“You are unforgiving,” said he.  “I only ask you to hear me.  I have a right to be heard, Ruth!  I won’t believe you are so much changed as not to listen to me when I entreat.”

He spoke in a tone of soft complaint.  But he himself had done much to destroy the illusion which had hung about his memory for years, whenever Ruth had allowed herself to think of it.  Besides which, during the time of her residence in the Benson family, her feeling of what people ought to be had been unconsciously raised and refined; and Mr. Donne, even while she had to struggle against the force of past recollections, repelled her so much by what he was at present, that every speech of his, every minute they were together, served to make her path more and more easy to follow.  His voice retained something of its former influence.  When he spoke, without her seeing him, she could not help remembering former days.

She did not answer this last speech any more than the first.  She saw clearly, that, putting aside all thought as to the character of their former relationship, it had been dissolved by his will—­his act and deed; and that, therefore, the power to refuse any further intercourse whatsoever remained with her.

It sometimes seems a little strange how, after having earnestly prayed to be delivered from temptation, and having given ourselves with shut eyes into God’s hand, from that time every thought, every outward influence, every acknowledged law of life, seems to lead us on from strength to strength.  It seems strange sometimes, because we notice the coincidence; but it is the natural, unavoidable consequence of all, truth and goodness being one and the same, and therefore carried out in every circumstance, external and internal, of God’s creation.  When Mr. Donne saw that Ruth would not answer him, he became only the more determined that she should hear what he had to say.  What that was he did not exactly know.  The whole affair was most mysterious and piquant.

The umbrella protected Ruth from more than the rain on that walk homewards, for under its shelter she could not be spoken to unheard.  She had not rightly understood at what time she and the girls were to dine.  From the gathering at meal-times she must not shrink.  She must show no sign of weakness.  But, oh! the relief, after that walk, to sit in her own room, locked up, so that neither Mary nor Elizabeth could come by surprise, and to let her weary frame (weary with being so long braced up to rigidity and stiff quiet) fall into a chair anyhow—­all helpless, nerveless, motionless, as if the very bones had melted out of her!