Afterward Ruth was glad that she had not enrolled in any of the evening classes. She usually returned to the house on Gramercy Square about five o’clock in the afternoon, just when Gloria’s day seemed to be properly begun, and there were always people there who interested Ruth, though she took little part in the conversation. Ruth would come into the hall, her sketches under her arm, and Gloria would call to her and she would walk into the big comfortable room and be introduced to half a dozen people, whose names she seldom remembered. The people would nod to her and go on with their conversation, and she would sit back listening and watching, feeling more like an audience at a play than one of the group of people in a drawing-room. Most of the conversation was quite meaningless to her, but there was one man, one of the few who did not change in the ever-changing group, who interested her intensely. She gathered that he was a playwright and that he had written the book and lyrics for a musical comedy that was to have its New York _première_ soon. One of the other men called him a show doctor, and said that he had written lines into over half the shows on Broadway. All of the other people seemed to think him “terribly clever,” but Ruth didn’t understand all of the things at which they laughed. They were always begging him to sing his latest song, and he never demurred, though any one could tell with half an ear that he hadn’t any voice at all. He sang in a queer, half-chanty voice, with a curious appealing note in it. “Do you really like his singing?” she once asked Gloria. “His voice, you mean?” Gloria looked at her with the little frown between her eyes and the amused twist to her mouth that Ruth often observed when her aunt was explaining things to her. “Of course not; it’s not his voice, it’s his song. He’s the cleverest song writer in New York, and he’s already written two fairly successful plays. He’s young, you know.” “Is he? I thought he must be thirty at least.” Then Gloria laughed outright. “He is about thirty, but that isn’t old. He’s a funny, old dear, don’t you think so?” “Yes,” admitted Ruth. “He dresses oddly—that is—” “I know what you mean, but you see a man like Terry Riordan doesn’t have to keep his trousers pressed. No other man is worth listening to while Terry is in the room.” Ruth decided that she would pay particular attention to Terry Riordan the next time she met him. Her opportunity came the next day. She had gone out to lunch that day and had been a little late at life class in consequence, and had to stand up at an easel in the back instead of sitting among the more fortunate ones in the front rows, where early arrival had usually placed her. The model was a man—“Krakowski, the wrestler,” one of the girls had whispered to her. “He’s got a wonderful body; we’re lucky to get him.”