Chapter 29

"--he wasn't tied to me," interrupted Ruth, with a little whimper. "I--I wish he knew--about Mr. Dulac.... He wouldn't think so--hard of me, maybe... if he knew I didn't--never did--love Mr. Dulac...."

"The only thing that would make any difference to him would be to know that you loved him," said Hilda.

Ruth had no answer, but she was saying to herself, with a sort of secret surprise: "If I loved him.... If I loved him...." Presently she spoke aloud: "You won't be angry with me, Hilda?... You won't misunderstand, but--but won't you please--go away?... Please.... I--I don't want to see anybody. I want to be alone."

"Well, of all things!" said Hilda. But she was not offended. Her resemblance to her father was very faint indeed, at that moment. She looked more like her mother, softer, more motherly. She put on her hat and went away quietly. "Poor Bonbright!" she was thinking. Then: "It's come to her.... She's got a hint of it. It will come now with a rush...."

Ruth sat in her chair without movement. "If I loved him..." she said, aloud, and then repeated it, "... loved him...." She was questioning herself now, asking herself the meaning of things, of why she had been lonely, of why she had sat in her window peering down into the street--and she found the answer. As Hilda had said in her thoughts, it was coming with a rush.... She was frightened by it, dared not admit it.... She dared not admit that the biggest, weightiest of her woes was that she no longer had Bonbright with her; that she was lonesome for him; that her heart had been crying out for him; that she loved him! She dared not admit that. It would be too bitter, too ironically bitter.... If she loved him now she had loved him then! Was her life to be filled with such ironies--? Was she forever to eat of Dead Sea fruit?

Did she love Bonbright? At last she dared to put the question squarely.... Her answer came quickly. "Oh, I do... I do!" she cried, aloud. "I love him...." A surge of happiness welled up from her heart at the words. "I love him," she repeated, to hear the sound of them again.

The happiness was of short life. "I love him--but it's too late.... It's always too late," she sobbed. "I've lost him.... He's gone. ..."

The girl who could give herself to a man she did not love for the Cause was not weak; she did not lack resolution, nor did she lack the sublimity of soul which is the heritage of women. She had lost her happiness; she had wrecked her life, and until this moment there seemed no possibility of recovering anything from the wreckage.... But she loved.... There was a foundation to build from. If she had been weak, a waverer, no structure could have risen on the foundation; it must have lain futile, accusing. But there was strength in her, humility, a will that would dare much, suffer much, to fight its way to peace.

"If he loves me still," she thought; and there hope was born.

"If I go to him.... If I tell him--everything?" she asked herself, and in asking made her resolution. She would venture, she would dare, for her happiness and for his. She would go, and she would say: "Bonbright, I love you.... I have never loved anybody but you.... You must believe me." He would believe her, she knew. There was no reason why he should not believe her. There was nothing for her to gain now by another lie. "I'll make him believe," she said, and smiled and cried and smiled again. "Hilda will tell me where he lives and I'll go to him--now...."

At that instant Hilda was coming to her, was on the stairs, and Hilda looked grave, troubled. She walked slowly up the stairs and rapped on the door. "Ruth," she called, "it's Hilda.... May I come in now?"

Ruth ran to the door and threw it open. "Come in.... Come in." Her voice was a song. "Oh, Hilda..."

"Honey," said Hilda, holding her at arm's length, '-his father is dead. They found him dead just after noon...."

"Oh!..." said Ruth. It was an instant before the full significance of this news was shown to her. Then she clutched Hilda with terror-stricken fingers. "No.... No!..." she cried. "It can't be.... It mustn't be...."

"Why--what is it? I--I didn't think you'd take it like this...."

"I love him.... I love Bonbright," Ruth said, in a blank, dead voice. "I was going to him.... I was going to tell him... and he would have believed. But now---he wouldn't believe. He would think I came--because his father was dead--because he--he was what I thought he was when I married him.... Don't you see? He'd think I was coming to him for the same reason.... He'd think I was willing to give myself to him--for that...."

Hilda took the slight form in her arms and rocked her to and fro, while she thought.... "Yes," she said, sorrowfully, "you can't go to him now.... It would look--oh, why couldn't his father have made a will, as he was going to?... If he'd left his old money to charity or something.... We thought he had.... But there has been no will. Everything is Bonbright's...."

"I'm always--too--late..." Ruth said, quietly.