I don't like to say these things to you, but you compel me to.

I learned long ago how foolish it is to put off unpleasant things that will have to be faced in the end. The longer they're put off the worse the final reckoning is. Most of my troubles have come through my being too weak or good-natured--or whatever it was--to act as my good sense told me. I'm not going to make that mistake any more. And I'm going to start the new deal with absolute frankness with you.

I am not in love with you."

"I know you better than you know yourself," said he.

"For a little while after I found you again I did have a return of the old feeling--or something like it. But it soon pa.s.sed. I couldn't love you. I know you too well."

He struggled hard with his temper, as his vanity lashed at it.

She saw, struggled with her old sensitiveness about inflicting even necessary pain upon others, went on:

"I simply like you, Rod--and that's all. We're well acquainted. You're physically attractive to me--not wildly so, but enough--more than any other man--probably more than most husbands are to their wives--or most wives to their husbands. So as long as you treat me well and don't wander off to other women, I'm more than willing to stay on here."

"Really!" said he, in an intensely sarcastic tone. "Really!"

"Now--keep your temper," she warned. "Didn't I keep mine when you were handing me that impertinent talk about how I should dress and the rest of it? No--let me finish. In the second place and in conclusion, my dear Rod, I'm not going to live off you. I'll pay my half of the room. I'll pay for my own clothes--and rouge for my lips. I'll buy and cook what we eat in the room; you'll pay when we go to a restaurant. I believe that's all."

"Are you quite sure?" inquired he with much satire.

"Yes, I think so. Except--if you don't like my terms, I'm ready to leave at once."

"And go back to the streets, I suppose?" jeered he.

"If it were necessary--yes. So long as I've got my youth and my health, I'll do precisely as I please. I've no craving for respectability--not the slightest. I--I----" She tried to speak of her birth, that secret shame of which she was ashamed. She had been thinking that Brent's big fine way of looking at things had cured her of this bitterness. She found that it had not--as yet. So she went on, "I'd prefer your friendship to your ill will--much prefer it, as you're the only person I can look to for what a man can do for a woman, and as I like you. But if I have to take tyranny along with the friendship--" she looked at him quietly and her tones were almost tender, almost appealing--"then, it's good-by, Rod."

She had silenced him, for he saw in her eyes, much more gray than violet though the suggestion of violet was there, that she meant precisely what she said. He was astonished, almost dazed by the change in her. This woman grown was not the Susie who had left him. No--and yet----

She had left him, hadn't she? That showed a character completely hidden from him, perhaps the character he was now seeing. He asked--and there was no sarcasm and a great deal of uneasiness in his tone:

"How do you expect to make a living?"

"I've got a place at forty dollars a week."

"Forty dollars a week! You!" He scowled savagely at her.

"There's only one thing anyone would pay you forty a week for."

"That's what I'd have said," rejoined she. "But it seems not to be true. My luck may not last, but while it lasts, I'll have forty a week."

"I don't believe you," said he, with the angry bluntness of jealousy.

"Then you want me to go?" inquired she, with a certain melancholy but without any weakness.

He ignored her question. He demanded:

"Who's giving it to you?"

"Brent."

Spenser leaned from the bed toward her in his excitement.

"_Robert_ Brent?" he cried.

"Yes. I'm to have a part in one of his plays."

Spenser laughed harshly. "What rot! You're his mistress."

"It wouldn't be strange for you to think I'd accept that position for so little, but you must know a man of his sort wouldn't have so cheap a mistress."

"It's simply absurd."

"He is to train me himself."

"You never told me you knew him."

"I don't."

"Who got you the job?"

"He saw me in Fitzalan's office the day you sent me there. He asked me to call, and when I went he made me the offer."

"Absolute rot. What reason did he give?"

"He said I looked as if I had the temperament he was in search of."

"You must take me for a fool."

"Why should I lie to you?"

"G.o.d knows. Why do women lie to men all the time? For the pleasure of fooling them."

"Oh, no. To get money, Rod--the best reason in the world, it being rather hard for a woman to make money by working for it."

"The man's in love with you!"

"I wish he were," said Susan, laughing. "I'd not be here, my dear--you may be sure of that. And I'd not content myself with forty a week. Oh, you don't know what tastes I've got!

Wait till I turn myself loose."

"Well--you can--in a few months," said Spenser.

Even as he had been protesting his disbelief in her story, his manner toward her had been growing more respectful--a change that at once hurt and amused her with its cynical suggestions, and also pleased her, giving her a confidence-breeding sense of a new value in herself. Rod went on, with a kind of shamefaced mingling of jest and earnest:

"You stick by me, Susie, old girl, and the time'll come when I'll be able to give you more than Brent."

"I hope so," said Susan.

He eyed her sharply. "I feel like a fool believing such a fairy story as you've been telling me. Yet I do."