The Tower of Oblivion

by Oliver Onions

And then, "Queen's Gate——"

I had found myself nodding.

"His brother—Arnaud—sketching——"

She was well away now.

Then suddenly her hands had dropped, she had stared at me, and a shrill cry had broken explosively from her.

"The Beautiful Bear! Derwent Rose! I knew it, I knew it, I knew it!... George Coverham, tell me—is it? Is it?"

"It is."

"That afternoon—looking at himself in the picture—his brother in Queen's Gate—Arnaud—Derwent Rose—I knew it, I knew it all the time——"

And she had slid with my coverlet gently to the floor.

And she did in fact recognise him—did pick out, as it were through some bright reversed telescope of time, that still-sealed but identical beauty of the grown man she had found so superb. He was like, as a son is like a father, as for a fleeting instant a newly-born babe may resemble a grandparent. She had wished to meet Derwent Rose. She had now met him, at this far end of a corridor of years.