rkle and joy gone out like a flame,
I whisper to myself fiercely, "It's all wrong. Ideals to the winds. They
loved each other, and it is all wrong."

They were engaged about three months in all. They were so jubilant at
first that they wanted the engagement announced immediately. The college
paper triumphantly blazoned the news, and of course the daily papers
too. Everybody was interested. Everybody congratulated them. Ruth has
hosts of friends, Robert too. Ruth's mail for a month was enormous. The
house was sweet with flowers for days. Her presents rivaled a bride's.
And yet she gave it all up--even loving Bob. She chose to face
disapproval and distrust. Will called her heartless for it; Tom,
fickle; Edith, a fool; but I call her courageous.

There was no doubt of the sincerity of Ruth's love for Robert Jennings.
No other man before had got beneath the veneer of her worldliness.
Robert laid bare secret expanses of her nature, and then, like warm
sunlight on a hillside from which the snow has melted away, persuaded
the expanses into bloom and beauty. Timid generosities sprang forth in
Ruth. Tolerance, gratitude, appreciation blossomed frailly; and over all
there spread, like those hosts of four-petaled flowers we used to call
bluets, which grew in such abundance among rarer violets or wild
strawberry--there spread through Ruth's awakened nature a thousand and
one little kindly impulses that had to do with smiles for servants, kind
words for old people, and courtesy to clerks in shops. I don't believe
that anything but love could work such a miracle with Ruth. If only she
had waited, perhaps it would have performed more wonderful feats.

The book incident was the first indication of trouble. The second was
more trivial. It happened one Sunday noon. We had been to church that
morning together--Ruth, Will and I--and Robert Jennings was expected
for our mid-day dinner at one-thirty. He hadn't arrived when we returned
at one, and after Ruth had taken off her church clothes and changed to
something soft and filmy, she sat down at the piano and played a little
while--five minutes or so--then rose and strolled over toward the front
window. She seated herself, humming softly, by a table there. "Bob's
late," she remarked and lazily reached across the table, opened my
auction-bridge box, selected a pack of cards, and still humming began to
play solitaire.

The cards were all laid out before her when Robert finally did arrive.