The man held it out to Win with a proud smile. It was an enlargement of a small daguerreotype, taken some twenty years previously, and representing Shackleton in full face and without his beard. The work had been excellently done. It was a faithful and spirited likeness.
As his eye fell on it Win suffered a sudden and amazing revelation. It was like a dazzling flash of light tearing away the shadows of a dark place. Through the obscurity of his mind enlightenment rent like a current of electricity. That was what the memory was, that dim sense of previous knowledge, that groping after something well known and yet elusive.
He stared at the picture, and then turned and looked at Mariposa’s hanging on the wall. The photographer, looking commiseratingly at him, evidently mistaking his obvious perturbation of mind for a rush of filial affection, recalled him to himself. He did not know that he was pale, but he saw that the plate of ivory in his hand trembled.
“It’s—it’s—first-rate,” he said in a low voice. “I’m tremendously pleased. Send it to The Trumpet office to-morrow, and the bill with it, please. You’ve done an A number one job.”
He turned away and went slowly out, the photographer and his assistant looking curiously after him. There were steps to go down before he regained the street, and he descended them in a maze, the rain pouring on his head, his closed umbrella in his hand. It was all as clear as daylight now—the secret searching out of the mother and daughter, the interest taken by his father in the beautiful and talented girl, his desire to educate and provide for her. It was all as plain as A, B, C.
“She was so different from Maud and me,” Win thought humbly, as he moved forward in the blinding rain. “No wonder he was fond of her.”
It was so astonishing, so simple, and yet so hard to realize in the first moment of discovery this way, that he stopped and stood staring at the pavement.
Two of his friends, umbrellaed and mackintoshed, bore down on him, not recognizing the motionless figure with the water running off its hat brim till they were close on him.
“Win, gone crazy!” cried one gaily. “When did it come on, Winnie boy?”
He looked up startled, and had presence of mind enough not to open his umbrella.