Gloria was going to dine out that night and they were together in her room where she was dressing. Her auburn hair fell over her shoulders and Ruth decided that now she looked like the pictures of Guinevere in “The Idylls of the King.” Ruth knew that Gloria had been disturbed by the knowledge that her former husband was in New York and that she might meet him at any time, but she did not seem to be averse to talking about it, and Ruth was one of those persons, who, seemingly shy and reserved, actually so about her own affairs, could yet ask with impunity, questions that from any other person would have seemed prying and almost impertinent. This was really because Ruth never asked out of idle curiosity, but because she had a real interest. Her aunt was to her a fascinating book, the pages of which she must turn and turn until she had read the entire story. “Had any of the people this morning ever met Professor Pendragon?” she asked. “No; that is no one but George—I acquired George in London, you know, just about the same time that I married Percy. Husbands come and husbands go, but a good servant is not so easily replaced, so I’ve managed to keep George, though he hates New York.” “Then,” continued Ruth, more to herself than to Gloria, “it was not Professor Pendragon who gave you this house.” “No, as I told you, I don’t think he even knows that I’m in New York. I didn’t know he was here. I was fond of Percy and naturally I don’t let him give me anything, because that would have given him pleasure and I wanted to hurt him—” In the mirror she caught the shocked expression in Ruth’s eyes, and turned swiftly to face her. “Of course you think all this is terrible, but after a few years you’ll understand, not me, but something of life itself and of how helpless we all are. I know that you have a very clearly defined plan of life—certain things that you will do—certain things that ‘could never happen to me.’ I know because we’re all like that. And then one day, utterly without your own volition, knowing that you’re doing the wrong thing, you’ll do and say things that simply aren’t written in your lines. Do you suppose that at your age I planned to love a human observatory that observed everything except me, or that I expected to divorce him and marry a tired business man who expected to use me as a perpetual advertisement for toilet preparations, or that I expected when I divorced him that I’d do it all over again with a man more lifeless than his family portraits? You don’t know what you’re going to do when you start out. I know just that much now—that I don’t know. I may commit matrimony again tomorrow.” “But didn’t you love any of these men?” gasped Ruth. “Of course—I loved Percy, and Percy loved the stars—perhaps that’s why he married me. I was a star of a kind at the time.” “Then why—”