ho was all hers now--could possibly have turned impatiently from her
sobs. Yet it would have been for good, if only she would trust him.

Not till he left the elevator, on their floor, did he comprehend that
Ruth might not be awaiting him; might have gone. He looked
irresolutely at the grill of the elevator door, shut on the black
shaft.

"She was here when I telephoned----"

He waited. Perhaps she would peep out to see if it was he who had come
up in the elevator.

She did not appear.

He walked the endless distance of ten feet to their door, unlocked it,
labored across the tiny hall into the living-room. She was there. She
stood supporting herself by the back of the davenport, her eyes
red-edged and doubtful, her face tightened, expressing enmity or dread
or shy longing. He held out his hands, like a prisoner beseeching
royal mercy. She in turn threw out her arms. He could not say one
word. The clumsy signs called "words" could not tell his emotion. He
ran to her, and she welcomed his arms. He held her, abandoned himself
utterly to her kiss. His hard-driving mind relaxed; relaxed was her
body in his arms. He knew, not merely with his mind, but with the
vaster powers that drive mind and emotion and body, that Ruth, in her
disheveled dressing-gown, was the glorious lover to whom he had been
hastening this hour past. All the love which civilization had tried to
turn into Normal Married Life had escaped Efficiency's pruning-hook,
and had flowered.

"It's all right with me, now," she said; "so wonderfully all right."

"I want to explain. Had to be by myself; find out. Must have seemed so
unspeakably r----"

"Oh, don't, don't explain! Our kiss explained."

* * * * *

While they talked on the davenport together, reaching out again and
again for the hands that now really were there, Ruth agreed with Carl
that they must be up and away, not wait till it should be too late.
She, too, saw how many lovers plan under the June honeymoon to sail
away after a year or two and see the great world, and, when they
wearily die, know that it will still be a year or two before they can
flee to the halcyon isles.

But she did insist that they plan practically; and it was she who
wondered: "But what would happen if everybody went skipping off like
us? Who'd bear the children and keep the fields plowed to feed the
ones that ran away?"

"Golly!" cried Carl, "wish that were the worst problem we had!