My head was whirling so with excitement I felt as
if I were living in a dream. Yet when the man with the star began
speaking I heard him with curious distinctness.

"All that is necessary for you to do, Miss Fenwick, is to tell me
whether you recognize the person you saw this morning."

I sat forward on the edge of my chair. I tried to draw a deep breath,
but the sickly atmosphere seemed choking me. There was the tread of
feet outside the door; it opened and two officers came in, stopping one
on each side of the doorway; and then, with a queer shock, I saw not
the one man I had expected, but a file of men, shuffling one behind the
other, and linked together by what seemed a long steel chain, from
wrist to wrist, into the seeming of a single thing. This thing halted
opposite the railing, and faced about before me, where it appeared to
me as a line of heads and moving arms and legs and shuffling feet. But
among them all I saw only one individual. It was absurd if they had
expected to confuse me with these other creatures. I saw him instantly
and I knew him past hope of mistaking. His clothes were all torn and
disordered; there was a cut on his forehead and a bloodstained bandage
showed on his wrist beneath his sleeve; and the bitter way he held his
head up and stared straight past me at the wall made him seem quite
grim and yet, somehow, very forlorn. A lump rose in my throat. I
heard the Chief of Police saying, "Is there any person here you
recognize?" I swallowed hard and opened my lips, but the only sound
that came was like a sob.

Quickly the prisoner turned his eyes on me. There crossed his face
again a look like the faint shadow of that look which had transfixed
me, as he burst out of the door. But in a moment it was gone, and he
smiled. Such a smile, so warm and kind, as if he were reassuring and
encouraging me to go on! It transformed him from a terrifying presence
into something beautiful. It made me forget the others and the room
and, curiously, in their place, came the confusing memory of a
ball-room and a slim boy with black brows whirling down the polished
floor with his splendid partner, both in a gale of laughter. Those
long white hands, now linked together with a chain,--hadn't I seen them
holding up a woman's filmy draperies?

"Speak, Ellie," my father's voice said. "Can't you tell us?"

It brought me back from my fancies with a great start, and before I
knew what I was saying I ha