“Oh!”
It was the idea of death that shocked Ruth, not the particular manifestation of it. Hank had not touched her life. She had begun by disliking him and ended by feeling for him the tolerant sort of affection which she might have bestowed upon a dog or a cat. Hank as a man was nothing to her, and she could not quite keep her indifference out of her voice.
It was only later, when he looked back on this conversation, that Kirk realized this. At the moment he was unconscious of it, significant as it was of the fact that there were points at which his mind and Ruth’s did not touch.
When Ruth spoke again it was to change the subject.
“Well, Kirk,” she said, “have you come back with your trunk crammed with nuggets? You haven’t said a word about the mine yet, and I’m dying to know.”
He groaned inwardly. The moment he had been dreading had arrived more swiftly than he had expected. It was time for him to face facts.
“No,” he said shortly.
Ruth looked at him curiously. She met his eyes and saw the pain in them, and intuition told her in an instant what Kirk, stumbling through his story, could not have told her in an hour. She squeezed his arm affectionately.
“Don’t tell me,” she said. “I understand. And it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter a bit.”
“Doesn’t matter? But——”