Jerrie? What do you see?'

She did not move her head or eyes, but answered him.

'I see always a sweet pale face, to which I can almost give a name--a
face which smiles upon me; and a thin, white hand which is laid upon my
hair--a hand not like those you have told me about, and which must have
touched me so tenderly that awful night. Did you ever try to recall a
name, or a dream, which seems sometimes just within your grasp, and then
baffles all your efforts to retain it?'

'Yes, often,' Harold said.

'Just so it is with me,' she continued, 'I try to keep the fancies which
come and go so fast, and which always have reference to the past and
some far off country--Germany, I think. Harold, I must have been older
when you found me than you supposed I was.'

'Possibly,' Harold replied. 'You were so small that we thought you
almost a baby, although you had an old head on your shoulders from the
first, and could you have spoken our language I believe you might have
told us where you were and where you came from.'

'Perhaps,' Jerry said. 'I don't know; only this, as I grow older, the
things way back come to me, and the others fade away. The dark woman; my
mother,'--she spoke the name very low--'is not half as real to me as the
pale, sick face, on which the firelight shines. It is a small house, and
a low room, a poor room, I think, with a big, white stove in the corner,
and somebody is putting wood in it; a dark woman; she stoops; and from
the open door the firelight falls upon the face in the chair--the woman
who is always writing when she is not in bed; and I am there, a little
child; and when the pale face cries, I cry, too; and when she dies--oh,
Harold! but you saw me play it once, and wondered where I got the idea.
I saw it. I know I did; I was there, a part of the play. I was the
little child. Then, there is a blur, a darkness, with many people and a
crying--two voices--the dark woman's and mine; then, a river, or the
sea, or both, and noisy streets, and a storm, and cold; and _you_ taking
me into the sunshine.'

As she talked she had unconsciously laid her hand on Harold's knee, and
he had taken it in his, and was holding it fast, when she startled him
with the question:

'Do you--did you--ever think--did anybody ever think it possible, that
the woman found dead in here, was not my mother?'

'Not your mother!' Harold exclaimed, dropping her hand in his surprise.
'Not your mother! What do you mean?'

'No di