Young, all inexperienced in the ways of adjusting love to life, of saving it for life, the love in her tried to shoot through the self-love that closed her in, holding her tight. She wanted to follow that impulse, go over and put her arms around her husband, let her kisses drive away that look of sadness. She knew that she could do it, that she ought to do it, that she would be sorry for not having done it, but--she couldn't. Love did not know how to fight its way through pride. He had risen. "I must go. I have a number of calls to make. I--I'm sorry you feel as you do, Amy." He was not going to explain! He was just leaving her outside it all! He didn't care for her, really, at all--just took her because he couldn't get that other woman! Took _her_--Amy Forrester--because he couldn't get the woman he wanted! Great bands of incensed pride bound her heart now, closing in the love that had fluttered there. Her face, twisted with varying emotions, was fairly ugly as she cried: "Well, I must say, I wish you had told me this before we were married!" He looked at her in surprise. Then, surprised anew, looked quickly away. Feeling that he had failed, he tried to put it aside lightly. "Oh, come now, Amy, you didn't think, did you, that you could marry a man of thirty-four who had never loved any woman?" "I should like to think he had loved a respectable woman!" she cried, wounded anew by this lightness, unable to hold back things she miserably knew she would be sorry she had not held back. "And if he had loved that kind of a woman--_did_ love her--I should like to think he had too much respect for his wife to ask her to meet such a person!" "Ruth Holland is not a woman to speak like that about, Amy," he said with unconcealed anger. "She's not a decent woman! She's not a respectable woman! She's a bad woman! She's a low woman!" She could not hold it back. She knew she looked unlovely, knew she was saying things that would not make her loved. She could not help it. Deane turned away from her. After a minute he got a little control of himself and instead of the hot things that had flashed up, said coldly: "I don't think you know what you're talking about." "Of course I couldn't hope to know as much as _she_ does," she jeered. "However," she went on, with more of a semblance of dignity, "I do know a few things. I know that society cannot countenance a woman who did what that woman did. I know that if a woman is going to selfishly take her own happiness with no thought of others she must expect to find herself outside the lives of decent people. Society must protect itself against such persons as she. I know that much--fortunately." Her words fortified her. She, certainly, was in the right. She felt that she had behind her all those women of that afternoon. Did any of them receive Ruth Holland? Did they not all see that society must close in against the individual who defied it? She felt supported.