hink you know what you're talking about."

"Of course I couldn't hope to know as much as _she_ does," she jeered.
"However," she went on, with more of a semblance of dignity, "I do know
a few things. I know that society cannot countenance a woman who did
what that woman did. I know that if a woman is going to selfishly take
her own happiness with no thought of others she must expect to find
herself outside the lives of decent people. Society must protect itself
against such persons as she. I know that much--fortunately."

Her words fortified her. She, certainly, was in the right. She felt that
she had behind her all those women of that afternoon. Did any of them
receive Ruth Holland? Did they not all see that society must close in
against the individual who defied it? She felt supported.

For the minute he stood there looking at her--so absolutely unyielding,
so satisfied in her conclusions,--those same things about society and
the individual that he had heard from the rest of them; like the rest of
them so satisfied with the law she had laid down--law justifying
hardness of heart and closing in against the sorrow of a particular
human life; from Amy now that same look, those same words. For a little
time he did not speak. "I'm awfully sorry, Amy," was all he said then.

He stood there in miserable embarrassment. He always kissed her good-by.

She saw his hesitancy and turned to the other room. "Hadn't you better
hurry?" she laughed. "You have so many calls to make--and some of them
so important!"

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

It was quiet that evening in the house of Cyrus Holland; the noises that
living makes were muffled by life's awe of death, even sounds that could
not disturb the dying guarded against by the sense of decorum of those
living on. Downstairs were people who had come to inquire for the man
they knew would not be one of them again. For forty years Cyrus Holland
had been a factor in the affairs of the town. He was Freeport's senior
banker, the old-fashioned kind of banker, with neither the imagination
nor the daring to make of himself a rich man, or of his bank an
institution using all the possibilities of its territory. In venturing
days he remained cautious. His friends said that he was
sane--responsible; men of a newer day put it that he was limited,
lacking in that boldness which makes the modern man of affairs. He had
advised many men and always on the side of safety. No one had grown rich
throu