Being who she was and what she was, her contacts with the world had not been those of the ordinary girl of her age and her station in life.  In her earlier years she had been accustomed to radical words, radical thought, radical individuals.  The world she was taught to see was not the world girl children are usually taught to see.  And yet she retained her humor, her brightness of spirit, the joy of life that gave her her smile. ...  She had known boys and men.  However, none of these had made marked impression upon her.  They had been mere incidents, pleasant, uninteresting, wearying, amusing.  None had thrilled her. ...  So she had less experience to call to her aid than the average girl.

Dulac occupied her mind as no man had ever occupied it before; the thought of him thrilled her. ...  He wanted her, this magnetic, theatrically handsome man wanted her. ...

When we make a choice we do so by a process of comparison.  We buy this house because we like it better than that house; we buy this hat because we prefer it to that other; ... it is so we get our notions of value, of desirability.  It is more than possible that some effort at comparison is made by a woman in selecting a husband.  She compares her suitor with other men.  Her decision may hinge upon the result. ...  Dulac was clearly superior to most of the men Ruth had known. ...  Then, unaccountably, she found herself thinking of Bonbright Foote, who had that morning discharged her from her employment.  She found herself setting young Foote and Dulac side by side and, becoming objectively conscious of this, she felt herself guilty of some sort of disloyalty.  What right had a man in Foote’s position to stand in her thoughts beside Dulac?  He was everything Dulac was not; Dulac was nothing that Foote was.

She realized she was getting nowhere, was only confusing herself.  Perhaps, she told herself, when Dulac was present, when he asked her to be his wife, she would know what to answer.  So, resolutely, she put the matter from her mind.  It would not stay out.

She dreaded meeting Dulac at supper—­for the evening meal was supper in the Frazer cottage—­and yet she was burningly curious to meet him, to be near him, to verify her image of him. ...  Extra pains with the detail of her simple toilet held her in her room until her mother called to know if she were not going to help with the meal.  As she went to the kitchen she heard Dulac moving about in his room.

When they were seated at the table it was Mrs. Frazer who jerked the conversation away from casual matters.

“Ruth was discharged this morning, Mr. Dulac,” she said, bitterly, “and her as good a typewriter and as neat and faithful as any.  No fault found, either, nor could be, not if anybody was looking for it with a fine-tooth comb.  Meanness, that’s what I say.  Nothing but meanness. ...  And us needing that fifteen dollars a week to keep the breath of life in us.”