"Little heart! Ach, lieber Gott, my little Hélène; my little baby! How long, how long!" he murmured, smothering his emotion, but looking now at her, now at the little German doll clutched tightly in his hand.
"I want you to come with us?"
After a while a feeling of great peace came upon him. His mission was ended; he had found her at last. His longing heart had reached its haven.
"That's the doll my mother loved best," said Hélène, without pausing in her playing. "She loved to play with that doll and me."
He, too, was thinking of her mother. Was it telepathy that she should think the very thought that was uppermost in his mind?
"There's a portrait of her in the next room," and she pointed to the door off the main room. "It was painted by an artist here in New York three years before she died."
Von Barwig dared not trust himself to speak. He silently opened the door and looked. "Elene, Elene!" he murmured in a low voice. He stood there some time gazing at the portrait of his dead wife, and his eyes were swimming with tears. "Yes, there she is," he said, his low, sad voice scarcely audible through the music. "Elene! Ach, Gott! dead, dead! Better so; better—so——"
He closed the door gently. As he did so a tear ran down his cheek and dropped on the little German doll. "I baptise it," he said with a smile, and then he sighed deeply.