djoining room, to be within call. And as she
sat there a feeling of strange peace stole through her. It was as if she
had been set free, as if something that had chained her for years had
fallen away. When in her talk with Mrs. Hughes she became that other
woman, the woman on the other side, on compassion's side, something just
fell from her. When that poor girl murmured, "You're so kind!" she
suddenly knew that she must have something more from life than that
satisfaction of harming those who had hurt her. When she washed the
girl's face she knew what she could not unknow. She had served. She
could not find the old satisfaction in working harm. The soft, warm
thing that filled her heart with that cry, "You're so kind!" had killed
forever the old cruel satisfaction in being in the way.

She felt very quiet in this wonderful new liberation. She began shaping
life as something more than a standing in the way of others. It made
life seem a different thing just to think of it as something other than
that. And suddenly she knew that she did not hate Ruth Holland any more;
that she did not even hate the man who had been her husband. Hating had
worn itself out; it fell from her, a thing outlived. It was wonderful to
have it gone. For a long time she sat there very quiet in the wonder of
that peace of knowing that she was free--freed of the long hideous
servitude of hating, freed of wanting to harm. It made life new and
sweet. She wanted something from life. She must have more of that gentle
sweetness that warmed her heart when Lily murmured, "You're so kind!"

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Ruth Holland stood at the window looking out at Colorado in January. The
wide valley was buried under snow. It was late afternoon and the sun was
passing behind the western mountains. From the window where she stood
she could not see the western mountains, but the sunset colors had been
thrown over to the eastern range, some fifty miles away. When she first
came there, five years before, it had seemed strange to find the east
lighted at sunset, more luminous than the west. The eastern range was a
mighty one. Now there was snow down to its feet and there was no warmth
in the colors that lighted it. They only seemed to reveal that the
mountains were frozen. It would not have seemed possible for red--those
mountains had been named Sangre de Cristo because they went red at
sunset--to be so dazzling cold. The lighted snow brought out the contour