I thought my voice might not penetrate to her dulled senses, but to my wonder she put her arms round my neck immediately. “Yes,” she moaned, “I’m so cold. Take me to the warmth or I shall die.” We lifted her out between us and carried her into the house kitchen. There a goodly blaze went coiling up the chimney, and the sight was reviving in itself. “Shall we leave you here alone a bit?” said I, “to rest and recover? There’s to be no more of the river for us. We’ll walk the distance that remains.” She gave me a quick glance, full of a pathetic gratitude, and whispered, “Yes; I’d better be alone.” “And if you take my advice,” said our host, “you’ll strip off them drownded petticuts and wrap yourself in a blanket I’ll bring you while they’re a-drying; wait, while I fetch it.” As he went out Dolly beckoned me quickly to her. “I heard you tell me to leave go,” she said, hurriedly, in a low voice; “but I couldn’t--Renny, I couldn’t; and you saved my life.” Her lips were trembling and her eyes full of tears. She clasped her hands and held them entreatingly toward me. A gust of some strange feeling--some yearning sense of protection toward this pretty, lovable child--flooded my heart. “You poor little thing,” I whispered, in a pitying voice, and taking her two hands in one of mine I passed my other arm around her. Then she lifted her face eagerly and I bent and softly dropped a kiss on her warm, wet lips. The moment I had done it I felt the shame of my action. “There, dear, forgive me,” I said. “Like you, Dolly, I couldn’t let go at once,” and our friend returning just then with the blanket, we left the girl to herself and stepped outside. A queer exultant feeling was on me--a sense as of the lightening of some overburdening oppression. “A life for a life.” Why should the words ring stilly, triumphantly in my brain? I might earn for my breast a cuirass of medals such as Dolly had desired, and what would their weight be as set in the scale against the one existence I had terminated? Perhaps it was not that. Perhaps it was that I felt myself for the first time in close touch with a yearning human sympathy; that its tender neighborhood taught me at a breath to respect and stand by what was noble in myself. The shadow that must, of course, remain with me always, I would not have away, but would only that it ceased to dominate my soul’s birthright of independence. There was in my heart no love for Dolly--no passion of that affinity that draws atom to atom in the destiny that is human. There was only the pitying protective sense that came to man through the angels, and, in its sensual surrender, marked their fall from divinity. For to the end, without one thought of wavering, Zyp must shine the mirage of my barren waste of love. Suddenly I remembered, with a remorseful pang, that all this time I had forgotten Duke. I hurried down to the steps, calling him. He was sitting in the boat, his elbows on his knees, his face buried in his hands.