The old
women of the tenements, the old women of the gutters, the old
women drunk and dancing as the lecherous-eyed hunchback played
the piano.
She must not this time wait and hesitate and hope; this time
she must take the road that offered--and since it must be
taken she must advance along it as if of all possible roads it
was the only one she would have freely chosen.
Yet after she had written and sent off the note to Palmer, a
deep sadness enveloped her--a grief, not for Rod, but for the
association, the intimacy, their life together, its sorrows
and storms perhaps more than the pleasures and the joys. When
she left him before, she had gone sustained by the feeling
that she was doing it for him, was doing a duty. Now, she was
going merely to save herself, to further herself. Life, life
in that great and hard school of practical living, New York,
had given her the necessary hardiness to go, aided by Rod's
unfaithfulness and growing uncongeniality. But not while she
lived could she ever learn to be hard. She would do what she
must--she was no longer a fool. But she could not help
sighing and crying a little as she did it.
It was not many minutes after noon when Spenser came. He
looked so sheepish and uncomfortable that Susan thought
Constance had told him. But his opening sentence of apology was:
"I took too many nightcaps and Fitz had to lug me home with him.
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