unimportant, but kind and gentle. Between Ruth and Robert there glowed
adoration for each other, which words and commonplaces could not
conceal.

Robert stayed late. Upstairs in Will's study the clock struck
eleven-thirty when I heard the front door close, and peeked out
and saw Robert walking down over our flag-stones.

A moment later Ruth came upstairs softly. She went straight to her own
room. She closed the door without a sound. My sister, I knew, was filled
with the kind of exaltation that made her gentle even to stairs and
door-knobs.

Next morning she was singing as usual over her initialing. We went into
town at eleven-thirty to look up table linen. Edith met us for lunch.
One of the summer colonists had told Edith about Robert's "connections"
(he has several in Boston in the Back Bay and he himself was born in a
house with violet-colored panes) and Edith had become remarkably
enthusiastic. She was going to present Ruth with all her lingerie.

"After all," she said one day in way of reassurance to Ruth, "you would
have been in a pretty mess if you'd married Breck Sewall. Some gay lady
in Breck's dark and shady past sprang up with a spicy little law suit
two weeks before he was to be married to that Oliphant girl. Perhaps you
saw it in the paper. Wedding all off, and Breck evading the law nobody
knows where. This Bob of yours is as poor as Job's turkey, I suppose,
but anyhow, he's _decent_. An uncle of his is president of a bank in
Boston and belongs to all sorts of exclusive clubs and things. I'm going
to give you your wedding, you know, Toots. I've always wanted a good
excuse for a hack at Boston."

CHAPTER XIV

BOB TURNS OUT A CONSERVATIVE

But Edith didn't give Ruth her wedding. There was no wedding. Ruth
didn't marry Robert Jennings!

I cannot feel the pain that is Ruth's, the daily loss of Bob's eyes that
worshiped, voice that caressed--no, not that hurt--but I do feel
bitterness and disappointment. They loved each other. I thought that
love always could rescue. I was mistaken. Love is not the most important
thing in marriage. No. They tell me ideals should be considered first.
And yet as I sit here in my room and listen to the emptiness of the
house--Ruth's song gone out of it, Ruth fled with her wound, I know not
where--and see Bob, a new, quiet, subdued Bob, walking along by the
house to the University, looking up to my window and smiling (a queer
smile that hurts every time), the spa