unused. The words were scarcely out of her mouth when the door opened and a woman swept into the room—the tallest woman she had ever seen, 16at least six feet tall and slender without being thin—a graceful tiger lily of a woman with masses of auburn hair and big grey, black-lashed eyes and a straight white nose and a crushed flower of a mouth. With one hand she was holding a gorgeous, nameless garment of amber silk and lace and the other hand was held out to Ruth. Even as she took it Ruth realized that it would have been preposterous to have expected the goddess to kiss her.

16

“I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting—Ruth,” she said. Her voice was like silver bells ringing.

“I should have wired,” admitted Ruth. Her voice sounded flat and toneless after hearing her aunt speak.

“It would have been awkward if I hadn’t happened to be in town, but I was, so it’s all right. You’re older than I thought, I was afraid that you’d turn out a little girl.”

“And you’re ever so much younger than I thought, Aunt Gloria,” said Ruth, beginning to gain her composure.

“Thirty-five last birthday,” said her aunt.

Immediately Ruth realized that thirty-five was the only possible age for a woman. To be older or younger than thirty-five was infinitely dull. She herself at nineteen, which only a few moments ago she had considered a very interesting age indeed, was quite hopeless.

“But come, we mustn’t stay in this awful room. I didn’t tell George just where to take you. Certainly 17not here. I’ll have a room fixed up for you. Did George send for your trunks? He said you’d had breakfast, but that can’t be true—coffee perhaps, but not breakfast—I only had coffee myself. So we can eat together while they’re getting a room ready for you.” She was sweeping Ruth along with her down the stairs as she talked, not waiting for answers to anything she said. At the foot she turned and opened a door at the left of the staircase and peered in.

17

“Too gloomy in the dining-room in the morning. We’ll go in here,” and she turned to the other side, opening a door into a big room, all furnished in soft grey and dull gold. Ruth’s artist eye perceived how such a neutral-tinted background was just the thing to enhance the colourful appearance and personality of her aunt. The only touch of vivid colour in the room was in the hangings at the deep, high windows that looked 

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