"You needn't try to excuse yourself," said he in a tone that silenced her.
She wished she had not seen the woman who had thus put a cloud over their afternoon's happiness. But long after she had forgotten his queerness about what she said, she continued to remember that "perfect" woman—to see every detail of her exquisite toilet, so rare in a world where expensive-looking finery is regarded as the chief factor in the art of dress. How much she would have to learn before she could hope to dress like that!—learn not merely about dress but about the whole artistic side of life. For that woman had happened to cross Susan's vision at just the right moment—in development and in mood—to reveal to her clearly a world into which she had never penetrated—a world of which she had vaguely dreamed as she read novels of life in the lands beyond the seas, the life of palaces and pictures and statuary, of opera and theater, of equipages and servants and food and clothing of rare quality. She had rather thought such a life did not exist outside of novels and dreams. What she had seen of New York—the profuse, the gigantic but also the undiscriminating—had tended to strengthen the suspicion. But this woman proved her mistaken.
Our great forward strides are made unconsciously, are the results of apparently trivial, often unnoted impulses. Susan, like all our race, had always had vague secret dreams of ambition—so vague thus far that she never thought of them as impelling purposes in her life. Her first long forward stride toward changing these dreams from the vague to the definite was when Rod, before her on the horse on the way to Brooksburg, talked over his shoulder to her of the stage and made her feel that it was the life for her, the only life open to her where a woman could hope to be judged as human being instead of as mere instrument of sex. Her second long forward movement toward sharply defined ambition dated from the sight of the woman of the milliner's window—the woman who epitomized to Susan the whole art side of life that always gives its highest expression in some personal achievement—the perfect toilet, the perfect painting or sculpture, the perfect novel or play.
But Rod saw in her enthusiasm only evidence of a concealed longing for the money to indulge extravagant whims. With his narrowing interest in women—narrowed now almost to sex—his contempt for them as to their minds and their hearts was so far advancing that he hardly took the trouble to veil it with remnants of courtesy. If Susan had clearly understood—even if she had let herself understand what her increasing knowledge might have enabled her to understand—she would have hated him in spite of the hold gratitude and habit had given him upon her loyal nature—and despite the fact that she had, as far as she could see, no alternative to living with him but the tenements or the streets.
One day in midsummer she chanced to go into the Hotel Astor to buy a magazine. As she had not been there before she made a wrong turning and was forced to cross one of the restaurants. In a far corner, half hidden by a group of palms, she saw Rod at a small table with a strikingly pretty woman whose expression and dress and manner most energetically proclaimed the actress. The woman was leaning toward him, was touching his hand and looking into his eyes with that show of enthusiasm which raises doubts of sincerity in an experienced man and sets him to keeping an eye or a hand—or both—upon his money. Real emotion, even a professional expert at display of emotion, is rarely so adept at exhibiting itself.
It may have been jealousy that guided her to this swift judgment upon the character of the emotion correctly and charmingly expressing itself. If so, jealousy was for once a trustworthy guide. She turned swiftly and escaped unseen. The idea of trapping him, of confronting him, never occurred to her. She felt ashamed and self-reproachful that she had seen. Instead of the anger that fires a vain woman, whether she cares about a man or not, there came a profound humiliation. She had in some way fallen short; she had not given him all he needed; it must be that she hadn't it to give, since she had given him all she had. He must not know—he must not! For if he knew he might dislike her, might leave her—and she dared not think what life would be without him, her only source of companionship and affection, her only means of support. She was puzzled that her discovery, not of his treachery—he had so broken her spirit with his suspicions and his insulting questions that she did not regard herself as of the rank and dignity that has the right to exact fidelity—but of his no longer caring enough to be content with her alone, had not stunned her with amazement. She did not realize how completely the instinct that he was estranged from her had prepared her for the thing that always accompanies estrangement. Between the perfect accord, that is, the never realized ideal for a man and a woman living together, and the intolerable discord that means complete repulse there is a vast range of states of feeling imperceptibly shading into each other. Most couples constantly move along this range, now toward the one extreme, now toward the other. As human kings are not given to self-analysis, and usually wander into grotesque error whenever they attempt it, no couple knows precisely where it is upon the range, until something crucial happens to compel them to know. Susan and Rod had begun as all couples begin—with an imaginary ideal accord based upon their ignorance of each other and their misunderstanding of what qualities they thought they understood in each other. The delusion of accord vanished that first evening in New York. What remained? What came in the place? They knew no more about that than does the next couple. They were simply "living along." A crisis, drawing them close together or flinging them forever apart or forcing them to live together, he frankly as keeper and she frankly as kept, might come any day, any hour. Again it might never come.
After a few weeks the matter that had been out of her mind accidentally and indirectly came to the surface in a chance remark. She said:
"Sometimes I half believe a man could be untrue to a woman, even though he loved her."
She did not appreciate the bearings of her remark until it was spoken. With a sensation of terror lest the dreaded crisis might be about to burst, she felt his quick, nervous glance. She breathed freely again when she felt his reassurance and relief as she successfully withstood.
"Certainly," he said with elaborate carelessness. "Men are a rotten, promiscuous lot. That's why it's necessary for a woman to be good and straight."