Like one coming out of a dream, Mark glanced about the room, noted the hands of the clock marking the half hour past midnight, then picked up the picture of the girl who was young more than forty years ago.
With a little sense of shock it came to him that she existed no more. He wondered whether she also had died in her sweet youth or lived still, an old woman.
If she was alive, had she married some one not Uncle William? Or had she never married? Had she loved him? Had she known that he loved her? He picked up the picture again. The face seemed vaguely familiar. It seemed to speak to him. He lost himself in dreams and roused himself with a laugh.
“I believe I am half in love with you myself, little Allison, in love with your lost youth, in love with the shadow of a shadow. And that is a subject for a song—”
Allison, a quaint little name it was. Allison what? Who was she? It struck him suddenly,—he wondered that he had not thought of it before,—it must be, it surely was, Miss Allison Clyde. He studied the young pictured face more closely, and felt sure he traced a resemblance in it to the old. Tomorrow he would find out.
The pathos of it—too old for love, the theme of his song. Reverently he gathered up the letters, replaced them in their envelope, and put them away. Suddenly, sharply the consciousness smote him: the woman to whom those letters were written had never read them.
III
The next afternoon at tea-time he took the daguerreotype to his Aunt Lucretia. She received it with her slow, uncertain, frail old hands, lifting it to the light.
“Why, that little old picture of Allison!” she said. “I had forgotten we had it. Where did you find it? It was William’s.” She stared at it with the pitiful look the eyes of the old show at reawakening memories. “I always thought your Uncle William was in love with her,” she confided, “although he never told us so.”
“Miss Allison Clyde?” Mark questioned, and Miss Lucretia nodded faintly, marveling: