she
had left back there remained real and warm in her memory, but her part
with them was a thing finished. It was as if only shoots of pain could
for the minute unite them.

Turning her face back toward home turned her back to herself there. She
dwelt upon home as she had left it, then formed the picture of what she
would find now. Her mother and her grandfather would not be there. The
father she had left would not be there. A dying man would be there. Ted
would be grown up. She wondered if anyone had taken care of the flowers.
Would there be any roses? She and her mother had always taken care of
them. Edith--? Would Terror be there? He was only about three when she
left; dogs did live as long as that. She had named him Terror because of
his puppy pranks. But there would be no puppy pranks now. It would be a
sedate old dog she would find. He would not know her--she who had cared
for him and romped with him through his puppyhood. But they had not
shared experiences.

On the train carrying her back home her own story opened freshly to her.
Again and again she would be caught into it....

* * * * *

Ruth Holland--the girl of twenty--was waiting for Deane Franklin to come
and take her to the dance at the Country Club. She was dressed and
wandering restlessly about the house, looking in mirrors as she passed
them, pleased with herself in her new white dress. There was an
excitement in the fact that she had not seen Deane for almost a year; he
had been away, studying medicine at Johns Hopkins. She wondered if he
would seem any different; wondered--really more interested in this than
in the other--if she would seem any different to him.

She did not think of Deane "that way" she had told Edith Lawrence, her
bosom friend from childhood, when Edith that afternoon had hinted at
romantic possibilities. Edith was in romantic mood because she and Will
Blair were in the happy state of getting over a quarrel. For a month
Ruth had listened to explosions against Will Blair. Now it was made up
and Edith was in sweetly chastened spirit. She explained to Ruth at
great length and with much earnestness that she had not understood Will,
that she had done him a great injustice; and she was going to the party
with him that night. Edith and Will and Deane and Ruth were going
together.

They were singularly unmatured for girls of twenty. Their experiences
had not taken them outside the social life of the town