"Lucky for you, perhaps," said Cyrus, "but not for me. I am sure you are even more desirable, more beautiful, more generally perfect and irresistible--if possible--than you were then." "On the contrary. If you could see me by daylight you would shout for joy at your escape." "No, Ruth, you can't fool me that way. Are you little or big?" He groped about and laid a hand on her shoulder. "I should say you were little." She pushed away the hand. "Keep your hands to yourself, Cyrus. You forget we are no longer children." Cyrus obeyed. "True enough. But we were really married, you know. Surely a husband may touch his wife's shoulder. Tell me, have you the same wonder-working eyes and mouth and haughty bearing? You are not a great big woman, I have discovered that." "No, I am neither big nor lovely. I am little and dried up--and wrinkled, like a baked apple--and surprisingly ugly." "Dried up at your age? May I touch your face just a little?" "You may not!" "Oh, well, it doesn't matter. There's charm in baked apples. There's character in a dried-up face." "But that was only the beginning. As I dried and shriveled, my hair fell out." "Good! I love a bald head--especially in a woman. There's no distinction in hair. All animals have it. In that delectable period of sudden marriages, I remember some things clearly, as if yesterday. I recall distinctly the eyes of my bride. No man could forget them. In their fathomless depths even a boy could lose himself. And, oh, so beautiful! One such eye would transform a dried apple face into a thing of joy. And in that bride's face were two of them. Don't tell me they, also, are gone." "Only one." "Too bad! Have you lost any limbs?" "Not yet." "And your teeth are gone?" "Oh, long, long ago." There was a silence. So black was the enveloping darkness that the silence itself seemed heavy, as if forbidding conversation. At last Cyrus spoke. "So far as I can learn, your face is like a baked apple, your teeth and one eye are gone, and you have no hair. But I'll take you as you are." Ruth laughed. "Why, Cyrus! That's practically an offer of marriage! You appear even wilder and more reckless than when you were trying to discover whether you were in England or Massachusetts." "On the contrary, I am wiser than you think. I was in love with you in Longfields--and I am finding now that neither time nor absence have changed that feeling. What's a tooth, an eye, or a few hairs more or less to an honest lover?" "Honest humbug! You forget how well I knew you. You had no respect for truth." "Yes, but only as a child. I am telling the truth now, on my honor. Let's not separate again. Why, it's beginning a new life! Come. Let's go back to the Unitarian Church and be married just once more. Only once more; that's all I ask." "Indeed I shall not! I am not buying a pig in a poke. When daylight came and I really saw you I might be sick with horror."