She means to go to Bagdad next spring
"Queer child, Coral," he said to Susy that night as they smokeda last cigarette on their balcony. "She told me this afternoonthat she’d remembered lots of things she heard me say in India.
I thought at the time that she cared only for caramels andpicture-puzzles, but it seems she was listening to everything,and reading all the books she could lay her hands on; and shegot so bitten with Oriental archaeology that she took a courselast year at Bryn Mawr. She means to go to Bagdad next spring,and back by the Persian plateau and Turkestan."Susy laughed luxuriously: she was sitting with her hand inNick’s, while the late moon–theirs again–rounded its orange-coloured glory above the belfry of San Giorgio.
"Poor Coral! How dreary–" Susy murmured"Dreary? Why? A trip like that is about as well worth doing asanything I know.""Oh, I meant: dreary to do it without you or me, she laughed,getting up lazily to go indoors. A broad band of moonlight,dividing her room onto two shadowy halves, lay on the paintedVenetian bed with its folded-back sheet, its old damask coverletand lace-edged pillows. She felt the warmth of Nick’s enfoldingarm and lifted her face to his.
The Hickses retained the most tender memory of Nick’s sojourn onthe Ibis, and Susy, moved by their artless pleasure in meetinghim again, was glad he had not followed her advice and tried toelude them. She had always admired Strefford’s ruthless talentfor using and discarding the human material in his path, but nowshe began to hope that Nick would not remember her suggestionthat he should mete out that measure to the Hickses. Even if ithad been less pleasant to have a big yacht at their door duringthe long golden days and the nights of silver fire, the Hickses’
admiration for Nick would have made Susy suffer them gladly.
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