ou will return safe and sound from this venture, as indeed
I hope you may."

That was his cue. "You hope it?" he cried, arresting his step, turning,
and imprisoning her left hand in his right. "You hope it? Ah, if you
hope for my return, return I will; but unless I know that you will have
some welcome for me such as I desire from you, I think..." his
voice quivered cleverly, "I think, perhaps, it were well if... if
my forebodings were not as groundless as you say they are. Tell me,
Ruth..."

But she interrupted him. It was high time, she thought. Her face he saw
was flushed, her eyes had hardened somewhat. Calmly she disengaged her
hand.

"What is't you mean?" she asked. "Speak, Sir Rowland, speak plainly,
that I may give you a plain answer."

It was a challenge in which another man had seen how hopeless was his
case, and, accepting defeat, had made as orderly a retreat as still was
possible. But Sir Rowland, stricken in his vanity, went headlong on to
utter rout.

"Since you ask me in such terms I will be plain, indeed," he answered
her. "I mean..." He almost quailed before the look that met him from her
intrepid eyes. "Do you not see my meaning, Ruth?"

"That which I see," said she, "I do not believe, and as I would not
wrong you by any foolish imaginings, I would have you plain with me."

Yet the egregious fool went on. "And why should you not believe your
senses?" he asked her, between anger and entreaty. "Is it wonderful that
I should love you? Is it...?"

"Stop!" She drew back a pace from him. There was a moment's silence,
during which it seemed she gathered her forces to destroy him, and,
in the spirit, he bowed his head before the coming storm. Then, with a
sudden relaxing of the stiffness her lissom figure had assumed, "I think
you had better leave me, Sir Rowland," she advised him. She half turned
and moved a step away; he followed with lowering glance, his upper lip
lifting and laying bare his powerful teeth. In a stride he was beside
her.

"Do you hate me, Ruth?" he asked her hoarsely.

"Why should I hate you?" she counter-questioned, sadly. "I do not even
dislike you," she continued in a more friendly tone, adding, as if by
way of explaining this phenomenon, "You are my brother's friend. But I
am disappointed in you, Sir Rowland. You had, I know, no intention of
offering me disrespect; and yet it is what you have done."

"As how?" he asked.

"Knowing me another's wife..."

He broke in temp