"Do you love Breck Sewall?" asked Will point-blank.
"Oh, love!" Ruth shrugged her shoulders. "Love would be the last thing I would marry a man for. I'm not as short-sighted as that. Love may last a year, or two perhaps, but it is not enduring. I marry for sounder reasons than love. You must know that the Sewalls are immensely wealthy. Their position is as established as royalty in England. Oh, you see," laughed Ruth, standing up and walking over toward the bookcase, "how dreadfully worldly and wicked I am! Have you La Rochefoucauld? Let me read you a little saying of his."
"No, not dreadfully worldly—not dreadfully wicked, Ruth," said Will; "only dreadfully young, I think."
Ruth hates to be accused of youth.
"But old enough to marry whom I please, William, perhaps," she flashed.
"Oh," scoffed Will, "that doesn't require much age, nor much wisdom. You are young enough to think it rather clever and smart to scorn virtue, make fun of love, and pretend to marry a man for his wealth and position. It sounds so bookish and so sophisticated!"
Ruth would not have deigned to respond to such an insulting assault as that if I had made it, but to Will she replied, "You're mistaken there. I've thought and read on this subject. I'm not so young as you think." She walked over to the mantel and leaned her back against the white marble, then folding her arms across her chest, like a judging goddess, she continued: "I believe, and several people of repu-
