Beneath the stars this land of splintered peaks and ragged escarpments always took on a glory denied to it by day. The obscuration of detail, the vagueness of outline, lent magic to the hills. Below, the valley swam in a sheen of gleaming silver.
Ruth drew a deep breath of sensuous delight and lifted her face to the star-strewn sky. Her companion watched her, his eyes shining. She was standing lance straight, everything forgotten but the beauty of the night. In the air was a faint, murmurous stir of desert denizens.
“The world’s going to bed,” she whispered. “It always says its prayers first—wonderful prayers full of the fragrance of roses and the sough of wind just touching the pines, and the far, far song of birds. You have to listen—oh, so still!—before you can hear them. The world is sad because the lovely day is dead and because life is so short and so filled with loss, and it’s just a wee bit afraid of the darkness. So God lights up millions of candles in His sky as a sign that He’s up there and all’s well with the universe.”
Larry had another Ruth to add to his list of portraits of her. It was amazing how many women were wrapped up in her slim young body, not to mention the Ruth that was a naughty child and the one that was all eager boy. He had known her in the course of a morning grave and gay, whimsical and coquettish, sulky and passionate. She was given to generous impulses and unjust resentments. At times her soul danced on the hilltops of life, and again she beat with her fists indignantly at the bars that prisoned her. Of late he had more than once surprised her with the traces of tears on her face.
He knew that all was not well between her and Rowan, but he did not know what was amiss. Only Mrs. Flanders guessed that, and for once she kept her own counsel.
Larry slipped his big brown hand over her little one.
“But you’re not happy just the same,” he told her.
He was one of those men whose attitude toward a young and attractive woman is always that of the lover potential or actual. He was never quite satisfied until the talk became personal and intimate, until he had established an individual relationship with any woman who interested him.
Ruth nodded agreement.
She let her hand lie in his. Since her break with Rowan she was often the victim of moods when she craved a sympathy such as Larry offered, one that took her trouble for granted without discussing it. There were other times when her spirit flared into rebellion, when she was eager to punish her husband’s faithlessness by letting Silcott make veiled love to her with only a pretense of disapproval.