When Ruth remembered to call back, "Where's Ri-Ri?" to her mother, Mrs. Blair only glanced over her shoulder and answered, "She's coming," with no thought of anxiety.
It did occur to her, however, somewhat later, that the girl was loitering a little too significantly with young Byrd, and she made a point of suggesting to Ruth, when she passed her in a short time, that she wait for her cousin who was probably finding the climb too strenuous.
"Who? Me?" said Ruth amazedly. "Gee, what do you want me to do--fan her? Let Johnny do it," and cheerfully she went on photographing a group upon a fallen log, and Mrs. Blair went on with the lawyer from Washington who was a rapid walker.
And Ruth, with the casual thought that neither Ri-Ri nor Johnny Byrd would relish such attendance, promptly let the thought of them dissolve from her memory.
She was immersed in her own particular world that afternoon.
Life was at a crisis for her. Robert Martin had been drifting faster and faster with the current of his admiration for her, and now seemed to have been brought up on very definite solid ground. He felt he knew where he was. And he wanted to know where Ruth was.
And Ruth found herself in that special quandary reserved for independent American girls who want to have their cake and eat it, too.
She wanted Bob Martin, and she wanted to be gratifyingly sure that Bob Martin wanted her--and then she wanted affairs to stand still at that pleasant pass, while she played about and invited adventure.
Life was so desirable as it was . . . especially with Bob Martin in the scene. But if he were unsatisfied he wouldn't remain there as part of the adjacent landscape.
It was very delicate. She couldn't explain all her hesitation satisfactorily to herself, so she had made rather a poor job of it when she tried to explain to Bob.
Part of it was young unreadiness for the decisions and responsibilities of life, part of it was reprehensible aversion about shutting the door to other adventures, and part of it was her native energy, as yet unemployed, aware of a larger world and anxious to play some undivined part in its destinies.
She had always been furious that the war had come too soon for her. She would have loved to have gone over there, and known the mud and doughnuts and doughboys . . . and the excitement and the officers. . . .