Through the years he had grown used to seeing Mrs. Williams; he had become blunted to it; sometimes he could see her without really being conscious of "it," just because he was used to seeing her. But now that he had just come home, had been with Ruth, there was an acute new shock in seeing her.
During the first intermission he never looked back after that first glance; but when the house was darkened again it was not at the stage he looked most. From his place in the dress circle across the house he could look over at her, secured by the dim light could covertly watch her. It was hard to keep his eyes from her. She sat well to the front of the box; he could see every move she made, and every little thing about her wretchedly fascinated him. She sat erect, hands loosely clasped in her lap, seemingly absorbed in the play. Her shoulders seemed very white above her gauzy black dress; in that light, at least, she was beautiful; her neck was long and slim and her hair was coiled high on her head. He saw a woman bend forward from the rear of the box and speak to her; it brought her face into the light and he saw that it was Mrs. Blair--Edith Lawrence, Ruth's old chum. He crumpled the program in his hand until his friend looked at him in inquiry; then he smiled a little and carefully smoothed the program out. But when, in the next intermission, he was asked something about how he thought the play was going to turn out, he was at a loss for a suggestion. He had not known what that act was about. And he scarcely knew what the other acts were about. It was all newly strange to him, newly sad. He had a new sense of it, and a new sense of the pity of it, as he sat there that last night watching the people who had been Ruth's and Stuart's friends; he thought of how they had once been a part of all this; how, if things had gone differently it was the thing they would still be a part of. There was something about seeing Edith Lawrence there with Mrs. Williams made him so sorry for Ruth that it was hard to keep himself pulled together. And that house, this new sense of things, made him deeply sorry for Stuart Williams. He knew that he missed all this, terribly missed the things this represented. His constant, off-hand questionings about things--about the growth of the town, whether so and so was making good, who was running this or that, showed how he was missing the things he had turned away from, of which he had once been so promising a part. Here tonight, among the things they had left, something made him more sorry for Ruth and Stuart than he had ever been before. And he kept thinking of the strangeness of things; of how, if there had not been that one thing, so many things would have been different. For their whole family, for the Williams' family, yes, for Deane Franklin, too, it would have been all different if Ruth had just fallen in love with some one else. Somehow that seemed disloyalty to Ruth. He told himself she couldn't help it. He guessed _she_ got it the worst; everything would have been different, easier, for her, certainly, if she, like the other girls of her crowd, had fallen in love with one of the fellows she could have married. Then she would be there with Edith Lawrence tonight; probably they would be in a box together.