“I cannot go,” said Helene, “and leave you alone.”

Gottfried Gottfried smiled a sad smile, wistfully pleasant.

“Already I am wellnigh an old man, and it is the nature of my profession that I should be alone.  I work among the issues of life and death.  Every man must be lonely when he dies, and I, who have lived most with dying men, am perforce already lonely while I live.  It is well—­a clearer air for the young bird!  But yet it will be lonesome to miss you when I come in—­the empty pot wanting the flower; the case without the jewel; silence above and below; your voice and Hugo’s, that have changed the sombre Red Tower with your young folks’ pleasantries, heard no more.  Ah, God wot, I had thought—­I had dreamed far other things.”

He stopped and looked from one to the other of us, and I saw that Ysolinde of the White Gate read his thought.  Whereat right suddenly the Little Playmate blushed, and as for me I kept watching the dull gold flash on the spangles of our guest’s waist-belt, which was in form like a live serpent, with changeful scales and eyes of ruby red.

My father went over to where Helene sat.  She rose to meet him and cast her arms about his neck.  He laid his right hand on her head—­that terrible hand that was yet not dreadful to us-who loved him.

“Little flower,” he said, in his simple way, “God be good to you in the transplanting!  It is not fair to your young life that my red stain should lie upon your lot.  I have given you a quiet hermitage while you needed it.  But now it is right that my house should again be left unto me desolate.  It is already late summer with Gottfried Gottfried, and high time that the young brood should fly away.”

He turned to me.

“With you, Hugo, it is a thing different; you were born to that to which you are born.  And to that, as I read your horoscope, you must one day return.  But in the mean time care well for the maid.  I lend her to you.  I give her into your hand.  Cherish her as your chiefest treasure.  Let her enemies be yours, and if harm come to her through your neglect, slay yourself ere you come again before me.  For, by the Lord God of all Righteous Judgment, I will have no mercy!”

I saw the eyes of the Lady Ysolinde glitter like those of the snake in her belt as thus my father delivered Helene over to me.

But my father had yet more to say.

“And if any,” he went on, in a deep, still voice, keeping his hand upon the downcast head of the Little Playmate—­“if any, great or small, prince or pauper, harm so much as a hair of this fair head, by the great God who wields His Axe over the universe and sits in the highest Halls of Judgment, whose servant I am—­I, Gottfried Gottfried, swear that he shall taste the vengeance of the Red Axe and drink to the dregs the cup of agony in his own blood!”

So saying, he kissed Helene and stalked out without turning his head or making any further obeisance or farewell.