Charles raised his eyes and looked at her with strange
wistful intentness, but when Ruth had finished speaking he had no remark
to make in answer; and as he stood, bareheaded by the gate, twirling the
hasp and looking, as a hasty glance told her, so worn and jaded in the
sunshine, she said "Good-bye" again, and turned hastily away.

And all along the empty harvested fields, and all along the lanes, where
the hips and haws grew red and stiff among the ruddy hedge-rows, Ruth
still saw Charles's grave, worn face.

That night she saw it still, as she sat in her own room, and listened to
the whisper of the rain upon the roof, and the touch of its myriad
fingers on the window-panes.

"I cannot bear to see him look like that. I cannot bear it," she said,
suddenly, and the storm which had been gathering so long, the clouds of
which had darkened the sky for so many days, broke at last, with a
strong and mighty wind of swift emotion which carried all before it.

It was a relief to give way, to let the tempest do its worst, and remain
passive. But when its force was spent at last, and it died away in gusts
and flying showers, it left flood and wreckage and desolation behind.
When Ruth raised her head and looked about her, all her landmarks were
gone. There was a streaming glory in the heavens, but it shone on the
ruin of all her little world below. She loved Charles, and she knew it.
It seemed to her now as if, though she had not realized it, she must
have loved him from the first; and with the knowledge came an
overwhelming sense of utter misery that struck terror to her heart. She
understood at last the meaning of the weariness and the restless
misgivings of these last weeks. If heretofore they had spoken in
riddles, they spoke plainly now. Every other feeling in the world seemed
to have been swept away by a passion, the overwhelming strength of which
she regarded panic-stricken. She seemed to have been asleep all her
life, to have stirred restlessly once or twice of late, and now to have
waked to consciousness and agony. Love, with women like Ruth, is a great
happiness or a great calamity. It is with them indeed for better, for
worse.

Those whose feelings lie below the surface escape the hundred rubs and
scratches which superficial natures are heir to; but it is the nerve
which is not easily reached which when touched gives forth the sharpest
pang. Nature, when she gives intensity of feeling, mercifully covers it
well wit