CONTENTS
[CHAPTER ONE]
[CHAPTER TWO]
[CHAPTER THREE]
[CHAPTER FOUR]
[CHAPTER FIVE]
[CHAPTER SIX]
[CHAPTER SEVEN]
[CHAPTER EIGHT]
[CHAPTER NINE]
[CHAPTER TEN]
[CHAPTER ELEVEN]
[CHAPTER TWELVE]
[CHAPTER THIRTEEN]
[CHAPTER FOURTEEN]
[CHAPTER FIFTEEN]
[CHAPTER SIXTEEN]
[CHAPTER SEVENTEEN]
[CHAPTER EIGHTEEN]
[CHAPTER NINETEEN]
[CHAPTER TWENTY]
[CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE]
[CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO]
[CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE]
[CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR]
[CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE]
[CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX]
[CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN]
[CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT]
[CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE]
[CHAPTER THIRTY]
[CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE]
[CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO]
[CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE]
[CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR]
FIDELITY
CHAPTER ONE
It was hard to get back into the easy current of everyday talk. Cora Albright's question had too rudely pulled them out of it, disturbing the quiet flow of inconsequential things. Even when they had recovered and were safely flowing along on the fact that the new hotel was to cost two hundred thousand dollars, after they had moved with apparent serenity to lamentation over a neighbor who was sick in bed and without a cook, it was as if they were making a display of the ease with which they could move on those commonplace things, as if thus to deny the consciousness of whirlpools near by.
So they seemed to Dr. Deane Franklin, who, secured by the shadow of the porch vine, could smile to himself at the way he saw through them. Though Deane Franklin's smile for seeing through people was not so much a smile as a queer little twist of the left side of his face, a screwing up of it that half shut one eye and pulled his mouth out of shape, the same twist that used to make people call him a homely youngster. He was thinking that Cora's question, or at any rate her manner in asking it, would itself have told that she had lived away from Freeport for a number of years. She did not know that they did not talk about Ruth Holland any more, that certainly they did not speak of her in the tone of everyday things.
And yet, looking at it in any but the Freeport way, it was the most natural thing in the world that Cora should have asked what she did. Mrs. Lawrence had asked if Mr. Holland—he was Ruth's father—was getting any better, and then Cora had turned to him with the inquiry: "Do you ever hear from Ruth?"