"Your voice puzzles me," she said abruptly. "It doesn't seem possible that you can have been long enough in America to have lost every trace of accent. Of course, it was never very noticeable; but one who knew you well could always tell."
Barry's jaw dropped, and his face took on an expression of utter astonishment. His accent—again! What in the world did it mean? Was it possible that she was taking him for——
"You were talking about that summer at Southampton, of course?" he managed to ask in an odd voice.
"Southampton?" she exclaimed, her eyes fixed intently on his face. "I don't understand. You don't mean that you've forgotten—Cannes?"
Lawrence stood as one in a trance. "Cannes!" he muttered hoarsely, wondering whether his brain was giving way. "I have never been in Cannes in all my life." Then, as the belated memory came to him at last, he gasped out: "Aren't you Miss Vera Pell?"
The woman's face turned white, and one slim, gloved hand stole upward to her lips. Her eyes, wide, almost black with the emotion which was rending her, were fixed on his face with a look of absolute bewilderment.
"Are you jesting?" she managed to gasp at last. "You know that I am Mrs. Walbridge Gordon. You could never forget—it is impossible."
As Barry did not answer, a look of utter horror flashed into her face. She swayed a little, and put out one hand to steady herself.
"Who—are—you?" she asked, in a low, trembling voice. Then swiftly she laughed an uneven, hysterical sort of laugh. "You are jesting with me. It is impossible that there should be two men so absolutely alike on earth. You must be——"
She broke off abruptly, and her eyes flashed past Barry's shoulder to the door. The next instant a spasm of fear ripped swiftly across her face, and her white teeth came together over her lips with a cruel force which brought forth a tiny fleck of blood to glisten there.