"I don't understand it, Ruth," he said, less aggressively. "I had thought you would be so glad of the chance to marry. I—" he hesitated but did not pursue that. He had never told her of going to see Mrs. Williams, of the effort he had made for her. "It seemed that now, when your chance came, you ought to show people that you do want to do the right thing. It surprises me a lot, Ruth, that you don't feel that way, and—Oh! I don't get it at all," he concluded abruptly.
Tears were very close when, after a little, she answered: "Well, Ted, maybe when you have less of life left you will understand better what it is I feel. Perhaps," she went on in answer to his look inquiry, "when the future has shrunk down to fewer years you'll see it as more important to get from it what you can."
They drove for a little time in silence. They had come in sight of the town and she had not won Ted; she was going away without his sympathy. And she was going away alone, more alone this time than she had been twelve years before.
She laid her hand on his arm, left it there while she was speaking. "Ted," she said, "it's like this. This has gone for me. It's all gone. It was wonderful—but it's gone. Some people, I know, could go on with the life love had made after love was gone. I am not one of those people—that's all. You speak of there being something discreditable in my going away just when I could marry. To me there would be something discreditable in going on. It would be—" she put her hand over her heart and said it very simply, "it would be unfaithful to something here." She choked a little and he turned away.
"But I don't see how you can bear, Ruth," he said after a moment, made gentle by her confidence, "to feel that it has—failed. I don't see how you can bear—after all you paid for it—to let it come to nothing."
"Don't say that, Ted!" she cried in a voice that told he had touched the sorest place. "Don't say that!" she repeated, a little wildly. "You don't know what you're talking about. Failed? A thing that glorified life for years—failed?"
Her voice broke, but it was more steadily she went on: "That's the very reason I'm going to New York—simply that it may not come to nothing. I'm going away from it for that very reason—that it may not come to nothing! That my life may not come to nothing. What I've had—what I've gone through—lives in me, Ted. It doesn't come to nothing if I—come to something!" She stopped abruptly with a choking little laugh.
Ted looked at her wonderingly; but the hardness had gone out of his look. "But what are you going to do, Ruth?" he asked gently.
"I don't know yet. I've got to find out."
"You must see that I can't help but worry about it," he went on. "Going so far away—to a place absolutely unknown to you—where I'm afraid it will be so much harder than you think."