ough it did not so present itself to her--she
might fortify herself in the conviction that Deane was preposterously
wrong, and she taking the only course a good woman could take in
relation to a bad one. She was prepared to feel that men did not see
those things as clearly as women did, that it was woman who was the
guardian of society, and that she must bear with man in his failure to
see some things right. She had been eager to strengthen herself in that
feeling, not alone because it would, in her own mind, get her out of
reach of any possible charge of hardness or narrowness, but because it
would let her break through her feeling against Deane; she wanted to get
back to the days of his complete adoration of her, back where his
passion for her would sweep all else out of their world. She knew well
enough that Deane loved her, but there was a tightened up place around
her knowing that. It made her miserable. Things would not be right until
she found a way through that tightened up place--a way that would make
her right and Deane wrong, but would let her forgive, largely and gently
understanding. Such, not thought out, were the things that took her to
the Lawrences' that afternoon.

It was apparent that Edith had been crying. She and her mother were
gracious to Amy, but there was a new constraint. She felt uncomfortable.
When they were alone Edith broke out and told her how she was just sick
at heart about Ruth. Deane had been there that morning urging her to go
and see Ruth--instantly there was all anew that tightening up that held
her from Deane, that feeling against him and against this Ruth Holland
that was as if something virulent had been poured into her blood,
changing her whole system. Edith cried as she told how Deane and her
mother had quarreled because he felt so strongly on the subject, and
didn't seem able to understand her mother's standpoint. Then, she too
wanting to set herself right with herself, she went over the whole
story--the shock to her, how it had hurt her ideal of friendship, had
even seemed to take something from the sanctity of her own marriage. She
silenced something within herself in recounting the wrong done her,
fortified herself in repeating the things she had from her mother about
one's not being free, about what the individual owed to society.

Amy went home in a turmoil of resentment against her husband. It was
hard to hold back the angry tears. A nice position he was putting
himself