stood like a statue for a moment--stood as we all stood.
Then slowly his hand went out and touched the hand of his double.
Slowly his fingers swept the face, the hair; gradually his eyes closed,
as though he were sensing by touch alone.

Suddenly a loud cry leaped from his throat.

"Sister!" he shouted. And he swept the black figure to him.

Then, tossing back his head, the youth faced us with blazing, angry
eyes, looking as David must have, when he faced old what's-his-name.

"If there's a man among you, I'd like to know what this means?" he
cried.

There was a blank silence for an instant, and then--

"Perhaps I can explain," said a voice.

And up the stairway advanced Professor Doozenberry.

CHAPTER XXXV

IN THE GLOW OF THE RUBIES

Evening had come again.

In fact, it was almost bedtime. Frances and I sat before the hearth in
the library, looking silently into the red heart of the dying embers of
fragrant pine cones. For in the heights of the Pocantico Hills it often
is chilly on summer nights.

My darling sat on a low _fauteuil_, her chin resting upon her hand, her
beautiful eyes fixed dreamily, inscrutably, upon the fading coals. In
her lap lay the spread of the crimson pajamas.

She was thinking--thinking--I wondered what! And I was thinking how
jolly rum it all was; that Francis wasn't Frances, that the professor
wasn't Billings, Colonel Francis Kirkland wasn't Foxy Grandpa and wasn't
the frump's father after all; and that the frump, herself--bless her,
her name was Elizabeth--wasn't Frances, and wasn't a frump at all, but
just a jolly, nice, homely old dear, you know. And I was trying to catch
and hold some of the deuced queer things the professor had discoursed
upon about ancient Oriental what's-its-name, and astral bodies,
obsession, psychical research and all that sort of thing. Somehow, dash
it, it had all seemed devilish unreasonable and improbable to
_me_--couldn't get hold of it, you know; but as everybody else had said
"Ah-h-h!" and had wagged their heads as though they understood, I just
said: "Dash it, of course, you know!" and recrossed my legs and took a
fresher grip on my monocle.

The most devilish hard thing to get hold of had been that Frances had
never sat on the arm of my Morris chair, had never told me she liked me
better than any man she had ever met, and had never called me "Dicky" at
any time or anywhere. I wondered if she ever would, and how the deuce
fellows went