“You cannot believe, Ruth,” he said, “that I shall ever forget?  We have been through too much together, too many dark days.”

She sighed.

“There wasn’t much for either of us to look forward to, was there, when we first looked down on the river together and you began to tell me fairy stories.”

“They kept our courage alive,” he declared.  “I am not sure that they are not coming true.”

She half closed her eyes.

“For you, Arnold,” she murmured.  “Not all the fancies that were ever spun in the brain of any living person could alter life very much for me.”

He took her hand and held it tightly.  Yet it was hard to know what to say to her.  It was the inevitable tragedy, this, of their sexes and her infirmity.  He realized in those few minutes something of how she was feeling,—­the one who is left upon the lonely island while the other is borne homeward into the sunshine and tumult of life.  There was little, indeed, which he could say.  It was not the hour, this, for protestation.

They passed along Piccadilly, across Leicester Square, and into the Strand.  The wayfarers in the streets, of whom there were still plenty, seemed to be lingering about in sheer joy of the cooler night after the unexpected heat of the day, the women in light clothes, the men with their coats thrown open and carrying their hats.  They passed down the Strand and into Adam Street, coming at last to a standstill before the tall, gloomy house at the corner of the Terrace.  Arnold stepped out onto the pavement and helped his companion to alight.  The chauffeur lifted his hat and the car glided away.  As they stood there, for a moment, upon the pavement, and Arnold pushed open the heavy, shabby door, it seemed, indeed, as though the whole day might have been a dream.

Ruth moved wearily along the broken, tesselated pavement, and paused for a moment before the first flight of stairs.  Arnold, taking her stick from her, caught her up in his arms.  Her fingers closed around his neck and she gave a little sigh of relief.

“Will you really carry me up all the way, Arnie?” she whispered.  “I am so tired to-night.  You are sure that you can manage it?”

He laughed gayly.

“I have done it many times before,” he reminded her.  “To-night I feel as strong as a dozen men.”

One by one they climbed the flight of stone steps.  Curiously enough, notwithstanding the strength of which he had justly boasted, as they neared the top of the house he felt his breath coming short and his heart beating faster, as though some unusual strain were upon him.  She had tightened her grasp upon his neck.  She seemed, somehow, to have come closer to him, yet to hang like a dead weight in his arms.  Her cheek was touching his.  Once, toward the end, he looked into her face, and the fire of her eyes startled him.

“You are not really tired,” he muttered.

“I am resting like this,” she whispered.