When he bade her good-by at the front door and it closed behind her, she was all at once so tired that it seemed to her she would then and there sink down through sheer fatigue and fall asleep. For no physical exercise so quickly and utterly exhausts as real brain exercise—thinking, studying, learning with all the concentrated intensity of a thoroughbred in the last quarter of the mile race.
CHAPTER XV
SPENSER had time and thought for his play only. He no longer tormented himself with jealousy of the abilities and income and fame of Brent and the other successful writers for the stage; was not he about to equal them, probably to surpass them? As a rule, none of the mean emotions is able to thrive—unless it has the noxious vapors from disappointment and failure to feed upon. Spenser, in spirits and in hope again, was content with himself. Jealousy of Brent about Susan had been born of dissatisfaction with himself as a failure and envy of Brent as a success; it died with that dissatisfaction and that envy. His vanity assured him that while there might be possibly—ways in which he was not without rivals, certainly where women were concerned he simply could not be equaled; the woman he wanted he could have—and he could hold her as long as he wished. The idea that Susan would give a sentimental thought to a man "old enough to be her father"—Brent was forty-one—was too preposterous to present itself to his mind. She loved the handsome, fascinating, youthful Roderick Spenser; she would soon be crazy about him.
Rarely does it occur to a man to wonder what a woman is thinking. During courtship very young men attribute intellect and qualities of mystery and awe to the woman they love. But after men get an insight into the mind of woman and discover how trivial are the matters that of necessity usually engage it, they become skeptical about feminine mentality; they would as soon think of speculating on what profundities fill the brain of the kitten playing with a ball as of seeking a solution of the mystery behind a woman's fits of abstraction. However, there was in Susan's face, especially in her eyes, an expression so unusual, so arresting that Spenser, self-centered and convinced of woman's intellectual deficiency though he was, did sometimes inquire what she was thinking about. He asked this question at breakfast the morning after that second visit to Brent.
"Was I thinking?" she countered.
"You certainly were not listening. You haven't a notion what
I was talking about."
"About your play."
"Of course. You know I talk nothing else," laughed he. "I must bore you horribly."
"No, indeed," protested she.
"No, I suppose not. You're not bored because you don't listen."