“I can’t.”
“Don’t you want to get free?”
“I can’t.”
“—Hiding like a sneak in the woods to love: just because Jack’s a carpenter.”
“I can’t.”
“You could marry Jack, if you left.”
Ruth was silent. She sat, transfixed a moment. A great tide of misery swept her: she crumpled back in her bed. She wept.
“I can’t. I can’t,” she looked up. “It’s too late,” she ended.
Cornelia seemed to understand, though it was all blank ugliness to Tom.
“Last year, even—if I’d dared. If you had helped me then. Now——”