Johnny Brodie returned. Routledge took him by the hand and led him into the midst of his possessions.... It was quite a happy time, with the old landlady looking on, and a mysterious fund in her pocket for Johnny stockings, and Brodie trousers and even dinners, when old Bookstalls was remiss in her duty. Finally, at the last moment, Routledge dropped his hand upon the boy’s shoulder. The face was turned up clear, the eyes unblinking. The man was no longer afraid. “Johnny,” he said, “the best fellows in this world are those who are strong enough to hold their tongues at the right time. Nobody must know about this little room--_nobody_. To you, I’m just a decent stranger who has gone away. If anybody asks who or where or how or why about me--you don’t know. This is all yours. Sleep tight, and say nothing. If you need anything that you can’t get yourself, go to the landlady. Be clean about what you do everywhere--I don’t mean in the room, Johnny, but everywhere, in the street, too. Not clean about your hands and face--that’s good--but mostly about what you think. I may come back some time, and I may not, but you’ll be fixed here as long as you need. Think of it, Johnny Brodie--remember this well: always if something hits you from inside that a thing isn’t good to do, don’t hurry about doing it. Think it over. If you wouldn’t do it when the person you like best in the world is watching, it isn’t a good thing to do alone.” Routledge locked his lodgings. With the boy attached to one hand and his bag in the other, he went down into the street, and just at that moment a carriage opened at the curb, and Noreen Cardinegh stepped out. Routledge took the outstretched hand, but there was a warm flood of pain widening within him, as blood from an opened wound.... The rain-coat hung about her like a delicate harmony, its hood covering her hair; and its high-rolling collar, bound with scarlet, thin as a thread but vivid as an oriflamme, concealed her throat. That lustrous, perfect oval face in the rain. It was luminous from within like a pearl, and had _its_ scarlet-edging in the curving, exquisite lips, strange with inner vividness. Never had she been so wondrous to him as he felt the superb zest of life beneath the pearl-gray glove that moment in grimy Bookstalls. A conception of womanhood that widened the limitations of any man!... He lifted his glance from the pavement, where it had been held for an instant by the glittering point of her boot, and found the great eyes upon him--pools of splendor which held his temple, white as truth, golden sunlight on its dome; and, far within, a dim, mystic sanctuary where Mother Earth had built a shrine for him. “Thank God you have not gone, Routledge-san!” she said in a low way. “Tell me--ah, but I know--you would have gone without a word to me.... You think it is right?” “Yes.”