"I do not. I was only wondering--" She broke off and began to talk about the Josslyns whom, it had turned out, he knew and liked. Two weeks ago she had dined there with him, and Christopher had taken occasion to tell her that John Fay was about the rightest all right he knew.... She had not really needed the telling. She had a good deal of insight herself. They came to the great arched door of the apartment house, and there she told Fay good-night. When he was gone, she stood for a moment in the paved lobby with its palm or two, her eyes upon the clear darkness without; then she turned to the elevator. Upstairs, within her own doors, Thomasine met her. "Oh, Hagar! It's Mr. Ralph--" "Ralph!" Ralph had been abroad, and she had not seen him for a long time. "Yes!" said Thomasine. "His boat came in yesterday evening. And awhile ago he telephoned to ask you if he might come to dinner with you, and I didn't know what to say, and I told him you wouldn't be in till late; and he said did I think you'd mind his coming, and I didn't know what to say, so I said, 'No,' I couldn't think so; and he asked what time you dined--and it's nearly seven now--" "Well, you couldn't say anything else," said Hagar. "Only I devoutly hope--" She moved toward her own room. "I'll dress quickly." "And don't you think," said Thomasine, "that I'd better not dine with you--" "I think just the contrary," answered Hagar, and vanished. Ralph came. He was the Ralph of three years ago, of that last autumn week at Gilead Balm, only with certain things accentuated. He was richer, he had more and more a name in finance; his state was now loudly and perpetually proud of him. There was an indefinable hardening.... He was very handsome, Thomasine thought; he looked tremendously Somebody. He had been around the world--his physician had sent him off because of a threatened breaking-down. Apparently that had been staved off, pushed at least into a closet to stay there a few years. He talked well, with vigorous, clipped sentences, of Australia and China and India. Hagar, sitting opposite him in a filmy black gown, kept the talk upon travel. She had not seen him for eighteen months, and before then, for a long while, their meetings had been casual, cold and stiff enough, with upon his side an absurd hauteur. The eighteen months had at least dissipated that.... Dinner over, they went for coffee back to the apartment, and Thomasine determinedly disappeared. Old Gilead Balm talk was in Thomasine's mind. Ralph Coltsworth and Hagar Ashendyne were to mate--Old Miss had somehow kept that in the air, even so long, long ago. In the grave and restful room with its shaded lights Hagar poured a cup of coffee for her cousin and gave it to him. Taking it, he took for a moment also her two hands, long, slender, and very finely made. "Ringless!" he said.