“But it has changed you,” he persisted. “And it’s going to change you a lot more. I can see it. Please, Ruth,” he said, suddenly softening, “you won’t let it change you? You won’t let it make any difference, with us, I mean?”
The girl looked soberly and steadily up into his face, and said:
“No, Jeffrey. It won’t make any difference with us, in the way you mean.
“So long as we are what we are,” she said again after a pause, “we will be just the same to each other. If it should make something different out of me than what I am, then, of course, I would not be the same to you. Or if you should change into something else, then you would not be the same to me.
“It’s too soon,” she continued decisively. “Nothing is clear to me, yet. I’ve just entered into a great, wonderful world of thought and feeling that I never knew existed. Where it leads to, I do not know. When I do know, Jeffrey dear, I’ll tell you.”
He looked up sharply at her as she rose to her feet, and he understood that she had said the last word that was to be said. He saw something in her face with which he did not dare to argue.
He got up saying:
“I have to be gone. I’m glad I found you here at the old place. I’ll be back to-night to help you eat the trout.”
“Where are you going?”