Ruth found it hard to speak; she did not know what to say. She had a flashing sense of the haphazardness of life, of the power, the flame this found in Mildred that the usual experiences would never have found, of how, without it, she would doubtless have developed much like the other girls of her world--how she might develop because of it--how human beings were shaped by chance. She looked at Mildred's face--troubled, passionate, a confused defiance, and yet something real there looking through the tumult, something flaming, something that would fight, a something, she secretly knew, more flaming, more fighting, than might ever break to life in Mildred again. And then she happened to look down at the girl's feet--the very smart low shoes of dull kid, perfectly fitted, high arched--the silk stockings, the slender ankle. They seemed so definitely feet for the places prepared, for the easier ways, not fitted for going a hard way alone. It made her feel like a mother who would want to keep a child from a way she herself knew as too hard. "But what are you going to put in the place of that social world, Mildred?" she gently asked. "There must be something to fill its place. What is that going to be?" "Love will fill its place!" came youth's proud, sure answer. Ruth was looking straight ahead; the girl's tone had thrilled her--that faith in love, that courage for it. It was so youthful!--so youthfully sure, so triumphant in blindness. Youth would dare so much--youth knew so little. She did not say anything; she could not bear to. "Love can fill its place!" Mildred said again, as if challenging that silence. And as still Ruth did not speak she demanded, sharply, "Can't it?" Ruth turned to her a tender, compassionate face, too full of feeling, of conflict, to speak. Slowly, as if she could not bear to do it, she shook her head. Mildred looked just dazed for a moment, then so much as if one in whom she had trusted, on whom she had counted for a great deal had failed her that Ruth made a little gesture as if to say it was not that, as if to say she was sorry it seemed like that. Mildred did not heed it. "But it has with you," she insisted. "It has _not_!" leaped out the low, savage answer that startled the woman from whom it came. "It has not!" she repeated fiercely.