He nodded in silent assent.
"In the first place, will you tell me your given name?"
Of all questions, Fernow seemed least to have expected this. "My given name?"
"Yes."
"I am called Walter."
"Walter?" A deep breath of relief came involuntarily from Jane's breast. "Walter! I do not know that name."
"And why should you know it, Miss Forest?" he asked in evident surprise. "We were strangers until the moment you trod the soil of Germany."
"Perhaps so!" Her glance fastened itself gloomily upon the lurid flame-images which in endless transformations darted forth and fell back dissolved in nothingness; "and perhaps not! You told me once that you had been thrust out into life without parents and without a home; that you had fallen into the hands of a learned man who had led you also into the paths of science.--Was this learned man a clergyman?"
"Yes; but after a time he left his parish and his vocation to give himself entirely up to science."
Jane convulsively pressed her left hand against her breast. "And--his name?"