"God keep you, Ruth!" he murmured.
She sought to answer him, but something choked her; a sob was all she achieved.

Had he caught her to him in that moment there is little doubt but that she had yielded.

Perhaps he knew it; and knowing it kept the tighter rein upon desire.

She was as metal molten in the crucible, to be moulded by his craftsman's hands into any pattern that he chose.

But the crucible was the crucible of pity, not of love; that, too, he knew, and, knowing it, forbore.
He dropped her hand, doffed his hat, and, wheeling his horse about, touched it with the spur and rode back towards the thicket where his friends awaited him.