Perhaps she wished to tire me with lesser loves, certain that her own must prevail against them. Perhaps she had even left me solely for this, with this idea. Knowing herself unable to bear the pain of infidelity to her when she was present, yet, accepting it as tending to some ultimate psychological end, she had withdrawn herself from me.
"I would so much rather be a man's last love, the crowning love of his life, the one whose image would be with him as he passed from this world, than his first; poor little toy of his youth, forgotten, unheeded, effaced by the passions of his life at the zenith."
Perhaps, ... but, ah! what was the use of speculation when it might all be wrong?
Some reason was there, guiding that subtle mystery of her brain, and I, if I fulfilled her expressed wishes, was doing the utmost to carry out that plan of hers which I could not yet understand.
A feeling of excessive weariness invaded me, mental and physical, and as the light grew stronger, breaking into day, I went to my own room to sleep.
As soon as I woke I got up and went to look at my new possession. To my surprise the room seemed empty. I looked round. No Suzee. I went up to the bed. It had apparently not been slept in, but two of the blankets had been pulled off and disappeared.
As I stood by the bedside, wondering what had become of her, I felt a soft kiss on my ankles and, looking down, there she was, creeping out from under the bed with one of the blankets round her. Her hair was a lovely undisarranged mass; but the rosebuds in it were dead, and it was dusty. Her face looked like white silk in its youthful pallor. She smiled up delightedly at me and crawled out farther from the bed valance.
"What are you doing down there?" I asked. "Wasn't the bed comfortable?"
"Oh yes, Treevor, underneath I was very comfortable and warm. You see, I have always been accustomed to something over my head, and in this room the ceiling is such a long way off."
She got up and stood before me, her rounded shoulders and sweetly moulded arms shewing above the blanket.
"You don't mind, do you?" she added, with a note of quick anxiety.
I laughed as I remembered the low ceilings, almost on one's head, that are the rule in Chinatown, and caught her up in my arms.