Ruth stopped just inside the door and looked about her in astonishment.

The benches had been drawn up in an orderly semi-circle about the fire-place. Beyond them she observed the figure of a man kneeling before the fire, using a bellows with great effect. The big logs were snapping, and cracking, and spitting before the furious blasts.

She closed the door and started across the room in his direction.

Suddenly she recognized the broad back and the familiar but very unseasonable panama hat. Panic seized her. She turned quickly, bent on making her escape. Her heart was beating like a triphammer,--she felt strangely weak in the knees. As abruptly, she checked the impulse to flee. Why should she run away, now that the moment she had wished for so ardently the night before was at hand? Chance had answered her call with amazing swiftness. She was alone with him,--she could go to him and lay her weapons at his feet and say,--as she had said a hundred times in the night,--"I can fight no more. I am beaten."

But now that the time had come for bravery, she found herself sorely afraid. A chill swept through her,--a weakening chill that took away her strength and left her trembling from head to foot. The crisis was at hand,--the great, surpa.s.sing crisis. She found herself hazily, tremulously wondering what the next minute in her life would be like?

What would be said in it, what would happen to her? Would she be in his arms, would his lips be upon hers,--all in the minute to come? Was the whole of her life to be altered in the brief s.p.a.ce of a minute's time?

A warm glow suddenly drove off the chill. It came with the realization that he was building the fire for her,--that his thoughts were of her,--that he had stolen into the building to make it warm and comfortable long before she was due to arrive,--and that he would steal away again as soon as the "ch.o.r.es" were done.

He arose to his feet and stood over the fire for a moment or two, watching its lively progress. Apparently satisfied with his efforts, he turned and started toward the door. She was standing in his path, a shy, wavering smile on her lips.

He halted, and after an instant's hesitation, stammered:

"I--I never dreamed you'd be around so early. I thought I'd run in as I was pa.s.sing and build a fire for--for the kiddies. Get the place warmed up a bit before--"

"Will you let me say something, Mr. Percival?" she broke in, hurrying the words.

He fumbled for his hat. "I am sorry if you are annoyed, Miss Clinton.

Please believe me when I tell you I hoped to get out before you came. I came early so that you would not find me--"

"You are not letting me say what I want to say."

She came toward him, her hand extended. "Oh, I don't want to thank you for lighting the fire and putting the room in order. I want to tell you that I surrender."

"Surrender?" he exclaimed, staring.

"I cannot fight you any longer," she said breathlessly.

He looked dumbly first at her hand and then into her eyes. She was an arm's length away.

"Fight me?" he mumbled, uncomprehending.

"You--you said we could not be friends. I knew what you meant. If--if you love me,--oh, if you do love me, we need not be friends. But I know you love me. If I did not know it I could not have come to you like this and--"

"Do I love you?" he cried out. "My G.o.d, I--I worship you."

She held out both arms to him. "Then, we will try no more to be friends," she murmured very softly. "Here are my arms. I surrender."

A long time after he said to her as they sat before the jubilant, applauding fire,--the only witness to their ecstasy:

"Now I understand why we have never really been friends. It wasn't what G.o.d intended. Even in the beginning we were not friends. We thought we were,--but we weren't. We were lovers, Ruth,--from the start."

"I tried very hard to hate you," she sighed, drawing a little closer in the crook of his encircled arm. "How wonderful it all is,--how wonderful!"

"I never believed it could come true. I hoped, G.o.d, how I hoped,--but it didn't seem possible that this could ever happen. I've wanted to hold you in my arms, to kiss your dear lips, to kiss your eyes, to touch your hair, to press you tight against my heart. And here I am awake, not dreaming, not longing,--and I have done all these things. Lord! I wonder if I can possibly be dreaming all this for the thousandth time."

"I was thinking of you when I came into this room,--not ten minutes ago,--and suddenly I saw you. I was terrified. I knew then that my dreams were coming true,--I knew it, and I don't know why I did not run away. Any self-respecting, modest girl would have done so. But what did I do? I, a supposedly sensible, well-brought-up--"

"You caught me trying to run away," he broke in. "I give you my word, my heart was in my throat all the time I was working over that fire,--scared stiff with the fear that you would come in and bayonet me with one of those icicle looks of yours. And see what really happened!"

They were silent for some time, staring into the fire. Suddenly his arm tightened; he drew a sharp breath. She looked up quickly.

"Why are you frowning?"

"I was just thinking," he replied after a moment's hesitation.

He gave a queer little jerk of his head, as if casting off something that bothered him. Into his paradise had slipped the memory of a night not long since when he held the yielding, responsive form of another woman in his arms, and felt the thrill of an ign.o.ble pa.s.sion surging through his veins. The kiss of the sensualist had burned on his lips for days; even to this hour it had clung to them; he was never free from the fire it had started in his imagination. And always on Olga's red, alluring lips lurked the reminder that she had not forgotten; in her eyes lay the light of expectancy.

"Of whom?" asked Ruth, not coyly, but with a directness that startled him. She seemed to have divined that his thoughts were not of her in that brief, flitting instant.

"Of myself," he answered, quite truthfully.

She laid her hand on his. "I forbid you to think of any one but me," she said.

He was silent for a moment. "I shall never think of any one but you, Ruth Clinton," he said earnestly. "You have nothing to fear."

"I believe you," she said, and pressed his hand tightly. After a slight pause, she went on, looking straight into his eyes: "I might have lost you, dear,--and I could have blamed no one but myself. She--she is very alluring."

He shook his head. "I've always been of the opinion that Samson's hair needed tr.i.m.m.i.n.g. His mother probably brought him up with Fauntleroy curls, poor chap. If he'd had his hair cut regularly, he wouldn't have looked such an a.s.s when Delilah got through with him."

"I don't quite follow the parable."

"In other words, it's what a man's got in his head and not so much what he's got on it that makes him strong," he explained, still more or less cryptically.

"I am beginning to see. You made good use of what you have in your head, is that it?"

"I made use of what you put into it a good many months ago, dear heart.

You have been in my head and in my heart all these months, and so it was you who made me strong. Without you in there, I might have been as weak as Samson was before he had his hair cut. No sensible man blames Delilah. In fact, men are rather strong for her. When you stop to think how long old Samson got away with it, and what a shock it must have been to her after she trimmed him and found there wasn't anything left to speak of, you've just got to feel sorry for her. She took one good look at his head and understood why he let his hair grow. He was like the fellow who wears long whiskers to develop his chin. If Samson had had room enough in his head for a thought of anything except himself, Delilah wouldn't have been able to catch him napping."

She could not help laughing. "You take a most original way of evading the point. Still, I am satisfied. You did not have room in your head for any one else but me,--and that's all there is to it. I can't help feeling tremendously complimented, however. She is quite capable of turning any man's head."

"She plays fair, Ruth," he said seriously. "She keeps the danger signal up all the time. That's more than you can say for most women."

"Yes," said she; "she plays fair. She is a strange woman. She has given me a lot of advice,--and I am just beginning to take it."

"If I had believed what she told me three months ago," said he, "this glorious hour would have been advanced just that length of time."

Ruth stiffened. "What did she tell you?"

"She told me I was a fool and a coward; that all I had to do was to walk up to you and say 'Here, I want you,' and that would have been the end of my suspense. She told me something I didn't know and couldn't believe."

"Indeed! I like her impudence! She--"

"She told me you were as much in love with me as I was with you.

Honest,--was she right?"

Ruth sighed. "I suppose she was right."