disproportioned to the subject, as she fancied he must view it,
although to her it had always been something to dream over. It was
impossible for her to realize, as he did, the importance of details in
solving a problem like that involved in her past history. Nor could she
feel the pathos and almost tragic fascination with which her story had
touched him.

"There is absolutely nothing more to tell," she said. "All my life I
have tried to remember more, but it's impossible; I can't get any
further back or call up another thing. There's no use trying. It's all
like a dream--probably it is one. I do have such dreams. In my sleep I
can lift myself into the air, just as easy, and fly back to the same
big white house that I seem to remember. When you told me about your
home it was like something that I had often seen before. I shall be
dreaming about it next!"

Beverley cross-questioned her from every possible point of view; he was
fascinated with the mystery; but she gave him nothing out of which the
least further light could be drawn. A half-breed woman, it seemed, had
been her Indian foster-mother; a silent, grave, watchful guardian from
whom not a hint of disclosure ever fell. She was, moreover, a Christian
woman, had received her conversion from an English-speaking Protestant
missionary. She prayed with Alice, thus keeping in the child's mind a
perfect memory of the Lord's prayer.

"Well," said Beverley at last, "you are more of a mystery to me, the
longer I know you."

"Then I must grow every day more distasteful to you."

"No, I love mystery."

He went away feeling a new web of interest binding him to this
inscrutable maiden whose life seemed to him at once so full of idyllic
happiness and so enshrouded in tantalizing doubt. At the first
opportunity he frankly questioned M. Roussillon, with no helpful
result. The big Frenchman told the same meager story. The woman was
dying in the time of a great epidemic, which killed most of her tribe.
She gave Alice to M. Roussillon, but told him not a word about her
ancestry or previous life. That was all.

A wise old man, when he finds himself in a blind alley, no sooner
touches the terminal wall than he faces about and goes back the way he
came. Under like circumstances a young man must needs try to batter the
wall down with his head. Beverley endeavored to break through the web
of mystery by sheer force. It seemed to him that a vigorous attempt
could not fail to succe