She
apparently had not had time to change her underskirt, for there was the
dust of the stage on its delicate lace edging, as she threw herself into
an armchair and crossed her pretty slippered feet before her. Her face
was pale, its pallor incautiously increased by powder; and as Clarence
looked at its still youthful, charming outline, he was not perhaps
sorry that the exquisite pink and white skin beneath, which he had once
kissed, was hidden from that awakened recollection. Yet there was little
trace of the girlish Susy in the pretty, but prematurely jaded, actress
before him, and he felt momentarily relieved. It was her youth and
freshness appealing to his own youth and imagination that he had
loved--not HER. Yet as she greeted him with a slight exaggeration of
glance, voice, and manner, he remembered that even as a girl she was an
actress.
Nothing of this, however, was in his voice and manner as he gently
thanked her for the opportunity of meeting her again. And he was frank,
for the diversion he had expected he had found; he even was conscious of
thinking more kindly of his wife who had supplanted her.
"I told Jim he must fetch you if he had to carry you," she said,
striking the palm of her hand with her fan, and glancing at her husband.
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