It was like Ruth to answer this with a quotation.
“I don’t think so,” she said. “‘There is a destiny that shapes our ends, rough-hew them as we may.’”
“Perhaps, but some people do a lot more rough-hewing than others, and I’m going to hew my way to a position as the greatest American portrait painter, and it won’t be so rough either.”
Before such blind self-confidence Ruth was dumb. She also intended to be a great something or other in the world of art, but she had never thought definitely enough about it to decide just what it would be. She did think now, or spoke without thinking.
“Then I’ll be the greatest landscape painter—landscapes with figures.”
Before they parted at Twentieth Street, Ruth had promised to go to an exhibition with Dorothy on the following Saturday.
Gloria had given her a latch key and she went into the house on Gramercy Square without ringing the bell. She expected to hear her aunt’s voice, but instead a man’s voice called out:
“That you, Gloria?”
She answered by walking into the drawing-room, disappointed at not finding Gloria there.
“Where is Gloria?”