“Don’t you think it’s natural to want to pay back?” Cis suggested. “If the Church were not true, she could not be so beautiful, and you do ‘have it bad,’ as you say, when you love anything that is wholly true and profoundly beautiful. Rodney, truly you don’t begin to know! I wish you would--at least begin to know! Did you ever read about those poor animals which have been shut down in mines, how they act when they come up into the sunshine, into green fields again? Quite mad with the warmth, and brightness, and pasturage? I’m like that. I went along, didn’t know what I was missing, but now I know what I have! Will you promise me, Rodney, solemnly promise me, now, to-day when we part, that you will do your best to learn what your birthright is which you threw away?” Rodney Moore looked long and mutely at Cis, frowning, biting his lip; she had silenced his pleas for his personal desires. She waited for his answer. At last it came. “Yes,” Rodney said. “I will look into it thoroughly. It must be a big thing to do what it did last night. And to you--though that’s another story. It hit me when you would not marry me, stuck to the Church, though you didn’t seem to care much about her. I know a chap who is a Dominican in Chicago; he and I were confirmed together. I’ll hunt him up. It’s a promise.” “Then God bless you, Rodney, and I’ll pray for you hard. It’s good-bye, now, isn’t it? I heard the Angelus from our church faintly ever so long ago,” said Cis, rising. Rodney pulled out his watch. “I’ll say it was long ago!” he cried. “I’ll have to eat on the train. But it won’t take me long to connect with my bag at the hotel. Everything else is done. Cis, good-bye. Oh, Cis, good-bye! Not for always? Let me come again!” “Better not, Rodney. I’m not going to stay here, though; not long. I think this time it is for always, yet we may meet again; there should be many days before we are old. Truly God bless you, Rodney,” said Cis, holding out her hand. Their hands met over the sleeping baby; he seemed like a figure of their complete separation, filling the place of the child who would never be. “Kiss me, Holly,” Rodney whispered. “Our hands hold all that we give,” Cicely answered, and once more he bowed to her will. “I shall remember you looking like a madonna. Good-bye, good-bye, ah, Cis, good-bye!” Rodney lifted to his cheek the hand he held, then laid it upon the child’s breast, beside its mate. Cis stood motionless after the front door closed, till Nan came creeping into the room and little Matt stirred with a complaining cry. Rodney had gone, gone with Myrtle, dead, to bury her; deeper still to bury his hope and love of Cicely. Nothing was left of Rodney Moore except his promise to her. But that promise filled Cis with exaltation. * * * * * The next morning Cis made it on her way to her office to go to see Jeanette Lucas, though it was a détour that took her in the opposite direction for several blocks.