She turned and ran into the next room, returning immediately with a large volume, and showed a portrait frontispiece. It was a book of South American travel and archæology. Lang remembered Edward Morrison’s name very well now, though he had never read any of his books. But he did not think of that at the moment; for the half length of the portrait, though well clad, healthy, with open, frowning eyes and resolute countenance was beyond any doubt the figure of the haggard and unconscious patient of the Cavite.
“Oh, Lord!” Lang groaned, taking this in.
“You know him? You’ve seen him?”
“Yes—I’ve seen him.” Lang cast about for softening phrases. “I was aboard a steamer with him, only the other day. Why,” he cried, remembering, “it was the yacht, you know—that call that you urged me to accept. He was the patient I was to treat, only they didn’t tell me his right name.”
“My father?” said Eva, dazed. “How did he get on a yacht? But that man was very ill—paralyzed.”
“Yes. Not seriously, though, as I think now. But—but the yacht was run down two days later, in a fog. I helped get your father on deck; I tried to save him. The ship went down under us. I never saw him again. I don’t know whether anybody was saved but myself and one other.”
He felt the cool bluntness of his story, but he could think of no other words. Eva Morrison searched his face with wide, imploring eyes which he could not meet. She turned about slowly, and went back into the darkness of the dining room, putting out her hands as if blinded. She did not come back.
Left alone with his confusion and wretchedness, Lang waited for several minutes. He thought he heard a suppressed noise, hesitated a little longer, and then took the lamp and went after her. The devastated room had been put into order again, and Eva was huddled on a wide couch, her head buried in her arms, trembling with gasping sobs.
He spoke gently to her. She did not move, perhaps did not hear him. He stood over her uncertainly for some seconds, tortured.
“Don’t sorrow so—not yet,” he tried to comfort her. “We don’t know that your father is lost at all. Most likely he has been picked up, as I was. That ocean swarms with ships. I’d have plenty of hope. He may be ashore by this time.”