Almost hourly, in these days when she saw him constantly, Susan tried to convince herself that her heart was not quite committed yet to Peter Coleman’s keeping.  But always without success.  The big, sweet-tempered, laughing fellow, with his generosity, his wealth, his position, had become all her world, or rather he had become the reigning personage in that other world at whose doorway Susan stood, longing and enraptured.

A year ago, at the prospect of seeing him so often, of feeling so sure of his admiration and affection, of calling him “Peter,” Susan would have felt herself only too fortunate.  But these privileges, fully realized now, brought her more pain than joy.  A restless unhappiness clouded their gay times together, and when she was alone Susan spent troubled hours in analysis of his tones, his looks, his words.  If a chance careless phrase of his seemed to indicate a deepening of the feeling between them, Susan hugged that phrase to her heart.  If Peter, on the other hand, eagerly sketched to her plans for a future that had no place for her, Susan drooped, and lay wakeful and heartsick long into the night.  She cared for him truly and deeply, although she never said so, even to herself, and she longed with all her ardent young soul for the place in the world that awaited his wife.  Susan knew that she could fill it, that he would never be anything but proud of her; she only awaited the word--less than a word!—­that should give her the right to enter into her kingdom.

By all the conventions of her world these thoughts should not have come to her until Peter’s attitude was absolutely ascertained.  But Susan was honest with herself; she must have been curiously lacking in human tenderness, indeed, not to have yielded her affection to so joyous and so winning a claimant.

As the weeks went by she understood his ideals and those of his associates more and more clearly, and if Peter lost something of his old quality as a god, by the analysis, Susan loved him all the more for finding him not quite perfect.  She knew that he was young, that his head was perhaps a little turned by sudden wealth and popularity, that life was sweet to him just as it was; he was not ready yet for responsibilities and bonds.  He thought Miss Susan Brown was the “bulliest” girl he knew, loved to give her good times and resented the mere mention of any other man’s admiration for her.  Of what could she complain?

Of course—­Susan could imagine him as disposing of the thought comfortably—­she didn’t complain.  She took things just as he wanted her to, had a glorious time whenever she was with him, and was just as happy doing other things when he wasn’t about.  Peter went for a month to Tahoe this summer, and wrote Susan that there wasn’t a fellow at the hotel that was half as much fun as she was.  He told her that if she didn’t immediately answer that she missed him like Hannibal he would jump into the lake.