She shrugged her shoulders. "No matter," she said. "It's undone now. I'm much obliged. It's more than I expected."
"You don't believe me—and I don't blame you. You think I'm making some sort of grandstand play."
"You haven't changed—at least not much."
"I'll admit, when you left I was wild and did tell 'em to take you in as soon as they found you. But that was a long time ago. And I never meant them to disturb a woman who was living respectably with her husband. There may have been—yes, there was a time when I'd have done that—and worse. But not any more. You say I haven't changed. Well, you're wrong. In some ways I have. I'm climbing up, as I always told you I would—and as a man gets up he sees things differently. At least, he acts differently. I don't do that kind of dirty work, any more."
"I'm glad to hear it," murmured Susan for lack of anything else to say.
He was as handsome as ever, she saw—had the same charm of manner—a charm owing not a little of its potency to the impression he made of the man who would dare as far as any man, and then go on to dare a step farther—the step from which all but the rare, utterly unafraid man shrinks. His look at her could not but appeal to her vanity as woman, and to her woman's craving for being loved; at the same time it agitated her with specters of the days of her slavery to him. He said:
"You've changed—a lot. And all to the good. The only sign is rouge on your lips and that isn't really a sign nowadays. But then you never did look the professional—and you weren't."
His eyes were appealingly tender as he gazed at her sweet, pensive face, with its violet-gray eyes full of mystery and sorrow and longing. And the clear pallor of her skin, and the slender yet voluptuous lines of her form suggested a pale, beautiful rose, most delicate of flowers yet about the hardiest.
"So—you've married and settled down?"
"No," replied Susan. "Neither the one nor the other."