than the
cold words. It had hurt more; it seemed actually to be putting in force
the decree that everything between her and Edith was at an end. It was
never to be Ruth and Edith again.

As she walked slowly on now, away from Edith's, she remembered the day
she walked across that Arizona plain, looking at Edith's letter a
hundred times in the two miles between the little town and their cabin.
She had gone into town that day to see the doctor. Stuart had seemed
weaker and she was terribly frightened. The doctor did not bring her
much comfort; he said she would have to be patient, and hope--probably
it would all come right. She felt very desolate that day in the
far-away, forlorn little town. When she got Edith's letter she did not
dare to open it until she got out from the town. And then she found
those few formal, final words--written, it was evident, to keep her from
writing any more. The only human thing about it was a little blot under
the signature. It was the only thing a bit like Edith; she could see her
making it and frowning over it. And she wondered--she had always
wondered--if that little blot came there because Edith was not as
controlled, as without all feeling, as everything else about her letter
would indicate. As she looked back to it now it seemed that that day of
getting Edith's letter was the worst day of all the hard years. She had
been so lonely--so frightened; when she saw Edith's handwriting it was
hard not to burst into tears right there at the little window in the
queer general store where they gave out letters as well as everything
else. But after she had read the letter there were no tears; there was
no feeling of tears. She walked along through that flat, almost
unpeopled, half desert country and it seemed that the whole world had
shrivelled up. Everything had dried, just as the bushes along the road
were alive and yet dried up. She knew then that it was certain there was
no reach back into the old things. And that night, after they had gone
to bed out of doors and Stuart had fallen asleep, she lay there in the
stillness of that vast Arizona night and she came to seem in another
world. For hours she lay there looking up at the stars, thinking,
fearing. She reached over and very gently, meaning not to wake him, put
her hand in the hand of the man asleep beside her, the man who was all
she had in the world, whom she loved with a passion that made the
possibility of losing him a thing that came i