The man moved nervously.
“You must have some sense, Ruth. Surely, I’m not worth all this if I leave you so. You must take this money.”
She moved closer to him and held up her delicate hands, with the sunlight gleaming through the red blood of her tapering fingers.
“You see these hands? They have only known the gentle tasks of love. Well, I’ll scrub, sew and wash the clothes of working-men before one dollar of her gold shall stain them!”
“You cannot be so foolish,” he protested, impatiently. “Besides, she has given me this money to give to you.”
“Ah, my love,” she went on, as though she had not heard his last words, “if you were frankly evil as other men, I might bear this shame with better grace. Others before me, as good as I, have borne its burden. But when I think that you are making your sin a religion, and that you are going to preach with the zeal of a prophet this gospel of the brute and call it freedom, how can I bear it?”
They were both silent for a moment.
“Let us change this disgusting subject, Frank,” she said at length. “I wish you to leave with something kindlier to remember in my face than this shadow. You see, I have taken your pictures all down and locked them up. I have placed your clothes, all I could spare, in your trunk—for even these little things to me are heart treasures now. I could not let you take the slippers I have made for you with my own hands, or your dressing-gowns. That woman shall never touch them. The marriage certificate, with the little poem written to me on the birth of Lucy, I’ve packed up, too, with your pictures. I’ve put them away, because, just now, it would break my heart to look at them after this parting with you. When I come back from the South I will be stronger, and I will bring them out again. Your ring is mine until God’s hand shall take it. I’ll teach our babies always to love you.”
Her voice broke, and he looked away.
“I will tell them that you have gone on a long journey into a strange country, and that you will come back again because you love them.”