Moreover,
he could understand now her point of view, and that disarmed him.
He saw how this state of things had come about. In a sense, it was the
natural state of things. Ruth had been brought up in certain
surroundings. Her love for him, new and overwhelming, had enabled her
to free herself temporarily from these surroundings and to become
reconciled to a life for which, he told himself, she had never been
intended. Fate had thrown her back into her natural sphere. And now she
revelled in the old environment as an exile revels in the life of the
homeland from which he has been so long absent.
That was the crux of the tragedy. Ruth was at home. He was not. Ruth
was among her own people. He was a stranger among strangers, a prisoner
in a land where men spoke with an alien tongue.
There was nothing to be done. The gods had played one of their
practical jokes, and he must join in the laugh against himself and try
to pretend that he was not hurt.
Chapter V
The Real Thing
Kirk sat in the nursery with his chin on his hands, staring gloomily
at William Bannister. On the floor William Bannister played some game
of his own invention with his box of bricks.
They were alone. It was the first time they had been alone together for
two weeks. As a rule, when Kirk paid his daily visit, Lora Delane
Porter was there, watchful and forbidding, prepared, on the slightest
excuse, to fall upon him with rules and prohibitions.
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