“I dare not say,” he said, “that it is your misfortune to love me, for in this you show how noble a woman can be. But I will say that the cup is bitter-sweet for you.... I cannot tell you now what my trouble is; but I can say that no other living woman has a claim upon me.... My reckoning is with the dead.”
“That is with God,” she whispered, “and He is just and merciful too.... Can it not be repaired here?” She smoothed back his hair, then let her fingers stray lightly on his cheek.
It hurt him like death to reply. “No, but there can be punishment here.”
She shuddered slightly. “Punishment, punishment,” she repeated fearfully--“what punishment?”
“I do not quite know.” Lines of pain grew deeper in his face.... “Ruth, how much can a woman forgive?”
“A mother, everything.” But she would say no more. He looked at her long and earnestly, and said at last: “Will you believe in me no matter what happens?”
“Always, always.” Her smile was most winning.
“If things should appear dark against me?”
“If I said to you that I did a wrong; that I broke the law of God, though not the laws of man?”
There was a pause in which she drew back, trembling slightly, and looked at him timidly and then steadily, but immediately put her hands bravely in his, and said: “Yes.”
“It was when you were in the navy?” she inquired, in an awe-stricken tone.
“I know. I feel it. You must not tell me. It was a woman, and this other woman, this Mrs. Falchion knows, and she would try to ruin you, or”--here she seemed to be moved suddenly by a new thought--“or have you love her. But she shall not, she shall not--neither! For I will love you, and God will listen to me, and answer me.”
“Would to Heaven I were worthy of you! I dare not think of where you might be called to follow me, Ruth.”
“‘Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God,’” she rejoined in a low voice.
“‘Thy God my God!’” he repeated after her slowly. He suddenly wondered if his God was her God; whether now, in his trouble, he had that comfort which his creed and profession should give him. For the first time he felt acutely that his choice of this new life might have been more a reaction from the past, a desire for expiation, than radical belief that this was the right and only thing for him to do. And when, some time after, he bade Ruth good-bye, as she went with her father, it came to him with appalling conviction that his life had been a mistake. The twist of a great wrong in a man’s character distorts his vision; and if he has a tender conscience he magnifies his misdeeds.