in defending Ruth, was simply because in his own thinking about it
there were never arguments, or thoughts upon conduct, but always just
that memory of Ruth's face as he had seen it in revealing moments.

Everyone saw something that Ruth should have done differently. In the
weeks they spent upon it they found, if not that they would be able to
forgive her, at least that they could think of her with less horror had
she done this, had she not done that. But Ruth lived through that week
seeing little beyond the one thing that she must get through it. She was
driven; she had to go ahead, bearing things somehow, getting through
them. She had a strange power to steel herself, to keep things, for the
most part, from really getting through to her. She could not go ahead if
she began letting things in. She sealed herself over and drove ahead
with the singleness of purpose, the exclusions, of any tormented thing.
It was all terrible, but it was as if she were frozen at the heart to
all save the one thing.

She stayed through the week because it was the time of Edith Lawrence's
wedding and she was to be maid-of-honor. "I'll have to stay till after
Edith's wedding," she said to Deane and Stuart. Then on her way home
from Deane's office she saw that she could not go on with her part in
Edith's wedding. That she could see clearly enough despite the thing
driving her on past things she should be seeing. What would she say to
Edith?--how get _that_ over?

Someone was giving a party for Edith that night; every day now things
were being given for her. She must not go to them. How could she go? It
would be absurd to expect that of herself. She would have to tell Edith
that she could not be her bridesmaid. What a terrible thing Edith would
think that was! She would have to give a reason--a big reason. What
would she tell her?--that she had been called away?--but where? Should
she tell her the truth? Could she? Edith would find it almost
unbelievable. It was almost unbelievable to herself that her life could
be permeated by a thing Edith knew nothing about. It was another of the
things she would have said, had she known her story only through hearing
it, would not be possible. But it was with Edith as it was with her own
family--simply that such a thing would never occur to her. She winced in
thinking of it that way. A number of times she had been right on the
edge of a thing it seemed would surely be disclosing, but it strangely
happened