step closer and I said: "You do remember, Penelope!"

"I must be going," she returned in a low voice, but she did not move.

I feared to speak now lest I should awaken her from the revery in which
she seemed to have suddenly forgotten my existence.

"I must be going," she said again, and still she did not move.

She was looking across our valley! I knew that she saw it as on the
morning when we rode in terror from the woods and it lay beneath us, a
friendly land, in the broad day, under the kindly eye of God. Then I
bent nearer her, an arm resting on the wall, my eyes on her averted
face, patiently waiting until she should speak. And I could wait
patiently now, for I believed that in the silence the memory of that
day was fighting for me.

After a long time Penelope spoke. "David, do you remember--" She
paused. Her voice fell to a whisper. "What was it that you said to me
that morning--don't you remember?--don't cry, little one!"

In all the world there is no fairer prospect than that on which I
looked from the little terrace in Perugia. For I saw not alone the
lovely Umbrian plain. Before me stretched a fair life itself, into the
unending years, from that moment when Penelope spoke, turning as she
spoke and looking up at me with a smiling face. What a blind,
blundering creature I had been! The black-gloved hand was close to
mine on the wall, and I took it. Then I leaned down to her and said:
"I remember, Penelope, and I will--I will take care of you always."

CHAPTER XXVII

"Yesterday, Harry, your mother laid a hand upon my arm, and, turning to
me with a curious, far-away light in her eyes, said: 'How time flies,
David!'"

And I looked down at her proudly, as though this were another of the
innumerable new and clever ideas which she has a way of discovering and
expressing so concisely.

"What made you think of that, Penelope?"

She pointed over the tangled briers to the woods, to the very spot
where the path breaks through the bushes and leads to the brook.

"Yesterday, David--it seems but yesterday--I dragged you out of the
deep pool, and to-day--a moment ago--I heard Harry there, shouting."

"He has probably caught a trout," said I as I lighted a cigar. "A
small boy always shouts when he lands a fish."

Penelope laughed.

"And if," I went on, between critical puffs--"if he falls in, James is
with him and James will pull him out. You must not think that these
woods are full of sm