But inwardly her thoughts were like whirling web.  And in its very center was Peter Coleman.  Everything that Susan did began and ended with the thought of him.  She never entered the office without the hope that a fat envelope, covered with his dashing scrawl, lay on the desk.  She never thought herself looking well without wishing that she might meet Peter that day, or looking ill that she did not fear it.  She answered the telephone with a thrilling heart; it might be he!  And she browsed over the social columns of the Sunday papers, longing and fearing to find his name.  All day long and far into the night, her brain was busy with a reconciliation,—­excuses, explanations, forgiveness.  “Perhaps to-day,” she said in the foggy mornings.  “To-morrow,” said her undaunted heart at night.

The hope was all that sustained her, and how bitterly it failed her at times only Susan knew.  Before the world she kept a brave face, evading discussion of Peter when she could, quietly enduring it when Mrs. Lancaster’s wrath boiled over.  But as the weeks went by, and the full wretchedness of the situation impressed itself upon her with quiet force, she sank under an overwhelming sense of wrong and loss.  Nothing amazing was going to happen.  She—­who had seemed so free, so independent!—­was really as fettered and as helpless as Virginia and Mary Lou.  Susan felt sometimes as if she should go mad with suppressed feeling.  She grew thin, dyspeptic, irritable, working hard, and finding her only relief in work, and reading in bed in the evening.

The days slowly pushed her further and further from those happy times when she and Peter had been such good friends, had gone about so joyfully together.  It was a shock to Susan to realize that she had not seen him nor heard from him for a month—­for two months—­for three.  Emily Saunders was in the hospital for some serious operation, would be there for weeks; Ella was abroad.  Susan felt as if her little glimpse of their world and Peter’s had been a curious dream.

Billy played a brother’s part toward her now, always ready to take her about with him when he was free, and quite the only person who could spur her to anything like her old vigorous interest in life.  They went very often to the Carrolls, and there, in the shabby old sitting-room, Susan felt happier than she did anywhere else.  Everybody loved her, loved to have her there, and although they knew, and she knew that they knew, that something had gone very wrong with her, nobody asked questions, and Susan felt herself safe and sheltered.  There was a shout of joy when she came in with Phil and Jo from the ferryboat.  “Mother! here’s Sue!” Betsey would follow the older girls upstairs to chatter while they washed their hands and brushed their hair, and, going down again, Susan would get the motherly kiss that followed Jo’s.  Later, when the lamp was lit, while Betsey and Jim wrangled amicably over their game, and Philip and Jo toiled with piano and violin, Susan sat next to Mrs. Carroll, and while they sewed, or between snatches of reading, they had long, and to the girl at least, memorable talks.