“Yes, yes, yes. I remember; I did put them on.”
“But you didn’t, you couldn’t have! O Jack, don’t you understand me? You weren’t really wearing them!”
All at once he felt something crunch beneath his feet, and he looked down, then back up at the portrait. The large square of glass which apparently once covered it had been shattered; there were a few triangles still sticking in the edge of the frame; the rest was in smaller bits on the floor. Instinctively he brought his right hand to a level with his face, and saw the scar upon it.
“It’s a mystery, Jack dear. Can’t you see it is? And it is so much more interesting never to explain it,” she essayed fearfully, feigning a laugh of regained naturalness. “We shall never, never find out who he was, by whom it was painted, or what made you break it, or why—”
“Ah,” he shouted eagerly, defying, as the memories came crowding into his brain, the doubts which had freshly assailed him. “I told you it might be possible! And he did have, after all—for that man was the father of her child!”
“Whose child?” Julia gasped.
But love and pity for her whom he could not name kept him from answering. And in the drift of his silence the vision capriciously failed him. He looked at Julia. He looked back at the wall. It was nothing but a funny old picture which hung there confronting them. The commonplaceness, beside it, of Julia’s long-drawn expression made him snicker, until, as a result of this accidental reaction, they were both actually giggling aloud.
He turned away from her. She watched him cross to the bureau. He pulled out each one of the drawers in turn. He peered blankly into them, where there was only the smell of mold and whirring dust to greet his pains.
He persistently scanned the room again. What had become of the hat-tub? Why had the Chinese water-jug gone from the squalid little wash-stand? Baffled and solemn, he went back over to her.
“Haven’t you taken some things away?”