Ted broke a pause to say that he supposed it was getting late and he must be starting for Harriett's. Cyrus had asked him to come over awhile that evening. Mr. McFarland, their family lawyer, was going out of town for a few days, leaving the next morning. He was coming in that evening, more as the old friend than formally, to speak to them about some business matters, Cyrus's time being limited and there being a number of things to arrange.
"I hate leaving you alone, Ruth," said Ted, lingering.
She looked over to him with quick affectionate smile. "I don't mind, Ted. Somehow I don't mind being alone tonight."
That was true. Being alone would not be loneliness that evening. Things were somehow opened; all things had so strangely opened. She had been looking down the deep-shadowed street, that old street down which she used to go. The girl who used to go down that street was singularly real to her just then; she had about her the fresh feeling, the vivid sense, of a thing near in time. Old things were so strangely opened, old feeling was alive again: the wild joy in the girl's heart, the delirious expectancy--and the fear. It was strange how completely one could get back across the years, how things gone could become living things again. That was why she was not going to mind being alone just then; she had a sense of the whole flow of her life--living, moving. It did not seem a thing to turn away from; it was not often that things were all open like that.
"I shouldn't wonder if Deane would drop in," said Ted, as if trying to help himself through leaving her there alone.
"He may," Ruth answered. She did not say it with enthusiasm, much as she would like to talk with Deane. Deane was just the one it would be good to talk with that night. But Deane never mentioned his wife to her. At first, in her preoccupation, and her pleasure in seeing him, she had not thought much about that. Then it had come to her that doubtless Deane's wife would not share his feeling about her, that she would share the feeling of all the other people; that brought the fear that she might, again, be making things hard for Deane. She had done enough of that; much as his loyalty, the rare quality of his affectionate friendship meant to her, she would rather he did not come than let the slightest new shadow fall upon his life because of her. And yet it seemed all wrong, preposterous, to think anyone who was close to Deane, anyone whom he loved, should not understand this friendship between them. She thought of how, meeting after all those years, they were not strange with each other. That seemed rare--to be cherished.