"Well, Suzanne, you know," she said, rather despondently, "I just couldn't help it. I had to go to someone. I am quite alone apart from you and Kinroy and the children"—she referred to Adele and Ninette as the children when talking to either Suzanne or Kinroy—"and I didn't want to say anything to them. You have been my only confidant up to now, and since you have turned against me——"
"I haven't turned against you, mama."
"Oh, yes you have. Let's not talk about it, Suzanne. You have broken my heart. You are killing me. I just had to go to someone. We have known Dr. Woolley so long. He is so good and kind."
"Oh, I know, mama, but what good will it do? How can anything he might say help matters? He isn't going to change me. You're only telling it to somebody who oughtn't to know anything about it."
"But I thought he might influence you," pleaded Mrs. Dale. "I thought you would listen to him. Oh, dear, oh, dear. I'm so tired of it all. I wish I were dead. I wish I had never lived to see this."
"Now there you go, mama," said Suzanne confidently. "I can't see why you are so distressed about what I am going to do. It is my life that I am planning to arrange, not yours. I have to live my life, mama, not you."
"Oh, yes, but it is just that that distresses me. What will it be after you do this—after you throw it away? Oh, if you could only see what you are contemplating doing—what a wretched thing it will be when it is all over with. You will never live with him—he is too old for you, too fickle, too insincere. He will not care for you after a little while, and then there you will be, unmarried, possibly with a child on your hands, a social outcast! Where will you go?"
"Mama," said Suzanne calmly, her lips parted in a rosy, baby way, "I have thought of all this. I see how it is. But I think you and everybody else make too much ado about these things. You think of everything that could happen, but it doesn't all happen that way. People do these things, I'm sure, and nothing much is thought of it."
"Yes, in books," put in Mrs. Dale. "I know where you get all this from. It's your reading."
"Anyhow, I'm going to. I have made up my mind," added Suzanne. "I have decided that by September fifteenth I will go to Mr. Witla, and you might just as well make up your mind to it now." This was August tenth.