Fidelity

His blood quickened in the old anger for Ruth; but there was something worse than that--a sick feeling, a feeling in which there was disappointment and into which there crept something that was like shame.

The telephone rang before he need reply. When he turned from it, it was to say hurriedly, "I'll have to go to the hospital, Amy. Sorry--that woman I operated on yesterday--" He was in the next room, gathering together his things before he had finished it.

Amy followed him in. "Why, I'm so sorry, dear. It's too bad--when you're so tired."

He turned and caught her in his arms and held her there close in a passion of relief at the gentleness and love of her voice that swept away those things about her he had tried to think were not in his mind. Amy was so sweet!--so beautiful, so tender. Why of course she wouldn't understand about Ruth! How absurd to expect her to understand, he thought, when he had blurted things out like that, g