“I thought George told you over the ’phone that I couldn’t see any one today,” said Gloria. “I’m packing to go to Palm Beach, and now that you’ve satisfied your curiosity, perhaps you’ll run along.” “Not at all; I’m going to stay to argue with you. In the first place why go away and in the second why go to Palm Beach when there are so many interesting places to go?” “I’m going away because I’m tired of playwrights and actors and actresses, and Fifth Avenue and Broadway, and if you have any better place than Palm Beach to suggest, I will be very glad to go there—only don’t say the North Pole, for I’ve been packing summer clothing and don’t want to do it all over again.” “Can’t you say anything to her?” he asked, smiling at Ruth. She shook her head, answering him with her eyes and again she had the feeling of a secret understanding between herself and Terry. “Haven’t you any control over this house, George?” he asked perching on top of one of the trunks and lighting a cigarette. George made no answer, but Amy grinned her delight. With her mistress gone George would assume more upper servant airs than ever and she would have no court of justice to which she could refer in time of domestic strife. “Please get off that trunk, Terry; there are chairs to sit on,” said Gloria, drawing the red flower of her lip under her white teeth. “How can I sit on a chair when there are hats and boots on every one?” “Here, I’ll clear one for you,” said Gloria, and sent a hat sailing across the room. Ruth would never dare throw a hat across the room, no matter how much she felt like it. She watched Gloria in a perfect passion of admiration that half drowned the sharp pain in her heart because she knew that Terry also saw Gloria’s beauty and felt the charm of her. “If you really must go away, and I can understand that too, for I’d like to get away myself, why not take a sea voyage—that’s the real thing in rest cures. Go to San Francisco by rail and then take one of those boats that run to Hawaii and Samoa and on to Sydney if you don’t want to stop at Samoa. Let me see, five days to San Francisco, eighteen days to Sydney, not counting a long stopover in Hawaii and Samoa, and by the time you return I’ll have a comedy written for you,—a comedy in which the entire plot rests on the heroine’s being not less than six feet tall—” “Don’t tease me, Terry—it isn’t fair—you’ve been writing that comedy for three years now—if you only would write it I wouldn’t care even if I had to play opposite a giant from a circus—” She was near tears, so near that Ruth could hardly restrain an impulse to go to her and throw her arms about her, when Terry evidently with the same impulse went to her and did throw one arm about her shoulders. Ruth saw now that they were exactly the same height.