At half-past eleven I got up, stole across the hall, and stood listening outside her closed door. At long intervals I could hear her move. She was not sleeping. I waited an hour and stole across the hall again. She was still awake. Poor Ruth--sleepless, tearless (there was no sound of sobbing) hour after hour, there she was lying all night long, staring into the darkness, waiting for the dawn. At three I opened the door gently and went in, carrying something hot to drink on a tray. "What is the matter?" she asked calmly. "Nothing, Ruth. Only you must sleep, and here is some hot milk with just a little pinch of salt. It's so flat without. Nobody can sleep on an empty stomach." "I guess that's the trouble," she said, and sat up and took the milk humbly, like a child. Her fingertips were like ice. I went into the bath-room, filled a hot-water bag, and got out an extra down-comforter. I was tucking it in when she asked, "What time is it?" And I told her. "Only three? Oh, dear--don't go--just yet." So I wrapped myself up in a warm flannel wrapper and sat down on the foot of her bed with my feet drawn up under me. "I won't," I said, "I'll sit here." "You're awfully good to me," Ruth remarked. "I _was_ cold and hungry, I guess. Oh, Lucy," she exclaimed, "I wish one person could understand, just _one_." "I do, Ruth. I do understand," I said eagerly. "It isn't suffrage. It isn't the parade. It isn't any _one_ thing. It's just _everything_, Lucy. I'm made up on a wrong pattern for Bob. I hurt him all the time. Isn't it awful--even though he cares for me, and I for him, we hurt each other?" I kept quite still. I knew that Ruth wanted to talk to some one, and I sat there hugging my knees, thankful that I happened to be the one. Always I had longed for this mysterious sister's confidence, and always I had seemed to her too simple, too obvious, to share and understand. "You know, Lucy," she went on wistfully, "I was awfully happy at first--so happy--you don't know. Why, I would do anything for Bob. I was glad to give up riches for him. My worldly ambitions shriveled into nothing. Comforts, luxuries--what were they as compared to Bob's love? But, oh, Lucy, it is giving up little things, little independencies of thought, little daily habits, which I can't do. I tried to give up these, too. You know I did. I said that the book was just paper and print and the cards just pasteboard. But all the time they were symbols. I could destroy the symbols easily enough, but I couldn't destroy what they stood for. You see, Bob and I have different ideals. That's at the bottom of all the trouble. We tried for weeks not to admit it, but it had to be faced finally." "Your ideals aren't very different way down at their roots--both clean, true, sincere, and all that," I said, with a little yawn, so she might not guess how tremblingly concerned I really was.