“No,” she said, “the necessity does not exist.  Your reckless pursuit of wealth, your return here, the use you are making of my husband and me, are all means towards some end.  Why not tell me?”

“Your imagination,” he declared, “is running away with you.”

“Are you our enemy?” she asked.  “Is this seeming friendship of yours a cloak to hide some scheme of yours to make us suffer?  Or—­” She drew a little closer to him, and her eyes drooped.

“Or what?” he repeated.

“Is there a little left,” she whispered, “of the old folly?”

“Why not?” he answered quietly.  “I was very much in love with you.”

“It is dead,” she murmured.  “I believe that you hate me now!”

Her voice was almost a caress.  She was leaning a little towards him; her eyes were seeking to draw his.

“Hate you!  How impossible!” he said calmly.  “You are still a beautiful woman, you know, Ruth.”

He turned and studied her critically.  Lady Ruth raised her eyes once, but dropped them at once.  She felt herself growing paler.  A spasm of the old fear was upon her.

“Yes,” he continued, “age has not touched you.  You can still pour, if you will, the magic drug into the wine of fools.  By the bye, I must not be selfish.  Aren’t you rather neglecting your guests?”

“Never mind my guests,” she answered.  “I have been wanting to talk to you alone for days.  Why have you done this?  Why are you here?  What is it that you are seeking for in life?”

“A little amusement only,” he declared.  “I cannot find it except amongst my own kind.”

“You have not the appearance of a pleasure seeker,” she answered.

“Mine is a passive search,” he said.  “I have some years to live—­and of solitude, well, I have tasted at once the joys and the depths.”

“You are not in love with me any longer, are you?” she asked.

“I am not bold enough to deny it,” he answered, “but do not be afraid that I shall embarrass you with a declaration.  To tell you the truth, I have not much feeling left of any sort.”

“You mean to keep your own counsel, then?” she asked.

“It is so little to keep,” he murmured, “and I have parted with so much!”

She measured the emotion of his tone, the curious yet perfectly natural indifference of his manner, and she shivered a little.  Always she feared what she could not understand.

“I had hoped,” she said sadly, “that we might at least have been friends.”

He shook his head.

“I have no fancy,” he declared, “for the cemeteries of affection.  You must remember that I am beginning life anew.  I do not know myself yet, or you!  Let us drift into the knowledge of one another, and perhaps—­”

“Well!  Perhaps?”

“There may be no question of friendship!”

Lady Ruth went back to her guests, and with the effortless ease of long training, she became once more the gracious and tactful hostess.  But in her heart, the fear had grown a little stronger, and a specter walked by her side.  Once during the evening, her husband looked at her questioningly, and she breathed a few words to him.  He laughed reassuringly.