"She was crazy to know about your children. That's been a grief to her, Edith. Ruth should be a mother--you know that. You must know what a mother she would have made. If you were to take your youngsters to see her--" He broke off with a laugh, as if there was no way of expressing it. Edith looked away from him, seemed to be staring straight into a rose bush at the side of the porch. "Couldn't you?" he gently pressed. She turned to him. "I'd like to, Deane," she said simply, "but, "--her dimmed eyes were troubled--"I don't see how I could." "Why not?" he pursued. "It's simple enough--just go and see her. We might go together, if that would seem easier." She was pulling at a bit of sewing in her lap. "But, Deane, it _isn't_ simple," she began hesitatingly. "It isn't just one's self. There's society--the whole big terrible question. If it were just a simple, individual matter,--why, the truth is I'd love to go and see Ruth. If it were just a personal thing--why don't you know that I'd forget everything--except that she's Ruth?" Her voice choked and she did not go on, but was fumbling with the sewing in her lap. He hitched his chair forward anxiously, concentrated on his great desire to say it right, to win Edith for Ruth. Edith was a simple sort of being--really, a loving being; if she could only detach herself from what she pathetically called the whole terrible question--if he could just make her see that the thing she wanted to do was the thing to do. She looked up at him out of big grieving eyes, as if wanting to be convinced, wanting the way opened for the loving thing she would like to do. "But, Edith," he began, as composedly and gently as he could, for she was so much a child in her mentality it seemed she must be dealt with gently and simply, "_is_ it so involved, after all? Isn't it, more than anything else, just that simple, personal matter? Why not forget everything but the personal part of it? Ruth is back--lonely--in trouble. Things came between you and Ruth, but that was a long time ago and since that she's met hard things. You're not a vindictive person; you're a loving person. Then for heaven's sake why _wouldn't_ you go and see her?"--it was impossible to keep the impatience out of that last. "I know," she faltered, "but--society--" "Society!" he jeered. "_Forget_ society, Edith, and be just a human being! If _you_ can forget--forgive--what seemed to you the wrong Ruth did _you_--if _your_ heart goes out to her--then what else is there to it?" he demanded impatiently. "But you see,"--he could feel her reaching out, as if thinking she must, to the things that had been said to her, was conscious of her mother's thinking pushing on hers as she fumbled, "but one _isn't_ free, Deane. Society _has_ to protect itself. What might not happen--if it didn't?"