“Nothing,” she responded. It was the first word she had spoken to him since the afternoon ceremony. He turned back to Levice, lowering his ear to his chest. After a faint, almost imperceptible pause he arose.
“I think you had all better lie down,” he said softly. “I shall sit with him, and you all need rest.”
“I could not rest,” said Mrs. Levice; “this chair is all I require.”
“If you would lie on the couch here,” he urged, “you would find the position easier.”
“No, no! I could not.”
He looked at Ruth.
“I shall go by and by,” she answered.
Arnold had long since gone out.
Ruth’s by and by stretched on interminably. Kemp took up the “Argonaut” that lay folded on the table. He did not read much, his eyes straying from the printed page before him to the “finis” writing itself slowly on Jules Levice’s face, and thence to Ruth’s pale profile; she was crying,—so quietly, though, that but for the visible tears an onlooker might not have known it; she herself did not,—her heart was silently overflowing.
Toward morning Levice suddenly sprang up in bed and made as if to leap upon the floor. Kemp’s quick, strong hand held him back.