It left Ruth unsatisfied, troubled. And yet it seemed surely a woman would be proud of a man who had been as fine in a thing, as big and true and understanding, as Deane had been with her. Surely a woman would be proud of a man who had so loyally, at such great cost, been a woman's friend, who, because of friendship, because of fidelity to his own feeling, would stand out that way against others. She tried to think that, for she could not go back to what Deane had left behind. And yet she could not forget that she had not met Amy. They walked toward home talking quietly about things that happened to come up, more as if they were intimate friends who had constant meetings than as if they had been years apart and were about to part for what would probably be years more. But that consciousness was there underneath; it ruled the silences, made their voices gentler. It was very sweet to Ruth, just before again leaving all home things behind, to be walking in the spring twilight with Deane along that road they knew when they were boy and girl together. Twilight was deepening to evening when they came to the hill from which they could see the town. They stood still looking off at it, speaking of the beauty of the river, of the bridge, of the strangeness of the town lights when there was still that faint light of day. And then they stood still and said nothing, looking off at that town where they had been brought up. It was beautiful from there, bent round a curve in the broad river, built upon hills. She was leaving it now--again leaving it. She had come home, and now she was going away again. And now she knew, in spite of her anger of the day before, in spite of all there had been to hurt her, in spite of all that had been denied her, that she was not leaving it in bitterness. In one sense she had not had much from her days back home; but in a real sense, she had had much. She looked at that town now with a feeling of new affection. She believed she would always have that feeling of affection for it. It stood to her for things gone--dear things gone; for youth's gladness, for the love of father and mother, for many happy things now left behind. But now that she had come back, had gone through those hard days, she was curiously freed from that town. She had this new affection for it in being freed of it. She would always love it because of what it had meant in the past, but love it as one does love a thing past. It seemed she had to come back to it to let it lose its hold on her. It was of the past, and she knew now that there was a future. What that future was to be she did not know, but she would turn from this place of the past with a new sense of the importance of the future. Standing there with Deane on the hilltop at evening, looking off at that town where they had both been brought up, she got a sense of the significance of the whole thing--the eleven years away, and the three years preceding those years; a sense too of the