I never can tell you about that moment. All the love with which I had loved her swept back over my heart like a great flood. Pride and bitterness, what did they mean? I only knew that I had loved Ruth Carson as I should never, never love any other friend; and that if she died I wanted to die too, and be friends with her again in the next world, if I could not here. I think I called to her, but the call was wasted upon the wind which always bore my voice the other way. So Ruth skated on and on, and I skated after her. Whether any one was coming behind me I did not know. I never even looked over my shoulder. It seemed to me that some mad wind of destiny was sweeping us both ahead.
Suddenly there came a plash, the scarlet cap appeared a moment above the ice, and then that went under, and there was no Ruth in sight, anywhere. You cannot think how calm I was. I wonder at it now, looking back over so many years, to that bright, sad, far-off winter day. I succeeded in checking my own headlong speed, and, drawing near cautiously to the spot where Ruth had gone down, I threw myself along the ice. It was thick and strong, and had been cut into squares, so it bore me up. I looked over the edge. Ruth was rising toward me. I reached down and clutched her, I hardly know by what. At that moment I felt my ankles grasped firmly by two strong hands, and then I knew that I could save Ruth. I held her until some one helped me to pull her out, and then I don’t know what came next.
I waked up, long afterward, in my own bed, in my own room. I seemed to myself to have been quite away from this world, on some long journey. A consciousness of present things came back to me slowly. I recalled with a shudder the hard, sharply cut ice, the water gurgling below, and Ruth, my Ruth, with her great black eyes and her bright, bonny face, going down, down. I cried out,—
“Ruth! Ruth! where are you?”
And then I turned my head, and there, beside me, she lay, my pretty Ruth—mine again, after so long.
“She clung to you so tightly we could not separate you,” I heard my mother say; but all my being was absorbed in looking at Ruth. She was white as death. I had said I would not speak to her again until I saw her lie a-dying. Was she dying now? I lifted myself on my elbow to look at her. I held my own breath to see if any came from her half-parted lips; and as I looked, her eyes unclosed, and she put her arm up,—oh, so feebly!—and struggled to get it round my neck. I bent over her, and one moment our lips clung together, in such a kiss as neither of us had ever known before—a kiss snatched from death, and full of peace and pardon, and the unutterable bliss of a restored love. Then Ruth whispered,—
“Sue, I have been only half a girl since I lost you. I would rather have died there, in the black water from which you saved me, than not to find you again.”
“I thought you were dying, Ruth,” I whispered back, holding her close; “and if you were, I meant to die too. I would have gone after you into the water but what I would have had you back.”
Then we were too weak to say any thing more. We just lay there, our hands clasped closely, in an ineffable content. Our mothers came and went about us; all sorts of tender cares were lavished on us of which we took no heed. I knew only one thing,—that I had won back Ruth; Ruth knew only one thing,—that once more she was by my side.
That was our first and our last quarrel. I think no hasty word was ever spoken between us afterward. The first one had cost us too dear.