“Mr. Batterly and I parted soon after. My mother died that summer and I went to Paris to study art. While in Paris last winter, in a Seattle paper, I read of Mr. Batterly’s death at Nome. His name was probably confused with that of his partner. I did not know he had a partner. This spring I returned to America, and with a sudden longing for the West I came out to visit Janet Jones in Spokane. It was then I was obsessed with the desire to paint this beautiful river country. Janet Jones aided and abetted me. I purchased a riding horse and went to board on a ranch near Kingman. It was deadly. When I walked into your workshop I had ridden all day, fully determined to find a habitation of my own.”
I had glanced at Haidee once or twice to find that her eyes were still closed. But now, as she finished, she opened them wide, and at the look of misery I saw in them I cried out quickly:
“Don’t tell me any more—please—please—”
“There is nothing more to tell,” she answered dully.
“Thank you for your confidence. Before I told you all I have to tell I thought it best to ask it of you.”
“You have something to tell me? For you things are righting—you have found your boy! For me everything seems wrong in the world—everything! But now—may I see Joey, please, before long?”
“Mrs. Batterly,” I asked, “may I tell you Joey’s short history?”
At my abrupt tone she turned her eyes to mine, wonderingly. “Surely,” she replied.
“It is a pitifully meagre one. I found him sobbing on the doorstep of a humble cabin, one night, four years ago last June. I took him in my arms and entered the place, to find within a dying woman. She told me that the child was a waif, picked up on the beach after a storm on Puget Sound, by her brother, who was a fisherman, a year before. Her brother had died six months previous and she had taken the child. The woman passed away that night, and I carried the child home. Mrs. Batterly, your husband gleaned this story from Wanza. He took Joey and secreted him in a cabin, thinking the lad his child and yours—”
Haidee broke in on my recital with a gasping cry: “My child—mine?”