tity.

A half minute more and he was leaning over in the full light of the
lamp, his two hands clutching the thing which the paper had disclosed
when it dropped to the floor, his eyes staring, his lips parted, and his
heart seeming to stand still in the utter amazement of the moment!

CHAPTER V

David held in his hands a photograph--the picture of a girl. He had half
guessed what he would find when he began to unfold the newspaper
wrapping and saw the edge of gray cardboard. In the same breath had come
his astonishment--a surprise that was almost a shock. The night had been
filled with changes for him; forces which he had not yet begun to
comprehend had drawn him into the beginning of a strange adventure; they
had purged his thoughts of _himself_; they had forced upon him other
things, other people, and a glimpse or two of another sort of life; he
had seen tragedy, and happiness--a bit of something to laugh at; and he
had felt the thrill of it all. A few hours had made him the bewildered
and yet passive object of the unexpected. And now, as he sat alone on
the edge of his bed, had come the climax of the unexpected.

The girl in the picture was not dead--not merely a lifeless shadow put
there by the art of a camera. She was alive! That was his first
thought--his first impression. It was as if he had come upon her
suddenly, and by his presence had startled her--had made her face him
squarely, tensely, a little frightened, and yet defiant, and ready for
flight. In that first moment he would not have disbelieved his eyes if
she had moved, if she had drawn away from him and disappeared out of the
picture with the swiftness of a bird. For he--some one--had startled
her; some one had frightened her; some one had made her afraid, and yet
defiant; some one had roused in her that bird-like impulse of flight
even as the camera had clicked.

He bent closer into the lampglow, and stared. The girl was standing on a
flat slab of rock close to the edge of a pool. Behind her was a carpet
of white sand, and beyond that a rock-cluttered gorge and the side of a
mountain. She was barefooted. Her feet were white against the dark rock.
Her arms were bare to the elbows, and shone with that same whiteness. He
took these things in one by one, as if it were impossible for the
picture to impress itself upon him all at once. She stood leaning a
little forward on the rock slab, her dress only a little below her
knees, and as she leaned