"I'd like to know what she is to you!" Amy cried. "It's very strange—your standing up for her against the whole town!"
He did not reply; it was impossible to tell Amy, when she was like this, what Ruth had been—was—to him.
She looked at him as he sat there silent. And this was the man she had married!—a man who could treat her like this, asking her to go and see a woman who wasn't respectable—why, who was as far from respectable as a woman could be! This was the man for whom she had left her mother and father—and a home better than this home certainly,—yes, and that other man who had wanted her and who had so much more to offer! He respected her. He would never ask her to go and see a woman who wasn't decent! But she had married for love; had given up all those other things that she might have love. And now.... Her throat tightened and it was hard to hold back tears. And then suddenly she wanted to go over to Deane, slip down beside him, put her arms around him, tell him that she loved him and ask him to please tell her that he loved her. But there was so strange an expression on his face; it checked that warm, loving impulse, holding her where she was, hard. What was he thinking about—that woman? He had so strange a look. She did not believe it had anything to do with her. No, he had forgotten her. It was this other woman. Why, he was in love with her—of course! He had always been in love with her.
Because it seemed the idea would break her heart, because she could not bear it, it was scoffingly that she threw out: "You were in love with her, I suppose? You've always been in love with her, haven't you?"
"Yes, Amy," he answered, "I was in love with Ruth. I loved her—at any rate, I sorrowed for her—until the day I met you."
His voice was slow and sad; the whole sadness of it all, all the sadness of a world in which men and women loved and hurt each other seemed closing in around him. He did not seem able to rise out of it, to go out to her; it was as if his new disappointment brought back all the hurt of old ones.
Young, all inexperienced in the ways of adjusting love to life, of saving it for life, the love in her tried to shoot through the self-love that closed her in, holding her tight. She wanted to follow that impulse, go over and put her arms around her husband, let her kisses drive away that look of sadness. She knew that she could do it, that she ought to do it, that she would be sorry for not having done it, but—she couldn't. Love did not know how to fight its way through pride.
He had risen. "I must go. I have a number of calls to make. I—I'm sorry you feel as you do, Amy."
He was not going to explain! He was just leaving her outside it all! He didn't care for her, really, at all—just took her because he couldn't get that other woman! Took her—Amy Forrester—because he couldn't get the woman he wanted! Great bands of incensed pride bound her heart now, closing in the love that had fluttered there. Her face, twisted with varying emotions, was fairly ugly as she cried: "Well, I must say, I wish you had told me this before we were married!"
He looked at her in surprise. Then, surprised anew, looked quickly away. Feeling that he had failed, he tried to put it aside lightly. "Oh, come now, Amy, you didn't think, did you, that you could marry a man of thirty-four who had never loved any woman?"