Drew interrupted her fiercely. "Great heavens!" he cried out, "my part would be easy, comfortable, serene, interesting, compared to yours. Don't you know it's nothing except _sad_ to be shut up in the same house, in the same life, with a person you love who doesn't love you? Nothing but sad, I tell you; and there's no special nervous strain about being sad. But to be shut up day and night--as long as life lasts--with a person who takes the impudent liberty of loving you against your wish to be loved--oh, the spiritual distastefulness of it, and the physical enmity, and the ghastly, ghastly ennui! That's your part of it. Flower or book or jewel or caress, no agonizing, heart-breaking, utterly wholesome effort to please, but just one hideously chronic, mawkishly conscientious effort to _be_ pleased, to act pleased--though it blast your eyes and sear your lips--to _look_ pleased. I tell you I won't have it!" "I understand all that," said Ruth gravely. "I understand it quite perfectly. But underneath it all--I would rather--you had taken me in your arms--as though I were a little, little hurt girl--and comforted me--" But before Drew's choking throat-cry had reached his lips she had sprung from her seat and was facing him defiantly. Across her face flared suddenly for the first time the full, dark flush of one of Life's big tides, and the fear in her hands reached up and clutched at Drew's shoulders. The gesture tipped her head back like a fagged swimmer's struggling in the water. "I am pleading for my life, Drew," she gasped, "for my body, for my soul, for my health, for my happiness, for home, for safety!" He snatched her suddenly into his arms. "My God! Ruth," he cried, "what do you want me to do?" Triumph came like a holiday laugh to her haggard face. "What do I want you to do?" she dimpled. "Why, I want you to come with me now and get a license. I want to be married right away this afternoon." "What!" Drew hurled the word at her like a bomb, but it did not seem to explode. Laughingly, flushingly, almost delightedly, she stood and watched the anger rekindle in his face. "Do you think I am going to take advantage of you like this?" he asked hotly. "You would probably change your mind to-morrow and be very, very sorry--" She tossed her head. It was a familiar little gesture. "I fully and confidently expect to be sorry to-morrow," she affirmed cheerfully. "That's why I want to be married to-day, this afternoon, this minute, if possible, before I have had any chance to change my mind."