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 bestsellers. 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 keynote 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, tightlipped, 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 downstrokes 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 dustbin, 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 catchphrase, 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.
“Bailey,” she said, “wake up. Either get to the point or go or read a book or do some tatting or talk about something else. You know perfectly well that I absolutely refuse to endure your impressive manner. I believe when people ask you the time you look pained and important and make a mystery of it. What’s troubling you? I should have thought Clarence would have kept quiet about insulting me. But apparently he has no sense of shame.”
Bailey gaped. Bailey was shocked and alarmed.
“Insulting you! What do you mean? Clarence is a gentleman. He is incapable of insulting a woman.”
“Is he? He told me I was a suitable wife for a wretched dwarf with the miserably inadequate intelligence which nature gave him reduced to practically a minus quantity by alcohol! At least, he implied it. He asked me to marry him.”
“I have just left him at the club. He is very upset.”
“I should imagine so.” A soft smile played over Ruth’s face. “I spoke to Clarence. I explained things to him. I lit up Clarence’s little mind like a searchlight.”
Bailey rose, tremulous with just wrath.
“You spoke to him in a way that I can only call outrageous and improper, and—er—outrageous.”
He paced the room with agitated strides. Ruth watched him calmly.
“If the overflowing emotion of a giant soul in torment makes you knock over a table or smash a chair,” she said, “I shall send the bill for repairs to you. You had far better sit down and talk quietly. What is worrying you, Bailey?”
“Is it nothing,” demanded her brother, “that my sister should have spoken to a man as you spoke to Clarence Grayling?”
With an impassioned gesture he sent a flower-vase crashing to the floor.
“I told you so,” said Ruth. “Pick up the bits, and don’t let the water spoil the carpet. Use your handkerchief. I should say that that would cost you about six dollars, dear. Why will you let yourself be so temperamental? Now let me try and think what it was I said to Clarence. As far as I can remember it was the mere A.B.C. of eugenics.”
Bailey, on his knees, picking up broken glass, raised a flushed and accusing face.
“Ah! Eugenics! You admit it!”
“I think,” went on Ruth placidly, “I asked him what sort of children he thought we were likely to have if we married.”
“A nice girl ought not to think about such things.”
“I don’t think about anything else much. A woman can’t do a great deal, even nowadays, but she can have a conscience and feel that she owes something to the future of the race. She can feel that it is her duty to bring fine children into the world. As Aunt Lora says, she can carry the torch and not falter.”
Bailey shied like a startled horse at the hated phrase. He pointed furiously at the photograph of the great thinker.
“You’re talking like that—that damned woman!”
“Bailey precious! You mustn’t use such wicked, wicked words.”
Bailey rose, pink and wrathful.
“If you’re going to break another vase,” said Ruth, “you will really have to go.”
“Ever since that—that—” cried Bailey. “Ever since Aunt
