“The elves caught me. It was so lovely to shake off all the weight and the misery and the womanliness.” “Are you tired of being a woman, Zyp?” “Tired? My heart aches so that I could die. Oh, I hate it all! No, no, Renny, don’t believe me! My little child! My little, little child! How can I have her and not be a woman!” “Get up, Zyp, and let’s find our way out of this.” “Not till you’ve promised me. Where can we talk better? The foolish people never dare to walk here at night. You love the woods, too, Renny. Oh, why didn’t I wait for you? Why, why didn’t I wait for you?” “Come, we must go.” “Not till you’ve promised to help me.” “I promise.” She caught my hand and kissed it as she knelt; then rose to her feet and her dark eyes burned upon me in the gloom. “You didn’t expect to see me?” “How could I? Least of all here.” “It’s on the road from Southampton. At least, if it isn’t, the woods drew me and I couldn’t help but go.” “Why have you come from Southampton?” “We fled there to escape him.” “Him? Who?” Yet I had no need to ask. “That horrible man. Oh, his white face and the eyes in it! Renny, I think Jason will die of that face.” I remembered Duke’s words and was silent. “It comes upon us in all places and at all hours. Wherever we go he finds means to track us and to follow--in the streets; in churches, where we sometimes sit now; at windows, staring in and never moving. Renny,” she came close up against me to whisper in my ear, and put her arm round my neck like the Zyp of old. Perhaps she was half-changeling again in that atmosphere of woodland leafiness. “Renny--once he tried to poison Jason!” “Oh, Zyp, don’t say that!” “He did--he did. Jason was sitting by an open window in the dark, and a tumbler of spirit and water was on the table by him. He was leaning back in his chair, as if asleep, but he was really looking all the time from under his eyelids. A hand came very gently through the window, pinched something into the glass, and went away again quite softly.” “Why didn’t Jason seize it--call out--do anything that wasn’t abject and contemptible?” “You don’t know how the long strain has told upon him. Sometimes in the beginning he thought he must face it out, for life or death, and end the struggle. But he isn’t really brave, I think.” “No, Zyp, he isn’t.” “And now it has gone too far. All his spirit is broken. He clings to me like a child. He sits with his hand in mine, staring and listening and dreadfully waiting. And that other doesn’t mean to kill him now, I think--not murder him, I mean. He sees he can do it more hideously by following--by only following and looking, Renny.” In a moment she bowed her head upon my arm and burst into a convulsive flood of crying. I waited for the first of it to subside before I spoke again. These, almost the only tears I had ever known fall from her, were eloquent of her change, indeed.