“Forgive me, Ruth.  It’s all wrong.  I’m all wrong.  We can’t do it.  I shouldn’t have kissed you.  I shouldn’t have touched you—­shouldn’t have let you come to me like this.  You must go now, dear.  I am sorry.”

Ruth faced him in silence a moment then bowed her head, turned and walked away to the door meekly like a chidden child.  Her loosened hair fell like a golden shower over her shoulders.  It was all Larry could do to keep from going after her, taking her in his arms again.  But he stood grimly planted by the table, gripping its edge as if to keep himself anchored.  He dared not stir one inch toward that childish figure in the dark robe.

On the threshold Ruth turned, flung back her hair and looked back at him.  There was a kind of fearless exaltation and pride on her lovely young face and in her shining eyes.

“I don’t know whether you are right or wrong, Larry, or rather when you are right and when you are wrong.  It is all mixed up.  It seems as if it must be right to care or we wouldn’t be doing it so hard, as if God couldn’t let us love like this if he didn’t mean we should be happy together, belong to each other.  Why should He make love if He didn’t want lovers to be happy?”

It was an argument as old as the garden of Eden but to Ruth and Larry it was as if it were being pronounced for the first time for themselves, here in the dead of night, in the old House on the Hill, as they felt themselves drawn to each other by the all but irresistible impulse of their mutual love.

“Maybe,” went on Ruth, “I forgot my morals along with the rest I forgot.  I don’t seem to care very much about right and wrong to-night.  You called me.  I heard you and I came.  I am here.”  Her lovely, proud little head was thrown back, her eyes still shining with that fearless elation.

“Ruth!  Don’t, dear.  You don’t know what you are saying.  I’ve got to care about right and wrong for both of us.  Please go.  I—­I can’t stand it.”

He left his post by the table then came forward and held open the door for her.  She passed out, went up the stairs, her hair falling in a wave of gold down to her waist.  She did not turn back.

Larry waited at the foot of the stairs until he heard the door of her room close upon her and then he too went up, to Granny’s room.  Ted met him at the threshold in a panic of fear and grief.

“Larry—­I think—­oh—­” and Ted bolted unable to finish what he had begun to say or to linger on that threshold of death.

The nurse was bending over Madame Holiday forcing some brandy between the blue lips.  Larry was by the bedside in an instant.  The nurse stepped back with a sad little shake of the head.  There was nothing she could do and she knew it, knew also there was nothing the young doctor could do professionally.  He knelt, chafed the cold hands.  The pale lips quivered a little, the glazed eyes opened for a second.

“Ned—­Larry—­give Philip love—­” That was all.  The eyes closed.  There was a little flutter of passing breath.  Granny was gone.