importunity. The eyes that backed up the message of the chin were
pleasant, but inflexible.
Generally it was with a feeling akin to relief that the rejected, when
time had begun to heal the wound, contemplated their position. There
was something about this girl, they decided, which no fellow could
understand: she frightened them; she made them feel that their hands
were large and red and their minds weak and empty. She was waiting for
something. What it was they did not know, but it was plain that they
were not it, and off they went to live happily ever after with girls
who ate candy and read best-sellers. And Ruth went on her way, cool and
watchful and mysterious, waiting.
The room which Ruth had taken for her own gave, like all rooms when
intelligently considered, a clue to the character of its owner. It was
the only room in the house furnished with any taste or simplicity. The
furniture was exceedingly expensive, but did not look so. The key-note
of the colour-scheme was green and white. All round the walls were
books. Except for a few prints, there were no pictures; and the only
photograph visible stood in a silver frame on a little table.
It was the portrait of a woman of about fifty, square-jawed,
tight-lipped, who stared almost threateningly out of the frame;
exceedingly handsome, but, to the ordinary male, too formidable
to be attractive. On this was written in a bold hand, bristling
with emphatic down-strokes and wholly free from feminine flourish:
'To my dear Ruth from her Aunt Lora.' And below the signature, in
what printers call 'quotes,' a line that was evidently an extract
from somebody's published works: 'Bear the torch and do not falter.'
Bailey inspected this photograph with disfavour. It always irritated
him. The information, conveyed to him by amused friends, that his Aunt
Lora had once described Ruth as a jewel in a dust-bin, seemed to him to
carry an offensive innuendo directed at himself and the rest of the
dwellers in the Bannister home. Also, she had called him a worm. Also,
again, his actual encounters with the lady, though few, had been
memorably unpleasant. Furthermore, he considered that she had far too
great an influence on Ruth. And, lastly, that infernal sentence about
the torch, which he found perfectly meaningless, had a habit of running
in his head like a catch-phrase, causing him the keenest annoyance.
He pursed his lips disapprovingly and averted his eyes.
'Don't sniff at Aunt Lora, Bailey,' said Ruth. 'I've had to speak to
you about that before. What's the matter? What has sent you flying up
here?'
'I have had a shock,' said Bailey. 'I have been very greatly disturbed.
I have just been speaking to Clarence Grayling.'
He eyed her accusingly through his gold-rimmed glasses. She remained
tranquil.
'And what had Clarence to say?'
'A great many things.'
'I gather he told you I had refused him.'
'If it were only that!'
Ruth rapped the piano sharply.
