“‘I’m here by her consent, she’s had a note from me, and she answered it, and here she is. Isn’t it true?’ he demanded of her. “‘It is quite true,’ she said, speaking to me. “I was hurt and disappointed. “‘Then I will go, as it appears to be an assignation.’ “‘No,’ said Ruth, ‘wait. You said you had had your finger on the pulse of my affairs ever since you came here, and now you must follow them out to the end. I am not a bit afraid of your turning me away from the path I’ve chosen.’ “Weak! I had thought her. As I stood there like a bereft and helpless puppet between those two dark figures, I felt myself a stranger and a foreigner to them, baffled by the remoteness of their race. They were of the same blood, and I and Leslie Dymock were of a different breed, tame, contented, orderly, incapable of abrupt resolution. Weak! I had thought her. Well, and so she had been, indolently weak, but now, like many weak natures, strong under the influence of a nature stronger than her own. So, at least, I read her new determination, for I did not believe in a well of strength sprung suddenly in the native soil of her being. I perceived, rather, a spring gushing up in the man, and pouring its torrent irresistibly over her pleasant valleys. I thought her the mouthpiece of his thunder. At the same time, something in her must have risen to merge and marry with the force of his resolve. Who knows what southern blood, what ancient blood, what tribal blood, had stirred in her from slumber? what cry of the unknown, unseen wild had drawn her towards a mate of her own calibre? An absurd joy rushed up in me at the thought. I flung a dart of sympathy to Leslie Dymock, but he, like those slow-chewing cattle, was of the patient, long-suffering sort whose fate is always to be cast aside and sacrificed to the egoism of others. I forgot my homily on marriage, and the pictures I had drawn of Ruth and Dymock in their happy home with their quiverful of robust and flaxen children. I forgot the sinful lusts of Rawdon Westmacott. Yes, I lost myself wholly in the joy of the mating of two Bohemian creatures, and in Ruth’s final justification of herself. “‘I want you,’ continued Ruth, in the same even, relentless voice, ‘to stand by Leslie whatever may come to him, and to show him that he’s a happier man for losing me....’ “I heard Westmacott in the darkness give a snarl of triumph. “‘You’re determined, then?’ I said to Ruth. ‘You’ve not had much time to make up your mind, or wasted many words over it, since I surprised you here.’ “‘Time?’ she said, ‘words? A kettle’s a long time on the fire before it boils over. I know I’m not for Leslie Dymock, I know it this evening, and I’ve known it a long while though I wouldn’t own it. I’m going, and I want to be forgotten by all at home.’ “I was moved—by her homely little simile, and by the anguish in her voice at her last sentence.