BUT she did not "look out about the booze." Each morning she awoke in a state of depression so horrible that she wondered why she could not bring herself to plan suicide. Why was it? Her marriage? Yes—and she paid it its customary tribute of a shudder. Yes, her marriage had made all things thereafter possible. But what else? Lack of courage? Lack of self-respect? Was it not always assumed that a woman in her position, if she had a grain of decent instinct, would rush eagerly upon death? Was she so much worse than others? Or was what everybody said about these things—everybody who had experience—was it false, like nearly everything else she had been taught? She did not understand; she only knew that hope was as strong within her as health itself—and that she did not want to die—and that at present she was helpless.
One evening the man she was with—a good-looking and unusually interesting young chap—suddenly said:
"What a heart action you have got! Let me listen to that again."
"Is it all wrong?" asked Susan, as he pressed his ear against her chest.
"You ask that as if you rather hoped it was."
"I do—and I don't."
"Well," said he, after listening for a third time, "you'll never die of heart trouble. I never heard a heart with such a grand action—like a big, powerful pump, built to last forever. You're never ill, are you?"
"Not thus far."
"And you'll have a hard time making yourself ill. Health? Why, your health must be perfect. Let me see." And he proceeded to thump and press upon her chest with an expertness that proclaimed the student of medicine. He was all interest and enthusiasm, took a pencil and, spreading a sheet upon her chest over her heart, drew its outlines. "There!" he cried.
"What is it?" asked Susan. "I don't understand."