hat would better have been left unsaid. But he was thinking that being
free to say what one was feeling was like drawing a long breath.

And in thinking of it as he went about his calls that morning, in
various homes, talking with a number of people, it occurred to him that
many of those things he had come to think, things of which he did not
often try to talk to others, he had arrived at because of Ruth. It was
amazing how his feeling about her, thoughts through her, had run into
all his thinking. It even occurred to him that if it had not been for
her he might have fallen into accepting many things more or less as the
rest of the town did. It seemed now that as well as having caused him
much pain she had brought rich gain; for those questionings of life,
that refusal placidly to accept, had certainly brought keener
satisfactions than he could have had through a closer companionship with
facile acceptors. Ruth had been a big thing in his life, not only in his
heart, but to his mind.

He had come out of the house of one of his patients and was standing on
the steps talking with the woman who had anxiously followed him to the
door. The house was directly across the street from the Lawrences'.
Edith was sitting out on the porch; her little girl of eight and the
boy, who was younger, were with her. They made an attractive picture.

He continued his reassuring talk to the woman whose husband was ill, but
he was at the same time thinking of Ruth's eager questionings about
Edith, about Edith's children, her hunger for every smallest thing he
could tell her. When he went down to his car Edith, looking up and
seeing him, gayly waved her hand. He returned the salute and stood there
as if doing something to the car. Sitting there in the morning sunshine
with her two children Edith looked the very picture of the woman for
whom things had gone happily. Life had opened its pleasantest ways to
Edith. He could not bring himself to get in his car and start away; he
could not get rid of the thought of what it would mean to Ruth if Edith
would go to see her, could not banish the picture of Ruth's face if
Edith were to walk into the room. And because he could not banish it he
suddenly turned abruptly from his car and started across the street and
up the steps to the porch.

She smiled brightly up at him, holding out her hand. "Coming up to talk
to me? How nice!"

He pulled up a chair, bantering with the children.

"I know what you'v