Fidelity A Novel

Excerpt: ...But this is different, isn't it?" The words had piled up tumultuously; she seemed right on the verge of angry, tumultuous tears. He paused in what he was doing. "Why, Amy," he murmured in real astonishment. And then helplessly repeated in tender reproach, "Why, Amy!" But she laughed, it seemed sneeringly. He colored, quickly finished dressing and left the room without saying anything more. When she heard the front door close, heard Deane running down the steps, she sat up in bed and burst into tears of rage. Always that woman! Running away to her in the middle of the night! He didn't have to go! There was nothing for him to do as a doctor-he could do nothing for a man who had been dying for a couple of days. He said that-just a couple of nights before when someone wanted him to come. But this was Ruth Holland! She had only to telephone. Of course he'd go anywhere-any time-for her! Her sobs grew more and more passionate. Her head down on her knees she rocked back and forth in that miserable fury only jealousy and wounded pride can create. This gathered together, brought to a head, the resentment accumulating through a number of incidents. That afternoon she had gone over to the Lawrences' to thank Edith and her mother for the flowers from the tea which they had sent her that morning. They had urged her to run in often, to be friendly. Her unhappiness about her talk with Deane the night before, when he had actually proposed that she go to see this Ruth Holland, made her want to be with friends; she wanted to see people who felt as she did that-though it did not so present itself to her-she might fortify herself in the conviction that Deane was preposterously wrong, and she taking the only course a good woman could take in relation to a bad one. She was prepared to feel that men did not see those things as clearly as women did, that it was woman who was the guardian of society, and that she must bear with man in his...