There were moments in those last two days at home when it seemed that now her heart was indeed breaking: a kindly note in the voice of her father or mother--one of Ted's teasing jokes--little requests from her grandfather; then doing things she had done for years and knowing while doing them that she would not be doing them any more--the last time she cut the flowers, and then that last night when she went to bed in her own room, the room she had had ever since old enough to have a room of her own. She lay there that night and listened to the branches of the great oak tapping the house. She had heard that sound all her life; it was associated with all the things of her life; it seemed to be speaking for all those things--mourning for them. But the closest she came to actual breaking down was that last day when her dog, laying his head upon her knee, looked with trust and affection up into her eyes. As she laid her hand upon his head his eyes seemed to speak for all the love she had known through all the years. It seemed she could not bear it, that her heart could not bear it, that she would rather die. But she did bear it; she had that terrible power for bearing.
If only she had told her mother, they said over and over again. But if she told her mother she would not go--that was how she saw that; they would not let her; or rather, she would have no strength left to fight through their efforts to keep her. And then how could she tell her mother when her mother would never in the world understand? She did not believe that her mother could so much as comprehend that she could love where she should not, that a girl like Ruth--or rather, _Ruth_--could love a man it was not right she love. She had never talked with her mother of real things, had never talked with her of the things of her deepest feeling. She would not know how to do it now, even had she dared.
Her mother helped her dress for the wedding, talking all the while about plans for the evening--just who was going to the church, the details about serving. Ruth clung to the thought that those _were_ the things her mother was interested in; they always had been, surely they would continue to be. In her desperation she tried to think that in those little things her mother cared so much about she would, after a time, find healing.