And the doctor was partially correct, for when at last Arthur awoke he seemed natural and bright, with a recollection of all which had happened the day before, and an earnest desire for the letters and the rest of the story which Jerrie told him, with her arm across his neck, and her cheek laid occasionally against his, as she read him the letter directed to his friends, and then showed him the certificate of her birth and her mother’s death.

’Born January 1st, 18—­, to Arthur Tracy and Marguerite, his wife, a daughter,’ Arthur repeated, again and again, and as often as he did so he kissed the bright face which smiled at him through tears, for there was almost as much sadness as joy mingled with the reading of those messages from the dead.

Just what Gretchen’s letter to Arthur contained, Jerrie never knew, except that it was full of love and tenderness, with no word of complaint for the neglect and forgetfulness which must have hastened her death.

‘Oh, Gretchen, I can’t bear it, I can’t,’ Arthur moaned, as he laid his hand upon Jerrie’s shoulder and sobbed like a child.  ’To think I could forget her, and she so sweet and good.’

Everything came back to him for a time, and he repeated to Jerrie much which was of interest to her concerning her mother, but with which the reader has nothing to do; while Jerrie, in turn, told him all she could remember of her life in the old house where Gretchen had died.  Idle fancies she had sometimes thought these memories of the past, but now she knew they were real.  And Arthur hung upon her words with breathless interest, moaning occasionally when she told of the sweet-faced woman who cried so much and prayed so much, and whose death scene she had once enacted for him when a little child.  At his own letters addressed to Gretchen he barely glanced, muttering, as he did so, ’how could I have written such crazy bosh as that?’ and then suddenly recollecting himself, he asked for the photograph mentioned in Gretchen’s letter to his friends, and which he seemed to think had come with the other papers, just as Jerrie meant he should.  Taking it from the bag she handed it to him, while his tears fell like rain as he gazed upon the face which was far too young to wear the sad, wan look it did.

‘That is as I remember her,’ Jerrie said, referring again to the strange ideas which had filled her brain and made her sure that not the dark woman found dead at her side was her mother, but another and far different person, whose face haunted her so continually and whose voice she sometimes seemed to hear speaking to her from the dim shadows of the far-off past when they lived in the little house in Wiesbaden, where the picture hung on the wall.

Arthur remembered the picture well and when it was taken, though that, too, had faded from his mind, until Jerrie told him of it.

‘We will go there together, Cherry,’ he said, ’you and I, and find the house and the picture, and Gretchen’s grave, and bring them home with us.  There is room for them at Tracy Park.