rought this new feeling
that it should not have been that way, that what she had felt, and her
fidelity to that feeling--ruthless fidelity though it was--should not
have blighted like this. There was something that seemed at the heart of
it all in that feeling of not being ashamed in the presence of
death--she who had not denied life.

Silence had fallen between her and Ted, she saddened in the thought of
going away and open to the puzzling things that touched her life at
every point; looking at Ted--proud of him--hating to leave him now just
when she had found him again, thinking with loving gratefulness and
pride of how generous and how understanding he had been with her, how he
was at once so boyish and so much more than his years. The fine
seriousness of his face tonight made him very dear and very comforting
to her. She wanted to keep close to him; she could not bear the thought
of again losing him. If her hard visit back home yielded just that she
would have had rich gain from it. She began talking with him about what
he would do. He talked freely of his work, as if glad to talk of it; he
was not satisfied with it, did not think there was much "chance" there
for him. Ted had thought he wanted to study law, but his father, in one
of his periods of depression, had said he could not finish sending him
through college and Ted had gone into one of the big manufactories
there. He was in the sales department, and he talked to Ruth of the
work. He told her of his friends, of what they were doing; they talked
of many things, speaking of the future with that gentle intimacy there
can be between those sorrowing together for things past. Their sensitive
consciousness of the emptiness of the house--the old place, their
home,--brought them together through a deep undercurrent of feeling.
Their voices were low as they spoke of more intimate things than it is
usual to speak of without constraint, something lowered between them as
only a grief shared can lower bars to the spirit, their thinking set in
that poignant sense of life which death alone seems able to create.

Ted broke a pause to say that he supposed it was getting late and he
must be starting for Harriett's. Cyrus had asked him to come over awhile
that evening. Mr. McFarland, their family lawyer, was going out of town
for a few days, leaving the next morning. He was coming in that evening,
more as the old friend than formally, to speak to them about some
business matte