She was thinking with satisfaction that he looked well. He had thrown off the trouble that had brought about their departure from Freeport twelve years before. He was growing rather stout; his fair hair had gone somewhat gray and his face was lined, he had not the look of a young man. But he looked strong, alert. His new hopes had given him vigor, a new buoyancy. She sat there thinking of the years she had lived with him, of the wonder and the happiness she had known through him, of the hard things they had faced together. Her voice was gentle as she replied to his inquiry about what day of the month it was.
"I think," he said, "that we can get off by the fifteenth, don't you, Ruth?"
"Perhaps." Her voice shook a little, but he was following his own thoughts and did not notice. After a little he came and sat across the table from her. "And, Ruth, about this getting married business--" He broke off with a laugh. "Seems absurd, doesn't it?"
She nodded, fumbling with the things in the box, her head bent over them.
"Well, I was thinking we'd better stop somewhere along the way and attend to it. Can't do it here--don't want to there."
She lifted her hands from the box and laid them on the table that was between him and her. She looked over at him and said, quietly, in a voice that shook only a little: "I do not want to get married, Stuart."
He was filling his pipe and stopped abruptly, spilling the tobacco on the table. "What did you say?" he asked in the voice of one sure he must have heard wrong.
"I said," she repeated, "that I did not want to get married."
He stared at her, his face screwed up. Then it relaxed a little. "Oh, yes--yes, I know how you feel. It seems so absurd--after all this time--after all there has been. But we must attend to it, Ruth. It's right that we should--now that we can. God knows we wanted to bad enough--long ago. And it will make us feel better about going into a new place. We can face people better." He gathered up the tobacco he had spilled and put it in his pipe.
For a moment she did not speak. Then, "That wasn't what I meant, Stuart," she said, falteringly.
"Well, then, what in the world _do_ you mean?" he asked impatiently.
She did not at once say what she meant. Her eyes held him, they were so strangely steady. "Just why would we be getting married, Stuart?" she asked simply.