against others. She tried to think
that, for she could not go back to what Deane had left behind. And yet
she could not forget that she had not met Amy.

They walked toward home talking quietly about things that happened to
come up, more as if they were intimate friends who had constant meetings
than as if they had been years apart and were about to part for what
would probably be years more. But that consciousness was there
underneath; it ruled the silences, made their voices gentler. It was
very sweet to Ruth, just before again leaving all home things behind, to
be walking in the spring twilight with Deane along that road they knew
when they were boy and girl together.

Twilight was deepening to evening when they came to the hill from which
they could see the town. They stood still looking off at it, speaking of
the beauty of the river, of the bridge, of the strangeness of the town
lights when there was still that faint light of day. And then they stood
still and said nothing, looking off at that town where they had been
brought up. It was beautiful from there, bent round a curve in the broad
river, built upon hills. She was leaving it now--again leaving it. She
had come home, and now she was going away again. And now she knew, in
spite of her anger of the day before, in spite of all there had been to
hurt her, in spite of all that had been denied her, that she was not
leaving it in bitterness. In one sense she had not had much from her
days back home; but in a real sense, she had had much. She looked at
that town now with a feeling of new affection. She believed she would
always have that feeling of affection for it. It stood to her for things
gone--dear things gone; for youth's gladness, for the love of father and
mother, for many happy things now left behind. But now that she had come
back, had gone through those hard days, she was curiously freed from
that town. She had this new affection for it in being freed of it. She
would always love it because of what it had meant in the past, but love
it as one does love a thing past. It seemed she had to come back to it
to let it lose its hold on her. It was of the past, and she knew now
that there was a future. What that future was to be she did not know,
but she would turn from this place of the past with a new sense of the
importance of the future. Standing there with Deane on the hilltop at
evening, looking off at that town where they had both been brought up,
she go