“Tug!” she cried, irradiate, and moved to him with hands outstretched.
He was profoundly touched, but his words reflected the commonplace of the surface mind. “I’m wet,” he warned.
She laughed that to scorn, a little hysterically, and went blindly into his arms, a smirr of mist in her eyes. All night she had been under a strain, had carried the responsibility of facing peril for all of them. Now she cast that burden, without a moment’s hesitation, on broader shoulders.
His lip trembled. “I was afraid,” he whispered, as his arms went round her. “Horribly afraid till Dusty told me he’d heard you singing.”
“Oh, I’m glad you’ve come! I’m glad!” she wailed softly.
He held her close, as though he were afraid that even yet malign fate might try to snatch her from him. Beyond a shadow of a doubt he knew now that if they lived nothing could keep them apart. She had been right. The sin that had held him from her was a dead and shriveled thing. It was no more a part of him than are discarded horns part of a living stag.
Tug murmured, with emotion, “Thank God! Thank God!”
Into this stress of feeling Ruth interjected herself. She saw no reason for being out of the picture.
“Did Jesus send you?” she asked, tugging at his shirt-sleeve.
He did not quite understand.