But when she looked at Jerome she commented:  “I can trust you, Mister, too; almost as much, but not quite.  If you didn’t suspect me I could trust you completely.”

Jerome went white.  He spoke for the first time since the girl’s coming.

“How—­how did you know that I suspected you?”

“I can’t explain; I don’t know myself.”  Then wistfully:  “I wish you would stop suspecting me, Mister.  I have nothing to conceal from you.”

“I know it!” Jerome burst out, excitedly, apologetically.  “I know it now!  You’re all right, I’m satisfied of that from now on!”

She sighed in pure pleasure.  And she offered one hand to Jerome.  He took it as though it were a humming-bird’s egg, and turned almost purple.  At the same time the honest, fervid manliness which backed the detective’s professional nature shone through for the first time in my knowledge of him.  From that moment his devotion to the girl was as absolute as that of the fondest father who ever lived.

Well, no need to detail all that was said during the next hour.  Bit by bit we added to the girl’s knowledge of the world into which she had emerged, and bit by bit there unfolded in her mind a corresponding image of the world from which she had come.  And when, for an experiment, we took her out on the front porch and showed her the stars, we were fairly amazed at the thoughts they aroused.

“Oh!” she cried, in sheer rapture.  “I know what those are!” By now she was speaking fairly well.  “They are stars!” Then:  “They don’t look the same.  They’re not outlined in the same way as I know.  But they can’t be anything else!”

Not outlined the same.  I took this to be a very significant fact.  What did it mean?

“Look”—­showing her the constellation Leo, on the ecliptic, and therefore visible to both the northern and southern hemispheres—­ “do you recognise that?”

“Yes,” decisively.  “That is, the arrangement; but not the appearance of the separate stars.”

And we found this to be true of the entire sky.  Nothing was entirely familiar to her; yet, she assured us, the stars could be nothing else.  Her previous knowledge told her this without explaining why, and without a hint as to the reason for the dissimilarity.

“Is it possible,” said I, speaking half to myself, “that she has come from another planet?”

For we know that the sky, as seen from any of the eight planets in this solar system, would present practically the same appearance; but if viewed from a planet belonging to any other star-sun, the constellations would be more or less altered in their arrangement, because of the vast distance involved.  As for the difference in the appearance of the individual stars, that might be accounted for by a dissimilarity in the chemical make-up of the atmosphere.

“Ariadne, it may be you’ve come from another world!”

“No,” seemingly quite conscious that she was contradicting me.  For that matter there wasn’t anything offensive about her kind of frankness.  “No, Hobart.  I feel too much at home to have come from any other world than this one.”