“I am weak,” said Susan ashamedly to herself; “I was afraid he would think I cared,—­would see that I cared!” And she walked on busy with self-contemptuous and humiliated thoughts.  She had made it easy for him to take advantage of her.  She had assumed for his convenience that she had suffered no more than he through their parting, and that all was again serene and pleasant between them.  After to-night’s casual, friendly conversation, no radical attitude would be possible on her part; he could congratulate himself that he still retained Susan’s friendship, and could be careful—­she knew he would be careful!—­never to go too far again.

Susan’s estimate of Peter Coleman was no longer a particularly idealized one.  But she had long ago come to the conclusion that his faults were the faults of his type and his class, excusable and understandable now, and to be easily conquered when a great emotion should sweep him once and for all away from the thought of himself.  As he was absorbed in the thought of his own comfort, so, she knew, he could become absorbed in the thought of what was due his wife, the wider viewpoint would quickly become second nature with him; young Mrs. Peter Coleman would be among the most indulged and carefully considered of women.  He would be as anxious that the relationship between his wife and himself should be harmonious and happy, as he was now to feel when he met her that he had no reason to avoid or to dread meeting Miss Susan Brown.

If Susan would have preferred a little different attitude on his part, she could find no fault with this one.  She had for so many months thought of Peter as the personification of all that she desired in life that she could not readily dismiss him as unworthy.  Was he not still sweet and big and clean, rich and handsome and popular, socially prominent and suitable in age and faith and nationality?

Susan had often heard her aunt and her aunt’s friends remark that life was more dramatic than any book, and that their own lives on the stage would eclipse in sensational quality any play ever presented.  But, for herself, life seemed deplorably, maddeningly undramatic.  In any book, in any play, the situation between her and Peter must have been heightened to a definite crisis long before this.  The mildest of little ingenues, as she came across a dimly lighted stage, in demure white and silver, could have handled this situation far more skillfully than Susan did; the most youthful of heroines would have met Peter to some purpose,—­while surrounded by other admirers at a dance, or while galloping across a moor on her spirited pony.

What would either of these ladies have done, she wondered, at meeting the offender when he appeared particularly well-groomed, prosperous and happy, while she herself was tired from a long office day, conscious of shabby gloves, of a shapeless winter hat?  What could she do, except appear friendly and responsive?  Susan consoled herself with the thought that her only alternative, an icy repulse of his friendly advances, would have either convinced him that she was too entirely common and childish to be worth another thought, or would have amused him hugely.  She could fancy him telling his friends of his experience of the cut direct from a little girl in Front Office,—­no names named—­and hear him saying that “he loved it—­he was crazy about it!”