that I'm telephoned at once if--if I
should be wanted, won't you, Ruth?"--as one depending on this other more
than on anyone else. Ruth only answered gently, "Yes, Harriett," but she
felt warmed in her heart. She had been given something to do. She was
depended on. She was not left out.

She sat beside her father during the hour that the nurse had to be
relieved. Very strongly, wonderfully, she had a feeling that her father
knew she was there, that he wanted her there. In the strange quiet of
that hour she seemed to come close to him, as if things holding them
apart while he was of life had fallen away now that he no longer was
life-bound. It was very real to her. It was communion. Things she could
not have expressed seemed to be flowing out to him, and things he could
not have understood seemed reaching him now. It was as if she was going
with him right up to the border--a long way past the things of life that
drove them apart. The nurse, coming back to resume duty, was arrested,
moved, by Ruth's face. She spoke gently in thanking her, her own face
softened. Flora Copeland, meeting Ruth in the hall, paused, somehow
held, and then, quite forgetful of the manner she was going to maintain
toward Ruth, impulsively called after her: "Are you perfectly
comfortable in your room, Ruth? Don't you--shan't I bring in one of the
big easy chairs?"

Ruth said no, she liked her own little chair, but she said it very
gently, understanding; she had again that feeling of being taken in, the
feeling that warmed her heart.

She went in her room and sat quietly in her little chair; and what had
been a pent up agony in her heart flowed out in open sorrowing: for her
mother, who was not there to sit in her room with her; for her father,
who was dying. But it was releasing sorrowing, the sorrowing that makes
one one with the world, drawing one into the whole life of human
feeling, the opened heart that brings one closer to all opened hearts.
It was the sadness that softens; such sadness as finds its own healing
in enriched feeling. It made her feel very near her father and mother;
she loved them; she felt that they loved her. She had hurt
them--terribly hurt them; but it all seemed beyond that now; they
understood; and she was Ruth and they loved her. It was as if the way
had been cleared between her and them. She did not feel shut in alone.

Ted hesitated when he came to her door a little later, drew back before
the tender light of her