His heart thumped with an emotion he had no time to question.  In those wide-open, shining eyes of the girl he sensed unspeakable tragedy—­for him.  And then the girl’s arms were reaching out to him, and she was crying in that voice that trembled and broke between sobs and laughter: 

“Derry, don’t you know me?  Don’t you know me?”

He stood like one upon whom had fallen the curse of the dumb.  She was within arm’s reach of him, her face white as a cameo, her eyes glowing like newly-fired stars, her slim throat quivering, and her arms reaching toward him.

“Derry, don’t you know me?  Don’t you know me?”

It was a sob, a cry.  McDowell had risen.  Overwhelmingly there swept upon Keith an impulse that rocked him to the depth of his soul.  He opened his arms, and in an instant the girl was in them.  Quivering, and sobbing, and laughing she was on his breast.  He felt the crush of her soft hair against his face, her arms were about his neck, and she was pulling his head down and kissing him—­not once or twice, but again and again, passionately and without shame.  His own arms tightened.  He heard McDowell’s voice—­a distant and non-essential voice it seemed to him now—­saying that he would leave them alone and that he would see them again tomorrow.  He heard the door open and close.  McDowell was gone.  And the soft little arms were still tight about his neck.  The sweet crush of hair smothered his face, and on his breast she was crying now like a baby.  He held her closer.  A wild exultation seized upon him, and every fiber in his body responded to its thrill, as tautly-stretched wires respond to an electrical storm.  It passed swiftly, burning itself out, and his heart was left dead.  He heard a sound made by Wallie out in the kitchen.  He saw the walls of the room again, the chair in which McDowell had sat, the blazing fire.  His arms relaxed.  The girl raised her head and put her two hands to his face, looking at him with eyes which Keith no longer failed to recognize.  They were the eyes that had looked at him out of the faded picture in Conniston’s watch.

“Kiss me, Derry!”

It was impossible not to obey.  Her lips clung to him.  There was love, adoration, in their caress.

And then she was crying again, with her arms around him tight and her face hidden against him, and he picked her up as he would have lifted a child, and carried her to the big chair in front of the fire.  He put her in it and stood before her, trying to smile.  Her hair had loosened, and the shining mass of it had fallen about her face and to her shoulders.  She was more than ever like a little girl as she looked up at him, her eyes worshiping him, her lips trying to smile, and one little hand dabbing her eyes with a tiny handkerchief that was already wet and crushed.

“You—­you don’t seem very glad to see me, Derry.”

“I—­I’m just stunned,” he managed to say.  “You see—­”