We can’t call it a City of Refuge, beautiful as such a city is—­to be.  Neither will I call it a Home, or an Asylum.  The first thing Mary Moxall said to me was,—­’I won’t go to no Refuges nor Sile’ums.  I don’t want to be raked up, mud an’ all, into a heap that everybody knows the name of.  If the world was big enough for me to begin again,—­in a clean place; but there ain’t no clean places!’ And then I asked her to come home with me and my sister.”

“You mean, of course, a neighborhood name, for the settlement, as it grows?”

“Exactly.  ‘Brickfield Farms’ belongs to the outlying husbandry and homesteads.  And ‘Clay Pits!’ It is out of the pit and the miry clay that we want to bring them.  The suggestion of that is too much like Mary Moxall’s ‘heap that everybody knows the name of.’”

“Why not call it ‘Hill-hope’?  ’The hills, whence cometh our strength;’ ’the mountain of the height of Israel where the Lord will plant it, and the dry tree shall flourish’?”

“Thank you,” said Mr. Kirkbright, heartily.  “That is the right word.  It is named.”

Desire said nothing.  She looked quietly into the fire with a flush of deep pleasure on her face.  Mr. Kirkbright remained silent also for a few minutes.

He looked at her as she sat there, in this room that was her own; that was filled with home-feeling and association for her; where a solemnly tender commission and opportunity had been given her, and had centred, and he almost doubted whether the thing that was urging itself with him to be asked for last and greatest of all, were right to ask; whether it existed for him, and a way could be made for it to be given him.  Yet the question was in him, strong and earnest; a question that had never been in him before to ask of any woman.  Why had it been put there if it might not at least be spoken?  If there were not possibly, in this woman’s keeping, the ordained and perfect answer?

While he sat and scrupled about it, it sprang, with an impulse that he did not stop to scruple at, to his lips.

“I shall want to ask you questions every day, dear friend!  What are we to do about it?”

Desire’s eyes flashed up at him with a happiness in them that waited not to weigh anything; that he could not mistake.  The color was bright upon her cheek; her lips were soft and tremulous.  Then the eyes dropped gently away again; she answered nothing,—­with words.

So far as he had spoken, she had answered.

“I want you there, by my side, to help me make a real human home around which other homes may grow.  There ought to be a heart in it, and I cannot do it alone.  Could you—­will you—­come?  Will you be to me the one woman of the world, and out of your purity and strength help me to help your sisters?”

He had risen and walked the few steps across the distance that was between them.  He stopped before her, and bending toward her, held out his hands.