PEACE AT ANY PRICE


Miss Severance, stepping out of a Waldorf elevator at the main
floor, shrank back wide-eyed. "You?" she gasped.

Before her, serene and smiling and inflexible, was Craig. None of
the suits he had bought at seven that morning was quite right for
immediate use; so there he was in his old lounge suit, baggy at
knees and elbows and liberally bestrewn with lint. Her glance fell
from his mussy collar to his backwoodsman's hands, to his feet, so
cheaply and shabbily shod; the shoes looked the worse for the
elaborate gloss the ferry bootblack had put upon them. She
advanced because she could not retreat; but never had she been so
repelled.

She had come to New York to get away from him. When she entered
the train she had flung him out of the window. "I WILL NOT think
of him again," she had said to herself. But--Joshua Craig's was
not the sort of personality that can be banished by an edict of
will. She could think angrily of him, or disdainfully, or coldly,
or pityingly--but think she must. And think she did. She told
herself she despised him; and there came no echoing protest or
denial from anywhere within her. She said she was done with him
forever, and well done; her own answer to herself there was, that
while she was probably the better off for having got out of the
engagement, still it must be conceded that socially the manner of
her getting out meant scandal, gossip, laughter at her. Her cheeks
burned as her soul flamed.