The train for Chicago was several hours out from Denver when the man who had decided that it was an uninteresting car began watching the woman who was facing him from several seats away. He was one of those persons with a drab exterior but not a similarly colored imagination, and he was always striving to defeat the meager life his exterior consigned him to by projecting himself into the possible experiences of people he watched on the trains.

Afterwards he wondered that he should at first have pa.s.sed this woman by with the mere impression of a nice-looking woman who seemed tired. It was when he chanced to look at her as she was looking from the window that she arrested him. Her sweet face had steeled itself to something, she was as if looking out at a thing that hurt her, but looking with the courage to bear that hurt. He turned and looked from the window in the direction of her intense gaze and then smiled at himself as he turned back from the far-reaching monotonous plain of Eastern Colorado; he might have known that what she was looking at was not spread out there for anyone else to see.

She interested him all through the two days. She puzzled him. He relieved the tedium of the journey with speculations on what sort of thing it was she was thinking about, going over. He would arrive at a conclusion in which he felt considerable satisfaction only to steal another look at her and find that she did not look at all like the woman he had made up his mind she was. What held him was the way feeling shaped her. She had a delicate, sweet face, but there were times when it was almost repellent in its somberness, when it hardened in a way that puzzled him. She would sit looking from the window and it was as if a dense sadness had settled down upon her; then her face would light with a certain sad tenderness, and once he had the fancy of her lifting her head out of gloom to listen to a beautiful, far-away call. There were long meditations, far steady looks out at something, little reminiscent smiles that lingered about her sensitive mouth after her eyes had gone sad again. She would grow tired of thinking and close her eyes and seem to try to rest. Her face, at those times, showed the wear of hard years, laying bare lines that one took no count of when her eyes were lighted and her mouth sensitive. Frequently she would turn from herself and smile at the baby across the aisle; but once, when the baby was crowing and laughing she abruptly turned away. He tried to construct "a life"

for her, but she did not stay in any life he carefully arranged. There were times when he impatiently wondered why he should be wondering so much about her; those were the times when she seemed to have let it all go, was inert. But though he did not succeed in getting a "life" for her, she gave him a freshened sense of life as immensely interesting, as charged with pain and sweetness.

It was over the pain and the sweetness of life that this woman--Ruth Holland--brooded during the two days that carried her back to the home of her girlhood. She seemed to be going back over a long bridge. That part of her life had been cut away from her. With most lives the past grew into the future; it was as a growth that spread, the present but the extent of the growth at the moment. With her there had been the sharp cut; not a cut, but a tear, a tear that left bleeding ends. Back there lay the past, a separated thing. During the eleven years since her life had been torn from that past she had seen it not only as a separate thing but a thing that had no reach into the future. The very number of miles between, the fact that she made no journeys back home, contributed to that sense of the cleavage, the remoteness, the finality. Those she had left back there remained real and warm in her memory, but her part with them was a thing finished. It was as if only shoots of pain could for the minute unite them.

Turning her face back toward home turned her back to herself there. She dwelt upon home as she had left it, then formed the picture of what she would find now. Her mother and her grandfather would not be there. The father she had left would not be there. A dying man would be there. Ted would be grown up. She wondered if anyone had taken care of the flowers.

Would there be any roses? She and her mother had always taken care of them. Edith--? Would Terror be there? He was only about three when she left; dogs did live as long as that. She had named him Terror because of his puppy pranks. But there would be no puppy pranks now. It would be a sedate old dog she would find. He would not know her--she who had cared for him and romped with him through his puppyhood. But they had not shared experiences.

On the train carrying her back home her own story opened freshly to her.

Again and again she would be caught into it....

* * * * *

Ruth Holland--the girl of twenty--was waiting for Deane Franklin to come and take her to the dance at the Country Club. She was dressed and wandering restlessly about the house, looking in mirrors as she pa.s.sed them, pleased with herself in her new white dress. There was an excitement in the fact that she had not seen Deane for almost a year; he had been away, studying medicine at Johns Hopkins. She wondered if he would seem any different; wondered--really more interested in this than in the other--if she would seem any different to him.

She did not think of Deane "that way" she had told Edith Lawrence, her bosom friend from childhood, when Edith that afternoon had hinted at romantic possibilities. Edith was in romantic mood because she and Will Blair were in the happy state of getting over a quarrel. For a month Ruth had listened to explosions against Will Blair. Now it was made up and Edith was in sweetly chastened spirit. She explained to Ruth at great length and with much earnestness that she had not understood Will, that she had done him a great injustice; and she was going to the party with him that night. Edith and Will and Deane and Ruth were going together.

They were singularly unmatured for girls of twenty. Their experiences had not taken them outside the social life of the town, and within it they had found too easy, pre-prepared sailing for any real finding or tests of themselves. They were daughters of two of the town's most important families; they were two of the town's most attractive girls.

That fixed their place in a round of things not deepening, not individualizing. It was pleasant, rather characterless living on a limited little part of the surface of life. They went to "the parties,"

occupied with that social round that is as definite a thing in a town of forty thousand as in a metropolis. Their emotional experiences had been little more than part of their social life--within it and of the character of it. Attractive, popular, of uncontested place in the society in which they found themselves, they had not known the strivings and the heart-aches that can intensify life within those social boundaries. They were always invited. When they sat out dances it was because they wanted to. Life had dealt too favoringly and too uneventfully with them to find out what stuff was really in them. They were almost always spoken of together--Edith Lawrence and Ruth Holland--Ruth and Edith. That was of long standing; they had gone to primary school together, to Sunday-school, through the high-school. They told each other things; they even hinted at emotions concealed within their b.r.e.a.s.t.s, of dissatisfactions and longings there were no words for.

Once Ruth confided that sometimes she wept and could not have said why, and great seemed the marvel when Edith confessed to similar experiences.

They never suspected that girlhood was like that; they were like that, and set apart and united in being so.

But those spiritual indulgences were rare; for the most part they were what would be called two wholesome, happy girls, girls whose lot had fallen in pleasant places.

Ruth wanted to go to college, but her father had kept her from it. Women should marry and settle down and have families was the belief of Cyrus Holland. Going to college put foolish notions in their heads. Not being able to go had been Ruth's first big disappointment. Edith had gone East to a girls' school. At the last minute, realizing how lonely she would be at home without her chum, Ruth had begged to go with her. Her mother had urged it for her. But it was an expensive school to which Edith was going, and when he found what it would cost Ruth's father refused, saying he could not afford it, and that it was nonsense, anyway. Ruth had then put in a final plea for the State University, which would not cost half as much as Edith's school. Seeing that it meant more to her than he had known, and having a particular affection for this younger daughter of his, Mr. Holland was on the point of giving in when the newspapers came out with a scandal that centered about the suicide of a girl student at the university. That settled it; Ruth would stay home with her mother. She could go on with music, and study literature with Miss Collins. Miss Collins stood for polite learning in the town. There was not the remotest danger of an education received through her unfeminizing a girl. But Ruth soon abandoned Miss Collins, scornfully informing her parent that she would as soon study literature with a mummy.

With Ruth, the desire to go to college had been less a definite craving for knowledge than a diffused longing for an enlarged experience. She wanted something different, was impatient for something new, something more. She had more curiosity about the life outside their allotted place than her friend Edith Lawrence had. She wanted to go to college because that would open out from what she had. Ruth would have found small satisfaction in that girls' school of Edith's had her father consented to her going. It was little more than the polite learning of Miss Collins fashionably re-dressed. Edith, however, came home with a new grace and poise, an added gift of living charmingly on the surface of life, and held that school was lovely.

During that year her friend was away--Ruth was nineteen then--she was not so much unhappy as she was growingly impatient for something more, and expectant of it. She was always thinking that something was going to happen--that was why things did not go dead for her. The year was intensifying to her; she missed her friend; she had been baffled in something she wanted. It made her conscious of wanting more than she had. Her energies having been shut off from the way they had wanted to go, she was all the more zestful for new things from life. There was much in her that her life did not engage.

She loved dancing. She was happily excited that night because they were going to a dance. Waiting for Deane, she wondered if he had danced any during the year, hoping that he had, and was a little better dancer than of old. Dear Deane! She always had that "Dear Deane!" feeling after she had been critical about him.

She wished she did think of Deane "that way"--the way she had told Edith she did not think of him. But "that way" drew her from thoughts of Deane. She had stopped before her dressing-table and was toying with her manicure things. She looked at herself in the gla.s.s and saw the color coming to her cheeks. She sat there dreaming--such dreams as float through girlhood.

Her mother came in to see how she looked. Mrs. Holland was a small, frail-looking woman. Ruth resembled her, but with much added. Things caught into Ruth were not in her mother. They resembled each other in certain definite things, but there was something that flushed Ruth to life--transforming her--that did not live in her mother. They were alike as a beautiful sh.e.l.l enclosing a light may be like one that is not lighted. Mrs. Holland was much occupied with the social life of her town. She was light-hearted, well-liked. She went to the teas and card parties which abounded there and accepted that as life with no dissatisfaction beyond a mild desire for more money.

She also enjoyed the social life of her daughter; where Ruth was to go and what she would wear were matters of interest and importance. Indeed life was compounded of matters concerning where one would go and what one would wear.

"Well, Sally Gordon certainly did well with that dress," was her verdict. "Some think she's falling off. Now do try and not get it spoiled the first thing, Ruth. Dancing is so hard on your clothes."

She surveyed her daughter with satisfaction. Ruth was a daughter a mother would survey with satisfaction. The strong life there was in her was delicately and subtly suggested. She did not have what are thought to be the easily distinguishable marks of intense feeling. She suggested fine things--a rare, high quality. She was not out-and-out beautiful; her beauty lurked within her feeling. It was her fluidity that made her lovely. Her hazel eyes were ever changing with light and feeling, eyes that could wonderfully darken, that glowed in a rush of feeling and shone in expectancy or delight,--eyes that the spirit made. She had a lovely brow, a sensitive, beautiful mouth. But it needed the light within to find her beauty. Without it she was only a sweet-looking, delicately fashioned girl.

"That's Deane," said Ruth, as the bell rang.

"I want to see him too," said Mrs. Holland, "and so will your father."

Ruth met him in the hall, holding out both hands with, "Deane, I'm _so_ glad to see you!"

He was not an expressive youth. As he shook Ruth's hands with vigor, he exclaimed, "Same here! Same here!" and straightway he seemed just the Deane of old and in the girl's heart was a faint disappointment.

As a little boy people had called Deane Franklin a homely youngster. His thick, sandyish hair used to stand up in an amazing manner. He moved in a peculiarly awkward way, as if the jointing of him had not been perfectly accomplished. He had a wide generous mouth that was attractive when it was not screwed out of shape. His keen blue eyes had a nice twinkle. His abrupt, hearty manner seemed very much his own. He was better dressed than when Ruth had last seen him. She was thinking that Deane could actually be called attractive in his own homely, awkward way. And yet, as he kept shaking her hands up and down, broadly grinning, nodding his head,--"tickled to death to be back," she felt anew that she could not think of Deane "that way." Perhaps she had known him too long. She remembered just how absurd he had looked in his first long trousers--and those silly little caps he had worn perched way back on his head! Yet she really loved Deane, in a way; she felt a great deal nearer to him than to her own brother Cyrus.

They had gone into the living-room. Mrs. Holland thought he had grown--grown broader, anyway; Mr. Holland wanted to know about the medical school, and would he practice in Freeport? Ted wanted to know if Johns Hopkins had a good team.

"That's Will, I guess," he said, turning to Ruth as the bell rang.

"Oh, Will," cried Mrs. Holland, "do ask Edith to come in and show us her dress! She won't muss it if she's careful. Her mother told me it was the sweetest dress Edith ever had."

Edith entered in her bright, charming way, exhibiting her pretty pink dress with a pleasure that was winning. She had more of definite beauty than Ruth--golden hair, really sunny hair, it was, and big, deep blue eyes and fresh, even skin. Ruth often complained that Edith had something to count on; she could tell how she was going to look, while with her--Ruth--there was never any knowing. Some of the times when she was most anxious to look her best, she was, as she bewailed it, a fright. Edith was larger than Ruth, she had more of a woman's development.

Mrs. Holland followed them out to the carriage. "Now don't stay until _all_ hours," was her parting admonition, in a tone of comfortable resignation to the fact that that was exactly what they would do.

"Well," said Mr. Holland, who had gone as far as the door, "I don't know what young folks are coming to. After nine o'clock now!"

"That must be a punk school Deane goes to," said Ted, his mind not yet pried from the football talk.

CHAPTER SIX

"Our dance."

With a swift little movement the girl turned a glowing face to the man standing before her. Flushed with dancing, keyed high in the pleasure and triumphs of the evening, she turned the same radiant face to Stuart Williams as he claimed their dance that she would have turned to almost anyone claiming a dance. It was something that came to life in the man's eyes as he looked down into her flushed face, meeting her happy, shining eyes, that arrested the flashing, impersonal smile of an instant before and underneath that impersonal gladness of youth there was a faint flutter of self.

He was of the "older crowd;" it happened that she had never danced with him before. He was a better dancer than the boys of her own set, but somehow that old impersonal joy in dancing was a lesser thing now than the sense of dancing with this man.

"That was worth coming for," he said quietly, when the dance and the encore to it were over and they found themselves by one of the doors opening out on the balcony.

She looked up with a smile. It was a smile curiously touched with shyness. He saw the color wavering in her sensitive, delicate face. Then he asked lightly: "Shall we see what's being dispensed from this punch-bowl?"

With their ice, they stood looking out into the moonlight over a wide stretch of meadow to far hills. "A fine night to ride over the hills and far away," he laughed at last, his voice lingering a little on the fancy.

She only laughed a little in reply, looking off there toward over the hills and far away. Watching her, he wondered why he had never thought anything much about her before. He would have said that Ruth Holland was one of the nice attractive girls of the town, and beyond that could have said little about her. He watched the flow of her slender neck into her firm delicate little chin, the lovely corners of her mouth where feeling lurked. The fancy came to him that she had not settled into flesh the way most people did, that she was not fixed by it. He puzzled for the word he wanted for her, then got it--luminous was what she was; he felt a considerable satisfaction in having found that word.

"Seems to me you and Edith Lawrence grew up in a terrible hurry," he began in a slow, teasing manner. "Just a day or two ago you were youngsters racing around with flying pigtails, and now here you are--all these poor young chaps--and all us poor old ones--fighting for dances with you. What made you hurry so?" he laughed.

The coquette in most normal girls of twenty rose like a little imp up through her dreaming of over the hills and far away. "Why, I don't know," she said, demurely; "perhaps I was hurrying to catch up with someone."

His older to younger person manner fell away, leaving the man delighting in the girl, a delightfully daring girl it seemed she was, for all that look of fine things he had felt in her just a moment before. He grew newly puzzled about her, and interested in the puzzle. "Would you like to have that someone stand still long enough to give you a good start?"

he asked, zestful for following.

But she could not go on with it. She was not used to saying daring things to "older men." She was a little appalled at what she had done--saying a thing like that to a man who was married; and yet just a little triumphant in her own audacity, and the way she had been able to make him feel she was something a long way removed from a little girl with flying pigtails.