They all stood at the head of the steps for a moment as he and Amy were bidding the others goodnight. They talked of the tea Edith was to give for Amy the following week--what Amy would wear--how many people there would be. "And let me pick you up and take you to the tea tomorrow," Edith was saying. "It will be small and informal--just Cora's old friends--and then you won't have so many strangers to meet next week." He glowed with new liking of Edith, felt anew that sweetness in her nature that, after her turning from Ruth, had not been there for him. Looking at her through this new friendliness he was thinking how beautifully she had developed. Edith was a mother now, she had two lovely children. She was larger than in her girlhood; she had indeed flowered, ripened. Edith was a sweet woman, he was thinking. "I do think they're the kindest, most beautiful people!" Amy exclaimed warmly as they started slowly homeward through the fragrant softness of the May night. CHAPTER TWO He had known that Amy would ask, and wondered a little at her waiting so long. It was an hour later, as she sat before her dressing-table brushing her hair that she turned to him with a little laugh and asked: "Who is this mysterious Ruth?" He sighed; he was tired and telling about Ruth seemed a large undertaking. Amy colored and turned from him and picked up her brush. "Don't tell me if you don't want to," she said formally. His hand went round her bared shoulder. "Dearest! Why, I want to, of course. It's just that it's a long story, and tonight I'm a little tired." As she did not respond to that he added: "This was a hard day at the office." Amy went on brushing her hair; she did not suggest that he let it go until another time so he began, "Ruth was a girl who used to live here." "I gathered that," she replied quietly. Her tone made no opening for him. "I thought a great deal of her," he said after a moment. "Yes, I gathered that too." She said it dryly, and smiled just a little. He was more conscious than ever of being tired, of its being hard to tell about Ruth. "I gathered," said Amy, still faintly smiling, though, her voice went a trifle higher, "that you thought more of her--" she hesitated, then amended--"think more of her--than the rest of them do." He answered simply: "Yes, I believe that's so. Though Edith used to care a great deal for Ruth," he added meditatively. "Well, what did she do?" Amy demanded impatiently. "What _is_ it?" For a moment his cheek went down to her soft hair that was all around her, in a surge of love for its softness, a swift, deep gratitude for her loveliness. He wanted to rest there, letting that, for the time, shut out all else, secure in new happiness and forgetting old hurts.