, I
investigated, and satisfied myself on the point. Time corroborated me.
It is as though he had arisen from the grave. That is all."

The man paused; then, looking at the girl, he continued:

"And Mr. Saxon--" he hesitated a moment upon the name, but went
resolutely on--"Mr. Saxon will recover. When he wakes next, the
doctors believe, he will awake to everything. After his violent
exertion and the shock of his partial realization, he became
delirious. For several days perhaps, he must have absolute quiet, but
he will take up a life in which there are no empty spaces."

The girl rose, and, as she spoke, there was a momentary break in her
voice that led Steele to hope for the relief of tears, but her tone
steadied itself, and her eyes remained dry.

"Mr. St. John," she said slowly, "may I go and see--your daughter?"

For a moment, the Englishman looked at her quietly, then tears flooded
his eyes. He thought of the message of the portrait, and, with no
information except that of his own observing eyes, he read a part at
least of the situation.

"Miss Filson," he said with as simple a dignity as though his name had
never been tarnished, as though the gentleman had never decayed into
the derelict, "my daughter would be happy to receive you, but she is
in no condition to hear startling news. By her own wish, we have not
in seven years spoken of Mr. Marston. She does not know that I
believed him dead, she does not know that he has reappeared. To tell
her would endanger her life."

"I shall not go as a bearer of news," the girl assured him; "I shall
go only as a friend of her father's, and--because I want to."

St. John hesitatingly put out his hand. When the girl gave him hers,
he bent over it with a catch in his voice, but a remnant of the grand
manner, and kissed her fingers in the fashion of the old days.

Driving with Steele the next morning to St. John's lodgings, the girl
looked straight ahead steadfastly. The rain of the night had been
forgotten, and the life of Paris glittered with sun and brilliant
abandon. Pleasure-worship and vivacious delight seemed to lie like a
spirit of the departed summer on the boulevards. Along the _Champs
Elysees_, from the _Place de la Concorde_ to the _Arc de Triomphe_,
flowed a swift, continuous parade of motors, bearing in state gaily
dressed women, until the nostrils were filled with a strangely blended
odor of gasoline and flowers. The pavement cafes and sidewalks flashed