“Then he won’t be our Winky any longer,” she objected, with a touch of obstinacy that was very seductive.  “We shall all be different.  Perhaps we shall be too wonderful to need each other any more....  Oh, Spinny, you precious thing my life needs, think of that!  We may be too wonderful even to care!”

Spinrobin turned and faced her.  He tried to speak with authority and conviction, but he was a bad actor always.  He met her soft grey eyes, already moist and shining with a tenderness of love beyond belief, and gazed into them with what degree of sternness he could.

“Miriam,” he said solemnly, “is it possible that you do not want us to be as gods?”

Her answer came this time without hesitation.  His pretended severity only made her happy, for nothing could intimidate by a hair’s breadth this exquisite first love of her awakening soul.

“Some day, perhaps, oh, my sweet Master,” she whispered with trembling lips, “but not now.  I want to be on earth first with you—­and with our Winky.”

To hear that precious little voice call him “sweet Master” was almost more than he could bear.  He made an effort, however, to insist upon this fancied idea of “duty” to Skale; though everything, of course, betrayed him—­eyes, voice, gestures.

“But we owe it to Mr. Skale to become as gods,” he faltered, trying to make the volume of his voice atone for its lack of conviction.

And it was then she uttered the simple phrase that utterly confounded him, and showed him the new heaven and new earth wherein he and she and Winky already lived.

“I am as God now,” she said simply, the whole passion of a clean, strong little soul behind the words.  “You have made me so!  You love me!”

II

The same moment, before they could speak or act, Skale was upon them from behind with a roar.

“Practicing your splendid notes together!” he cried, thundering down the steps past them, three at a time, clothed for the first time in the flowing scarlet robe he usually wore only in the particular room where his own “note” lived.  “That’s capital!  Sing it together in your hearts and in your souls and in your minds; and the more the better!”

He swept by them like a storm, vanishing through the hall below like some living flame of fire.  They both understood that he wore that robe for protection, and that throughout the house the heralds of the approaching powers of the imprisoned Letters were therefore already astir.  His steps echoed below them in the depths of the building as he descended to the cellar, intent upon some detail of the appalling consummation that drew every minute nearer.