He had expected a rapturous outburst, and perhaps some reassertion of wifely faith in the glorious future that awaited The Pageant of Alexander; and deep down under the lover's well-being the author felt a faint twinge of mortified vanity when Susy, leaping to her feet, cried out, ravenously and without preamble: "Oh, Nick, Nick--let me see how much they've given you!"
He flourished the cheque before her in the firelight. "A couple of hundred, you mercenary wretch!"
"Oh, oh--" she gasped, as if the good news had been almost too much for her tense nerves; and then surprised him by dropping to the ground, and burying her face against his knees.
"Susy, my Susy," he whispered, his hand on her shaking shoulder. "Why, dear, what is it? You're not crying?"
"Oh, Nick, Nick--two hundred? Two hundred dollars? Then I've got to tell you--oh now, at once!"
A faint chill ran over him, and involuntarily his hand drew back from her bowed figure.
"Now? Oh, why now?" he protested. "What on earth does it matter now--whatever it is?"
"But it does matter--it matters more than you can think!"
She straightened herself, still kneeling before him, and lifted her head so that the firelight behind her turned her hair into a ruddy halo. "Oh, Nick, the bracelet--Ellie's bracelet.... I've never returned it to her," she faltered out.
He felt himself recoiling under the hands with which she clutched his knees. For an instant he did not remember what she alluded to; it was the mere mention of Ellie Vanderlyn's name that had fallen between them like an icy shadow. What an incorrigible fool he had been to think they could ever shake off such memories, or cease to be the slaves of such a past!
"The bracelet?--Oh, yes," he said, suddenly understanding, and feeling the chill mount slowly to his lips.
"Yes, the bracelet... Oh, Nick, I meant to give it back at once; I did--I did; but the day you went away I forgot everything else. And when I found the thing, in the bottom of my bag, weeks afterward, I thought everything was over between you and me, and I had begun to see Ellie again, and she was kind to me and how could I?" To save his life he could have found no answer, and she pressed on: "And so this morning, when I saw you were frightened by the expense of bringing all the children with us, and when I felt I couldn't leave them, and couldn't leave you either, I remembered the bracelet; and I sent you off to telephone while I rushed round the corner to a little jeweller's where I'd been before, and pawned it so that you shouldn't have to pay for the children.... But now, darling, you see, if you've got all that money, I can get it out of pawn at once, can't I, and send it back to her?"