the inner glow of their mutual love and worship deepened and warmed as
did the colors of the heavens and of the glassing waters. The brother
knew full well Ruth's poignant sense of his distresses; and to her his
mute tongue and unbent head were a sister's convincement that he would
endure them in a manner wholly faithful to every one of the loved hands
that had lain under his the evening Godfrey had said good-by.

[Illustration: Indeed it was clear that to go away would be unfair.]

Indeed, it was clear that to go away--unless he honestly felt too weak
to remain--would be unfair to almost every person, every interest,
concerned; and such a step was but second choice in Ruth's mind,
conditioned solely on any unreadiness he might have uprightly to bear
the burden brought upon him by--well, after all, by his own too
confident miscalculations in the game of hearts.

To him such flight signified the indeterminate continuance of his
sister's maiden singleness and a like prolongation of her lover's
galling suspense. To Ruth it stood not only for the loss of her brother,
but for the narrowing of their father's already narrowed life,--a
narrowing which might come to mean a shortening as well; and it meant
also the leaving of Isabel and Arthur to their mistake and to their
unskilfulness slowly and patiently to work out its cure. To go away
were, for him, to consent to be the one unbroken string on a noble but
difficult instrument. These thoughts and many more like them passed to
and fro, out through the abstracted eyes of the one, across to the
fading clouds, and back through the abstracted eyes and into the
responding heart of the other.

At length the sister rose. "I must go to father," she said.