Strefford stared. "What—that nonsense about your setting each other free if either of you had the chance to make a good match?"
She signed "Yes."
"And he's actually asked you—?"
"Well: practically. He's gone off with the Hickses. Before going he wrote me that we'd better both consider ourselves free. And Coral sent me a postcard to say that she would take the best of care of him."
Strefford mused, his eyes upon his cigarette. "But what the deuce led up to all this? It can't have happened like that, out of a clear sky."
Susy flushed, hesitated, looked away. She had meant to tell Strefford the whole story; it had been one of her chief reasons for wishing to see him again, and half-unconsciously, perhaps, she had hoped, in his laxer atmosphere, to recover something of her shattered self-esteem. But now she suddenly felt the impossibility of confessing to anyone the depths to which Nick's wife had stooped. She fancied that her companion guessed the nature of her hesitation.
"Don't tell me anything you don't want to, you know, my dear."
"No; I do want to; only it's difficult. You see—we had so very little money. . . ."
"Yes?"
"And Nick—who was thinking of his book, and of all sorts of big things, fine things—didn't realise . . . left it all to me . . . to manage. . . ."
