ral and simple and real as one wanted to be. He was sure that in
Edith's heart love for her friend was more real than any sense of duty
to society.

"But after all what is society, Edith?" he began quietly. "Just a
collection of individuals, isn't it? Why must it be so much harder than
the individuals comprising it? If it is that--then there's something
wrong with it, wouldn't you think?"

He looked around at the sound of a screen door closing. Edith's mother
had stepped out on the porch. He knew by her startled look, her quick,
keen glance at him, that she had heard his last words. She stepped
forward holding up her hands in mock dismay, with a laughing: "What a
large, solemn issue for an early morning conversation!"

Deane tried to laugh but he was not good at dissembling and he was
finding it hard to conceal his annoyance at the interruption. Talking to
Mrs. Lawrence was very different from talking to Edith. Edith, against
her own loving impulses, tried to think what she thought she ought to
think; Mrs. Lawrence had hardened into the things she thought should be
thought, and at once less loving and more intelligent than Edith, she
was fixed where her daughter was uncertain, complacent where Edith was
troubled. She was one of those women who, very kind to people they
accept, have no tendrils of kindness running out to those whom they do
not approve. Her qualities of heart did not act outside the circle of
her endorsement. With the exception of Ruth's brother Cyrus, no one in
the town had been harder about her than Edith's mother. He had all the
time felt that, let alone, Edith would have gone back to Ruth.

He had risen and pulled up a chair for Mrs. Lawrence and now stood there
fumbling with his hat, as if about to leave. It seemed to him he might
as well.

"Why, my dears!" exclaimed the older woman with a sort of light dryness,
"pray don't let me feel I have broken up a philosophic discussion."

"Deane was asking me to go and see Ruth, mother," said Edith, simply and
not without dignity.

He saw her flush, her quick look up at him, and then the slight
tightening of her lips.

"And doesn't it occur to Deane," she asked pleasantly, "that that is
rather a strange thing to ask of you?"

"She is very lonely, Deane says," said Edith tremulously.

Mrs. Lawrence was threading a needle. "I presume so," she answered
quietly.

Deane felt the blood rising in him. Somehow that quiet reply angered him
as no sharp re