"What, you've caught my fear?"
"I dread the long, slow years—the long, slow days and sleepless nights—old people sleep very little—in which there is nothing but thought, an endless-web of miserable thoughts, going slowly round and round, never stopping, never changing. That's what I am afraid of, Susie."
"Strange for you to be afraid of anything," her friend said thoughtfully. "I think you are the most courageous woman I ever heard of—as brave as Joan of Arc, or Charlotte Corday."
"Why?"
"Because you are not afraid to live in this house."
"Why not? What does the house matter?"
"It must make you think sometimes," faltered Susan.
"I won't think! But if I were to think of the past, the house would make no difference. My thoughts would be the same in Mexico—or at the North Pole. I have heard of people who go to the end of the earth to forget things, but I should never do that. I should know that memory would go with me."
For three seasons in London, for three winters in Rome, the pace went on, and was accelerated rather than slackened with the passing of the years. Claude Rutherford won the Blue Ribbon of the turf, with Sinbad the Second, and was equally fortunate with his boat at Cowes. If he did not cross the Channel or fly from London to Liverpool, he did at least make sundry costly excursions in the air, which kept his name in the daily papers, and made his wife miserable, till, aviation having resulted in boredom, he promised to content himself with the substantial earth. After those three years this boy and girl couple began to discover that they had done everything brilliant and exciting that there was to be done; and the fever called living began to pall.