She would have supposed, thinking back to it afterward, that she would have drawn back; that before feeling really broke through, a girl such as she, reared as she had been, a part of such a society, a girl, as they afterward said, who should have known right from wrong would, in that time of its gathering, have drawn back from so shameful a thing as love with another woman's husband. It was as mystifying to her that she did not fight against it as it was that it should have come. She did not understand the one nor the other. Certainly it was not as she would have supposed it would be had she heard of such a thing. Something seemed to have caught her up, to have taken her. She was appalled at times, but the truth was that she was carried along almost without resistance; ideas of resistance were there, but they were pale things, not charged with power. She would suppose, had she known the story only through hearing it, that she would have thought intensely and become wretched in the thought of Mrs. Williams. Perhaps if Mrs. Williams had been a plain little woman, or a sad looking one, that would have come home to her harder. But one would not readily pity Marion Williams, or get the feeling of wronging her. As Marion Averley she had been the reigning girl of the town. Ruth, ten years younger, had not come far enough out from her little girl's awe of Marion Averley, the young lady, to be quick in getting the feeling of wronging Marion Williams, the wife. Perhaps one would be more slow in getting a feeling of wronging the most smartly dressed woman in the room than would be the case with the wife dowdy or drab. Mrs. Williams, while not radiating happiness, seemed somehow impervious to unhappiness, and certainly to any hurt another woman could bring her. She had an atmosphere of high self-valuation. While she never appeared to be having an especially good time she gave a sense of being perfectly able to command a better one had it pleased her to do so.