A little later Thoreau led the way into the room which David was to occupy for the night. It was a small room, with a sapling partition between it and the one in which the Missioner was to sleep. The fox breeder placed a lamp on the table near the bed, and bade David good-night.
It was past two o'clock, and yet David felt at the present moment no desire for sleep. After he had taken off his shoes and partially undressed, he sat on the edge of his bed and allowed his mind to sweep back over the events of the last few hours. Again he thought of the woman in the coach—the woman with those wonderful, dark eyes and haunting face—and he drew forth from his coat pocket the package which she had forgotten. He handled it curiously. He looked at the red string, noted how tightly the knot was tied, and turned it over and over in his hands before he snapped the string. He was a little ashamed at his eagerness to know what was within its worn newspaper wrapping. He felt the disgrace of his curiosity, even though he assured himself there was no reason why he should not investigate the package now when all ownership was lost. He knew that he would never see the woman again, and that she would always remain a mystery to him unless what he held in his hands revealed the secret of her identity.
A half minute more and he was leaning over in the full light of the lamp, his two hands clutching the thing which the paper had disclosed when it dropped to the floor, his eyes staring, his lips parted, and his heart seeming to stand still in the utter amazement of the moment!
CHAPTER V
David held in his hands a photograph—the picture of a girl. He had half guessed what he would find when he began to unfold the newspaper wrapping and saw the edge of gray cardboard. In the same breath had come his astonishment—a surprise that was almost a shock. The night had been filled with changes for him; forces which he had not yet begun to comprehend had drawn him into the beginning of a strange adventure; they had purged his thoughts of himself; they had forced upon him other things, other people, and a glimpse or two of another sort of life; he had seen tragedy, and happiness—a bit of something to laugh at; and he had felt the thrill of it all. A few hours had made him the bewildered and yet passive object of the unexpected. And now, as he sat alone on the edge of his bed, had come the climax of the unexpected.
The girl in the picture was not dead—not merely a lifeless shadow put there by the art of a camera. She was alive! That was his first thought—his first impression. It was as if he had come upon her suddenly, and by his presence had startled her—had made her face him squarely, tensely, a little frightened, and yet defiant, and ready for flight. In that first moment he would not have disbelieved his eyes if she had moved, if she had drawn away from him and disappeared out of the picture with the swiftness of a bird. For he—some one—had startled her; some one had frightened her; some one had made her afraid, and yet defiant; some one had roused in her that bird-like impulse of flight even as the camera had clicked.
He bent closer into the lampglow, and stared. The girl was standing on a flat slab of rock close to the edge of a pool. Behind her was a carpet of white sand, and beyond that a rock-cluttered gorge and the side of a mountain. She was barefooted. Her feet were white against the dark rock. Her arms were bare to the elbows, and shone with that same whiteness. He took these things in one by one, as if it were impossible for the picture to impress itself upon him all at once. She stood leaning a little forward on the rock slab, her dress only a little below her knees, and as she leaned thus, her eyes flashing and her lips parted, the wind had flung a wonderful disarray of curls over her shoulder and breast. He saw the sunlight in them; in the lampglow they seemed to move; the throb of her breast seemed to give them life; one hand seemed about to fling them back from her face; her lips quivered as if about to speak to him. Against the savage background of mountain and gorge she stood out clear-cut as a cameo, slender as a reed, wild, palpitating, beautiful. She was more than a picture. She was life. She was there—with David in his room—as surely as the woman had been with him in the coach.
He drew a deep breath and sat back on the edge of his bed. He heard Father Roland getting into his creaky bed in the adjoining room. Then came the Missioner's voice.