Gordon had bathed her forehead as soon as he had
discovered it, and carried her to the cabin, with her soft arms
clinging around his neck.
He was watching her lips twitch.
She had grown in the three years out of all resemblance to the child
he had left. Her eyes now looked at him with the timid light of a
maiden.
As she had clung to him while he carried her to the house, he had
felt her lips soft and warm with the dawn of sex when she kissed
him and murmured:
"Papa, dear, it's so good to have you carry me. I love you."
For the first time there came into his soul the sweet and terrible
realisation that his own flesh and blood had become one with Ruth's
in the greatest miracle of earth, the heart of a woman--a woman
who could live and suffer and whose heart could break even as her
mother's! Her eyes were all his, her hair a perfect mixture of the
pigments with which theirs had been coloured. The strength of the
man trembled with tender pride and wonder as he looked at her--his
living marriage vow, written out before his eyes in a beautiful
poem of flesh and blood. In the gentle beauty of her face he saw
reflected himself blended with the young vision of Ruth as he had
first met her a laughing girl--the little stranger a growing woman,
himself and his first love dream in one.
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