CHAPTER VII.
I Helene, as Ruyler had anticipated, refused positively to accept Mrs.
Thornton's invitation.
"Do you think I'd leave you--to come home to a dreary house every night?
Even if I don't see much of you, at least you know I'm there; and that if you have an evening off you have only to say the word and I'll break any engagement--you have always known that!" Ruyler had not, but she looked so eager and sweet--she was lunching with him at the Palace Hotel on the day following his interview with Spaulding--that he hastened to assure her affectionately that the certainty of his wife's desire for his constant companionship was both his torment and his consolation.
Helene continued radiantly: "Besides, darling, Polly Roberts is staying on.

Rex can't get away yet." "Polly Roberts is not nearly good enough for you.

She hasn't an idea in her head and lives on excitement--" Helene laughed merrily.

"You are quite right, but there's no harm in her.
After all, unless one goes in for charities (and I can't, Price, yet; besides the charities here are wonderfully looked after), plays bridge, has babies, takes on suffrage--what is there to do but play?
I suppose once life was serious for young women of our class; but we just get into the habit of doing nothing because there's nothing to do.

Take to-morrow as an example: I suppose Polly and I will wander down to The Louvre in the morning and buy something or look at the new gowns M.Dupont has just brought from Paris.
"Then we'll lunch where there's lots of life and everybody is chatting gayly about nothing.
"Then we'll go to the Moving Pictures unless there is a matinee, and then we'll motor out to the Boulevard, and then back and have tea somewhere.
"Or, perhaps, we'll motor down to the Club at Burlingame for lunch and chatter away the day on the veranda, or dance.