"Do you understand?" said Paul.
"I—think—I—do. But how—strange—it is!" she replied, in lingering tones, her gaze continuing to rest, as if fascinated, upon Miss Ludington.
The latter's face expressed a great elation, an impassioned tenderness held in check through fear of terrifying its object.
"I do not wonder it seems strange," she said, very softly. "You have yet no evidence as to who I am. I remember you—oh, how well!—but you cannot remember me, nor is there any instinct answering to memory by which you can recognize me. You have a right to require that I should prove that I am what I claim to be; that I am also Ida Ludington; that I am your later self. Do not fear, my darling. I shall be able to convince you very soon."
She made Ida sit down, and then went to an ancient secretary, that stood in a corner of the room, and unlocked a drawer, the key to which she always carried on her person.
Paul remembered from the time he was a little boy seeing her open this drawer on Sunday afternoons and cry over the keepsakes which it contained.
She took out now a bundle of letters, a piece of ribbon, a locket, a bunch of faded flowers, and a few other trifles, and brought them to Ida.
Paul left the room on tiptoe. This was a scene where a third person, one might almost say a second person, would be an interloper.
When, a long time after, he returned, Miss Ludington was sitting in the chair where Ida had been sitting, smiling and crying, and the girl, with eyes that shone like stars, was bending over her, and kissing the tears away.
The night was now almost spent, and the early dawn of midsummer, peering through the windows, and already dimming the lights, warned them that the day would soon be at hand.