"Mr. Keating," she said, with the slightest of bows, and lowered herself into a chair by the door.
He could merely incline his head.
"You got tired waiting, did you," said Mr. Driscoll, who had turned his short-sighted eyes about at her entrance. "I'll be through in just a minute." He looked back at Tom, and could but notice the latter's white, set face. "Why, what's the matter?"
"I twisted my ankle a bit; it's nothing," Tom answered.
Mr. Driscoll went on with his discourse, to ears that now heard not a word. Ruth glanced about the room. The high-colored sentimental pictures, the cheap showy furniture, the ornaments on the mantelpiece—all that she saw corroborated the revelation she had had of Maggie's character. Inspiration in neither wife nor home. Thus he had to live, who needed inspiration—whom inspiration and sympathy would help develop to a fitness for great ends. Thus he had to live!—dwarfed!
She filled with frantic rebellion in his behalf. Surely it did not have to be so, always. Surely the home could be changed, the wife roused to sympathy—a little—at least a little!... There must be a way! Yes, yes; surely. There must be a way!... Later, somehow, she would find it....
In this moment of upheaving ideas and emotions she had the first vague stirring of a new purpose—the very earliest conception of the part she was to play in the future, the part of an unseen and unrecognized influence. She was brought out of her chaotic thoughts by Mr. Driscoll rising from his chair and saying: "There's no turning a fool from his folly, I suppose. Well, we'd better be going, Miss Arnold."
She rose, too. Her eyes and Tom's met. He wondered, choking, if she would speak to him.
"Good-by, Mr. Keating," she said—and that was all.
"Good-by, Miss Arnold."