"And you can do more than anyone else, Ruth," Mrs. Lawrence urged. "You know Edith counts so on you," she added with an intimate little smile. And again Ruth only nodded, and bent over her coffee. She had a feeling of having been caught, of being helpless. Mrs. Lawrence was talking about the caterer for the wedding; she wished it were another kind of salad. Then she wanted Ruth to come up and look at her dress; she wasn't at all satisfied with the touch of velvet they had put on it. After that some one else came in and Mrs. Lawrence was called away. Ruth left without saying what she had come to say. She knew now that she would not say it. She went home seeing that she must go through with the wedding. It was too late now to do anything else. Edith would break down--her pleasure in her wedding spoiled; no, Edith must be spared--helped. She must do this for Edith. No matter what people thought of her, no matter what Edith herself thought--though _wouldn't_ she understand? Ruth considered with a tortured wistfulness--the thing to do now was to go through with it. Edith must look beautiful at her wedding; her happiness must be unmarred. Later, when she was away with Will--happy--she could bear it better. And she would understand that Ruth had wished to spare her; had done it to help her. She held that thought with her--and drove ahead. There were moments in those last two days at home when it seemed that now her heart was indeed breaking: a kindly note in the voice of her father or mother--one of Ted's teasing jokes--little requests from her grandfather; then doing things she had done for years and knowing while doing them that she would not be doing them any more--the last time she cut the flowers, and then that last night when she went to bed in her own room, the room she had had ever since old enough to have a room of her own. She lay there that night and listened to the branches of the great oak tapping the house. She had heard that sound all her life; it was associated with all the things of her life; it seemed to be speaking for all those things--mourning for them. But the closest she came to actual breaking down was that last day when her dog, laying his head upon her knee, looked with trust and affection up into her eyes. As she laid her hand upon his head his eyes seemed to speak for all the love she had known through all the years. It seemed she could not bear it, that her heart could not bear it, that she would rather die. But she did bear it; she had that terrible power for bearing.