Ted lit another cigarette, looked up straight into Geoffrey Annersley’s war lined face.

“Thank you,” he said.  “I think I’ll remember it.  Anyway I appreciate your saying it to me that way.”

The subject dropped then, went back to war and how men feel on the edge of death, of the unimportance of death anyway.

CHAPTER XXXVI

THE PAST AND FUTURE MEET

Larry knocked at Ruth’s door.  It opened and a wan and pathetically drooping little figure stood before him.  Ever since she had been awake Ruth, had been haunted by that unwelcome bit of memory illumination which had come the night before.  No wonder she drooped and scarcely dared to lift her eyes to her lover’s face.  But in a moment he had her in his arms, a performance which banished the droop and brought a lovely color back into the pale cheeks.

“Larry, oh Larry, is it all right?  I’m not his wife?  He didn’t marry me?”

Larry kissed her.

“He didn’t marry you.  Nobody’s going to marry you but me.  No, I didn’t mean to say that now.  Forget it, sweetheart.  You are free, and if you want to say so I’ll let you go.  If you don’t want—­”

“But I do want,” she interrupted.  “I want Larry Holiday and he is all I want.  Why won’t you ever, ever believe I love you?  I do, more than anything in the world.”

“You darling!  Will you marry me?  I shouldn’t have asked you that other time.  I hadn’t the right.  But I have now.  Will you, Ruth?  I want you so.  And I’ve waited so long.”

“Listen to me, Larry Holiday.”  Ruth held up a small warning forefinger.  “I’ll marry you if you will promise never, never to be cross to me again.  I have shed quarts of tears because you were so unkind and—­faithless.  I ought to make you do some terrible penance for thinking the money or anything but you mattered to me.  Not even the wedding ring mattered.  I told you so but still you wouldn’t believe.”

Larry shook his head remorsefully.

“Rub it in, sweetheart, if you must.  I deserve it.  But don’t you think I have had purgatory enough because I didn’t dare believe to punish me for anything?  As for the rest I know I’ve been behaving like a brute.  I’ve a devil of a disposition and I’ve been half crazy anyway.  Not that that is any excuse.  But I’ll behave myself in the future.  Honest I will, Ruthie.  All you have to do is to lift this small finger of yours—­” He indicated the digit by a loverly kiss “and I’ll be as meek and lowly as—­as an ash can,” he finished prosaically.

Ruth’s happy laughter rang out at this and she put up her lips for a kiss.

“I’ll remember,” she said.  “You’re not a brute, Larry.  You’re a darling and I love you—­oh immensely and I’ll marry you just as quick as ever I can and we’ll be so happy you won’t ever remember you have a disposition.”

Another interim occurred, an interim occupied by things which are nobody’s business and which anybody who has ever been in love can supply ad lib by exercise of memory and imagination.  Then hand in hand the two went down to where Geoffrey Annersley waited to bring back the past to Elinor Farringdon.