wonder it did not kill you," Diana murmured.

"I am strong; strong and very healthy. . . . It broke something inside;
I hardly know what. But there's a story--I read it the other day--about
a man who wandered in a dark wood, and came to a place where he looked
into hell. Just one glimpse. He fainted, and when he awoke it was
daylight, with the birds singing all around him. But he was changed
more than the place, for he listened and understood all the woodland
talk--what the birds were saying, and the small creeping things.
And when he went back among men he answered at random, and yet in a way
that astonished them; for he saw and heard what their hearts were
saying, at the back of their talk. . . . Of course," smiled Ruth,
"I am not nearly so wonderful as that. But something has happened to
me--"

Diana nodded slowly. "--Something that, at any rate, makes you terribly
disconcerting. But what about Oliver? They tell me that he browbeat
the magistrates and insisted on sitting beside you."

Ruth's eyes confirmed it. They were moist, yet proud. They shone.

"I had always," mused Diana, "looked on my cousin as a carefully selfish
person, even in the matter of that Dance woman. You must have turned
his head completely."

"It was not _that_."

Diana stared, the low tone was so earnest, vehement even. "Well, at all
events I know him well enough to assure you he will never give you up."

"Ah!" Ruth drew a long sigh over the joy in her heart, and, a second
later, hated herself for it.

"--until afterwards."

"Afterwards?" the girl echoed.

"Afterwards. My cousin Oliver is a tenacious man, and you would seem to
have worked him up to temporary heroics. But I beg you to reflect that
what for you must have been a real glimpse into hell"--Diana shivered--"
was likely enough for him no more than an occasion for posing.
Fine posing, I'll allow." She paused. "It didn't degrade him, actually.
He's a Vyell; and as another of 'em I may tell you there never was a
Vyell could face out actual degradation. You almost make me wish we
were capable of it. To lose everything--" She paused again.
"You make it more alluring, somehow, than the prospect of endless London
seasons--Diana Vyell, with a fading face and her market missed--that's
how they'll put it--and, _pour me distraire_ this side of the grave, the
dower-house, a coach, a pair of wind-broken horses, and the consolations
of religion! If we were capable of it.