go with me to see Ruth Holland!"

"Oh, you don't!" she cried. "A woman living with another woman's
husband! Why, this very afternoon I was with the wife of the man that
woman is living with!--_she_ is the woman I would meet! And you can ask
me--your wife--to go and see a woman who turned her back on society--on
decency--a woman her own family cast out, and all decent people turn
away from." She paused, struggling, unable to keep her dignity and yet
say the things rushing up to be said.

He had grown red, as he always did when people talked that way about
Ruth. "Of course,"--he made himself say it quietly--"she isn't those
things to me, you know. She's--quite other things to me."

"I'd like to know what she _is_ to you!" Amy cried. "It's very
strange--your standing up for her against the whole town!"

He did not reply; it was impossible to tell Amy, when she was like this,
what Ruth had been--was--to him.

She looked at him as he sat there silent. And this was the man she had
married!--a man who could treat her like this, asking her to go and see
a woman who wasn't respectable--why, who was as far from respectable as
a woman could be! This was the man for whom she had left her mother and
father--and a home better than this home certainly,--yes, and that other
man who had wanted her and who had so much more to offer! _He_ respected
her. He would never ask her to go and see a woman who wasn't decent! But
she had married for love; had given up all those other things that she
might have love. And now.... Her throat tightened and it was hard to
hold back tears. And then suddenly she wanted to go over to Deane, slip
down beside him, put her arms around him, tell him that she loved him
and ask him to please tell her that he loved her. But there was so
strange an expression on his face; it checked that warm, loving impulse,
holding her where she was, hard. What was he thinking about--_that
woman_? He had so strange a look. She did not believe it had anything to
do with her. No, he had forgotten her. It was this other woman. Why, he
was in love with her--of course! He had always been in love with her.

Because it seemed the idea would break her heart, because she could not
bear it, it was scoffingly that she threw out: "You were in love with
her, I suppose? You've always been in love with her, haven't you?"

"Yes, Amy," he answered, "I was in love with Ruth. I loved her--at any
rate, I sorrowed for her--until the day I met