"How dreadful to have traditions!" she murmured. "There's no real reason why I shouldn't go in. And," with grim honesty, "if you weren't here watching I believe I'd do it. Anyway we may have to, if they don't come soon. I can't sit on this grass. I'm sure it's damp."
"I'll get you a chair from Benis's tent," offered John unkindly. "There are no traditions to forbid that, are there?"
"No. And, John—you might look around a little? Just to make sure."
The doctor nodded. He had every intention of looking around. He felt, in fact, entitled to any knowledge which his closest observation might bring him. But the tent was almost empty. That at least proved that the tent belonged to Spence. He was a man with an actual talent for bareness and spareness in his sleeping quarters. Even his room at school had possessed that man-made neatness which one associates with sailor's cabins and the cells of monks. The camp-bed was trimly made, a dressing-gown lay across a canvas chair, a shaving mug hung from the centre pole—there was not so much as a hairpin anywhere.
John crossed thoughtfully to the folding stand which stood with its portable reading lamp beside the bed. There was one unusual thing there, a photograph. Benis, as his friend knew, was an expert amateur photographer—but he never perched his photographs upon stands. This one must be an exception, and exceptions are illuminating.
It was still quite light inside the tent and the doctor could see the picture clearly. It was an extraordinarily good one, quite in the professor's happiest style. Composition, lighting, timing, all were perfect. But it is doubtful if John Rogers noticed any of these excellencies. He was absorbed at once and utterly in the personality of the person photographed. This was a girl, bending over a still pool. The pose was one of perfectly arrested grace and the face which was lifted, as if at the approach of someone, looked directly out of the picture and into Roger's eyes. It was the most living picture he had ever seen. The lips were parted as if for speech, there was a smile behind the widely opened eyes. And both face and form were beautiful.
The doctor straightened up with a sharply drawn breath. It seemed that something had happened. For one flashing instant some inner knowledge had linked him with his own unlived experience. It was gone as soon as it came. He did not even realize it, save as a sense of strangeness. Yet, as a chemist lifts a vial and drops the one drop which changes all within his crucible, so some magic philtre tinged John Roger's cup of life in that one stolen look.
"Have you found anything?" Aunt Caroline's voice came impatiently.
"Nothing."
But to himself he added "everything" for indeed the mystery of Benis seemed a mystery no longer. The photograph made everything clear. And yet not so clear, either. The doctor looked around at the ship-shape bachelorness of the tent, at the neat pile of newly typed manuscript upon the bed, and felt bewildered. Even the eccentricity of Benis, in its most extravagant mode, seemed inadequate as a covering explanation.