She did not answer him, looking off to that eastern range she was going to cross, as if the mountains could help her to hold on to her own feeling against the doubts he was trying to throw around her.
"You see, Ruth," he went on, as if feeling his way, not wanting to hurt her, "what has been may make it hard to go on. You can't tell. You'll never know—never be sure. Old things may come up to spoil new ones for you. That's what I'm so afraid of. That's what it seems you aren't seeing. You would be so much—safer—to stay with Stuart."
She turned to him with a little laugh, her lashes wet. "Yes, Ted dear, I suppose I would. But I never did seem to stay where I was safest—did I?"
"Don't worry about me, Ted," she said just as they were coming into town. "I'm going to take some of father's money—yes, yes, I know it isn't a great deal, but enough for a little while, till I get my bearings—and I'm going to make things come alive for me again. I'm not through yet, that's all. I could have stayed with life gone dead; it would have been safer, as you say. But you see I'm not through yet, Ted—I guess that's the secret of it all. I want more life—more things from life. And I'm going to New York just because it will be so completely new—so completely beginning new—and because it's the center of so many living things. And it's such a wonderful time, Ted. It seems to me the war is going to make a new world—a whole new way of looking at things. It's as if a lot of old things, old ideas, had been melted, and were fluid now, and were to be shaped anew. That's the way it seems to me, and that makes me the more eager to get some things from life that I haven't had. I've been shut in with my own experience. If I stayed on here I'd be shut in with my own dead experiences. I want to go on! I can't stop here—that's all. And we have to find our way for going on. We must find our own way, Ted, even," she choked, "though what we see as the way may seem a wild goose chase to some one we love. I'll tell you why I'm going to New York," she flashed with sudden defiance. "I'm going because I want to!"
She laughed a little and he laughed with her. Then she went on more gently: "Because I want to. Just the thought of it has made life come alive for me—that's reason enough for going to the ends of the earth! I'm going to live again, Ted—not just go on with what living has left. I'm going to find some work to do. Yes I can!" she cried passionately in response to his gesture "I suppose to you it seems just looking out for myself—seems unfaithful to Stuart. Well, it isn't—that's all I can say, and maybe some day you'll see that it wasn't. It isn't unfaithful to turn from a person you have nothing more to offer, for whom you no longer make life a living thing. It's more faithful to go. You'll see that some time, Ted. But be good to Stuart," she hastily added. "You stay with him till he can get off. I've made all the arrangements with Mrs. Baxter for packing up—sending on the things. It would be hard for him to do that, I know. And once away from here—new interests—life all new again—oh, no, Ted dear," she laughed a little chokingly, "don't worry about Stuart."
"I'm not worrying about Stuart," he muttered. "I'm worrying about you."
She squeezed his arm in affectionate gratitude for the love in the growling words. "Don't worry about me, Ted," she implored, "be glad with me! I'm alive again! It's so wonderful to be alive again. There's the future—a great, beautiful unknown. It is wonderful, Ted," she said with insistence, as if she would banish his fears—and her own.
They had a few minutes to wait, and Ted ran over to the postoffice to get her mail for her—she was expecting a paper she wanted to read on the train. She tucked what he handed her into her bag and then when she heard the train coming she held on to Ted's arm, held it as if she could not bear letting it go. "It's all right," were her last words to him, smiling through tears.
She had been trying all along to hold her mind from the thought that they would pass through Freeport. Late the next afternoon, when she knew they were nearing it, she grew restless. It was then she remembered the paper in her bag—she had been in no mood for reading, too charged with her own feeling. She got it out now and found that with the paper was a letter. It was a letter from Deane Franklin.