His feeling had grown as he spoke, and he stopped now because he was too close to losing control; he reddened as his brother--calm, apparently unmoved--surveyed him as if mildly amused. That way Cyrus looked at him when they were quarrelling always enraged him. If he would only _say_ something--not stand there as if he were too superior to bother himself with such a thing! He knew Cyrus knew it maddened him--that that was why he did it, and so it was quietly that he resumed: "No, Cy, I'm not with you, and you might as well know it. I'm for Ruth. You've got the world on your side--and I know the arguments you can put up, and all that, but Ruth's got a--" he fumbled a minute for the words--"Ruth's got a power and an understanding about her that you'll never have. She's got a heart. More than that, she's got--character." He paused, thinking, and Cyrus did speak then. "Oh, I don't think I'd use that word," he said suavely. "No, you wouldn't; you wouldn't see it, but that's just what I mean." He turned to the minister. "Character, I say, is what my sister Ruth has got. Character is something more than putting up a slick front. It's something more than doing what's expected of you. It's a kind of--a kind of being faithful to yourself. _Being_ yourself. Oh, I know--" at a sound from his brother--"just how you can laugh at it, but there's something to it just the same. Why, Ruth's got more real stuff in her than you two put together! After being with her these days you, Cy, strike a fellow as pretty shallow." That brought the color to his brother's face. Stung to a real retort, he broke out with considerable heat: "If to have a respect for decency is 'shallow'--!" He quickly checked himself as the door opened and Harriett's maid entered. She paused, feeling the tension, startled by their faces. "Excuse me, sir," she said to the minister, "but Mrs. Tyler said I was to tell you she had gone out for a few minutes. She said to tell you she had gone to see her sister." She looked startled at Ted's laugh. After she had gone he laughed again. "Hard luck!" he said to his brother-in-law, and walked from the room.