He talked a little, very quietly of trivial things, sometimes to her, sometimes to the others, and Ruth took courage from his calmness. Only as the party grew more gay it seemed to her that under all the sparkle and the gaiety there was a silence louder than the noise, like the heavy hush that falls on nature before the thunder clap and the revealing flash have ushered in a storm. So strong was this sense of waiting that when their host stood with upraised glass, her hand instinctively went out and rested for a brief second on Professor Pendragon’s arm, as if she would shield him. Then she saw Terry looking at her, and remembering what Angela had said to her that afternoon, she quickly withdrew it. There had been no need to touch him, for Pendragon, like the others at the table, turned his attention to John Peyton-Russell, listening to his words as if they held no especial significance for him. “I want John to make the announcement,” Angela had said. “It gives him such pleasure to make speeches. He simply adores it.” Evidently she knew her husband’s tastes, for with the halting words and awkward phraseology of the man accustomed to addressing nothing gayer than a board of directors’ meeting, he stumbled at great length and with obvious self-satisfaction through a speech in which he proposed that they drink to the approaching marriage of Gloria Mayfield and Prince Aglipogue. His words were greeted with enthusiasm by all those to whom they meant nothing except that a more or less famous actress was to marry a fat foreign prince. Ruth heard a woman near her whisper to the man at her right: “Will this make her third or her fourth?” And the response: “I’ve lost count.” The Prince was responding now—something stilted and elaborate, but Ruth did not hear. The dinner had become a nightmare. She wanted to escape. Concealed in the girdle of her frock was the little revolver that Terry had given her. She could feel its weight, and it comforted her. Somehow the dinner ended and Ruth with the others followed Angela to a drawing-room that had been denuded of rugs for dancing. A few months before Ruth would have thought all these people charming, the women beautiful, the men distinguished. Now they were repulsive to her. How could they listen unprotesting to the announcement that Gloria, the beautiful and good (no power on earth could have persuaded Ruth that Gloria was not good), was to marry an ugly ogre like Prince Aglipogue? His fat face wreathed in smiles now, he stood, tucking his violin under his third chin, and then he played—he played, and even Ruth forgot the source of the music. It was not Prince Aglipogue that played, but some slender, dark Hungarian gypsy whose music was addressed to an unattainable princess, ’neath whose window he stood, bathed in moonlight. She threw a rose to him and he crushed it against a heart that broke with joyous pain of loving.