“No, I don’t propose to be handicapped. We are not engaged any more, and you can’t come till I tell you.”
He put up a brave fight, selling his law books to buy candy and pay the livery bill for buggy rides, but it was all in vain.
At last, when she told him she was going to marry Gordon and the day had been fixed, he turned pale, looked at her long and tenderly and stammered:
“I hope you will be very happy, Ruth. But you’ve killed me.”
“Don’t be silly,” she cried. “Go to work and be a great man.”
He closed his law office and went over to Norfolk, debating the question of suicide or murder. He walked along the river-front to pick out a place to jump overboard, but the water looked too black and filthy and cold. He saw a steamer loading, boarded her, and landed in New York with ten cents in his pocket and not a friend on earth that he knew.
He had never spoken a word of love to a woman since. Ambition was his god, and yet, mingled with its fierce cult, its conflicts and turmoil, he had cherished a boyish loyalty to Ruth’s last words as she dismissed him.
“Be a great man,” she had said. He would—and he had dreamed that some day, perhaps, he might say to her: “Behold, I am your knight of youthful chivalry. Your command has been my law. It is all yours.”
The day she had curtly dismissed him as her attorney he was elated with the first assurance his associates had given him that he would be the next Governor of New York. Her unexpected rebuff had cut his pride to the quick. The old hurt was bruised again, and by a woman who had been deserted by a cavalier husband. He had sworn in the wrath of a strong man he would go this time and never return. And now he was hurrying back to her side and cursing himself for being a fool.
She greeted him cordially.