“I should love it,” she murmured.

“Then why not?” he cried.  “I’ll stop the car at the next village we come to, and make inquiries.”

She laid her hand softly upon his.

“Arnold, dear,” she begged, “it sounds very delightful, and yet, can’t you see it is impossible?  I am not quite like other women, perhaps, but, after all, I am a woman.  It is for your sake—­for your sake, mind—­that I think of this.”

He turned and looked at her—­looked at her, perhaps, with new eyes.  She was stretched almost at full length upon the grass, her head, which had been supported by her clasped hands, now turned towards him.  As she lay there, with her stick out of sight, her lips a little parted, her eyes soft with the sunlight, a faint touch of color in her cheeks, he suddenly realized the significance of her words.  Her bosom was rising and falling quickly.  Her plain black dress, simply made though it was, showed no defect of figure.  Her throat was soft and white.  The curve of her body was even graceful.  The revelation of these things came as a shock to Arnold, yet it was curious that he found a certain pleasure in it.

“I had forgotten, Ruth,” he said slowly, “but does it matter?  You have no one in the world but Isaac, and I have no one in the world at all.  Don’t you think we can afford to do what seems sensible?”

Her eyes never left his face.  She made no sign either of assent or dissent.

“Arnold,” she declared, “it is true that I am an outcast.  I have scarcely a relative in the world.  But what you say about yourself is hard to believe.  I have never asked you questions because it is not my business, but there are many little things by which one tells.  I think that somewhere you have a family belonging to you with a name, even if, for any reason, you do not choose just now to claim them.”

He made no direct reply.  He watched for some moments a white-sailed boat come tacking down the narrow strip of river.

“I am my own master, Ruth,” he said; “I have no one else to please or to consider.  I understand what you have just told me, but if I gave you my word that I would try and be to you what Isaac might have been if he had not been led away by these strange ideas, wouldn’t you trust me, Ruth?”

“It isn’t that!” she exclaimed.  “Trust you?  Why, you know that I would!  It isn’t that I mind for myself either what people would say—­or anything, but I am thinking of your new friends, of your future.  If they knew that you were living down in the country with a girl, even though she were an invalid, who was no relation at all, don’t you think that it might make a difference?”

“Of course not,” he replied, “and, in any case, what should I care?  It would be the making of you, Ruth.  You would be able to pick up your strength, so that when our money-box is full you would be able to have that operation and never dare to call yourself an invalid again.”