Mrs. Strongtharm smiled tolerantly.
"Never," Ruth repeated; "never; I know it."
With the same assurance of prophesy she answered her lover on his return, a bare two months later.
"But you must have known. . . . Even your letters kept it secret. Yet, had you written, the next ship would have brought me. Surely you did not doubt that?"
"No."
"Then why did you not tell me?"
It was the inevitable question. She had forestalled it so often in her thoughts that, when uttered at last, it gave her a curious sensation of re-enacting some long-past scene.
"I thought you did not care for children."
He was pacing the room. He halted, and stared at her in sheer astonishment. Many a beautiful woman touches the height of her beauty after the birth of her first child; and this woman had never stood before him in loveliness that, passing comprehension, so nearly touched the divine. But her perversity passed comprehension yet farther.
"Do you call that an answer?" he demanded.