any one else."

It was the old gentleman's turn to start. She rose impulsively and sat
down on the bench beside him, and his hand trembled as he laid it in
hers.

"Yes, my dear, I am still alive. But surely you cannot remember me,
Alison?"

The old look of almost stubborn honesty he recalled in the child came
into her eyes.

"I do--and I don't," she said, perplexed. "It seemed to me as if I ought
to have recognized you when I came up, and yet I hadn't the slightest
notion who you were. I knew you were somebody."

He shook his head, but did not speak.

"But you have always been a fact in my existence--that is what I want to
say," she went on. "It must be possible to remember a person and not
recognize him, that is what I feel. I can remember you coming to our
house in Ransome Street, and how I looked forward to your visits. And
you used to have little candy beans in your pockets," she cried. "Have
you now?"

His eyes were a little dimmed as he reached, smilingly, into the skirts
of a somewhat shiny but scrupulously brushed coat and produced a brightly
colored handful. She took one, and put it in her mouth:

"Oh," she said, "how good they were--Isn't it strange how a taste brings
back events? I can remember it all as if it were yesterday, and how I
used to sit on your knee, and mother would tell me not to bother you."

"And now--you are grown," he said.

"Something more than grown," she smiled. "I was thirty-one in May.
Tell me," she asked, choosing another of the beans which he still
absently held, "do you get them for these?" And she nodded toward the
Dalton Street waifs.

"Yes," he said, "they are children, too."

"I can remember," she said, after a pause, "I can remember my mother
speaking of you to me the year she died. I was almost grown, then. It
was after we had moved up to Park Street, and her health had already
begun to fail. That made an impression on me, but I have forgotten what
she said--it was apropos of some recollection. No--it was a photograph
--she was going over some old things." Alison ceased speaking abruptly,
for the pain in Mr. Bentley's remarkable grey eyes had not escaped her.
What was it about him? Why could she not recall? Long-forgotten,
shadowy episodes of the past tormented her, flitted provokingly through
her mind--ungrasped: words dropped in her presence which had made their
impression, but the gist of which was gone. Why had Mr. Bentley ceased
coming to the house? So stro