mystifying.

Oliver's apartment is really quite awful, disorderly, crowded,
incongruous. It contains a specimen of every kind of furniture since
the period of hair-cloth down to mission--cast-offs from the homes of
Oliver's more fortunate brothers and sisters. When I first saw Ruth
there in the midst of the confusion of unpacking, the room in Irving
Place with its old chests and samovars, Esther Claff quietly writing
in her corner, the telephone bell muffled to an undisturbing whirr,
flashed before me.

The baby was crying. I smelled the odor of steaming clothes, in process
of washing in the near-by kitchen. I heard the deep voice of the big
Irish wash-woman I had engaged, conversing with the rough Norwegian.
Becky was hanging on to Ruth's skirt and begging to be taken up. In the
apartment below some one was playing a victrola. I hoped Ruth was not as
conscious as I of Van de Vere's at this time in the morning--low bells,
subdued voices, velvet-footed attendants, system, order.

"Well, Ruth," I broke out, "I hope you'll be able to stand this. If it's
too much you must write and let me know."

She picked up Becky and held her a moment. "I think I shall manage to
pull through," she replied.

CHAPTER XXXI

RUTH DRAWS CONCLUSIONS

Will and I were buried in a little place in Newfoundland all summer, and
Ruth's letters to us, always three days old when they reached me, were
few and infrequent. What brief notes she did write were non-committal.
They told their facts without comment. I tried to read between the
practical lines that announced she had changed the formula for the
baby's milk, that she had had to let down Emily's dresses, that she had
succeeded in persuading Oliver to spend his three weeks' vacation with
Madge in Colorado, finally that Becky had been ill, but was better now.
I was unable to draw any conclusions. I knew what sort of service
Ruth's new enterprise required--duties performed over and over again,
homely tasks, no pay, no praise. I knew the daily wear and tear on good
intentions and exalted motives. I used to conjecture by the hour with
Will upon what effect the summer would have on Ruth's theories. She has
advanced ideas for women. She believes in their emancipation.

Edith and Alec had gone to Alaska. They could not report to me how Ruth
was progressing. Elise had been unable to leave her cottage on the Cape
for a single trip to Boston. Only Oliver's enthusiastic letters (Oliver
who n