s woman had done! And he'd
be sorry then--would want her back--and she wouldn't come. She finally
found control in that thought of her power over him used to make him
suffer.

Deane, meanwhile, was hurrying through the streets that had the
unrealness of that hour just before morning. That aspect of things was
with him associated with death; almost always when he had been on the
streets at that hour it was because someone was fighting death. It was
so still--as if things were awed. And a light that seemed apart from
natural things was formed by the way the street lights grew pale in the
faint light of coming day. Everyone was sleeping--all save those in a
house half a dozen blocks away, the house where they were waiting for
death.

He was on foot, having left his car down at the garage for some repairs
after taking his mother home. As he slowed for a moment from a walk that
was half run he thought of how useless his hurrying was. What in the
world could he do when he got there? Nothing save assure them he could
do nothing. Poor Ruth!--it seemed she had so much, so many hard things.
This was a time when one needed one's friends, but of course they
couldn't come near her--on account of society. Though--his face softened
with the thought--Annie Morris would come, she not being oppressed by
this duty to society. He thought of the earnestness of her thin face as
she talked of Ruth. That let in the picture of Amy's face as he
introduced them. He tried not to keep seeing it. He did think, however,
that it was pretty unnecessary of Amy to have talked to his mother about
Ruth. All that was unyielding in him had been summoned by the way his
mother talked to him going home--"going for him" like that because he
had wanted Amy to go and see Ruth. That, it seemed to him, was something
between him and Amy. He would not have supposed she would be so ready to
talk with some one else about a thing that was just between themselves.
There had been that same old hardening against his mother when she began
talking of Ruth, and that feeling that shut her out excluded Amy with
her. And he had wanted Amy with him.

Hurrying on, he tried not to think of it. He didn't know why Amy had
talked to his mother about it--perhaps it just happened so, perhaps his
mother began it. He seized upon that. And Amy didn't understand; she was
young--her life had never touched anything like this. He was going to
talk to her--really talk to her, not fly off the