“What is it—are you ill?” In her fright Ruth has risen from her place at the table and moved to Gloria’s side.
Gloria waved her away with a movement of her arm, and seeming to recover a part of her composure began to smile.
“It’s nothing at all, Ruth,” she said. “I was just startled for a moment—you see Professor Percival Pendragon is—was, my husband.”
Ruth sank back into her chair.
“Then I suppose—perhaps you’d prefer—I can send the card back to him and tell that I am unable to use it.”
“Not at all,” said Gloria, twisting her round, red mouth in the whimsical way she had. “If you haven’t met him he doesn’t know that you are a relative of mine and you needn’t tell. Besides he’s an awfully good sort really. I always did like Percy. I didn’t know he was in America. The last I knew he was in Oxford, associated with the observatory there. He’ll probably talk to you about the great star map.”
“The great star map?” questioned Terry.
“Oh, I don’t know what the thing really is,” said Gloria. “Something that the astronomers are working on now. It takes about twenty years to make one, but it’s no particular use to them after it’s finished. They just make it with great work—but that’s merely a rehearsal. Their children make another one, which I suppose is the dress rehearsal; and their grandchildren make a third, which is I suppose the première. Then they compare their map with the one made by their parents and grandparents and by some process discover that the planets have moved. They have a wild hope that they may discover where the planets have moved and why, but if that doesn’t materialize the great-grandchildren’s children make a new star map, devoting their entire lives to it, and some time, two thousand years from now, perhaps, some grey-whiskered old man some place will know something exact about the stars, or will not know something exact about the stars, as the case may be.”
Every one except Ruth laughed at this description. She felt that these people with all their years must be in some ways younger than herself.
“They are working for posterity,” she said reprovingly. “All great art and science is like that.”