It will be remembered that I was more than thirty years of age, and yet no lover of eighteen could have felt more nervous than I. For the first time during eleven long years I dared to hope that I might be happy, and yet as I stood outside the door, longing yet not daring to enter, my limbs trembled like those of a woman in great fear. At length I knocked timidly, and heard Ruth's voice telling me to enter, and in a second more we stood face to face. She stood by the library table with an eager look upon her face. For a minute we did not speak, but looked steadily at each other. How beautiful she was in spite of the long years of trouble and disappointment! True, the first blush of maidenhood was gone, for she was only four years younger than I, but she was beautiful beyond description. Little of stature, yet perfectly moulded, her great, grey eyes still possessed their old charm, while her brown hair made a fitting crown for so beauteous a face. To me, the rough sailor, who for more than eleven years had scarcely spoken to another woman, save Salambo's wife and my mother, she seemed like an angel. All this flashed through my mind as her great eyes met mine. "Ruth," I said. "Roger," she sobbed, "thank God you've come." I could not speak another word just then. I could only open my arms; but with a glad look on her face, and with a joyful cry, she laid her face on my bosom. And I--I was in Heaven. My happiness was beyond all thought, all hope. It was joy unspeakable to feel her in my arms, and to know that no cloud intervened. "Ruth," I said after a while, "I have loved you all these long years, loved you when all was darkness, and when there was no hope. When my heart was full of hatred for all else, I loved you. Ruth, I have been a sinful man, rejecting God's help, and breaking His laws, but I have loved you." She did not answer, save to sob as though her heart were too full for utterance. "Can you not speak some word, to me, Ruth?" I went on. "I know you must have hated me when I left you more than a year ago, for in my madness I thought that I had----" "No, no, Roger, I never hated you," she said, quickly. "I loved you all the time. I was mad, I think--and I did not know what I was doing, and I thought I should have died when I knew you were gone." "And now, Ruth?" "Can you ask, Roger, after--after all you have--no, no I do not love you because of what you have done, but because I cannot help it," and she clung more closely to me. After that I remembered little that was said, and what still remains with me I cannot write down, for such joy as mine comes to man but rarely, and cannot be told to others. By and by the dinner bell rang, and Ruth and I entered the dining hall together, where we found Mr. Inch, still stately and upright, but growing very feeble.