"It's a fool thing!" he cried. "Don't you know that something will happen to you?"
She smiled a little, very wearily. "Lots of things have happened to me, Ted, and I've come through them somehow." After a moment she added, with more spirit: "There's just one thing might happen to me that I haven't the courage to face." He looked at her inquiringly. "Nothing happening," she said, with a little smile.
He turned impatiently and slapped the horse with the reins. "You seem to have lost your senses," he said sharply.
He drove along in silence for a little. Ruth looked at him and his face seemed hard. She thought of how close she and Ted had come, how good he had been, how much it had meant. She could not leave him like this. She must make the effort, must gather herself together and try and make Ted see. "Perhaps, Ted," she began tremulously, "you think I have taken leave of my senses because you haven't tried very hard to understand just what it is I feel." She smiled wanly as she added, "You've been so absorbed in your own disapproval, you know."
"Well, how can I be any other way?" he demanded. "Going away like this—for no reason—on a wild goose chase! Isn't Stuart good to you?" he asked abruptly.
"Yes, Ted," she answered, as if she were tired of saying it, "Stuart is good enough to me."
"I suppose things aren't—just as they used to be," he went on, a little doggedly. "Heavens!—they aren't with anybody! And what will people say?" he broke out with new force. "Think of what people in Freeport will say, Ruth. They'll say the whole thing was a failure, and that it was because you did wrong. They'll say, when the chance finally came, that Stuart didn't want to marry you." He colored but brought it out bluntly.
"I suppose they will," agreed Ruth.
"And if they knew the truth—or what I know, though heaven knows I'm balled up enough about what the truth really is!—they'd say it just shows again that you are different, not—something wrong," he finished bitterly.
She said nothing for a moment. "And is that what you think, Ted?" she asked, choking a little.