"Don't be absurd, Freddie,"
said she. "You know perfectly well you and I don't call out the
finer feelings in each other. If either of us wanted that
sort of thing, we'd have to look elsewhere."
"You mean Brent--eh?"
She laughed with convincing derision. "What nonsense!" She
put her arms round his neck, and her lips close to his. The
violet-gray eyes were half closed, the perfume of the smooth
amber-white skin, of the thick, wavy, dark hair, was in his
nostrils. And in a languorous murmur she soothed his
subjection to a deep sleep with, "As long as you give me what
I want from you, and I give you what you want from me why
should we wrangle?"
And with a smile he acquiesced. She felt that she had ended
the frightful danger--to Brent rather than to herself--that
suddenly threatened from those wicked eyes of Palmer's. But
it might easily come again. She did not dare relax her
efforts, for in the succeeding days she saw that he was like
one annoyed by a constant pricking from a pin hidden in the
clothing and searched for in vain. He was no longer jealous
of Brent. But while he didn't know what was troubling him, he
did know that he was uncomfortable.
XXIII
IN but one important respect was Brent's original plan
modified. Instead of getting her stage experience in France,
Susan joined a London company making one of those dreary,
weary, cheap and trashy tours of the smaller cities of the
provinces with half a dozen plays by Jones, Pinero, and Shaw.
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