She turned and looked into his eyes ... she rose to her feet and took one hesitating step toward him ... she stretched out both her hands, and, somehow, then, she felt his strong arms fold themselves around her yielding form ... she felt his heart beat very near to hers ... she felt his lips against her hair ... and, then, she turned her face from his broad shoulder where it had found a resting-place, and, as her lips met his, it seemed to her that, after all, she had come home; a feeling of deep security and sweet peace crept over her:
"Tender Heart," he murmured very near to her small, shell-like ear, for she had, once more, put her head against his shoulder, "Tender Heart, you do not know my name.... I am, to you, but one of those five men who volunteered, at once, to follow Teddy up San Juan Hill.... I am, to you, but only him you rescued from almost certain death upon that bloody battle-field. Are you sure you are not making a mistake, sweet, trusting Tender Heart, to grant me this great privilege, knowing as little of me as you do?"
He waited for her answer, for some time, but, then, he waited willingly indeed, for her soft nearness was enough to make him very happy; when her answer came she spoke in such low tones he had to listen very closely ... he had to put his arms about her a little closer than they had been yet ... he had to lift her from the ground and bring her soft, red mouth upon a level with his head, indeed ... and then, he heard her say:
"I know you just as well as you know me. We do not know each other's names ... we do not need to know them ... now ... I only know I love you, Dear ... and, now, I know that you love me."
And, then, he set her feet upon the ground again and looked down into her clear, gray eyes, and found within their shining depths the very things he wanted most to know; and she looked up and saw a man who was a man indeed ... a man on whom she knew that she could lean ... a man whom she would love to walk beside ... a man of whom she could be always proud.
Standing there, they gazed into each other's eyes and read their future in them ... read the happiness that they might know together on the earth, and, then, they saw beyond the chance and change that seem to to govern earthly things, and saw themselves together in some higher, better sphere. They plainly saw, there, in each other's eyes, the promise of another, more etherial world, where they might spend long ages of eternal joy and gladness in each other's company.
Father Felix found them so, for he had followed Ruth to see if he could help her meet the problems that confronted her; the good Priest hesitated for only a moment before he said:
"My Daughter, I trust that you have found true happiness. Sir, I do not know you very well, but I can give you most profound assurance that you have found a jewel among women; if she has any faults I have not found them, yet, and I have spent full many happy hours in her society; my work is to find faults, if so be I can trace them out; I am a hunter, and a most successful one, of human frailties, and, when I give you my most profound assurance that I have not found a fault in this one woman, the statement is worthy of respect.
"Your coming at this time is most propitious, for I was almost at my wit's end as to how to help her bear the direful calamity that has just come upon her. She has not remembered half she's lost, and, now that she has found you, Sir, I trust that she will nevermore remember much of it, but that she will go on, with you beside her, leaving far behind her in her earthly path sad memories of happy days that nevermore can come to her."
The man, then, gave to Father Felix his right hand and kept his left arm round Ruth's slender waist: