bars to her spirit were down, that she would go out in tenderness
to anything that was of life--to sorrow, to joy, with the insight to
understand and the warmth to care. He looked at her: worn down by
living, yet glorified by it; hurt, yet valiant. The life in her had gone
through so much and circumstances had not been able to beat it down. And
this was the woman Amy said it was insulting of him to ask her to meet!

She looked up at him with her bright, warm smile. "Oh, Deane, it's been
so good! You don't know how you've helped me. Why you wouldn't believe,"
she laughed, "how much better I feel."

They had risen and he had taken her hand for goodnight. "You always
helped me, Deane," she said in her simple way. "You never failed me. You
don't know"--this with one of those flashes of feeling that lighted Ruth
and made her wonderful--"how many times, when things were going badly,
I've thought of you--and wanted to see you."

They stood there a moment silent; the things they had lived through
together, in which they had shared understanding, making a spiritual
current between them. She broke from it with a light, fond: "Dear Deane,
I'm so glad you're happy. I want you to be happy always."

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Those words kept coming back to him after he had gone to bed: "I'm so
glad you're happy--I want you to be happy always." Amy was asleep when
he came home, or he took it for granted that she was asleep and was
careful not to disturb her, for it was past midnight. He wished she
would turn to him with a sleepy little smile. He wanted to be made to
feel that it was true he was happy, that he was going to be happy
always. That night was not filled with the sweetness of love's faith in
permanence. He tried to put away the thought of how Amy had looked as
she said those things about Ruth. Knowing the real Ruth, his feeling
about her freshened, deepened, he could not bear to think of Amy as
having said those things. He held it off in telling himself again that
that was what the people of the town had done, that he himself had not
managed well. He would try again--a little differently. Amy was really
so sweet, so loving, he told himself, that she would come to be
different about this. Though he did not dwell on that, either--upon her
coming to be different; her face in saying those things was a little too
hard to forget. He kept up a pretence with himself on the surface, but
down in his heart he asked less now; he was