"Exactly."
"And I say it is simply a brain picture transmitted to me by heredity."
"I deny nothing; all things are possible. But by whom? One of those women?" Gerald started violently and looked suspiciously upon his questioner. Virdow's face betrayed nothing.
"I do not know," said Gerald; "you have gaps in your theory, and this is the gap in mine. Neither of these women could have seen this picture; there must have been a third person." Virdow smiled and nodded his head.
"And if there was a third person he is my missing witness. From him comes your vision—a true mind picture."
"And this?" Gerald drew from the folio a woman's face—the face that Edward had shown, but idealized and etherealized. "From whom comes this?" cried the young man with growing excitement. "For I swear to you that I have never, except in dreams, beheld it, no tongue has described it! It is mine by memory alone, not plucked from subtle ether by a wandering mind, but from the walls of memory alone. Tell me." Virdow shook his head; he was silent for fear of the excitement. Gerald came and stood by him with the two pictures; his voice was strained and impassioned, and his tones just audible:
"The face in this and the sleeper's face in this are the same; if you were on the stand to answer for a friend's life would you say of me, this man descends from the kneeling woman?" Virdow looked upon him unflinchingly.
"I would answer, as by my belief in God's creation, that by this testimony you descend from neither, for the brain that held those pictures could belong to neither woman. One could not hold an etherealized picture of her own face, nor one a true likeness of her own back." Gerald replaced the sheets.
"You have told me what I knew," he said; "and yet—from one of them I am descended, and the pictures are true!" He took his hat and boat paddle and left them abruptly. The portfolio stood open. Virdow went to close it, but there was a third drawing dimly visible. Idly he drew it forth.
It was the picture of a white seagull and above it was an arch; beyond were the bending trees of the first picture. Both men studied it curiously, but with varying emotions.