and you can tell her so

"I'm all right! Tell her that, will you, Susy? There are someof our old times I don't suppose I shall ever forget; but theymake me feel kindly to her, and not angry. I didn't know itwould be so, beforehand--but it is .... And now the thing'ssettled I'm as right as a trivet, and you can tell her so .... 　　Look here, Susy ..." he caught her by the arm as the taxi drewup at her hotel .... "Tell her I understand, will you? I'drather like her to know that .... ""I'll tell her, Nelson," she promised; and climbed the stairsalone to her dreary room. 　　Susy's one fear was that Strefford, when he returned the nextday, should treat their talk of the previous evening as a fit of"nerves" to be jested away. He might, indeed, resent herbehaviour too deeply to seek to see her at once; but hiseasygoing modern attitude toward conduct and convictions madethat improbable. She had an idea that what he had most mindedwas her dropping so unceremoniously out of the Embassy Dinner. 　　But, after all, why should she see him again? She had hadenough of explanations during the last months to have learnedhow seldom they explain anything. If the other person did notunderstand at the first word, at the first glance even,subsequent elucidations served only to deepen the obscurity. 　　And she wanted above all--and especially since her hour withNelson Vanderlyn--to keep herself free, aloof, to retain herhold on her precariously recovered self. She sat down and wroteto Strefford--and the letter was only a little less painful towrite than the one she had despatched to Nick. It was not thather own feelings were in any like measure engaged; but because,as the decision to give up Strefford affirmed itself, sheremembered only his kindness, his forbearance, his good humour,and all the other qualities she had always liked in him; andbecause she felt ashamed of the hesitations which must cause himso much pain and humiliation. Yes: humiliation chiefly. Sheknew that what she had to say would hurt his pride, in whateverway she framed her renunciation; and her pen wavered, hating itstask. Then she remembered Vanderlyn's words about his wife: 　　"There are some of our old times I don't suppose I shall everforget--" and a phrase of Grace Fulmer's that she had but halfgrasped at the time: "You haven't been married long enough tounderstand how trifling such things seem in the balance of one'smemories."Here were two people who had penetrated farther than she intothe labyrinth of the wedded state, and struggled through some ofits thorniest passages; and yet both, one consciously, the otherhalf-unaware, testified to the mysterious fact which was alreadydawning on her: that the influence of a marriage begun inmutual understanding is too deep not to reassert itself even inthe moment of flight and denial.