Colonel Jeff cast a glance at the table, at the photograph which lay there face upwards. "And who have you there?" he inquired, but not suspiciously. Barbara conquered a foolish impulse to put out her hand to intercept his as he went to pick up the portrait.
He glanced at it, first easily, then keenly, and his dark brows lowered ominously. Colonel Jeff did not look like a person to offend—if one had the choice.
"You are thinking of that blackguard still?" he said; and in his tone anger and pain struggled equally matched.
"I found that photograph by chance while I was looking over a drawer full of old papers," she replied, answering the spirit rather than, the letter of his words.
"And you were looking at it as if—as if—it was all the world to you!" he retorted.
"My looks belied me, then. It is a memory only—and a painful one," she said, with the slightest shade of a tremor in her sweet voice.
"Only a memory?" fixing the stern questioning of his piercing eyes upon her.
"If it were more, should I be what I am to you?" she replied, meeting his look frankly.
"What are you to me?" he demanded. The words might have sounded brutal had the tone been different, but though they were harshly spoken, they bore no suggestion of denial or rebuff, no faintest hint of insulting disclaimer. "You know," he continued, "we both know, that you're the one woman in the world to me—but what more? What beyond that? Are you the woman who cares for me?"
