I awoke with a start.  Somebody was in the room.  There was an urgent voice whispering my name, an urgent hand upon me.  A pocket light flashed, and in its pale circle appeared the face of John Flint.

“Get up!” said he in an intense whisper.  “And come.  Come!”

“Why, what in the name of heaven—­”

“Don’t make a row!” he snarled, and brought his face close.  “Here—­let me help you.  Heaven, man, how slow you are!” With furious haste he forced my clothes upon me and even as I mechanically struggled to adjust them he was hustling me toward the door, through the dark hall, and down the stairs.

“Easy there—­careful of that step!” he breathed in my ear, guiding me.

“But what is the matter?” I whispered back impatiently.  I do not relish mystery and I detest being led willynilly.

“In my rooms,” said he briefly, and hustled me across the garden on the double run, I with my teeth chattering, for I had been dragged out of my sleep, and the night air was cold.

He fairly lifted me up his porch-steps, unlocked his door, and pushed me inside.  With the drawn shades and the flickering firelight, the room was peaceful and pleasant enough.  Then Kerry caught my astonished gaze, for the dog stood statue-like beside the Morris chair, and when I saw what Kerry guarded I crossed myself.  Sunk into the chair, the Butterfly Man’s old gray overcoat partly around her, was Mary Virginia.

At my involuntary exclamation she raised her head and regarded me.  A great sigh welled from her bosom and I could see her eyes dilate and her lips quiver.

“Padre, Padre!” Down went her head, and she began to cry childishly, with sobs.

I watched her helplessly, too bewildered to speak.  But the other man’s face was the face of one crucified.  I saw his eyes, and something I had been all too blind to rushed upon me overwhelmingly.  This, then, was what had driven him forth for a time, this was what had left its indelible imprint upon him!  He had hung upon his cross and I had not known.  Oh, Butterfly Man, I had not known!

“She’ll be able to talk to you in a few minutes now, parson.”  He was so perfectly unconscious of himself that he had no idea he had just made mute confession.  He added, doubtfully:  “She said she had to come to you, about something—­I don’t know what.  It’s up to you to find out—­she’s got to talk to you, parson.”

“But—­I wanted to talk to you, Padre.  That’s why I—­ran away from home in the middle of the night.”  She sat suddenly erect.  “I just couldn’t stand things, any more—­by myself—­”

Gone was the fine lady, the great beauty, the proud jilt who had broken Laurence’s heart and maddened and enslaved Inglesby.  Here was only a piteous child with eyes heavy from weeping, with a pale and sad face and drooping childish lips.  And yet she was so dear and so lovely, for all her reddened eyelids and her reddened little nose, that one could have wept with her.  The Butterfly Man, with an intake of breath, stood up.