Page:MacGrath--The luck of the Irish.djvu/287



NE afternoon, toward dusk the fifth day of her captivity—Retrospection seized her and whirled her away in his purple chariot.

Retrospection, who is one of the unmentioned gods of tragedy, is never very particular about his backgrounds; Persian, Axminster or rag carpet, palace or hovel, little he cares; to him the play's the thing. Upon this occasion he set the disembodied spirit of Ruth in a furnished room, neat and comfortable, one flight up, in a genteel boarding-house in Washington Square. The scene would not have impressed the adventurous, consisting as it did of a lone young woman (who Ruth recognized as herself) feverishly packing a suit-case. When she had locked and strapped it she sat down upon a trunk near by, panting and disheveled. Her figure was slender yet shapely, the contours ripe; there was nothing out of the ordinary about it; indeed, the mold was common to nine-tenths of American women. It was by her face, perhaps, that one might distinguish her from the ruck of millions, the commonplace. It was not beautiful, but it was singularly attractive.

She drew her sleeve across her damp forehead, flushed by her exertions, for it was the evening of a