He stared at her, amazed and incredulous.
“About me? What can they say? That's absurd.”
“I felt you ought to know. Of course I don't believe it. Not for a moment. But you know what this town is.”
“I know it's a very good town,” he said steadily. “However, let's have it. I daresay it is not very serious.”
She was uneasy enough by that time, and rather frightened when she had finished. For he sat, quiet and rather pale, not looking at her at all, but gazing fixedly at an old daguerreotype of David that stood on his desk. One that Lucy had shown him one day and which he had preempted; David at the age of eight, in a small black velvet suit and with very thin legs.
“I thought you ought to know,” she justified herself, nervously.
Dick got up.
“Yes,” he said. “I ought to know, of course. Thank you.”
When she had gone he went back and stood before the picture again. From Clare's first words he had had a stricken conviction that the thing was true; that, as Mrs. Cook Morgan's visitor from Wyoming had insisted, Henry Livingstone had never married, never had a son. He stood and gazed at the picture. His world had collapsed about him, but he was steady and very erect.
“David, David!” he thought. “Why did you do it? And what am I? And who?”