“Of course you think all this is terrible, but after a few years you’ll understand, not me, but something of life itself and of how helpless we all are. I know that you have a very clearly defined plan of life—certain things that you will do—certain things that ‘could never happen to me.’ I know because we’re all like that. And then one day, utterly without your own volition, knowing that you’re doing the wrong thing, you’ll do and say things that simply aren’t written in your lines. Do you suppose that at your age I planned to love a human observatory that observed everything except me, or that I expected to divorce him and marry a tired business man who expected to use me as a perpetual advertisement for toilet preparations, or that I expected when I divorced him that I’d do it all over again with a man more lifeless than his family portraits? You don’t know what you’re going to do when you start out. I know just that much now—that I don’t know. I may commit matrimony again tomorrow.”
“But didn’t you love any of these men?” gasped Ruth.
“Of course—I loved Percy, and Percy loved the stars—perhaps that’s why he married me. I was a star of a kind at the time.”
“Then why—”
“Oh, I don’t know; I think the final break came because of Eros— Isn’t that the bell? Do run and tell Terry that I’ll be with him in a minute. I wonder why he will persist in always being on time?”
It was Terry. He was trying to engage the dignified George in conversation.
“Hello—you look as if you’d been reading fairy tales,” he exclaimed.
“No, just talking to Gloria,” said Ruth. “She’ll be down in a few minutes.”
“It must have been an exciting conversation from the size of your young eyes.”
“We were talking,” said Ruth, “we were talking about—about Eros.”