The flat rock over the fall was still their supper-table.  After supping they would wrap themselves closer in their cloaks of bearskin, and sit for long, his arm about her body.  The stars wheeled overhead.  At a little distance shone the open window inviting them.  From their ledge they overlooked the world.

She marvelled at the zest he threw into every moment and detail of this strange honeymooning.  He had taken pride even in skinning and cutting up the slain deer.

She had, in fact, being fearful of her experiment; had planned it, in some sort, as a test for him.  She was no sentimentalist.  She had believed that he loved her—­well she knew it now.  But for him this could not be first love.  Many times she had bethought her of the dead Margaret Dance, and as a sensible girl without resentment.  But, herself in the ecstasy of first love, she marvelled how it could die and anything comparable spring up in its room; and she had only her own heart to interrogate.  Her own heart told her that it was impossible.  “Fool!” said her own heart.  “Is it not enough that he condescends—­that you have found favour in his sight—­you, that asked but to be his slave?”

“Fool!” said her heart again.  “Would you be jealous of this dead woman?  Then jealousy is not cruel as the grave, but crueller.”

And she retorted, “The woman is dead and cannot grudge it.  Ah, conscience! are you the only part of me that has not slept in his arms.  I want him all—­all!”

“How can that be—­since you are not his first love?” objected conscience, falling back upon its old position.

“Be still,” she whispered back.  “See how love is recreating him!”

Indeed, the secret may have lain in her passing loveliness—­by night, beside their fire on the rock, he would sit motionless watching her face for minutes together, or the poise of her head, or the curve of her chin as she tilted it to ponder the stars; and, in part, the woodland life, chosen by her so cunningly, may have bewitched him for a space.  Certain it is that during their sojourn here he became a youth again, eager and glad as a youth, passionate as a youth, laughing, throwing his heart into simple things and not shrinking from coarser trials—­as when he plunged his hands into the blood of the deer.

This story is of Ruth, not of Oliver Vyell; or of him only in so far as his star ruled hers.  For the moment their stars danced together and the common cares of this world stood back for a space and left a floor for them.

Their bliss was absolute.  But the seed of its corruption lay in him.  Her spirit was chaste, as her life had been.  For him, before ever Margaret Dance met and crossed his path, he had lived loosely, squandering his manhood; and of this squandering let one who later underwent it record the inevitable sentence.

    “But ah! it hardens all within,
     And petrifies the feeling.”