“Not in so many words.  I might just as well have though.  She knows.  If it weren’t for the ring—­well, I think she would care too.”

“I am very sorry, Larry.  It looks like a bad business all round.  Yet I can’t see that you have much to blame yourself for.  I withdraw my objections to your going away.  If it seems best to you to go I haven’t a word to say.”

“I don’t know whether it is best or not.  I go round and round in circles trying to work it out.  It seems cowardly to run away from it, particularly if I am needed here.  A man ought not to pull up stakes just because things get a little hard.  Besides Ruth would think she had driven me away.  I know she would go herself if she guessed I was even thinking of going.  And I couldn’t stand that.  I’d go to the north pole myself and stay forever before I would send her away from you all.  I was so grateful to you for asking her to stay and making her feel she was needed.  She was awfully touched and pleased.  She told me last night.”

The senior doctor considered, thought back to his talk with Ruth.  Poor child!  So that was what she had been trying to tell him.  She had thought she ought to go away on Larry’s account, just as he was thinking he ought to go on hers.  Poor hapless youngsters caught in the mesh of circumstances!  It was certainly a knotty problem.

“It isn’t easy to say what is right and best to do,” he said after a moment.  “It is something you will have to decide for yourself.  When you came to me you had decided it was best to go, had you not?  Was there a specially urgent reason?”

Larry flushed again and related briefly the last night’s unhappy incident.

“I’m horribly ashamed of the way I acted,” he finished.  “And the whole thing showed me I couldn’t count on my self-control as I thought I could.  I couldn’t sleep last night, and I thought perhaps maybe the thing to do was to get out quick before I did any real damage.  It doesn’t matter about me.  It is Ruth.”

“Do you think you can stay on and keep a steady head for her sake and for ours?”

“I can, Uncle Phil.  It is up to me to stick and I’ll do it.  Uncle Phil, how long must a woman in Ruth’s position wait before she can legally marry?”

“Ruth’s position is so unique that I doubt if there is any legal precedent for it.  Ordinarily when the husband fails to put in appearance and the presumption is he is no longer living, the woman is considered free in the eyes of the law, after a certain number of years, varying I believe, in different states.  With Ruth the affair doesn’t seem to be a case of law at all.  She is in a position which requires the utmost protection from those who love her as we do.  The obligation is moral rather than legal.  I wouldn’t let my mind run on the marrying aspects of the case at present my boy.”

“I—­Uncle Phil, sometimes I think I’ll just marry her anyway and let the rest of it take care of itself.  There isn’t any proof she is married—­not the slightest shadow of proof,” Larry argued with sudden heat.