She was on her feet in an instant, but discovering that one foot was asleep, did not make such swift progress as she had expected. There were two other women in the dressing-room. Yesterday they would have looked at her as silently and impersonally as at the mirror or the wash basin or the black “prop” comb that is always found in Pullman dressing-rooms and that no one has ever been known to use, but now they were talking to her and to each other. The stout lady who was going home from a day’s Christmas shopping in New York was most voluble. She was worried about her husband and children, especially her husband.
“What I’ll ever say to Henry, I don’t know. He told me that I could do just as well in Pittsfield as in New York. They have everything there, and such accommodating sales people—not like New York, where every one is too busy to be polite—and I didn’t get a thing I went after—and then this horrible experience. It’s added ten years to my life—I know it has.”
“After all, it was only a delay,” comforted Ruth. “Suppose the train had been wrecked. I think it was rather fun.”
“Fun! Fun!” the tall thin woman fairly shrieked at her, and the eyebrow pencil she was using slipped and made a long mark down her nose that she had to rub off subsequently with cold cream, producing a fine, high polish, which in turn had to be removed with powder, so thickly applied that Ruth thought she looked as if her nose was made of plaster of Paris and had been fastened on after the rest of her face was finished. It was difficult to do anything in the tiny crowded space, but she finally completed a hasty toilet and hurried out to rejoin Terry, who, in her absence, had secured two cups of coffee and some toast and brought them to their seats in the Pullman.
“Where’s the Prince?” she asked suddenly, remembering his unwelcome existence.
“In the dining-car; he got there early and managed to secure what little food there was aboard.”
“Gloria’s train is right behind us,” he continued, “so we’ll wait for her at the station and all go up together.”
The increasing warmth in the train was beginning to clear the frosted windows, and Ruth could see that the snow had stopped falling. A wonderful pink glow was resting on top of the softly rounded mountains, and where the clouds were herded between two high crests it looked like a rose-coloured lake with fir trees on its banks. She forgot her uncomfortable night and felt new-born like the sun. Everything was simple and easy. Everything would be solved; Gloria would not marry Prince Aglipogue. She certainly would not, for he came in now, unshaved, with bloodshot eyes and rumpled linen. He did not speak at all, but slumped in his chair, his chins resting on his bulging shirt bosom.
“Have you seen George?” she asked Terry.
“Yes; he’s all right. I only hope the daughter of Shiva froze to death, but I fear not.”