No one in the happy throng seemed gayer than she; and once as she tripped by he assured himself that there was no hostility in the swift glance she gave him. Seeing her again rilled him with a great happiness untinged with bitterness. Among all the women of the bright company she alone was superb, and not less regal for his remembrance of her anger, the anger that had brought tears to her lovely eyes. At the conclusion of the number, she remained, to his discomfiture, at the farther end of the platform, and when he hurried forward in the hope of detaching her from the group that surrounded her she did not see him at all, which was wholly discouraging. A partner sought her for the next dance and as the music struck up he made bold to accost her. "I am not to be eluded!" he said. "I must have at least one dance!" "My card is filled--but I am reserving a boon for you! You shall have the intermission," and added as by an afterthought, "Mr. Comly," with a delicious mockery. He passed Ruth, returning to put herself in the path of her next partner. "This is your punishment for coming late!" laughed the girl. There was happiness in her eyes. "How perfectly ridiculous you two men are!" "Suppose we talk a bit," said the Governor when they had found a bench on the lawn. He was silent for several minutes, sitting erect with arms folded. "It's nearing the end!" he said solemnly; "there are other changes and chances perhaps, but the end is in sight. The whole thing was unalterable from the beginning; it makes little difference what we do now. And it's you--it's you that have brought it all about. We are bound together by ties not of earthly making." He laughed softly, turned and placed his hand on Archie's shoulder. "You are beginning to believe at last?" "I don't know what to believe," Archie answered slowly. "There's something uncanny in all this. Just how much do you understand of it?" "Precious little! Your Isabel and my Ruth are friends; quite intimate friends indeed. In college together, I'd have you know, but I never knew it till now. That's news to you, isn't it?" "Most astonishing news!" "And this is the very Isabel who shattered your equanimity; told you to shoot up the world and then treated you like a pick-pocket the next time you met! But as old William said 'Love is not love that alters when it alteration finds.'" "Don't jump at conclusions! I was just bragging when I gave you the idea that there was anything between us. The love's all on my side! She twitted me about my worthlessness that night in Washington; bade me tear down the heavens. And it oddly happened that from that hour I have never been a free man; I have done things I believed myself incapable of doing."