"Come!" he commanded as if defying any other hold that might have power over her.
Pale, trembling and enveloped in the fur coat and hood, Ruth Dale entered and closed the door behind her.
Her eyes were wide and fear-filled, but self-possession was not lost.
"John!" she cried pleadingly; "as soon as they told me—I came."
Her outstretched hands recalled Dale to the present.
"Ruth!" he whispered hoarsely, going to her; "this is—kind of you. Let me take your wraps. Here, sit down."
It was a relief to have her a little distance from him. He took a chair on the opposite side of the hearth, and struggled to regain his composure. For the life of him he could not fix his identity in the place where the sudden convulsion of events had cast them all.
He was an exile from the past of which this lovely woman was a part, and the present had no space for her.
In a dazed way he noted how exactly the same Ruth looked. When he had dropped her hands—way back there in time, she appeared precisely the same to him as she did now, with those same little jewelled hands lying white and soft in her lap. She had worn a bright gown then, Dale recalled, but even the gloomy raiment that now enfolded her had no power to change the woman of her.
Poor Dale could not comprehend in his new birth and life, that such women as Ruth Dale are Accomplished Achievements of heredity and ultra refinement. Generations ago Ruth's type had been perfected; she and others of her kind, were but repetitions.