*

She came towards him down the yellow glade through the sunshine and the
shadow, with a spray of briony in her hand. Neither spoke. She put her
hands into the hands that were held out for them, and their eyes met,
grave and steadfast, with the light in them of an unalterable love. So
long they had looked at each other across a gulf. So long they had stood
apart. And now, at last--at last--they were together. He drew her close
and closer yet. They had no words. There was no need of words. And in
the silence of the hushed woods, and in the silence of a joy too deep
for speech, the robin's song came sweet and sad.

"Charles!"

"Ruth!"

"I should like to tell you something."

"And I should like to hear it."

"I know what Raymond told you to conceal. I went to him just after you
did. We passed you coming back. He did not know me at first. He thought
I was you, and he kept repeating that you must keep your own counsel,
and that, unless you showed Mr. Dare's marriage was illegal, he would
never find it out. At last, when he suddenly recognized me, he seemed
horror-struck, and the doctor came in and sent me away."

Charles knew now why Raymond had sent for him the second time.

There was a long pause.

"Ruth, did you think I should tell?"

"I hoped and prayed you would, but I knew it would be hard, because I do
believe you actually thought at the time I should still consider it my
duty to marry Mr. Dare. I never should have done such a thing after what
had happened. I was just going to tell him so when he began to give me
up, and it evidently gave him so much pleasure to renounce me nobly in
your favor that I let him have it his own way, as the result was the
same. My great dread, until he came, was that you had not spoken. I had
been expecting him all the previous evening. Oh, Charles, Charles! I
waited and watched for his coming as I had never done before. Your
silence was the only thing I feared, because it was the only thing that
could have come between us."

"God forgive me! I meant at first to say nothing."

"Only at first," said Ruth, gently; and they walked on in silence.

The sun had set. A slender moon had climbed unnoticed into the southern
sky amid the shafts of paling fire which stretched out across the whole
heaven from the burning fiery furnace in the west. Across the gray dim
fields voices were calling the cattle home.

Charles spoke again at last in his usual tone.

"You quite understand