“No one knows I am here,” Ruth said in a faint voice, with an appealing smile.

“What did you say?”

He was surprised at the sound of his own voice.

She repeated her words.

“Oh,” he said, then wondered what more he could possibly say.

“I saw you come in, and I waited a few minutes.”

“Oh,” he said again.

He had never been so tongue-tied in his life.  Positively he did not have an idea in his head.  He felt stupid and awkward, but for the life of him he could think of nothing to say.  It would have been easier had the intrusion been the Shelly Hot Springs laundry.  He could have rolled up his sleeves and gone to work.

“And then you came in,” he said finally.

She nodded, with a slightly arch expression, and loosened the scarf at her throat.

“I saw you first from across the street when you were with that girl.”

“Oh, yes,” he said simply.  “I took her down to night school.”

“Well, aren’t you glad to see me?” she said at the end of another silence.

“Yes, yes.”  He spoke hastily.  “But wasn’t it rash of you to come here?”

“I slipped in.  Nobody knows I am here.  I wanted to see you.  I came to tell you I have been very foolish.  I came because I could no longer stay away, because my heart compelled me to come, because—­because I wanted to come.”

She came forward, out of her chair and over to him.  She rested her hand on his shoulder a moment, breathing quickly, and then slipped into his arms.  And in his large, easy way, desirous of not inflicting hurt, knowing that to repulse this proffer of herself was to inflict the most grievous hurt a woman could receive, he folded his arms around her and held her close.  But there was no warmth in the embrace, no caress in the contact.  She had come into his arms, and he held her, that was all.  She nestled against him, and then, with a change of position, her hands crept up and rested upon his neck.  But his flesh was not fire beneath those hands, and he felt awkward and uncomfortable.

“What makes you tremble so?” he asked.  “Is it a chill?  Shall I light the grate?”

He made a movement to disengage himself, but she clung more closely to him, shivering violently.

“It is merely nervousness,” she said with chattering teeth.  “I’ll control myself in a minute.  There, I am better already.”

Slowly her shivering died away.  He continued to hold her, but he was no longer puzzled.  He knew now for what she had come.

“My mother wanted me to marry Charley Hapgood,” she announced.

“Charley Hapgood, that fellow who speaks always in platitudes?” Martin groaned.  Then he added, “And now, I suppose, your mother wants you to marry me.”

He did not put it in the form of a question.  He stated it as a certitude, and before his eyes began to dance the rows of figures of his royalties.