Vanity smarting from deeper hurts made her answer, haughtily: "I'm rather inexperienced, you know, in meeting people of that class." In his heart too there were deeper disappointments than this touched. "Well, I must say--" he began hotly, "I think if I felt as snobbish as that I'd try pretty hard to conceal it!" Amy was carefully putting away her hat; she had an appearance of cold composure, of a sense of superiority. It was because she wanted to keep that that she did not speak. The things within would so completely have destroyed it. "I guess you don't understand, Amy," said Deane, quieted by her silence; "if you knew all about Annie Morris I think you'd see she is a woman worth meeting." Thinking of his talk with Edith and her mother that morning, he added, a good deal of feeling breaking into his voice: "A good sight more so than some of the people you are meeting!" "And of course," she could not hold back, "they--those inferior people--won't go to see Ruth Holland, and this wonderful woman will! That's the secret of it, isn't it?" "It's one thing that shows her superiority," he replied coolly. "Another thing is her pluck--grit. Her husband is a dolt, and she's determined her three children shall have some sort of a show in life, so she's driven ahead--worked from daylight till dark many a time--to make decent things possible for them." "Well, that's very commendable, I'm sure," replied Amy mildly, appearing to be chiefly concerned with a loose button on the wrap she had just taken off. "And with all that she's kept her own spirit alive; she's not going to let life get clear ahead of _her_, either. She's pretty valiant, I think." He was thinking again of Edith and her mother as he added contentiously, "I don't know any woman in this town I'd rather talk to!" Amy, appearing quite outside the things that were disturbing him, only smiled politely and threaded a needle for sewing on the button. He stood there in the doorway, fidgeting, his face red. She seemed so uncaring; she seemed so far away. "Oh, Amy!" he cried, miserably, appealingly. Quickly she looked up; her mouth, which had been so complacent, twitched. He started toward her, but just then the doorbell rang. "I presume that's your mother," she said, in matter of fact tone. Mrs. Franklin was with them for dinner that night. Amy's social training made it appear as if nothing were disturbing her. She appeared wholly composed, serene; it was Deane who seemed ill at ease, out of sorts. After dinner he had to go to the hospital and when she was alone with his mother Amy was not able to keep away from the subject of Ruth Holland. For one thing, she wanted to hear about her, she was avid for detail as to how she looked, things she had done and said--that curious human desire to press on a place that hurts. And there was too the impulse for further self-exoneration, to be assured that she was right, to feel that she was injured.