here to find my way back to Washington alone--quite capable!" And
her lip curled.

But the scorn was all upon the surface. Beneath there was fear and
respect--the fear and respect which those demoralized by unearned
luxury and by the purposeless life always feel when faced by
strength and self-reliance in the crises where externals avail no
more than its paint and its bunting a warship in battle. She knew
she had been treating him as no self-respecting man who knew the
world would permit any woman to treat him. She knew her self-
respect should have kept her from treating him thus, even if he,
in his ignorance of her world and awe of it, would permit. But
more than from shame at vain self-abasement her chagrin came from
the sense of having played her game so confidently, so carelessly,
so stupidly that he had seen it. She winced as she recalled how
shrewdly and swiftly he had got to the very bottom of her,
especially of her selfishness in planning to use him with no
thought for his good. Yet so many women thus used their husbands;
why not she? "I suppose I began too soon.... No, not too soon, but
too frigidly." The word seemed to her to illuminate the whole
situation. "That's it!" she cried. "How stupid of me!"





CHAPTER XXIII

WHAT THE MOON SAW AND DID