And now this last supreme test—with her soul rising up and gathering itself together and lifting its head in strength——
"Yes, I was born to make the best of things," she repeated.
"Then you were born lucky," sighed Clélie, who was of those who must lean if they would not fall and lie where they fell.
Susan gave a curious little laugh—with no mirth, with a great deal of mockery. "Do you know, I never thought so before, but I believe you're right," said she. Again she laughed in that queer way. "If you knew my life you'd think I was joking. But I'm not. The fact that I've survived and am what I am proves I was born lucky." Her tone changed, her expression became unreadable. "If it's lucky to be born able to live. And if that isn't luck, what is?"
She thought how Brent said she was born lucky because she had the talent that enables one to rise above the sordidness of that capitalism he so often denounced—the sordidness of the lot of its slaves, the sordidness of the lot of its masters. Brent! If it were he leaning beside her—if he and she were coming up the bay toward the City of the Sun!
A billow of heartsick desolation surged over her.
Alone—always alone. And still alone. And always to be alone.
Garvey came aboard when the gangway was run out. He was in black wherever black could be displayed. But the grief shadowing his large, simple countenance had the stamp of the genuine. And it was genuine, of the most approved enervating kind. He had done nothing but grieve since his master's death—had left unattended all the matters the man he loved and grieved for would have wished put in order. Is it out of charity for the weakness of human nature and that we may think as well as possible of it—is that why we admire and praise most enthusiastically the kind of love and the kind of friendship and the kind of grief that manifest themselves in obstreperous feeling and wordiness, with no strength left for any attempt to do? As Garvey greeted them the tears filled Clélie's eyes and she turned away. But Susan gazed at him steadily; in her eyes there were no tears, but a look that made Garvey choke back sobs and bend his head to hide his expression. What he saw—or felt—behind her calmness filled him with awe, with a kind of terror. But he did not recognize what he saw as grief; it did not resemble any grief he had felt or had heard about.
"He made a will just before he died," he said to Susan. "He left everything to you."
Then she had not been mistaken. He had loved her, even as she loved him. She turned and walked quickly from them. She hastened into her cabin, closed the door and flung herself across the bed. And for the first time she gave way. In that storm her soul was like a little land bird in the clutch of a sea hurricane. She did not understand herself. She still had no sense that he was dead; yet had his dead body been lying there in her arms she could not have been more shaken by paroxysms of grief, without tears or sobs—grief that vents itself in shrieks and peals of horrible laughter-like screams—she smothered them in the pillows in which she buried her face. Clélie came, opened the door, glanced in, closed it. An hour passed—an hour and a half. Then Susan appeared on deck—amber-white pallor, calm, beautiful, the fashionable woman in traveling dress.
"I never before saw you with your lips not rouged!" exclaimed Clélie.