try Club had not decided to replenish its treasury by giving
a play. Mrs. Lawrence was chairman of the entertainment committee. That
naturally brought Edith and Ruth into the play, and one night after one
of those periods of distraction into which the organizer of amateur
theatricals is swept it was Mrs. Lawrence who exclaimed, "Stuart
Williams! Why couldn't he do that part?"--and Stuart Williams, upon
learning who was in the cast, said he would see what he could do with
it.

Again, at the close of the first rehearsal, as they stood about in the
hall at the Lawrences', laughing over mishaps, it was Mrs. Lawrence who
said, "You and Ruth go the same way, don't you, Stuart?"

Tonight they were going that way after the final rehearsal. It was later
than usual; they went slowly, saying little. They had fallen silent as
they neared Ruth's home; they walked slowly and in silence outside the
fence; paused an instant at the gate, then, very slowly, started up the
walk which led to the big white square house and came to a stop beneath
the oak tree which was so near the house that its branches brushed the
upper window panes.

They stood there silent; the man knew that he ought to go at once; that
in that silence the feeling which words had so thinly covered would
break through and take them. But knowing he should go seemed without
power to make him go. He watched the girl's slightly averted face. He
knew why it was averted. He felt sure that he was not alone in what he
felt.

And so he stood there in the sweetness of that knowing, the sweetness of
that understanding why she held herself almost rigid like that, feeling
surging higher in him in the thought that she too was fighting feeling.
The breeze moved the hair on her temples; he could see the throb in her
uncovered throat, her thin white dress moving over her quick breathing.
Life was in her, and the desire for life. She seemed so tender, so
sensitive.

He moved a step nearer her, unable to deny himself the sweetness of
confirming what it was so wonderful to think. "I won't be taking you
home tomorrow night," he said.

She looked at him, then swiftly turned away, but not before he had seen
her eyes.

"Shall you care?" he pressed it, unsteadily.

He knew by her high head, her tenseness, that she was fighting something
back; and he saw the quivering of her tender mouth.

She cared! She _did_ care. Here was a woman who cared; a woman who
wanted love--his love; a woman