They no longer, these two bewildered loving children, spoke of one another in the far-fetched terminology of sound and music.  He no longer called her his “brilliant little sound,” nor did she respond with “you perfect echo”; they fell back—­sign of a gradual concession to more human things—­upon the gentler terminology, if the phrase may be allowed, of Winky.  They shared Winky between them ... though neither one nor other of them divined yet what Winky actually meant in their just-opening lives.

“Winky is yours,” she would say, “because you made him, but he belongs to me too, because he simply can’t live without me!”

“Or I without you, Little Magic,” he whispered, laughing tenderly.  “So, you see, we are all three together.”

Her face grew slightly troubled.

“He only pays me visits, though.  Sometimes I think you hide him, or tell him not to come.”  And far down in her deep grey eyes swam the first moisture of rising tears.  “Don’t you, my wonderful Spinny?”

“Sometimes I forget him, perhaps,” he replied gravely, “but that is only when I think of what may be coming if—­the experiment succeeds—­”

“Succeeds?” she exclaimed.  “You mean if it fails!” Her voice dropped instinctively, and they looked over their shoulders to make sure they were alone.

He came up very close to her and spoke in her small pink ear.  “If it succeeds,” he whispered, “we go to Heaven, I suppose; if it fails we stay upon the earth.”  Then he stood off, holding her hands at arm’s length and gazing down upon her.  “Do you want to go to Heaven?” he asked very deliberately, “or to stay here upon the earth with me and Winky—?”

She was in his arms the same second, laughing and crying with the strange conflict of new and inexplicable emotions.

“I want to be with you here, and forever.  Heaven frightens me now.  But—­oh, Spinny, dear protecting thing, I want—­I also want—­” She broke off abruptly, and Spinrobin, unable to see her face buried against his shoulder, could not guess whether she was laughing or weeping.  He only divined that something in her heart, profound as life itself, something she had never been warned to conceal, was clamoring for comprehension and satisfaction.

“Miriam, tell me exactly.  I’m sure I shall understand—­”

“I want Winky to be with us always—­not only sometimes—­on little visits,” he heard between the broken breathing.

“I’ll tell him—­”

“But there’s no good telling him,” she interrupted almost fiercely, “it is me you must tell....”

Spinrobin’s heart sank within him.  She was in pain and he could not quite understand.  He pressed her hard against him, keeping silence.

Presently she lifted her face from his coat, and he saw the tears of mingled pain and happiness in her eyes—­the eyes of this girl-woman who knew not the common ugly standards of life because no woman had ever told them to her.