tired."

He turned and caught her in his arms and held her there close in a
passion of relief at the gentleness and love of her voice that swept
away those things about her he had tried to think were not in his mind.
Amy was so sweet!--so beautiful, so tender. Why of course she wouldn't
understand about Ruth! How absurd to expect her to understand, he
thought, when he had blurted things out like that, giving her no
satisfaction about it. He was touchy on the subject, he gladly told
himself, as he held her close in all the thankfulness of regaining her.
And when, after he had kissed her good-by she lifted her face and kissed
him again his rush of love for her had power to sweep all else away.

CHAPTER THREE

It was in that mood of passionate tenderness for Amy, a glow of
gratitude for love, that he sent his car swiftly toward the hospital.
His feeling diffused warmth for the town through which he drove, the
little city that had so many times tightened him up in bitterness.
People were kind, after all; how kind they were being to Amy, he
thought, eager to receive her and make her feel at home, anxious that
she be happy among them. The picture of Edith as she stood at the head
of the steps making plans for Amy warmed his heart to her. Perhaps he
had been unfair to Edith; in that one thing, certainly, she had failed
as a friend, but perhaps it was impossible for women to go that far in
friendship, impossible for them to be themselves on the outer side of
the door of their approval. Even Amy.... That showed, of course, how
hard it was for women whose experiences had all fallen within the circle
of things as they should be to understand a thing that was--disrupting.
It was as if their kindly impulses, sympathy, tenderness, were
circumscribed by that circle. Little as he liked that, his own mood of
the moment, his unrecognized efforts at holding it, kept him within that
sphere where good feeling lived. In it were happy anticipations of the
life he and Amy would have in Freeport. He had long been out of humor
with his town, scornful. He told himself now that that was a wrong
attitude. There was a new feeling for the homes he was passing, for the
people in those homes. He had a home there, too; it seemed to make him
one with all those people. There was warmth in that feeling of being one
with others.

He told himself that it was absurd to expect Amy to adjust herself all
in a minute to a thing he had known about for