seemed terrifyingly new.... She was not
the first who had complacently gone to church after reading Bernard
Shaw.... But she did try to follow Carl's loose reasoning; to find out
what she thought and what the spiritual fashions of her neighborhood
made her think she thought.

The process gave her many anxious hours of alternating impatience with
fixed religious dogmas, and loneliness for the comfortable refuge of a
personal God, whose yearning had spoken to her in the Gregorian chant.
She could never get herself to read more than two chapters of any book
on the subject, nor did she get much light from conversation. One set
of people supposed that Christianity had so entirely disappeared from
intelligent circles that it was not worth discussion; another set
supposed that no one but cranks ever thought of doubting the
essentials of Christianity, and that, therefore, it was not worth
discussion; and to a few superb women whom she knew, their religion
was too sweet a reality to be subjected to the noisy chatter of
discussion. Gradually Ruth forgot to think often of the matter, but it
was always back in her mind.

* * * * *

They were happy, Carl and Ruth. To their flat came such of Ruth's friends
as she kept because she liked them for themselves, with a fantastic
assortment of personages and awkward rovers whom the ex-aviator knew. The
Ericsons made an institution of "bruncheon"--breakfast-luncheon--at which
coffee and eggs and deviled kidneys, a table of auction bridge and a
davenport of talk and a wing-chair of Sunday papers, were to be had on
Sunday morning from ten to one. At bruncheon Walter MacMonnies told to
Florence Crewden his experiences in exploring Southern Greenland by
aeroplane with the Schliess-Banning expedition. At bruncheon Bobby Winslow,
now an interne, talked baseball with Carl. At bruncheon Phil Dunleavy
regarded cynically all the people he did not know and played piquet in a
corner with Ruth's father.

Carl and Ruth joined the Peace Waters Country Club, and in the spring
of 1914 went there nearly every Saturday afternoon for tennis and a
dance. Carl refused golf, however; he always repeated a shabby joke
about the shame of taking advantage of such a tiny ball.

He seemed content to stick to office, home, and tennis-court. It was
Ruth who planned their week-end trips, proposed at 8 A.M. Saturday,
and begun at two that afternoon. They explored the tangled rocks and
wo