ot," replied Ruth, and I heard the cards going back into the
box. "If I offend--and I see I do--of course not." And she rose and came
over and sat on the sofa beside me.

From that time on I noticed a change in Robert and Ruth--nothing very
perceptible. Robert came as often, stayed as late--later. That was what
disturbed me. Ruth rose in the morning, after some of those protracted
sessions, suspiciously quiet and subdued. In place of the radiance that
so lately had shone upon her face, often I perceived a puzzled and
troubled expression. In place of her almost hilarious joy, a wistfulness
stole into her bearing toward Bob.

"Of course," she said to me one day, "I have been living a sort
of--well, broad life you might call it for a daughter of father's, I
suppose. He was so straightlaced. But all the modes and codes I've been
adopting for the last several years I adopted only to be polite, to do
as other people did, simply not to offend--as Bob said the other day. I
thought if I ever wanted to go back to the strict laws of my childhood
again, I could easily enough. In fact I intended to, after I had had my
little fling. But I've outgrown them. They don't seem reasonable to me
now. I can't go back to them. Convictions stand in my way."

"Women ought not to have convictions," I said shortly.

"Don't you think so?" queried Ruth.

"Men," I replied, "have so much more knowledge and experience of the
world. Convictions have foundations with men."

"How unfair somehow," said Ruth, looking away into space.

"Just you take my advice, Ruth," I went on, "and don't you let any
convictions you may think you have get in the way of your happiness.
Just you let them lie for a while. When you and Bob are hanging up
curtains in your new apartment, and pictures and things, you won't care
a straw about your convictions, then."

"I don't suppose so," replied Ruth, still meditative. "No, I suppose
you're right. I'll let Bob have the convictions for both of us. I'm
younger. I can re-adjust easier than he, I guess."

A few days later Ruth went to a suffrage meeting in town; not because
she was especially interested, but because a friend she had made in a
course she was taking at Shirley College invited her to go.

It was the winter that everybody was discussing suffrage at teas and
dinner parties; fairs and balls and parades were being given in various
cities in its interest; and anti-organizations being formed to fight it
and lend i