"But I love you, that's all.

Am I nothing--to you ?" And Philip looked a little defiant, and as if he had said something that ought to brush away all the sophistries of obligation on either side, between man and woman.
Perhaps Ruth saw this.

Perhaps she saw that her own theories of a certain equality of power, which ought to precede a union of two hearts, might be pushed too far.

Perhaps she had felt sometimes her own weakness and the need after all of so dear a sympathy and so tender an interest confessed, as that which Philip could give.

Whatever moved her--the riddle is as old as creation--she simply looked up to Philip and said in a low voice, "Everything." And Philip clasping both her hands in his, and looking down into her eyes, which drank in all his tenderness with the thirst of a true woman's nature-- "Oh! Philip, come out here," shouted young Eli, throwing the door wide open.
And Ruth escaped away to her room, her heart singing again, and now as if it would burst for joy, "Philip has come." That night Philip received a dispatch from Harry--"The trial begins tomorrow.".