Ruth had continued to live in the apartment.  It had not been her intention to do so.  From the moment of reading Bonbright’s succinct note she was determined to go back to the little cottage and to her mother.  But she put it off for a day, then for another day, and days grew into weeks and months.  “To-morrow I’ll move,” she told herself each night, but next day she was no nearer to uprooting herself than she had been the day before.

She gave herself no reasons for remaining.  If she had been asked for a reason she might have said it was because Dulac still boarded with her mother.  He had not left the city with the breaking of the strike, but had remained.  He had remained because he had asked the union he represented to let him remain and had been able to show them reasons for granting his request.  He wanted to stay on the ground to work quietly underground, undoing the harm that had been done by the strike; quietly proselyting, preaching his gospel, gaining strength day by day, until he should have reared an organization capable of striking again.  The courage of the man was unquenchable. ...  And he wanted to be near Ruth.  Just as he had set his will to force Bonbright Foote, Incorporated, to bow to the will of the men, so he had set his will to force Ruth to bow to his will. ...  So he remained and labored.

But his presence at her mother’s was not the real reason that impelled Ruth to continue in the home Bonbright had made for her.  It was something more intangible.  She found the thought of leaving that spot unendurable, but she did not, dared not, seek in her heart for what made it unendurable.

For a week she scarcely ventured outside the door; then the loneliness, the lack of occupation, drove her out.  She must be busy, for when she sat idly in a room her thoughts became torture.  There were many sides to her affliction.  First in her mind she placed the failure of her great project.  She had wrecked her life for it without accomplishment.  Second in the rank of her griefs stood the fact that she had been on the point of giving herself to Dulac.  She would have gone with him, disregarding convention, breaking her vows of marriage.  For that she despised herself... despised herself the more because she knew now that she did not love Dulac, that she had never loved Dulac.  That discovery had shocked and shaken her, and when she thought of what might have happened if she had gone with him a numbness of horror crept over her, leaving her cold and trembling. ...  She would have gone, and she did not love him.  She would not have known she did not love him until it was too late to draw back... and then she would have lived, but her soul would have died!

She accused herself bitterly for mistaking glamour for love.  She knew now that Dulac had called from her nothing deeper than a foolish, girlish fascination.  His personality, his work, his enthusiasm had enmeshed her, blinded her—­and she had mistaken her feelings for love!  Of this she was certain. ...  There were moments when she felt she must tell Bonbright.  Once she actually took writing materials to do so, but she did not tell him. ...  She wanted him to know, because, she thought, it would be a sort of vindication in his eyes.  But she was wrong.  She wanted him to know for quite another reason than that.