They were standing side by side before a long mirror, she taller for a woman than he was for a man, so that her face was almost in a range with his, as he stooped a little forward.

Glancing into the mirror at the two faces so near to each other, Jerrie saw something which for an instant made her cold and sick, and set every nerve to quivering as she stepped suddenly back, looking first at the man’s face and then at her own in the mirror.  It was gone now, the look which had so startled her, but it had certainly been there—­a likeness between the two faces—­and she had seen it plainer than she had ever seen any resemblance between herself and the picture.  Gretchen had blue eyes, and fair hair, and fair complexion, and so had she, and so had hundreds of German girls, and all Arthur had ever said to her had never brought to her mind a thought like the two faces in the mirror. What if it were so? That was the thought which had flashed like lightning through her brain, making her so weak that she grasped Arthur’s arm to steady herself as she tried to speak composedly.

‘You are white as your dress,’ he said.  ’It is this confounded hot room; let us sit nearer the window.’

They sat down together on a sofa, and taking up a newspaper, Arthur fanned Jerrie gently, while she said to him: 

‘Do you really think I look like Gretchen?’

‘Yes; except that you are taller.  You might be her daughter.’

‘Had she—­had Gretchen a daughter?’ was Jerrie’s next question, put hesitatingly.

‘None that I ever heard of,’ Arthur replied.  ‘Why do you ask that?’

‘And her name when a girl was Marguerite Heinrich, was it not?’ Jerrie went on.

‘Yes.  Who told you that?’ Arthur said.

’I saw it on a letter which you gave me to post years ago, when I was a child,’ Jerrie replied.  ’You never received an answer to that letter, did you?’

’What letter did you post for me to Marguerite Heinrich?  I don’t know what you mean,’ Arthur said, the old worried look settling upon his face, which always came there when he was trying to recall something he ought to remember.

As he grew older he seemed to be annoyed when told of things he had forgotten, and as the letter had evidently gone entirely from his mind, Jerrie said no more of it. She remembered it well; and never dreaming that it had not been posted, she had watched a long time for an answer, which never came.  Gretchen was dead; that was settled in her mind.  But who was she?  With the words, ‘What if it were so?’ still buzzing in her brain, the answer to this question was of vital importance to her, and after a moment, she continued, as if she had all the time been talking of Gretchen: 

’She was Marguerite Heinrich when a girl in Wiesbaden, but she had another name afterward, when she was married.’

’You are talking of something you know nothing about.  Can’t you let Gretchen alone?’ Arthur said, petulantly, and springing up he began to pace the room in a state of great excitement, while Jerrie sat motionless, with a white, stony look on her face and a far off look in her eyes, as if she were seeing in a vision things she could not retain, they passed to rapidly before her, and were so hazy and indistinct.