When Ruth telephoned Professor Pendragon’s hotel she found that he had not left any address and would not be expected back before the first of the year. Her next thought was of Nels Zord. He might know, but much to her surprise she did not see Nels at the League, and sought out Dorothy instead. She found her easily enough, but it was not until she had asked about Nels that she observed that Dorothy’s eyes were red and her cheeks swollen as if from recent weeping. It was luncheon time and they were walking toward their restaurant together.

“I don’t know where Nels is,” said Dorothy. Her voice was almost a sob.

“Haven’t you seen him today?”

“I never see him any more—haven’t you seen? He’s too busy with that Alice Winn girl. Oh, you know her, Ruth, the insipid creature with the carefully nurtured southern accent, who always has some highbrow Russian or Swedish book under her arm, and begins reading it every time she thinks a man is looking.”

“I think I know the one you mean, but what about her and why is Nels busy with her and why have you been crying? You have been crying.”

“I suppose I have; it’s most unmanly of me, but I must do something. All men you know are irresistibly attracted to the weakest, cheapest sort of women. They all prefer sham to reality, and they are all snobs at heart.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know much about men,” admitted Ruth.

“Well, I’m telling you about them now. You might as well know. And the better a man is the more he likes imitation women, and Nels is just as bad as any of them, and that’s why he’s fallen so hard for Alice Winn. First he fell for the highbrow books. He really believes that she reads ’em. Then she told him all about her aristocratic family in Kentucky, who fought and fought to keep her from being an artist, but she must ‘live her own life,’ even if she had to brave the hardships of a great city with not a thing to live on except the income she gets from home. And then, of course, she scorns everything except real art—she would never stoop to a fashion drawing or commercial art of any kind. Her artistic temperament would not allow it. She is working on a mural—yes, indeed—of course it never has and never will go any further than a rough sketch and a lot of conversation in her comfortable studio, but Nels doesn’t know that. He and every other man she talks to believes that she is really working on something big. And then she is such a lover of beauty. She must have flowers in her studio at all times. She simply couldn’t live without flowers. And Nels—Nels who never bought me even a bunch of violets at Easter time—is pawning his clothes to buy her roses. I think that’s what hurts most. I’m just a practical old thing, and I’ve never wanted to do anything at all but work with him and for him, and go to dinner with him ‘Dutch’—and so you see I am of no value—and she, who has never done a useful thing in her whole life, has completely fascinated him. He isn’t worth all this. I ought not to care—I don’t care—I’m just plain angry.”

Tears were overflowing the blue eyes of the “just plain angry” girl and Ruth feared a public exhibition. They had reached the restaurant and she feared the curious eyes inside.

“Let’s not eat here today, Dorothy. You need a change, that’s all, so why not take the afternoon off? We could go to your studio. I’ve never been there, you know. Couldn’t we have lunch there?”

“We could buy it at the ‘delly’ ’round the corner,” said Dorothy, her round face clearing a bit.

“And let’s buy some flowers first; if Nels shows up we can pretend a man sent them.”

“That’s ‘woman stuff’; I don’t think I ought—but—”

“Just for this once,” persisted Ruth, leading the way into the nearest flower shop.

“I don’t like to have you spend money on me. I don’t like to have anything that I can’t pay for myself.”

“That’s selfish, and vain. Perhaps that’s why Nels is with Alice.”

“I suppose so. You know they’re so stupid, men. They believe everything you tell them. I’ve told Nels what a practical worker I am and how independent I am and he believes me, without ever trying to prove it; and she’s told him that she is an impractical, artistic dreamer and he believes that, too, though if he’d only think for just a minute he’d know that she’s a mercenary schemer, not an artistic dreamer.”

“Do you like these pink ones?”

“Oh, and those unusual pale yellow roses—the combination is wonderful, and the scent.”

She buried her nose in the flowers in an ecstasy of delight that made her forget that Ruth was paying for them.

“Now we’ll ride down on the ’bus,” said Ruth. “But you haven’t told me just where Nels is—is Alice Winn pretty?”

Questions of this sort are perfectly intelligible to women and Dorothy answered in her own way as they climbed into the Fifth Avenue ’bus.

“He’s gone with her to the Met—to look over some costumes she wants to use in this mural she’s supposed to be doing; and of course she is pretty—an anÆmic, horrid, little dark-skinned vamp—and she lisps—all the time except when she forgets it or when there aren’t any men around. It’s not nice for me to talk like this. Probably she’s all right, only she isn’t good for Nels. I know that. What I’m afraid of is that she’ll use him. Lots of girls do, you know, use men like that. She’ll ask his advice about things and before he knows it he’ll be painting her old mural for her and she’ll sign it, and he’ll sit back and let her get the credit for doing it. It’s been done before, you know.”

“Nels is too sensible for that. He’ll wake up before it’s gone that far.”

“I don’t think so; she is attractive to men.”

They fell silent for a short space, looking out at the grey December streets on which no snow had yet fallen. Now a thin, cold rain began falling, making the pavements glisten, and giving even well-dressed pedestrians a shabby appearance as they hurried up and down—a thick stream of holiday shoppers.

“My room isn’t much, but at least I live on Washington Square and that is something,” said Dorothy. “I love it all the year round, even now when there aren’t any leaves on the trees or any Italian children playing and when this beastly rain falls. I rather like rain anyway, but I’m awfully glad we’ve got the roses. We’ll get off here and walk around to the ‘delly’ first. It’s on Bleecker Street. I’m not supposed to cook anything in my room, but of course I do. All of us do.”

Their purchases, though guided by the practical Dorothy, were rather like a college girl’s spread. Dorothy lived in an old-fashioned white house on the south side of the square—a house in which every piece of decrepit furniture seemed to have been dragged from its individual attic and assembled here in vast inharmony. Yet mingled with the 1830 atrocities were a few “good” things, left from time to time by artists and writers whom prosperity had called to better quarters. Dorothy lived at the top of the house in one of the two rooms facing the square.

“You see it isn’t really a studio,” she explained apologetically. “But it has got north light and the sloping room and that bit of skylight makes it quite satisfactory, and then, too, I face the Square and can always see the fountain and the Washington arch and the first green that comes on the trees in May, and I like it. And just because we’re celebrating I’ll put a charcoal fire in the grate and we’ll make tea in the samovar, but first we must take care of the flowers.”

For a few minutes she seemed to have forgotten all her troubles.

“I do wish I had a pretty vase. It’s almost criminal to put roses in this old jug. Don’t you think the samovar’s pretty? Nels did get me that. Wait a minute; I’ll show you his studio. It’s the next room to this and just like it. He never locks his door.”

She stepped out, Ruth following, and pushed open the only half closed door of a room, the exact counterpart in size of her own, but rather more comfortable as to furnishings.

“That’s her picture; she must have given it to him last week. I haven’t been in his studio for days and we used to have such corking times together—I worked here more often than in my own room and he always seemed to like having me—”

Fearing a return of tears Ruth hastily retreated to Dorothy’s room. Besides she didn’t feel quite comfortable about entering a man’s room during his absence and examining his pictures.

“Let’s not think about her; it’s just a phase and he’ll recover and come back to you,” she comforted.

“You make the tea and I’ll spread this little table,” she continued, removing a pile of sketches to the floor.

In a short space of time there was a real fire burning in the tiny grate, throwing a ruddy glow on the burnished brass of the samovar; in the small room the roses shed a heavy sweet perfume and the two girls chatted cosily over their tea cups. Dorothy smoked a cigarette.

“Cigarettes are a party to me,” she exclaimed. “If I could afford to smoke I might not care for it at all, but I can’t, so when I want to be extravagant I smoke; it’s just a symbol.”

Now that Dorothy seemed to have put her grief into the background Ruth was beginning to feel restless. On the following day the party was to leave for the Christmas party. They would arrive at their destination on the twenty-third of December and the imminence of the solution of all Ruth’s worries, for either good or evil, made her feel that she should be at the house as much as possible. Could she have done so she would have followed Gloria wherever she went. Most of all she wanted to find out where Professor Pendragon was stopping; and she ought to telephone Terry again to remind him not to forget the revolver. In her own mind she was not exactly sure what she would do with the gun when she got it.

“I think I’ll have to run along,” she said.

“Oh, and we were having such a good time. I was beginning to be quite cheered up. Wait a minute; that’s him.”

Regardless of grammar, Ruth knew that the masculine pronoun could refer to only one person. Down three flights of stairs she could hear a tuneless but valiant whistle.

“I wonder why he’s coming home so soon?” continued Dorothy. “I’ll shut the door tight so he won’t see us. I’m not going to make it easy for him to come back.”

She closed the door as she spoke and the two girls waited, trying to keep up a hum of conversation. Dorothy’s agitation communicated itself to Ruth.

“Will he come here?” she asked.

“I don’t know; he always did before, but now, he may just be coming in to get something and then dash out again to meet her.” She walked to the window and looked out:

“There’s no one down there waiting for him.” She came back to her place at the tiny table.

The whistle had mounted all three flights now, and paused a moment before their door. Dorothy began talking unconcernedly. They heard him enter his own studio. The whistle was resumed and they could hear him moving restlessly about. A match was struck, then another; then silence, then footsteps and a knock at the door.

“Come in,” called Dorothy, and the door opened, disclosing a rather shame-faced Nels, who, however, was determined to appear as if nothing had happened.

“Looks like a party,” he said.

“It is a party,” said Ruth.

“I hope I’m not intruding—I thought Dorothy was alone.”

“We were chattering continuously enough for any one to hear us,” said Dorothy. “Would you like a cup of tea?”

“Thanks—I suppose that means, too, that I can come in and sit down and share your gossip, and everything,” said Nels, seating himself forthwith on the couch-bed—not a chaise longue—but an ugly bed disguised as a couch—without which no cheap studio or hall bedroom is complete.

Much is written about the “feminine touch” which makes home of the most ordinary surroundings. Ruth thought of it as she looked at Dorothy’s room. Perhaps, she decided, artistic women are an exception to this rule. Dorothy had knowledge of beautiful things, more knowledge than the average woman, but no one would have guessed it from the untidy shabbiness of her studio. Only the bright samovar and the roses, thrown into relief by the firelight, which with the same magic threw dusty corners into shadow and seemed to gild the ugly, broken-down furniture into beauty, threw a glamour over the place now and made it seem quite different from the cheerless room they had entered over an hour before. The rain was bringing a premature twilight which made the firelight doubly welcome. Nels felt the change and looked about him as if in unfamiliar surroundings.

“This is certainly cheery,” he said, taking the cup Dorothy offered him. “And roses!” He looked inquiringly at Ruth.

“No, I’m not the lucky girl; some admirer of Dorothy’s.”

There was an embarrassed pause. Ruth blushed because she had told what in childhood she had called a “white lie”; Dorothy because she accepted the deception that she would not herself have instigated, and Nels for many reasons.

“Whoever he is he’s not a poor artist,” he said. “I know the price of roses in December,” whereupon he blushed more redly in remembrance.

“I thought you were going to spend the entire day at the Metropolitan,” said Dorothy, beginning to enjoy the situation.

“So did I,” said Nels, and then with a sudden burst of resolution, “I don’t mind telling you all about it—I’ve been an awful fool, and if you’ve decided to play with some one else, I don’t blame you. We walked to the Met this morning; Alice lives way uptown and I thought it would be a pleasant hike, but when we got there she was quite worn out, and then some fellow she knows came along with a car and offered to take her home and she went; said the walk had made her too tired to work. Of course he offered to ‘pick me up,’ too, but I preferred to walk and I did—all the way from the Metropolitan to Washington Square—now you know the entire story and can laugh to your heart’s content.”

But neither of the girls laughed. Nels had evidently learned his lesson, and they were in no mood to increase his discomfiture.

“I wanted to see you to ask if you know where Professor Pendragon went when he left town. He said some place in the country, but I’ve forgotten where,” said Ruth.

“Yes; I got a note from him only this morning. He’s visiting a friend of his in the Berkshires. North Adams is the post-office and I’ve forgotten the name of the house. One of those big country places with a fancy name—wait and I’ll get the note from my room.”

“He believed that about the roses and now that he’s sane again, my conscience hurts,” whispered Dorothy when he had left them.

“Let it hurt a bit; I wouldn’t tell him,” whispered Ruth.

“Here it is,” said Nels, returning. “Professor Percival Pendragon, care of Mr. John Peyton-Russell, Fir Tree Farm, North Adams, Massachusetts—some address, but anyway it will reach him.”

“Peyton-Russell—he’s at the Peyton-Russell’s?”

“You know them?”

“Yes, that is, I know Mrs. Peyton-Russell a bit; she’s a friend of my aunt’s, and we’re going there for Christmas—going tomorrow.”

“Really; that’s splendid, for you can save me writing a note. I hate writing letters. You see Pendragon has been trying to interest this Peyton-Russell in my work. He’s one of these men who’s spent two-thirds of a lifetime making money, and now he doesn’t know exactly what to do with it. He’s only been married about two years. I know Pendragon hadn’t met his wife, but Mr. Peyton-Russell depends on Pendragon to tell him when things are good, and when Professor Pendragon bought one of my pictures Mr. Peyton-Russell thought he ought to buy one, too. If you’d just tell Professor Pendragon that I don’t care what he pays for the picture he has—I let him borrow one to see whether he grew tired of it after it was hung—you’ll save me a lot of trouble.”

“Of course; did you say Professor Pendragon hasn’t met Mrs. Peyton-Russell?”

“He hadn’t; but I suppose he has now that he’s a guest in her house. John Peyton-Russell used to try to get him out to dinner in town, but Pen wouldn’t go; he hates society. But he was ill, you know, and Peyton-Russell was so anxious to do something for him, and promised that it would be quiet—no one out there, and the doctor seemed to think it might be good—he took the nurse along, of course, so Pen went.”

“Did he say how he was getting on, in his last letter?”

“Yes; just the same, no better and no worse, but didn’t say anything about coming back at once. You’re more interested than Dot.”

“No; only it seems strange, a coincidence, his being at the same house we’re going to.”

“While you’re delivering messages for Nels, deliver one for me too, Ruth,” said Dorothy. “Tell him I’m waiting very patiently to make that portrait and that when it’s finished if he wants to sell it to his rich collectors he can. What is he, Nels, a sort of dealer?”

“My word, no—he’s a—just a man who happens to have a little money and a lot of appreciation. He’s just helping me to success, and helping Peyton-Russell to a reputation as a collector—he is quite disinterested. He could be anything, that man. I don’t know why he isn’t. Something went wrong some place along his route, I guess, and he just got side-tracked, you understand.” He finished with a wave of his hand.

“Now I really must go—one must do a few things even before a short journey.”

Ruth was more anxious than ever to get away now, and neither Nels nor Dorothy made any great effort to keep her. Nels was looking at the roses with sad eyes and Dorothy was looking at him with eyes that made Ruth fear that the secret of the flowers would not be kept long. Dorothy was too generous and honest to want to keep up even so tiny a deception.

The one stupendous fact that stood out in her brain as she walked homeward was that Gloria and Professor Pendragon would meet. What would they do? Would Pendragon leave or would Gloria come back to town? What would they say to each other? How amazing that Mr. Peyton-Russell should be a friend of Pendragon’s and that Angela should be a friend of Gloria’s and that they had never before all met. Still it was understandable. Angela had only been married a year. George would be there, too, and Prince Aglipogue.

She thought of Pendragon’s tall, clean-cut figure and fine face, and of Aglipogue’s heavy countenance and elephantine form—the contrast. Surely Gloria would see and withdraw before too late. It would be, too, the time of test—the dark of the moon.