Now all of a sudden--I know not how--his words seemed to wake me to the fond illusion of my state. How, indeed, was I situated, with a legless Caliban to show me how to run? I had been blinded, by Gogo’s devotion, to the real nature of the presumption it had thought to justify. What honest right had he to have undertaken so responsible a deed, save he had provided for it to the last details? I felt suddenly very naked and forlorn--shiftless and crying, like some poor exposed child in the night. I clasped my fingers to the shadow, entreating it in a broken voice-- “What am I to do? Advise me, help me!” It moved upon me, soft, and swift, and irresistible. I felt my hands imprisoned--seized as out of the grave into an assurance of human warmth and sympathy. “For what else am I here?” demanded the fervent voice. “Have I not the prior claim? Have you never thought of me in all these years--of what you might be now, save for my interference?” “Yes,” I whispered. “Indeed, indeed I am not one to forget.” “Well,” he said, “I am just a vagabond at last, and desperate in romance; and you--your reason is forfeit, if not your life. Be under no delusion about it; nor about the real impotence of this good fellow to save you. Come with me, then, while there is time, and be my little sister. I am lonely in the deep woods.” I did not move or speak, but I gazed up intently into the white bloom of his face. The strangest thought was struggling for expression in me--of some conscious gravitation, through all these years, towards an affinity which had been shadowed out to me at that first and only meeting. I felt no shyness, but only a restful confidence in his company. Was not that strange? To be brother and sister, one and indivisible in the candid sympathies of Nature. I recognised in a moment that it was that ideal relationship which had always appealed to me for the best and purest--that I could never be happy again divorced from it. Suddenly the tears were in my eyes. “If I could truly be your little sister,” I said, “and keep house for you, as Gretel did for the gentle shepherd who had plucked her when a flower.” He heaved a long sigh, full of rapture. “Quick, then! let me pluck my flower,” says he, “and run.” But now, at that, for some reason, a revulsion of feeling took me. I sank down upon the ground away from him, and hid my face in my hands. “No, no,” I cried--“not yet, not now. O, leave me, _please_!” Perhaps he was wise to understand and temporise. Anyhow, he went, though no farther than the door.