“Did you name her after me?”
“Don’t flatter yourself. I call her Renna for short. Her real name’s Zyp.”
I laughed over the queer deduction; then sighed.
“Will you love me?” I said to the little girl, but she was too shy to answer.
I stroked her shining head and poke over it to Zyp.
“Tell me all about it, dear,” said I.
“It’s nothing, but the old miserable story—pursuit and flight; and with each new movement some little means of living abandoned.”
Looking at this pale, injured woman, a fierce deep resentment flared up in my heart against the inexorable tyranny of the fiend who would not learn mercy. I had too long stood aside; too long remained neutral in an unnatural warfare, the most innocent victim of which was she whose image my soul professed to hold inviolate. Old ties bound me no longer. Her champion would I be in life and death, meeting stealth with secrecy, pursuit with ambush.
I put the child from me and rose hurriedly to my feet.
“Zyp!” I cried, “this must end! Forgive me that, holding you in my heart as I have always done, I have not been more active in your succor. Here all doubt ends. I devote myself body and soul to your help and welfare!”