"Not right away," she said, her voice restrained.
"Better not try to sit up late, Ruth," he said kindly. "You need plenty of sleep. I notice you're often pretty tired at night."
She did not reply, putting things in the machine drawer. Her back was to him. "Well, Ruth," he said, in a voice genial but slightly ironic, "we can get married now."
She went on doing things and still did not speak.
"Better late than never," he said pleasantly, yawning.
He stood up, ready for going into the bedroom, but still hating to leave the fire, standing there with his back to it. "When shall we get married, Ruth?" he went on, in a slightly amused voice.
"Oh, I don't know, Stuart," she replied shortly from the kitchen.
"Have to plan it out," he said sleepily, yawning once more. Then he laughed, as if the idea more and more amused him. After that he murmured, in the voice of one mildly curious about a thing, "I wonder if Marion is going to get married?"
Ruth wanted to take a bath before she went to bed. Taking a bath was no easy matter under their circumstances. It was so much work and usually she was so tired that she would sometimes let it go longer than she would have supposed she would ever let bathing go. She was determined not to let it go tonight. She had the water on heating; she went down for the tub, went upstairs into her frigid room for the fresh things to put on in the morning. The room was so cold that there was a sort of horror about it. She went over to the window; the snow made the valley bright. Dimly she could see a massed thing—the huddled sheep. With a hard little laugh for the sob that shook her she hurried out of the room.
She took her bath before the fire in the living-room. Stuart had piled on one chair the clothes that he had taken off and would put on in the morning. She placed on another the things for herself. And suddenly she looked at those two chairs and the thing that she had been trying not to think about—that now they two could be married—seemed to sear her whole soul with mockery. She was rubbing some lotion on her red, chapped hands, hands defaced by work and cold. She had a picture of her hands as they used to be—back there in those years when to have been free to marry Stuart would have made life radiant. She sat a long time before the fire, not wanting to go to bed. She particularly wanted to go to bed alone that night. There seemed something shameful in that night sharing a bed as a matter of expediency. Stuart was snoring a little. She sat there, her face buried in her hands. The wind was beating against the house. It was beating against the sheep out there, too—it had a clean sweep against that outer rim of living things. She cried for a little while; and then, so utterly tired that it did not matter much, she went in the other room and crept into bed.