drive out into the country."

Her face lit up for a moment. Her beautiful eyes were soft, although
a few seconds later they were swimming with tears.

"Do you think you will want to go when Saturday afternoon comes?"
she asked. "Don't you think, perhaps, that your new friends may
invite you to go and see them? I am so jealous of your new friends,
Arnold."

He drew her a little closer to him. There was something very
pathetic in her complete dependence upon him, a few months ago a
stranger. They had both been waifs, brought together by a wave of
common adversity. Her intense weakness had made the same appeal to
him as his youth and strength to her. There was almost a lump in his
throat as he answered her.

"You aren't really feeling like that, Ruth?" he begged. "Don't! My
new friends are part of the new life. You wouldn't have me cling to
the old any longer than I can help? Why, you and I together have sat
here hour after hour and prayed for a change, prayed for the mystic
treasure that might come to us from those ships of chance. Dear, if
mine comes first, it brings good for you, too. You can't believe
that I should forget?"

For the first time in his life he bent over and kissed her upon the
lips. She suffered his caress not only without resistance but for a
single moment her arms clasped his neck passionately. Then she drew
away abruptly.

"I don't know what I'm doing!" she panted. "You mustn't kiss me like
that! You mustn't, Arnold!"

She began to cry, but before he could attempt to console her she
dashed the tears away.

"Oh, we're impossible, both of us!" she declared. "But then, a poor
creature like me must always be impossible. It isn't quite kind of
fate, is it, to give any one a woman's heart and a woman's
loneliness, and the poor frame of a hopeless invalid."

"You're not a hopeless invalid," he assured her, earnestly. "No one
would ever know, to look at you as you sit there, that there was
anything whatever the matter. Don't you remember our money-box for
the doctor? Even that will come, Ruth. The day will come, I am sure,
when we shall carry you off to Vienna, or one of those great cities,
and the cure will be quite easy. I believe in it, really."

She sighed.

"I used to love to hear you talk about it," she said, "but, somehow,
now it seems so far off. I don't even know that I want to be like
other women. There is only one thing I do want and that is to keep
you."

"That," he declared, fer