“I must make certain arrangements with him. Yes, I think that will be best.” I spoke cheerfully and buoyantly, anxious to quicken and sustain her new-born hope. Uneasy forebodings, nevertheless, drove me to make the proposition. I could not free my mind of the thought that Duke yet hung secretly about the place, induced to wait and watch on that sure instinct that had never yet in the long run failed to interpret to him the movements of his victims. Therefore I felt it safer to keep my brother for the present under friendly lock and key rather than risk a further exposing of him to the malignant observation of his enemy. “Zyp, take this money. I wish it were more, but it will keep you going for the present.” “No, Renny, I have a little left.” “Don’t worry me, changeling.” “Ah, the name and the flowers.” She rose to her feet. “Have you forgotten my asking you never to pick one?” “Not once in my life since, Zyp. My conscience is free of that reproach.” She looked at me with a sweet strange expression in her wet eyes. “Good-by, dear brother,” she said, suddenly, holding out her hand to me. “Shall I not see you off?” “No. We shan’t have long to wait, I dare say, and Jason will be wishing for you. Kiss--Renny, kiss dad for me--this kiss”--and she stepped hurriedly forward and put her soft trembling lips to my forehead. My blood leaped. For a moment I was near catching her madly in my arms. “Good-by!” I cried, swerving back. “Good-by, little Zyp!” They moved from me a few paces. Out in the road the wind caught the woman’s skirts and flung her dark hair abroad. Suddenly she turned and came back to me. “Renny,” she said, in low, heartrending tones, “it looks so happy and golden, but the fierce air talked in my lungs as I went. Oh, promise--promise--promise!” “Anything, Zyp, in the wide world.” “To care for my little one--my darling, if I’m called away.” “Before God I swear to devote my life to her.” She looked at me a long moment, with a piercing gaze, gave a hoarse, low sob, and catching at her child’s hand hurried away with her down the road. I watched their going till their shapes grew dim in the stormy dusk; then twisted about and strode my own way homeward. Heaven help me! It was my last vision of her who, through all the hounding of fate, had made my life “a perfumed altar-flame.” Before I reached the mill the rain swept down once more, wrapping the gabled city in high spectral gloom. Not dust to dust, it seemed, was our lot to be in common with the sons of men, but rather the fearfuller ruin of those whose names are “writ in water.”