“I think I’ll go up and work a while before dinner,” she said. It was better to leave them alone, and she must work! she must work! she must work!
Pursuant to her conversation with Dorothy Winslow in which she had announced her intention of painting landscapes with figures, Ruth had begun a new canvas—a corner of the park with two children playing under the trees. She had been trying to get an effect of sunlight falling through green leaves. It was badly done. She could see that now. Besides, she didn’t want to paint children. She painted them out with great sweeps of her brush. They were stiff, horrid, complacent little creatures. Instead she would have only one figure, a shabby, old woman crouching on a park bench, and she would take out the sunlight too. A thin mist of rain would be falling and the sky would be murky with a faint, coppery glow where the sun sought to penetrate through the clouds, but the chief interest of the picture would centre about the figure of the old woman, holding her tattered cloak about her under the uncertain shelter of the trees.
If only she had the colour sense of Nels Zord—she would get it in time. It was only a question of more work and more work. Would Terry Riordan really play opposite Gloria in the new comedy? The play was the task that Gloria had set him and when it was produced Terry could claim his reward. She would go to the wedding and no one would ever guess that her heart was broken. Afterward she would live in retirement and paint; or perhaps she would travel and one day be thirty-five years old and beautiful with a strange, sad beauty and men would love her, but she would refuse them all ever so gently.
She worked steadily for almost an hour and then she began to wonder whether Amy would have a very good dinner and how many would be there. Perhaps Terry Riordan would stay. And she decided to put on a new dinner frock that she had bought and wondered if she could dress her hair as Gloria did, and tried it, but found it unsuccessful and reverted to her own simple coiffure.
When she went down she found that Terry had indeed stayed for dinner and Gloria had changed to a gorgeous gown and Billie Irwin, who had come in late from the hair-dresser’s, had acquired a splendid aureole of golden hair in place of the streaked blond of yesterday, and Philip Noel was trying out some new music and they had all promised to stay to dinner and afterward there was a play that they simply must see, at least the second act. There was really nothing worth listening to after the second act, and all conversation about going away or about the new comedy seemed to be forgotten.
“You’ll have a surprise on Sunday morning,” Terry told her.
“What kind of a surprise?” asked Ruth.
“Can’t tell now; it’s a secret. Gloria knows, though.”
“It’s a very nice surprise,” said Gloria.
Ruth glanced quickly from one to the other. Perhaps they were going to be married and would announce the fact on Sunday.