game to life."

"But it is a long one, and changes," Louise said.

She glanced at him. He intended that his words should be taken, she
perceived, in a general sense. But the mind always seeks the specific:
hers instinctively seized on the particular thorn that had prompted
his utterance. Of Ruth Gardner's extraordinary and inexplicable
behaviour she had become informed, like everyone else; it at first
amazed, then shocked, and finally outraged her sense of decency. It
repelled her--but, then, her early attempts at friendship with the
other had never advanced. The girl had always been absorbed in her own
doings, immersed in pleasure or in plans for pleasure, concerned
entirely with the friends she had, and, unlike Imogene, received
Louise's calls and approaches at cordiality with an indifference that
withered all feeling. With the passing of time Louise had considered
Lee's course in relation to the girl as a cause for wonder. The
engineer was singularly patient, or incredibly obtuse, or marvellously
in love. Whichever it was, her heart stirred with pity. He deserved
better, he deserved the best. As for Ruth Gardner, she could now only
think of her with a hot resentment that set her lips quivering; and
she was moved at moments by a profound desire to express her sympathy
to him and to give that warm encouragement his spirit on occasion must
need. But she must refrain.

At his speech her conclusions, but not her feelings, underwent a sharp
revision. The revelation startled her. He had not been obtuse. He no
longer was marvellously in love with Ruth Gardner, nor in love with
her at all. Relief followed surprise in her mind, the relief that
comes at a fear unrealized, a disaster avoided. Disaster had been
precisely what she had sensed if not thought, since a union of two
persons whose natures were as utterly different, as essentially
opposed, as Lee's and Ruth's would inevitably lead to disillusionment,
antagonism, sorrow, havoc. That his eyes at last were open was a
blessing.

"What are you thinking of?" he asked, all at once.

She found his eyes full upon her.

"Of what you had said," she responded. "And at this minute I'm
speculating on whether anything--one's decisions, or acts, or
sentiments--are ever quite conclusive or final. Or fatal, too, as you
said. We might possibly except murder and suicide." She smiled as she
mentioned this reservation.

Lee shifted his position with a trace of impatience.

"I'm not