I

Hélène, as Ruyler had anticipated, refused positively to accept Mrs.
Thornton's invitation.

"Do you think I'd leave you—to come home to a dreary house every night? Even if I don't see much of you, at least you know I'm there; and that if you have an evening off you have only to say the word and I'll break any engagement—you have always known that!"

Ruyler had not, but she looked so eager and sweet—she was lunching with him at the Palace Hotel on the day following his interview with Spaulding—that he hastened to assure her affectionately that the certainty of his wife's desire for his constant companionship was both his torment and his consolation.

Hélène continued radiantly:

"Besides, darling, Polly Roberts is staying on. Rex can't get away yet."

"Polly Roberts is not nearly good enough for you. She hasn't an idea in her head and lives on excitement—"

Hélène laughed merrily. "You are quite right, but there's no harm in her. After all, unless one goes in for charities (and I can't, Price, yet; besides the charities here are wonderfully looked after), plays bridge, has babies, takes on suffrage—what is there to do but play? I suppose once life was serious for young women of our class; but we just get into the habit of doing nothing because there's nothing to do. Take to-morrow as an example: I suppose Polly and I will wander down to The Louvre in the morning and buy something or look at the new gowns M. Dupont has just brought from Paris.

"Then we'll lunch where there's lots of life and everybody is chatting gayly about nothing.

"Then we'll go to the Moving Pictures unless there is a matinée, and then we'll motor out to the Boulevard, and then back and have tea somewhere.

"Or, perhaps, we'll motor down to the Club at Burlingame for lunch and chatter away the day on the veranda, or dance. This afternoon we'll probably ring up a few that are still in town, and dance in Polly's parlor at the Fairmont."

Hélène's lip curled, her voice had risen. With, all her young enjoyment of wealth and position, she had been bred in a class where to idle is a crime. "Just putting in time—time that ought to be as precious as youth and high spirits and ease and popularity! But what is one to do? I have no talents, and I'd lose caste in my set if I had. I don't wonder the Socialists hate us and want to put us all to work. No doubt we should be much happier. But now—even if you retired from business, you'd spend most of your time on the links. We poor women wouldn't be much better off."

"It does seem an abnormal state of affairs; I've barely given it a thought, it has always been such a pleasure to find you, after a hard day's work, looking invariably dainty, and pretty, and eloquently suggestive of leisure and repose. But—to the student of history—I suppose it is a condition that cannot last. There must be some sort of upheaval due. Well, I hope it will give me more of your society."

They smiled at each other across the little table in perfect confidence. They were lunching in the court, and after she had blown him a kiss over her glass of red wine, her eyes happened to travel in the direction of the large dining-room. She gave a little exclamation of distaste.

"There is maman lunching with that hateful old Mr. Lawton. He was in her sitting-room when I ran in to call on her yesterday, and nearly snapped my head off when I asked him if he wouldn't buy my electric for Aileen. He said it was time she began to learn a few economies instead of more extravagances. Poor darling Aileen. She has to stay in town, too, for he won't open the house in Atherton until he is ready to go down himself every night."

"Is he an old friend of your mother's?"

"She and Papa met him when they were here, and Mrs. Lawton was very kind when I was born. It's too bad Mrs. Lawton's dead. She'd be a nice friend for maman."

"Perhaps your mother is asking Mr. Lawton's advice about the investment of money."

He had been observing his wife closely, but it was more and more apparent that if Mr. Lawton held the key to her mother's past she had not been informed of the fact. She answered indifferently:

"Possibly. One can get much higher interest out here than in France, and maman would never invest money without the best advice. She loves me, but money next. Oh, là! là!"

"Has she said anything more about going back to Rouen?"

"I didn't have a word with her alone yesterday, but I'll ask her to-day. Poor maman! I fancy the novelty has worn off here, and she would really be happier with her own people and customs. She hates traveling, like all the French; but don't you think that, after a bit we shall be able to go over to Europe at least once a year?"

"I am sure of it. And while I am attending to business in London you could visit your mother in Rouen. Tell her that one way or another I'll manage it."

And this seemed to him an ideal arrangement!