in--going about the town pleading for this woman whom nobody
would take in!--estranging his friends--yes, probably hurting his
practice. And _why_? _Why_ was he so wrought up about it? Why was he
making a regular business of going about fighting her battles? Well,
_one_ thing it showed! It showed how much consideration he had for his
own wife. When she came in sight of their house it was harder than ever
to hold back the tears of mortification, of hot resentment. She had been
so sure she was going to be perfectly happy in that house! Now already
her husband was turning away from her--humiliating her--showing how much
he thought of another woman, and _such_ a woman! She did not know what
to do with the way she felt, did not know how to hold from the surface
the ugly things that surged through her, possessed her. Until now she
had had nothing but adulation from love. A pretty, petted girl she had
formed that idea of pretty women in youth that it was for men to give
love and women graciously to accept it. For her vanity to be hurt by a
man who had roused her passion turned that passion to fury against him
and made it seem that a great wrong had been done her.

As she approached she saw that Deane was standing before the house
talking to a woman in a vegetable wagon. He had one foot up on the spoke
of the wheel and was talking more earnestly than it seemed one would be
talking to a vegetable woman. Doubtless she was one of his patients. As
she came up he said: "Oh, Amy, I want you to know Mrs. Herman."

She stiffened; his tone in introducing her to a woman of what she
thought of as the lower classes seeming just a new evidence of his
inadequate valuation of her.

"Your husband and I went to school together," said Mrs. Herman,
pleasantly, but as if explaining.

"Oh?" murmured Amy.

Deane abruptly moved back from the wagon. "Well, you do that, Annie.
Ruth would love to see you, I know."

So _that_ was it! She turned away with a stiff little nod to the woman
in the wagon. Always the same thing!--urging Tom, Dick and Harry to go
and see that woman!--taking up with a person like this, introducing his
wife in that intimate way to a woman who peddled vegetables just because
she was willing to go and see Ruth Holland! She didn't know that she had
to stand such things!--she didn't know that she _would_. She guessed she
could show him that she wasn't going to play second fiddle to that Ruth
Holland!

Deane came to the door o