Ruth," he whispered, "love does mean something to you, doesn't
it?"

She raised her head and looked at him. And that look was a thing Deane
Franklin never forgot; all the years did not blur his memory of it--that
flaming claim for love that transformed her face.

And then it was lost in contrition, for she saw what he had seen, and
what he hoped from that; in her compunction for having let him see what
was not for him, the tender, sorrowing look, the impulsive outreaching
of her hand, there was the dawn of understanding.

At first he was too bewildered to find words. Then: "You care for some
one else?" he groped unbelievingly.

She looked away, but nodded; her tears were falling.

He moved a little away and then sat there quite still. A breeze had come
up and the vines beat against the porch, making a sound that like the
flaming look of a moment ago he never forgot.

She knew that he must be wondering; he knew her life there, or what
seemed her life. He must be wondering who it was she cared for like
that.

She laid her hand upon his arm; and when he turned to her she did not
say anything at all, but the appeal that looked through pain perhaps
went where words could not have gone.

"But you're not happy!" he exclaimed, in a sort of harsh exulting in
that.

She shook her head; her eyes were brimming over.

He looked away from her, his own hurt and surprise rousing a savage
thing in him that did not want to do what the pleading pain of her eyes
so eloquently asked of him. He had always thought that _he_ was to have
Ruth. Well, he was not to have her--there were ugly things which, in
that first moment, surged into his disappointment. Some one else was to
have her. But she was not happy! Defeated feeling wrenched its own sorry
satisfaction from that.

"Why aren't you happy?" he asked of her abruptly, roughly.

She did not answer, and so he had to look at her. And when he saw Ruth's
face his real love for her broke through the ugliness of thwarted
passion. "Can't you tell me, Ruth?" he asked gently.

She shook her head, but the concern of his voice loosed feeling she was
worn out with holding in. Her eyes were streaming now.

His arm went round her shoulder, gently, as if it would shield, help.
His love for her wrenched itself free--for that moment, at least,--from
his own hurt. "Maybe I can help you, Ruth," he was murmuring.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

He went away from there that night not knowing more tha