Gloria looked at her with startled eyes.

“What nonsense! You’re too romantic, Ruth!”

“But, Gloria, you do love him; you can’t deny it. Didn’t you tell me once that he is the only one you’ve ever really loved?”

“It takes two to make a marriage, Ruth.”

“But he loves you too.”

“What makes you think that?”

“He told me so.”

“Even so, and even if I would marry again, you must realize that men very rarely marry the women they love. That’s why we separated, I think. We married for love and that is always disastrous. I should never have married at all. Tomorrow we’ll go back to town and Percy and I will each go our separate ways and forget the horrible nightmare of this place. It was just chance that we met—a weird freak of coincidence. He didn’t want it; neither did I.”

There was nothing that Ruth could answer and presently Gloria went on:

“No woman was meant to have both a career and a husband; lots of them try it—most women in fact, but usually they come to grief. It isn’t written in the stars that one woman should have both loves, art and a husband.”