"Well if I am," retorted Ruth—"forgive me for saying it, Harriett—that adultery has given me more decent ideas of life than marriage seems to have given you!"
Her feeling about it grew stronger as the day wore on. That evening she got the Woodburys' on the telephone and asked for Mildred. She did not know just what she would say, she had no plan, but she wanted to see Mildred again. She was told, however, that Mildred had gone to Chicago on a late afternoon train. At the last minute she had decided to go to Europe with Mrs. Blair, the servant who was speaking said, and had gone over to Chicago to see about clothes.
Ruth hung up the receiver and sat looking into the telephone. Then she laughed. So Mildred had been "saved."
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
On the afternoon of her last day in Freeport Ruth took a long tramp with Deane. She was going that night; she was all ready for leaving when Deane came out and asked if he couldn't take her for a ride in his car. She suggested a walk instead, wanting the tramp before the confinement of travelling. So they cut through the fields back of Annie's and came out on a road well known to them of old. They tramped along it a long way, Ruth speaking of things she remembered, talking of old drives along that road which had been a favorite with all of their old crowd. They said things as they felt like it, but there was no constraint in their silences. It had always been like that with her and Deane. Finally they sat down on a knoll a little back from the road, overlooking pastures and fields of blowing green.
"I love these little hills," Ruth murmured; "so many little hills," she laughed affectionately—"and so green and blowy and fruitful. With us it's a great flat valley—a plain, and most of it dry—barren. You have to do such a lot to make things grow. Here things just love to grow. And trees!" she laughed.
"But mountains there," suggested Deane.
"Yes, but a long way off from us, and sometimes they seem very stern, Deane. I've so many times had the feeling I couldn't get beyond them. Sometimes they have seemed like other things I couldn't hope to cross." After a little she said: "These little hills are so gentle; this country so open."
Deane laughed shortly. "Yes, the hills are gentle. The country is open enough!"