"Madame Dumois, if you were not beyond the necessity of making a career for yourself, permit me to say quite without impertinence that you would have been an ornament to my profession."
A delicate flush tinted her cheeks like old ivory and a spark twinkled in her eyes.
"You are a most refreshing young man!" She tapped his arm with a long forefinger. "But you have not replied to my question."
"I have based my theory on more than the young woman's appearance," Herbert Ross admitted quietly. "Some of the data which you considered irrelevant furnished me with a clue to work from. But that is beside the point. I came this afternoon to find if you have been able to secure the photograph we talked of."
They had mounted the steps and the old lady rang the bell before she replied.
"Yes. I will get it for you at once."
While he waited in the gloom of the drawing-room he tried again to force his mind to a decision, and once more the girl's face loomed before his mental vision, but this time with a haunting entreaty in her soft eyes, and the pitiful scar seemed to plead for at least a respite from final judgment. He cursed himself for a soft-hearted weakling, a susceptible fool to be swerved from his course by the girl's unconscious appeal to the innate chivalry he had believed to have been burned out long ago by the fire of his experiences and vicissitudes in his chosen profession. If only the photograph would prove him mistaken!
The rustle of Madame Dumois' gown sounded upon the stair and in another moment she had entered the room and silently placed in his hand a cabinet size square of cardboard. He walked over to the lamp ostensibly to obtain a better light, but he paused with his shoulder turned to her. Trained as he was to disguise his own thoughts, he dared not trust himself to the old lady's keen scrutiny.
The lower part of the photograph had been cut away, perhaps to destroy a tell-tale inscription, but the upper portion disclosed the picture of a young girl seated in a high cathedral-backed chair, with her head turned sharply to the left, so that only her profile and the right side of her face were visible.
Herbert Ross drew a long breath and Madame Dumois' voice grated hoarsely upon the stillness.