ward the narrow street that
trailed off into the country. Stuart would be waiting for her there. Her
joy in that, her eagerness, rushed past the dangers all around her, the
thing that possessed her avoiding thought of the disastrous
possibilities around her as a man in a boat on a narrow rushing river
would keep clear of rocks jutting out on either side. Sometimes the
feeling that swept her on did graze the risks so close about her and she
shivered a little. Suppose Harriett were at the Bennetts' when Deane got
there! Suppose Deane said something when they got home; suppose Ted said
something that wouldn't fit in with what Deane said; suppose Deane got
to Harriett's too soon--though she had told him not to be there till
after half past nine. Hadn't Deane looked queer at the last? Wouldn't he
suspect? Wouldn't everybody suspect, with her acting like this? And once
there was the slightest suspecting....

But she was hurrying on; none of those worries, fears, had power to lay
any real hold on the thing that possessed her; faster and faster she
hurried; she had turned into the little street, had passed the last
house, turned the bend in the road, and yes! there was Stuart, waiting
for her, coming to her. Everything else fell away. Nothing else in the
world mattered.

CHAPTER TEN

Ten o'clock found Ruth sitting on the porch at home with her mother and
father, her brother Cyrus and Deane. Her father was talking with Deane
about the operation that had been performed on the book-keeper in Mr.
Holland's bank; Cyrus talked of somebody's new touring car, the number
of new machines there were in town that year; her mother wondered where
some of the people who had them got the money for them. The talk moved
placidly from one thing to another, Mr. Holland saying at intervals that
he must be going to bed, his wife slapping at the mosquitoes and talking
about going inside--both delaying, comfortably stupid.

Ruth was sitting on the top step leaning back against the porch pillar.
She said little, she was very tired now. Something in this dragging talk
soothed her. It seemed safe just because it was so commonplace; it was
relaxing. She was glad to be back to it--to the world of it; in
returning safely to it she felt a curiously tender feeling for it, a
perhaps absurd sense of having come through something for it. She could
rest in it while within herself she continued to live back in that hour
with Stuart, that hour which str