Nor had any word passed between himself and Ruth, other than the merest commonplace.

He was cheery, buoyant, always ready to help,--always at her service if she took the train for New York or stayed after dark at a neighbor's house, when he would insist on bringing her home, no matter how late he had been up the night before.
If the truth were known, he neither suspected nor could he be made to believe that Ruth had any troubles.

The facts were that he had given her all his heart and had been ready to lay himself at her feet, that being the accepted term in his mental vocabulary--and she would have none of him.

She had let him understand so--rebuffed him--not once, but every time he had tried to broach the subject of his devotion;--once in the Geneseo arbor, and again on that morning when he had really crawled to her side because he could no longer live without seeing her.

The manly thing to do now was to accept the situation: to do his work; look after his employer's interests, read, study, run over whenever he could to see Peter--and these were never-to-be-forgotten oases in the desert of his despair--and above all never to forget that he owed a duty to Miss Ruth in which no personal wish of his own could ever find a place.