"I've told you all, Miss Kate."
"Yes—I'm unfair, but you have a right to know. I found that picture—your picture, when they brought him in. His hands were clenched about it. They said he had pleaded to hold it and made them promise not to take it from him—ever. I was left alone, and I dared to take it, just for a moment. Something in the design of the cover puzzled me. I had meant to put it right back, and after I had looked at it there was only one thing to do—to put it back."
"They said you found your own picture, or I might have suspected."
"They had reason to say it—I never told."
"Of course you never told, Miss Kate!" I seemed to learn a great deal of her from that. She had carried her wound secretly through all those years.
"Poor Little Miss!" I said in spite of myself, and at this quite unexpectedly there befell what I had hoped we might both be spared.
I might not soothe her as I would have wished, so I busied myself in the next room until she called to me. She was putting what touches she could to her eyes with a small and sadly bedraggled handkerchief.
"There is a better reason for telling no one now," she said, "so we must destroy this. Mother might see it."
My grate contained its summer accumulation of waste paper. She laid the picture on this and I lighted the pyre.
"Your mother will see your eyes," I said.