not
believe that her mother could so much as comprehend that she could love
where she should not, that a girl like Ruth--or rather, _Ruth_--could
love a man it was not right she love. She had never talked with her
mother of real things, had never talked with her of the things of her
deepest feeling. She would not know how to do it now, even had she
dared.

Her mother helped her dress for the wedding, talking all the while about
plans for the evening--just who was going to the church, the details
about serving. Ruth clung to the thought that those _were_ the things
her mother was interested in; they always had been, surely they would
continue to be. In her desperation she tried to think that in those
little things her mother cared so much about she would, after a time,
find healing.

With that cruel power for bearing pain she got away from home without
breaking down; she got through that last minute when she realized she
would not see Ted or her grandfather again,--they would not be at the
wedding and would be in bed when she returned from it, and she was to
leave that night on the two o'clock train. It was unbelievable to her
that she had borne it, but she had driven ahead through utter misery as
they commented on her dress, praising her and joking with her. That was
in the living-room and she never forgot just how they were grouped--her
grandfather's newspaper across his knees; Mary, who had worked for them
for years, standing at the door; her dog Terror under the reading
table--Ted walking round and round her. Deane was talking with her
father in the hall. Her voice was sharp as she went out and said: "We
must hurry, Deane."

The wedding was unreal; it seemed that all those people were just making
the movements of life; there were moments when she heard them from a
long way off, saw them and was uncertain whether they were there. And
yet she could go on and appear about the same; if she seemed a little
queer she was sure it was attributed to natural feeling about her
dearest friend's wedding--to emotion, excitement. There were moments
when things suddenly became real: a moment alone with Edith in her room,
just before they went to the church; a moment when Mrs. Lawrence broke
down. Walking down the aisle, the words of the service--that was in a
vague, blurred world; so was Edith's strained face as she turned away,
and her own walking down the aisle with Deane, turning to him and
smiling and saying something and f