“Pretty as life,” he replied.

And he stuck a pink campion bud among the hair.

“There! That’s me where you won’t forget me! That’s Moses in the bulrushes.”

“You don’t mind, do you, that I’m going away?” she asked wistfully, looking up into his face.

But his face was inscrutable, under the heavy brows. He kept it quite blank.

“You do as you wish,” he said.

And he spoke in good English.

“But I won’t go if you don’t wish it,” she said, clinging to him.

There was silence. He leaned and put another piece of wood on the fire. The flame glowed on his silent, abstracted face. She waited, but he said nothing.