"Listen to me, Larry Holiday." Ruth held up a small warning forefinger. "I'll marry you if you will promise never, never to be cross to me again. I have shed quarts of tears because you were so unkind and—faithless. I ought to make you do some terrible penance for thinking the money or anything but you mattered to me. Not even the wedding ring mattered. I told you so but still you wouldn't believe."
Larry shook his head remorsefully.
"Rub it in, sweetheart, if you must. I deserve it. But don't you think I have had purgatory enough because I didn't dare believe to punish me for anything? As for the rest I know I've been behaving like a brute. I've a devil of a disposition and I've been half crazy anyway. Not that that is any excuse. But I'll behave myself in the future. Honest I will, Ruthie. All you have to do is to lift this small finger of yours—" He indicated the digit by a loverly kiss "and I'll be as meek and lowly as—as an ash can," he finished prosaically.
Ruth's happy laughter rang out at this and she put up her lips for a kiss.
"I'll remember," she said. "You're not a brute, Larry. You're a darling and I love you—oh immensely and I'll marry you just as quick as ever I can and we'll be so happy you won't ever remember you have a disposition."
Another interim occurred, an interim occupied by things which are nobody's business and which anybody who has ever been in love can supply ad lib by exercise of memory and imagination. Then hand in hand the two went down to where Geoffrey Annersley waited to bring back the past to Elinor Farringdon.
"Does he know me?" queried Ruth as they descended.
"He surely does. He knows all there is to know about you, Miss Elinor Ruth Farringdon. He ought to. He is your cousin and he married your best friend, Nan—"
"Wait!" cried Ruth excitedly, "it's coming back. He married Nancy Hollinger and she gave me some San Francisco addresses of some friends of hers just before I sailed. They were in that envelope. I threw away the addresses when I left San Francisco and tucked my tickets into it. Why, Larry, I'm remembering—really remembering," she stopped short on the stairs to exclaim in a startled incredulous tone.
"Of course you are remembering, sweetheart," echoed Larry happily. "Come on down and remember the rest with Annersley's help. He is some cousin. You'd better be prepared to be horribly proud of him. He is a captain and wears all kinds of honorable and distinguished dingle dangles and decorations as well as a romantic limp and a magnificent gash on his cheek which he evidently didn't get shaving."