All the cloud of
suspicion and doubts and fears was suddenly lifted. He looked through
new eyes on to a new world.
"Thank God!" he exclaimed. "Not that I ever doubted it, Wingrave,
but--thank God!" . . .
Barrington left the house radiant,--Lady Ruth and Wingrave were alone.
She watched him close the door and turn towards her, with a new
timidity. The color came and went in her pale cheeks, her eyes were no
longer tired. When he turned towards her, she leaned to him with a
little seductive movement of her body. Her hands stole out towards
him.
"Wingrave!" she murmured.
His first action seemed to crush all the desperate joy which was
rising fast in her heart. He took one hand, and he led her to a chair.
"Ruth," he said, "I have been talking to your husband. There are only
a few words I want to say to you."
"There are only three I want to hear from you," she murmured, and her
eyes were pleading with him passionately all the time. "It seems to me
that I have been waiting to hear them all my life. Wingrave, I am so
tired--and I am losing--I want to leave it all!"
"Exactly," he answered cheerfully, "what you are going to do. You are
going to America with your husband."
"What do you mean?" she asked sharply.
He shrugged his shoulders.
"I am rather tired of the game," he said, "that is all. I am like the
child who likes to build up again the house of bricks which he has
thrown down.
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