They followed her across the long room, Ruth walking a step behind Gloria, watching her face, waiting for the moment when she should see around the high-backed chair. They must have seen him at the same moment, for Ruth’s heart gave a little thump and it seemed that Gloria missed a step, her body swaying just perceptibly for a second, while one hand flew to her throat in a gesture that Ruth had seen before. Her colour did not change, but with the sophistication of four months in New York Ruth knew that Gloria’s colour did not “come and go” for very good reason. The biggest change was in her eyes. They seemed to have turned a dark violet and to have opened wider than Ruth had ever seen them before, in a fixed stare. They were standing before him now. In her anxiety about Gloria she had not thought of him at all. His face was quite white and he seemed to be nerving himself for some tremendous ordeal. “Pardon me for not rising,”—he indicated the crutches beside his chair. “Professor Pendragon’s not a bit like a real invalid—one forgets it the moment one talks to him,” apologized Angela, rather tactlessly. “He and John are such good friends that I used to be jealous of him, and when I heard he was ill I insisted that John make him come, and do you know, he wanted to run away before, but I told him what clever people were coming and made him stay—aren’t you glad now that you’ve met Gloria Mayfield, and Ruth?” “Miss Ruth Mayfield and I have met before,” he said. She was almost afraid to look at him. There was in his eyes a look of questioning, almost of reproach. He had grown thinner and she wondered how Gloria could be so heartless. Still it wasn’t all Gloria’s fault. Ruth had seen her dark eyes melt with pity at sight of the crutches—pity and a sort of bewildered fright, but when he spoke as if he had never seen her before, the soft look faded and her eyes changed from violet to the coldest grey imaginable, and her mouth set in a cold line, quite unlike its natural form. “I’m sure you’ll like our little Bohemian circle,” she said. Ruth wondered how she dared make fun of Angela that way in her own house. Somehow or other they had all been presented to Miss Gilchrist, too, but she proved to be one of those persons one habitually forgets, and who is perpetually trying to call back the wandering attention of others, like a friendless pup rubbing his nose in the hands of strangers, hoping some place to find a master. Of course Miss Gilchrist hadn’t that kind of nose, but there was a pitiful look in her dust-coloured brown eyes that simply plead for attention. Evidently Terry saw it, for he was talking to her now, or perhaps he was only trying to relieve what was an awkward moment for him as well as for Ruth.