“I cannot fight you any longer,” she said breathlessly.
He looked dumbly first at her hand and then into her eyes. She was an arm's length away.
“Fight me?” he mumbled, uncomprehending.
“You—you said we could not be friends. I knew what you meant. If—if you love me,—oh, if you do love me, we need not be friends. But I know you love me. If I did not know it I could not have come to you like this and—”
“Do I love you?” he cried out. “My God, I—I worship you.”
She held out both arms to him. “Then, we will try no more to be friends,” she murmured very softly. “Here are my arms. I surrender.”
A long time after he said to her as they sat before the jubilant, applauding fire,—the only witness to their ecstasy:
“Now I understand why we have never really been friends. It wasn't what God intended. Even in the beginning we were not friends. We thought we were,—but we weren't. We were lovers, Ruth,—from the start.”
“I tried very hard to hate you,” she sighed, drawing a little closer in the crook of his encircled arm. “How wonderful it all is,—how wonderful!”
“I never believed it could come true. I hoped, God, how I hoped,—but it didn't seem possible that this could ever happen. I've wanted to hold you in my arms, to kiss your dear lips, to kiss your eyes, to touch your hair, to press you tight against my heart. And here I am awake, not dreaming, not longing,—and I have done all these things. Lord! I wonder if I can possibly be dreaming all this for the thousandth time.”