They talked along over the surface of it, as is people's way, Deane speaking mildly of tuberculosis, how prevalent, how easily controlled, how delightful Arizona was, the charms of living out-of-doors, and all the time each of them knew that the other was not thinking of that at all, but thinking of Ruth.
Finally, bracing himself as for a thing that was all he could do, Stuart spoke of her. "Ruth said she was coming in to see you about something this afternoon. I thought I'd get in first and tell you. I wondered what you'd think—what we'd better do—"
His voice trailed off miserably. He turned a little away and sat there in utter dejection.
And as he looked at him it came to Deane that love could be the most ruthless, most terrible thing in the world. People talked to him afterwards about this man's selfishness in taking his own pleasure, his own happiness, at the cost of everyone else. He said little, for how could he make real to anyone else his own feeling about what he had seen of the man's suffering, utter misery, as he spoke of the girl to whom he must bring new pain. Some one spoke to him afterwards of this "light love" and he laughed in that person's face. He knew that it was love bathed in pain.
A new sense of just how hideous the whole thing was made him suddenly demand: "Can't you—do anything about it? Isn't there any way?—any way you can get a divorce?" he bluntly asked.
"Mrs. Williams does not believe in divorce," was the answer, spoken with more bitterness than Deane had ever heard in any voice before.
Deane turned away with a little exclamation of rage, rage that one person should have this clutch on the life of another, of two others—and one of them Ruth—sickened with a sense of the waste and the folly of it,—for what was she getting out of it? he savagely put to himself. How could one get anything from life simply by holding another from it?
"Does she know anything about Ruth?" he asked with an abrupt turn to Stuart.
"She has mentioned her name several times lately and looked at me in doing it. She isn't one to speak directly of things," he added with a more subtle bitterness than that of a moment before. They sat there for a couple of minutes in silence—a helpless, miserable silence.
When, after that, Deane stepped out into the waiting-room he found Ruth among those there; he only nodded to her and went back and told Stuart that she was there. "But it's only three," said he helplessly, "and she said she was coming at four."