“No. . . .  You asked, and I had to say something; but it is no answer.  Forgive me.  It was the best I could find.”

He still eyed her, between wrath and admiration.

“I think,” she said, after a pause, “the true answer is just that I did wrongly—­wrongly for the child’s sake.”

“That’s certain.  And your own?”

“My own?  That does not seem to me to count so much. . . .  Neither of us believe that a priest can hallow marriage; but once I felt that the touch of a certain one could defile it.”

“You have never before reproached me with that.”

“Nor mean to now.  I chose to run from him; but, dear, I do not ask to run from the consequences.”

“The blackguard has had his pretty revenge.  Langton told me of it. . . .  All the prudes of Boston gather up their skirts, he says.”

“What matter?  Are we not happier missing them? . . .  Honester, surely, and by that much at any rate the happier.”

“Marry me, and I promise to force them all back to your feet.”

She laughed quietly, almost to herself, a little wearily.  “Can you not see, my dear lord, that I ask for no such triumph?  It is good of you—­oh, I see how good!—­to desire it for me.  But did we want these people in our forest days?”

“One cannot escape the world,” he muttered.

“What?  Not when the world is so quick to cast one out?”

“Ruth,” he said, coming and standing close to her, “I do not believe you have given me the whole answer even yet.  The true reason, please!”

“Must a woman give all her reasons? . . .  She follows her fate, and at each new turning she may have a dozen, all to be forgotten at the next.”

“I am sure you harbour some grudge—­some reservation?” His eyes questioned her.

She kept him waiting for some seconds.

“My lord, women have no consistency but in this—­they are jealous when they love.  As your slave, I demand nothing; as your mistress, I demand only you.  But if you wished also to set me high among women, you should have given me all or nothing. . . .  You did not offer to take me with you.  I was not worthy to be shown to that proud folk, your family.”

“If you had breathed a wish, even the smallest hint of one—­”

“I had no wish, save that you should offer it.  I had only some pride.  I was—­I am—­well content; only do not come back and offer me these women of Boston, or anything second best in your eyes, however much the gift may cost you.”

“Have it as you will,” said he, after a long pause.  “I was wrong, and I beg your pardon.  But I was less wrong than your jealousy suspects.  My family will welcome you.  Forgive me that I thought it well—­that it might save you any chance of humiliation—­to prepare them.”

She swept him a curtsy.  “They are very good,” she said.

He detected the irony, yet he persisted, holding his temper well in
control.  “But all this presupposes, you see, that you marry me. . . .  Ruth, you confess that you were wrong, for the child’s sake. 
He is dead; and, on the whole, so much the better, poor mite! 
But for another, should another be born—­”