Fidelity: A Novel

by Susan Glaspell

Ruth could only stare at him, bewildered.

He was running his hand over the grass near him. She noticed that it moved nervously. And she remarked the puckered brows that had all along made her think he was worried about something that day—she had thought it must be one of his cases. And there was that compression of the lips that she knew of old in Deane when he was hurt. Just then his face looked actually old, the face of a man who has taken hard things.

"Yes, Amy's gone home for a little while," he said in a more matter of fact voice, but a voice that had a hard ring. He added: "Her mother's not well," and looked up at Ruth with that characteristic little screwing up of his face, as if telling her to make what she could of it.

"Why, that's too bad," she stammered.

Again he looked up at her in that queer way of mixed feeling, his face showing the marks of pain and yet a touch of teasing there too, mocking her confusion, looking like a man who was suffering and yet a little like a teasing boy. Then he abruptly pulled his hat down over his eyes again, as if to shade them from the sun, and lay flat on his back, one heel kicking at the grass. She could not see his eyes, but she saw his mouth; that faint touch of pleasure in teasing which had perversely lurked in pain had gone now; that twist of his compressed lips was pure pain.

She was utterly bewildered, and so deeply concerned that she had to get ahead of Deane some way, not let him shut himself in with a thing that made his mouth look as if he was bearing physical pain. And then a new thought shot into her concern for him, a thought that seemed too preposterous to entertain, but that would not go away. It did not seem a thing she could speak of; but as she looked at Deane, his mouth more natural now, but the suggestion of pain left there, she had a sudden new sense of all that Deane had done for her. She couldn't leave things like this, no matter how indelicate she might seem.

"Deane," she began timidly, "I don't—in any way—for any reason—make things hard for you, do I?"

For the moment he did not speak, did not push his hat back so she could see his eyes. Then she saw that he was smiling a little; she had a feeling that he was not realizing she could see the smile; it was as if smiling to himself at something that bitterly amused him. It made her feel rather sick; it let that preposterous idea spread all through her.

Then he sat up and looked quizzically at her. "Well, Ruth, you don't expect me to deny, do you, that you did make a thing or two rather hard?" He said it with that touch of teasing. "Was I so magnanimous," he added dryly, "that I let you lose sight of the fact that I wanted you?"

Ruth colored and felt baffled; she was sure he knew well enough that was not what she referred to. He looked at her, a little mockingly, a little wistfully, as if daring her to go on.