We are
better off without her."
"All the same," said Ruth loyally, "she's rather a dear. And we ought
to remember that, if it hadn't been for her, you and I would never have
met."
"I do remember it. And I'm grateful. But I can't help feeling that a
woman capable of taking other people's lives and juggling with them as
if they were india-rubber balls as she did with ours, is likely at any
moment to break out in a new place. My gratitude to her is the sort of
gratitude you would feel toward a cyclone if you were walking home late
for dinner and it caught you up and deposited you on your doorstep.
Your Aunt Lora is a human cyclone. No, on the whole, she's more like an
earthquake. She has a habit of splitting up and altering the face of
the world whenever she feels like it, and I'm too well satisfied with
my world at present to relish the idea of having it changed."
Little by little the garrison of the studio had been whittled down.
Except for Steve, the community had no regular members outside the
family itself. Hank was generally out of town. Bailey paid one more
visit, then seemed to consider that he could now absent himself
altogether. And the members of Kirk's bachelor circle stayed away to a
man.
Their isolation was rendered more complete by the fact that Ruth, when
she had ornamented New York society, had made few real friends.
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