turned to a vivid flame-colour.  She plucked three or four and pinned
them over her bosom, glanced at the effect in the mirror, and went
quickly down the stairs.

Fairer day could hardly have been chosen.  "Happy is the bride the sun
shines on." ...  In the sunshine by the stable door Mr. Strongtharm sat
polishing his gun.  She asked him what sport he would be after to-day.

He answered, "None.  I don't reckon 'pon luck, fishing, after a body's
mentioned rabbits; and I don't go gunning if I've seen a parson.
A new parson, I mean.  Th' old Minister's all in the day's work."

"You have seen a strange clergyman to-day?"

"Yes; as I pulled home past the Ferry.  I'd been down-stream early,
tryin' for eels.  On my way back I saw him--over my left shoulder too.
He was comin' out o' the Inn by the waterside door, wipin' his mouth: a
loose-featured man, with one shoulder higher than t'other, and a hard
drinker by his looks."

Ruth saddled-up and mounted in silence.  Fatally she recognised the old
fellow's description; but--was it possible her lover had brought this
man to marry them?--this man, whose touch was defilement, to join their
hands?  If the precisians of Port Nassau had made religion her tragedy,
this man had come in, by an after-blow, to turn it into a blasphemous
farce.  If Ruth had lost Faith, she yet desired good thoughts, to have
everything about her pure and holy--and on this day, of all days!

Surely Oliver--she had taught herself to call him Oliver--would never
misunderstand her so!  Why, it was a misunderstanding that went down,
down, almost to the roots.  _Those whom God hath joined together let no
man put asunder_ . . . but here was cleavage, and from within.
Say rather of such sundering.  What man could remedy it?  _Those whom
God hath joined together_--ah, by such hands!

It was not possible!  In all things her lover had shown himself
considerate, tender; guessing, preventing her smallest wish.
As she rode she sought back once more to the wellspring of love.
Had he not stooped to her as a god, lifted her from the mire?
It was not possible.

Yet, as she rode, the unconquerable common sense within her kept
whispering that this thing _was_ possible. . . . It darkened the
sunlight.  She rode as one who, having sung carelessly for miles,
surmises a dreadful leap close ahead.  Still she rode on, less and less
sure of herself, and came to the church porch, and alighted.

The church was a plain oblong building, homely within to the last
degree.  The pews were of pitch-pine, the walls and rafters coated with
white-wash, some of which had peeled off and lay strewing the floor.
A smell of oil filled the air; it was sweet and sickly, and came from
the oozings of half a dozen untended lamps.  Ornament the place had
none, save a decent damask cloth on the Communion table.

Oliver Vyell stood by the chancel rail.  The rest of the congregation
comprised Mr. Trask, seated stiff and solitary in the largest pew, Mrs.
Strongtharm, and half a score of children whom Mrs. Strongtharm had
collected on the way and against her will.  They followed her by habit,
after goodies; but just now, though they sat quiet, her reputation was
suffering from a transient distrust.  (Allurements to piety rarely fell
in the path of a New England child; but even he was child enough to
suspect them when they occurred.) At the sound of the mare's footsteps
they turned their heads, one and all.  Mr. Silk, clad in white surplice
and nervously turning the pages of the Office by the holy table, faced
about also.

Ruth was seen alighting, out there in the sunlight.  She hitched the
mare's bridle over a staple and came lightly stepping through the shadow
of the porchway.  Her lover walked down the aisle to meet her.  He, too,
stepped briskly, courteously.

Three paces within the doorway she came to a halt.  The sunlight fell on
her again, through the first of the southern windows.  It flamed on the
leaves pinned to her bosom.

He offered his arm.  But she, that had come stepping like a wild fawn,
like a fawn stood at gaze, terrified, staring past him at the figure by
the table.  Mr. Silk commanded an oily smile and, book in hand, advanced
to the chancel step.

"Ah, no!" she murmured.  "It is wicked--"

She cast her eyes around, as though for help.  They did not turn--it was
pitifullest of all--to him who was about to swear to help her throughout
life.  They turned and encountered Mr. Trask's.

With a sob, as Sir Oliver would have taken her arm, she threw it up,
broke from him, and fled back through the porchway.  As she drew back
that one pace before fleeing, the sun fell full again on that
breast-knot of scarlet leaves.

He stared after her dumbfoundered, still doubting her intent.
He saw her catch at the mare's bridle, and, with a bitter curse, ran
forward.  But he was too late.  She had mounted, and was away.

He heard the mare's hoofs clattering up the street.  His own horse was
stabled at the Ferry Inn.  It would cost him ten minutes at least to
mount and pursue. . . .

"I said 'provisionally.'"  It was Mr. Trask's voice, speaking at his
elbow.  "Nay, man, don't strike me; since you meant business, 'tis
yourself you should strike for a fool.  You were a fool to invite me;
but she was scared before ever she caught sight of _me_--by that
buck-parson of yours, I guess."


He had fetched Bayard, had mounted, and was after her.  He pulled rein
at her lodgings.  Yes, Mr. Strongtharm had seen her go by.
The old fellow did not guess what was amiss; as how should he?
"It's cruel for the mare's hoofs," he commented, "forcing her that pace
on the hard road.  She rides well, s' far as ridin' goes; but the best
womankind on horseback has neither bowels nor understandin'."

He pointed towards Soldiers' Gap.  "She rides there most days," he said;
"but it can't be far.  There's no Christian road for a horse, once
you're past the second fall."

Oliver Vyell struck spur and followed.  Already he had the decency to
curse himself, but not yet could he understand his transgressing.


"Your atheism"--Mr. Trask had said it--"makes you dull in spiritual
understanding."

Sceptics are of two orders, and religious disputants gain a potential
advantage, but miss truth, by confusing them.  Oliver Vyell was dull,
and his dullness had betrayed him, precisely because his reason was so
lucid and logical that it shut out those half-tones in which abide all
men's, all women's, tenderest feelings.  He knew that Ruth had no more
faith than he in Christian dogma; no faith at all in what a minister's
intervention could do to sanctify marriage.  He had inferred that she
must consider the tying of the knot by Mr. Silk, if not as a fair jest,
at least as a gentle mockery, the humour of which he and she would
afterwards taste together.  Why had she not pleaded against rite of any
kind? . . . Besides, the dog had once insulted her with a proposal.
Sir Oliver never allowed Mr. Silk to guess that he had surprised his
secret; and Mr. Silk, tortuous himself in all ways, could not begin to
be on terms with a candid soul such as Ruth's, craving in all things to
be open where it loves.  Sir Oliver had supposed it a pretty lesson to
put on a calm, negligent face, and command the parson, who dared not
disobey, to perform the ceremony.  Mr. Silk had cringed.

Likewise, when inviting Mr. Trask to the nuptials, he had looked on him
but as a witness to his triumph.  The very man who had sentenced her to
degradation--was there not dramatic triumph in summoning him to behold
her exalted?

For behind all this reasoning, of course, and below all his real passion
for her, lay the poisonous, proud, Whig sense of superiority, the
conviction that, desirable though she was, his choice exalted her.
Would not ten thousand women--would not a hundred thousand--have counted
it heaven to stand in her place?

Yet she had earnestly begged off the rite which to every one of these
women would have meant everything.  This puzzled him.

On second thoughts the puzzle had dissolved.  She accepted his
negations, and, woman-like, improved on them.  The marriage service was
humbug; therefore she had willed to have none of it.  The attitude was
touching.  It might have been convenient, had he been less in love.

But he was deeply in love, so deeply that in good earnest he longed to
lift and set her above all women.  For this, nonsensical though they
were, due rites must be observed.

At the last pinch she had broken away.  Was it possible, then, that
after all she did not love him?  She had crossed her arms once and
called herself his slave. . . .

Not for one moment did he understand that other scepticism which, forced
out of faith, clasps and clings to reverence; which, though it count the
rite inefficient, yet sees the meaning, and counts the moment so holy
that to contaminate the rite is to poison all.

Not as yet did he understand one whit of this.  But he vehemently
desired her, and his desire was straight.  Because it was straight,
while he rode some inkling of the truth pierced him.

For, as he rode, he recalled how she had cast up an arm and turned to
flee.  His eyes had rested confusedly on the breast-knot of scarlet
leaves, and it seemed to him, as he rode, that he had seen her heart
beating there through her ribs.



Chapter VI.


"YET HE WILL COME--".


The cabin stood close above the fall.  It was built of oak logs split in
two, with the barked and rounded sides turned outward.  Pete Vanders
would have found pine logs more tractable and handier to come by, and
they would have outlasted his time; but, being a Dutchman, he had built
solidly by instinct.

Also, he had chosen his ledge cunningly or else with amazing luck.
A stairway shaped in the solid rock--eight treads and no more--led down
to the very brink of the first cascade; yet through all these years,
with their freshets and floods, the cabin had clung to its perch.
Within doors the ears never lost the drone of the waters.  There were
top-notes that lifted or sank as the wind blew, but below them the deep
bass thundered on.

Ruth had doffed her riding-dress for a bodice and short skirt of russet,
and moved about the cabin tidying where she had tidied a score of times
already.  Through the window-opening drifted wisps of smoke, aromatic
and pungent, from the fire she had built in an angle of the crags a few
yards from the house.  (It had been the Dutchman's hearth.  She had
found it and cleared the creepers away, and below them the rock-face was
yet black with the smoke of old fires.) Some way up the gorge, where, at
the foot of a smaller waterfall, the river divided and swirled about an
island covered with sweet grass--a miniature meadow--her mare grazed at
will.  About a fortnight ago, having set aside three days for the
search, on the second Ruth had found a circuitous way through the woods.
A part of it she had cleared with a billhook, and since then Madcap had
trodden a rough pathway with her frequent goings and comings.
It had immensely lightened the labour of furnishing, but she feared that
the pasturage would last but a day or two.  Her lover, when he came,
must devise means of sending the mare back.

She never doubted his coming.  He would probably miss the bridle-path,
the opening of which she had carefully hidden, and be forced to make the
ascent on foot.  But he would come.  See, she was laying out his clothes
for him!  He had sent to Sweetwater, at her request, two valises full,
packed by Manasseh; and she had conveyed them hither with the rest of
the furniture.  Carefully now she made her selection from the store:
coat, breeches of homespun and leather, stout boots, moccasined leggings
such as the Indians wore, woollen shirts--but other shirts also of
finest cambric--with underclothes of silk, and delicate nightshirts, and
silken stockings that could be drawn like soft ribbons between the
fingers.  She thrilled as she handled them garment by garment.
Along the wall hung his two guns, with shot-bag and powder-flask.

Here was his home.  Here were his clothes. . . . She had forgiven him,
hours ago, without necessity for his pleading.  So would he forgive her.
After all, what store did he set by church ceremony.  He had vowed to
her a dozen times that he set none.  He loved her; that was enough, and
assurance of his following.  He would confess that she had been right.
. . . As she moved about, touching, smoothing this garment and that,
there crossed her memory the Virgilian refrain--

"_Nihil ille deos, nil carmina curat.
Ducite ab urbe domum, mea carmina, ducite Daphnin._"

She murmured it, smiling to herself as she recalled also the dour figure
of Mr. Hichens in the library at Sabines, seated stiffly, listening
while she construed.  If only tutors guessed what they taught!

She hummed the lines: "_Nihil ille deos_"--he cared nothing for church
rites; "_nil carmina_"--she needed no incantations.

She never doubted that he would arrive; but, as the day wore on, she
told herself that very likely he had missed his road.  He would arrive
hungered, in any event. . . . She stepped out to the cooking-pot, and,
on her way, paused for a long look down the glen.  The sun, streaming
its rays over the high pines behind her, made rainbows in the spray of
the fall and cast her shadow far over the hollow at her feet.
The water, plunging past her, shot down the valley in three separate
cascades, lined with slippery rock, in the crevices of which many ferns
had lodged and grew, waving in the incessantly shaken air.  From the
pool into which the last cascade tumbled--a stone dislodged by her foot
dropped to it almost plumb--the stream hurtled down the glen, following
the curve of its sides until they overlapped; naked cliffs above,
touched with sunlight, their feet set in peat, up which the forest trees
clambered as if in a race for the top--pines leading, with heather and
scrubby junipers, oaks and hemlocks some way behind; alders, mostly by
the waterside, with maples in swampy patches, and here and there a birch
waving silver against the shadow.  The pines kept their funereal plumes,
like undertakers who had made a truce with death by making a business of
it.  But these deciduous trees, that had rioted in green through spring
and summer, wrapped themselves in robes to die, the thinner the more
royal; the maples in scarlet, the swamp-oak in purple--bloody purple
where the sun smote on its upper boughs.  Already the robes had worn
thin, and their ribs showed.  Leaves strewed the flat rock where Ruth
stood, looking down.

She was not thinking of the leaves, nor of the fall of the year.
She was thinking that her lord would be hungered.  She went back to her
cooking-pot under the cliff overhung with heath and juniper.

Herself fearless--or less fearful than other women--she did not for some
time let her mind run on possible accidents to him.  He was a man, and
would arrive, though tired and hungered.  Not until the sun sank behind
the upper pines did any sense of her own loneliness assail her.
Then she bethought her that with night, if he delayed, the forest would
wrap her around, formless, haunted by wild beasts.  The singing of
birds, never in daylight utterly drowned by the roar of the fall, had
ceased about her; the call of the hidden chickadees, the cheep-cheep of
a friendly robin, hopping in near range of the cooking-pot, the sawing
of busy chipmunks.

These sounds had ceased; but she did not feel the silence until, far up
the valley behind her, a loon sent forth its sole unhappy cry.
It rang a moment between the cliffs.  As it died away she felt how
friendly had been these casual voices, and wondered what beasts the
forest might hold.

She went back to the cabin, lit a lamp, and lifted one of the guns off
its rack.  She charged it--well she had learnt how to charge a gun.

Twilight was falling.  The fire burned beneath the cooking-pot; but,
seated on the flat stone with the gun laid across her knees and the fall
sounding beneath her, she had another thought--that the fire, set in an
angle of the rock, and moreover hidden around the house's corner, was
but a poor signal.  It shed no ray down the glen.

She would light another fire on the flat stone.  In the dusk she
collected dry twigs, piled stouter sticks above them, covered the whole
with leaves, and lit it, fetching a live brand from under the
cooking-pot.  The flame leapt up, danced over the leaves, died down and
again revived.  When assured that it was caught, she sat beside it,
staring across the flame over the valley now swallowed in darkness,
still with the gun laid across her knees.

"Ruth!  O Ruth!"

His voice came up over the roar of the fall--which, while he stumbled
among the boulders below, had drowned his footsteps.

"Dear!  Ah--have a care!"

"Yes; hold a light. . . . It must be dangerous here."

She snatched a brand from the fire.  She had collected a fresh heap of
twigs and leaves in the lap of her gown, groping in the dusk for them;
and his first sight of her had been as she stood high emptying them in a
red stream to feed the flames.  A witch she seemed, pouring sacrifice on
that wild altar, while the light of it danced upon her face and figure.
Having gained the ledge of the second cascade, he anchored himself on
good foothold and stared up, catching breath before he hailed.

Her first glimpse of him, as she held the blazing stick over the edge of
the fall, was of a face damp with sweat or with spray, and of his hands
reaching up the slimed rock, feeling for a grip.

"Ah, be careful!  Shall I come down to you?"  For the first time she
realised his peril.

"_Over rocks that are steepest_," he quoted gaily, between grunts of
hard breathing.  He had handhold now.  "Hero on her tower--and faith,
Leander came near to swimming for it--once or twice" (grunt) "_Over the
mountains, And over the waves_--hullo! that rock of yours overhangs.
What's to the left?" (grunt) "Grass?  I mistrust grass on these ledges.
. . . Reach down your hand, dear Ruth, to steady me only. . . ."

She flung herself prone on the flat rock beside the fire, and gave a
hand to him.  He caught it, heaved himself over the ledge with a final
grunt of triumph, and dropped beside her, panting and laughing.

"You might have killed yourself!" she shivered.

"And whom, then, would you have reproached?"

"You might have killed yourself--and then--and then I think I should
have died too."

"Ruth!"

"My lord will be hungry.  He shall rest here and eat."

He flung a glance towards the cabin; or rather--for the dusk hid its
outlines--towards the light that shone cosily through the window-hatch.

"Not yet!" she murmured.  "My lord shall rest here for a while."
She was kneeling now to draw off his shoes.  He drew away his foot,
protesting.

"Child, I am not so tired, but out of breath, and--yes--hungry as a
hunter."

"My lord will remember.  It was the first service I ever did for him."
It may have been an innocent wile to anchor him fast there and helpless.
. . . At any rate she knelt, and drew off his shoes and carried them to
a little distance.  "Next, my lord shall eat," she said; and having
rinsed her hands in the stream and spread them a moment to the flame to
dry, sped off to the cabin.

In a minute she was back with glasses and clean napkins, knives, forks,
spoons, and a bottle of wine; from a second visit she returned with
plates, condiments, and a dish of fruit.  Then, running to the
cooking-pot, she fetched soup in two bowls.  "And after that," she
promised, "there will be partridges.  Mr. Strongtharm shot them for me,
for I was too busy.  They are turning by the fire on a jack my mother
taught me to make out of threads that untwist and twist again. . . .
Shall I sit here, at my lord's feet?"

"Sit where you will, but close; and kiss me first.  You have not kissed
me yet--and it is our wedding day.  Our wedding feast!  O Ruth--Ruth, my
love!"

"Our wedding feast! . . . Could it be better!  O my dear, dear lord!
. . . But I'll not kiss you yet."

"Why, Ruth?"

"Why, sir, because I will not--and that's a woman's reason.
Afterwards--but not now!  You boasted of your hunger.  What has become
of it?"


They ate for a while in silence.  The stream roared at their feet.
Above them, in the gap of the hills, Jupiter already blazed, and as the
last of the light faded, star after star came out to keep him company.

He praised her roasting of the partridges.  "To-morrow," she answered,
"you shall take your gun and get me game.  We must be good providers.
To-morrow--"

"To-morrow--and for ever and ever--"  He poured wine and drank it
slowly.

"Ah, look up at the heavens!  And we two alone.  Is this not best,
after all?  Was I not right?"

"Perhaps," he answered after a pause.  "It is good, at all events."

"To-morrow we will explore; and when this place tires us--but my lord
has not praised it yet--"

"Must I make speeches?"

"No.  When this place tires us, we will strike camp and travel up
through the pass.  It may be we shall find boatmen on the upper waters,
and a canoe.  But for some days, O my love, let these only woods be
enough for us!"

Their dessert of fruit eaten, she arose and turned to the business of
washing-up.  He would have helped; but she mocked him, having hidden his
shoes.  "You are to rest quiet, and obey!"

Before setting to work she brought him coffee and a roll of
tobacco-leaf, and held a burning stick for him while he lit and inhaled.

For twenty minutes, perhaps, he watched her, stretched on the rock,
resting on his elbow, his hunger appeased, his whole frame fatigued, but
in a delicious weariness, as in a dream.

Far down the valley the full moon thrust a rim above the massed oaks and
hemlocks.  It swam clear, and he called to her to come and watch it.

She did not answer.  She had slipped away to the house--as he supposed
to restore the plates to their shelves.  Apparently it took her a long
while. . . . He called again to her.

The curtain of the doorway was lifted and she stood on the threshold,
all in white, fronting the moon.

"Will my lord come into his house?"

Her voice thrilled down to him. . . . Then she remembered that he stood
there shoeless; and, giving a little cry, would have run barefoot down
the moonlit rocky steps, preventing him.

But he had sprung to his unshod feet, and with a cry rushed up to her,
disregarding the thorns.

She sank, crossing her arms as a slave--in homage, or, it may be, to
protect her maiden breasts.

"No, no--" she murmured, sliding low within his arms.  "Look first
around, if our house be worthy!"

But he caught her up, and lifting her, crushing her body to his, carried
her into the hut.



Chapter VII.


HOUSEKEEPING.


She awoke at daybreak to the twittering of birds.  Raising herself
little by little, she bent over him, studying the face of her beloved.
He slept on; and after a while she slipped from the couch, collected her
garments in a bundle, tiptoed to the door, and lifting its curtain,
stole out to the dawn.

Mist filled the valley below the fall.  A purple bank of vapour blocked
the end of it.  But the rolling outline was edged already with gold, and
already ray upon ray of gold shivered across the upper sky and touched
the pinewoods at the head of the pass.

Clad in cloak and night-rail, shod in loose slippers of Indian
leather-work, she moved across to the fire she had banked overnight.
Beside it a bold robin had perched on the rim of the cooking-pot.
He fluttered up to a bough, and thence watched her warily.  She remade
the fire, building a cone of twigs; fetched water, scoured the cauldron,
and hung it again on its bar.  As she lifted it the sunlight glinted on
the ring her lover had brought for the wedding and had slipped on her
finger in the cabin, binding her by this only rite.

The fire revived and crackled cheerfully.  She caught up the bundle
again and climbed beside the stream, following its right bank until she
came to the pool of her choice.  There, casting all garments aside, she
went down to it, and the alders hid her.

Half an hour later she returned and paused on the threshold of the hut,
the sunlight behind her.  In her arms she carried a cluster--a bundle
almost--of ferns and autumnal branches--cedar and black-alder, the one
berried with blue the other with coral, maple and aromatic spruce, with
trails of the grape vine.  He was awake and lay facing the door,
half-raised on his left elbow.

"This for good-morning!"  She held out the armful to show him, but so
that it hid her blushes.  Then, dropping the cluster on the floor, she
ran and knelt, bowing her face upon the couch beside him.  But laying a
palm against either temple he forced her to lift it and gaze at him,
mastering the lovely shame.

He looked long into her eyes.  "You are very beautiful," he said slowly.

She sprang to her feet.  "See the dew on my shoes!  I have bathed,
and--" with a gesture of the hand towards the scattered boughs--
"afterwards I pulled these for you.  But I was in haste and late
because--because--"  She explained that while bathing she had let the
ring, which was loose and heavy, slip from her finger into the pool.
It had lodged endwise between two pebbles, and she had taken some
minutes to find it.  "As for these," she said, "the flowers are all
done, but I like the leaves better.  In summer our housekeeping might
have been make-believe; now, with the frosts upon us, we shall have hard
work, and a fire to give thanks for."

He slid from the couch and, standing erect, threw a bath-gown over his
shoulders.  "I must build a chimney," he said, looking around; "a
chimney and a stone hearth."

"Then our house will be perfect."

"I will start this very day. . . . Show me the way to your pool."


They ate their breakfast on the stone above the fall, in the warm
sunshine, planning and talking together like children.  He would build
the chimney; but first he must climb down to the lower valley and find
Bayard, deserted at the foot of the falls, and left to wander all night
at will.

He must take the mare, too, she said; and promised to start him on the
bridle-path, so that he could not miss it.

"What!  Must I ride on a side-saddle?"

"It should be easy for you," she laughed.  "You pretended to know all
about it when you taught me."  In the end it was settled that she should
ride and he walk beside till Bayard was found.  "Then you can lead her
back and leave her with Mr. Strongtharm."

"But I shall need Bayard to bring home a sack of lime for my mortar.
And you are over thoughtful for Madcap.  I walked up to inspect the
pasture, and there is enough to last the pair for a week.  It is odds,
too, we find some burnt lands at the back of these woods, with patches
of good grass.  Let us keep the horses up here, at any rate until the
nights turn colder.  A taste of hard faring will be good for their
pampered flesh, as for mine.  Besides--though you may not know it--I am
a first-class groom."

"As well as a mason?  You will have to turn hunter, too, before long,
else your cook will be out of work.  Dear, dear, how we begin to crowd
the days!"


For a whole week he worked at intervals, building his chimney with
stones from the river bed, and laying them well and truly.  Ruth helped
him at whiles, when household duties did not claim her.  Now and then,
when his back ached with the toil, he would break off for a spell and
watch her as she stooped over the cooking-pot, or knelt by the
stream-side, bare-legged, with petticoat kilted high, beating the linen
on a flat stone.

When the chimney was finished they were in great anxiety lest, being
built close under the cliff, it should catch a down-draught of the wind
and fill the dwelling with smoke.  But the wind came, and, as it turned
out, made a leap from the cliff to the valley, singing high overhead and
missing the chimney clear.  When they lit their first fire indoors and
ran forth to see the smoke rising in a thin blue pillar against the
pines, they laughed elated, and at supper drank to their handiwork.

Ruth's first sacrifice on the new hearth was the solemn heating of a
flat iron, to crimp and pleat her lover's body-linen.

Next day he shot a deer and flayed it; and, the next, set to work to
build a bed.  Their couch had been of white linen laid upon skins, the
skins resting on a thick mat of leaves.  Now he raised it from the
ground on four posts, joining the posts with a stout framework and
lacing the framework with cords criss-crossed like the netting of a
hammock.  Also he replaced the curtain at the entrance with a door of
split pinewood, and fashioned a wooden bolt.

The halcyon weather held for two weeks, the delicate weather of Indian
summer.  Day by day the forest dropped its leaves under a blue windless
sky; but the nights sharpened their frosts.  Ruth, stealing early to her
bathing-pool, found it edged with thin ice, and paused, breaking it with
taps of her naked foot while she braced her body for the cold shock.

The flat rock over the fall was still their supper-table.  After supping
they would wrap themselves closer in their cloaks of bearskin, and sit
for long, his arm about her body.  The stars wheeled overhead.
At a little distance shone the open window inviting them.
From their ledge they overlooked the world.


She marvelled at the zest he threw into every moment and detail of this
strange honeymooning.  He had taken pride even in skinning and cutting
up the slain deer.

She had, in fact, being fearful of her experiment; had planned it, in
some sort, as a test for him.  She was no sentimentalist.  She had
believed that he loved her--well she knew it now.  But for him this
could not be first love.  Many times she had bethought her of the dead
Margaret Dance, and as a sensible girl without resentment.  But, herself
in the ecstasy of first love, she marvelled how it could die and
anything comparable spring up in its room; and she had only her own
heart to interrogate.  Her own heart told her that it was impossible.
"Fool!" said her own heart.  "Is it not enough that he condescends--that
you have found favour in his sight--you, that asked but to be his
slave?"

"Fool!" said her heart again.  "Would you be jealous of this dead woman?
Then jealousy is not cruel as the grave, but crueller."

And she retorted, "The woman is dead and cannot grudge it.
Ah, conscience! are you the only part of me that has not slept in his
arms.  I want him all--all!"

"How can that be--since you are not his first love?" objected
conscience, falling back upon its old position.

"Be still," she whispered back.  "See how love is recreating him!"

Indeed, the secret may have lain in her passing loveliness--by night,
beside their fire on the rock, he would sit motionless watching her face
for minutes together, or the poise of her head, or the curve of her chin
as she tilted it to ponder the stars; and, in part, the woodland life,
chosen by her so cunningly, may have bewitched him for a space.  Certain
it is that during their sojourn here he became a youth again, eager and
glad as a youth, passionate as a youth, laughing, throwing his heart
into simple things and not shrinking from coarser trials--as when he
plunged his hands into the blood of the deer.

This story is of Ruth, not of Oliver Vyell; or of him only in so far as
his star ruled hers.  For the moment their stars danced together and the
common cares of this world stood back for a space and left a floor for
them.

Their bliss was absolute.  But the seed of its corruption lay in him.
Her spirit was chaste, as her life had been.  For him, before ever
Margaret Dance met and crossed his path, he had lived loosely,
squandering his manhood; and of this squandering let one who later
underwent it record the inevitable sentence.

"But ah! it hardens all within,
And petrifies the feeling."

Nor could this temporary miracle do more for Oliver Vyell than wake in