Deane--and happy. I'm so glad." That,
too, she had said very simply; it was real; direct. As he thought of it
now it was as if life had simplified her; she had let slip from her,
like useless garments, all those blurring artificialities that keep
people apart.

As usual he would go over again that evening to see his patient; and
then he would remain for a visit with Ruth. And he wanted to take Amy
with him. He would not let himself realize just how much he wanted to do
that, how much he would hate not doing it. He was thinking it out,
trying to arrive at the best way of putting it to Amy. If only he could
make it seem to her the simple thing it was to him!

He would be so happy to do this for Ruth, but it was more than that; it
was that he wanted to bring Amy within--within that feeling of his about
Ruth. He wanted her to share in that. He could not bear to leave it a
thing from which she was apart, to which she was hostile. He could not
have said just why he felt it so important Amy become a part of what he
felt about Ruth.

When at last they were together over their unusually late dinner the
thing he wanted to say seemed to grow more difficult because Amy was so
much dressed up. In her gown of that afternoon she looked so much the
society person that what he had in mind somehow grew less simple. And
there was that in her manner too--like her clothes it seemed a society
manner--to make it less easy to attempt to take her into things outside
the conventional round of life. He felt a little helpless before this
self-contained, lovely young person. She did not seem easy to get at.
Somehow she seemed to be apart from him. There was a real wistfulness in
his desire to take her into what to him were things real and important.
It seemed if he could not do that now that Amy would always be a little
apart from him.

Her talk was of the tea that afternoon: who was there, what they wore,
what they had said to her, how the house looked; how lovely Mrs.
Lawrence and Edith were.

What he was thinking was that it was Ruth's old crowd had assembled
there--at Edith's house--to be gracious to Amy that afternoon. She
mentioned this name and that--girls Ruth had grown up with, girls who
had known her so well, and cared for her. And Ruth? Had they spoken of
her? Did they know she was home? If they did, did it leave them all
unmoved? He thought of the easy, pleasant way life had gone with most of
those old friends of Ruth's. Had they