A week later John took me to the house of his prospective father-in-law, and in Miss Margovan, as you have already surmised, but to my profound astonishment, I recognized the heroine of that discreditable adventure.  A gloriously beautiful heroine of a discreditable adventure I must in justice admit that she was; but that fact has only this importance:  her beauty was such a surprise to me that it cast a doubt upon her identity with the young woman I had seen before; how could the marvelous fascination of her face have failed to strike me at that time?  But no—­there was no possibility of error; the difference was due to costume, light and general surroundings.

John and I passed the evening at the house, enduring, with the fortitude of long experience, such delicate enough banter as our likeness naturally suggested.  When the young lady and I were left alone for a few minutes I looked her squarely in the face and said with sudden gravity: 

“You, too, Miss Margovan, have a double:  I saw her last Tuesday afternoon in Union square.”

She trained her great gray eyes upon me for a moment, but her glance was a trifle less steady than my own and she withdrew it, fixing it on the tip of her shoe.

“Was she very like me?” she asked, with an indifference which I thought a little overdone.

“So like,” said I, “that I greatly admired her, and being unwilling to lose sight of her I confess that I followed her until—­Miss Margovan, are you sure that you understand?”

She was now pale, but entirely calm.  She again raised her eyes to mine, with a look that did not falter.

“What do you wish me to do?” she asked.  “You need not fear to name your terms.  I accept them.”

It was plain, even in the brief time given me for reflection, that in dealing with this girl ordinary methods would not do, and ordinary exactions were needless.

“Miss Margovan,” I said, doubtless with something of the compassion in my voice that I had in my heart, “it is impossible not to think you the victim of some horrible compulsion.  Rather than impose new embarrassments upon you I would prefer to aid you to regain your freedom.”

She shook her head, sadly and hopelessly, and I continued, with agitation: 

“Your beauty unnerves me.  I am disarmed by your frankness and your distress.  If you are free to act upon conscience you will, I believe, do what you conceive to be best; if you are not—­well, Heaven help us all!  You have nothing to fear from me but such opposition to this marriage as I can try to justify on—­on other grounds.”

These were not my exact words, but that was the sense of them, as nearly as my sudden and conflicting emotions permitted me to express it.  I rose and left her without another look at her, met the others as they reentered the room and said, as calmly as I could:  “I have been bidding Miss Margovan good evening; it is later than I thought.”