She extended her hands, and in both was the likeness of the dead Past! Identical they were! Both well preserved and arisen to face this man and young girl at God's own time! How shrivelled the memory of the grim error was! How weird and pitiful it arose against the youth and beauty of the vital creature who with outstretched arms challenged him to explain the black mystery!
"'What do you know of my mother?'"
"This—is—my—mother! I must have dropped one picture from the book. What do you know of my mother?"
It was only a palpitating question, but to Devant it bore the awful condemnation of outraged girlhood.
"My God!" he gasped, taking the photographs from her. "My God!" There could be no mistake. Both had been taken from the same negative!
Old Thorndyke had lied then! This girl, with her memory-haunting, elusive beauty, was—he sank back and stared at her. No: it could not be! Whatever the meaning was, he dared not think that she was his daughter! If Thorndyke had lied once, he probably had many times. There may not have been a child; but that would have been a senseless invention—and Thorndyke was not the man to waste his energies. Perhaps the first child had died. Perhaps there had never been a marriage such as Thorndyke had said. That might easily have happened, and then the mother could have drifted back to the dunes with her pitiful secret hidden forever. Her marriage with Cap'n Billy, in that case, might have resulted quite naturally. So dense was the darkness that Devant dared not move. He was afraid he might bring down upon this innocent girl a shame that in nowise concerned her.
"How came you to have a picture of my mother?" Janet's eyes were gray-black. An answer she would have, and her heart demanded truth. She saw Devant's panic and it filled her with sensations born upon the instant.
"I knew her when she was a girl. A girl like that!" He nodded toward the photographs as they lay side by side upon the table where Janet had placed them.