Was it illusion, too, that the ghost of his long-forgotten symphony
should be played by the girl at the piano there, who so resembled his
own lost loved one? Was it illusion that he should recognise that
little doll, her doll, as the doll with which his own child, his own
Helene, had played so long ago?

Von Barwig did not start as he picked up this mute evidence of the
truth; he was almost prepared for it. It was as if he knew she was his
own, and yet did not know it.

"That eye was never mended after all," he said in a pathetic, broken
voice, and as he spoke the whole scene of years gone by came back to
him. He saw once more his little girl pleading with him to mend the
doll with the broken eye.

Von Barwig was quite calm now. He had grasped a certainty at last; he
knew now that he did not dream. He looked over at the piano. The girl
felt deeply the music that she was playing, for it responded to
something in her own nature; and so interested was she at this moment
that she almost forgot his presence. Tears filled his eyes as he gazed
at her longingly, lovingly.

"Little heart! Ach, lieber Gott, my little Helene; my little baby!
How long, how long!" he murmured, smothering his emotion, but looking
now at her, now at the little German doll clutched tightly in his hand.

[Illustration: "I want you to come with us?"]

After a while a feeling of great peace came upon him. His mission was
ended; he had found her at last. His longing heart had reached its
haven.

"That's the doll my mother loved best," said Helene, without pausing in
her playing. "She loved to play with that doll and me."

He, too, was thinking of her mother. Was it telepathy that she should
think the very thought that was uppermost in his mind?

"There's a portrait of her in the next room," and she pointed to the
door off the main room. "It was painted by an artist here in New York
three years before she died."

Von Barwig dared not trust himself to speak. He silently opened the
door and looked. "Elene, Elene!" he murmured in a low voice. He stood
there some time gazing at the portrait of his dead wife, and his eyes
were swimming with tears. "Yes, there she is," he said, his low, sad
voice scarcely audible through the music. "Elene! Ach, Gott! dead,
dead! Better so; better--so----"

He closed the door gently. As he did so a tear ran down his cheek and
dropped on the little German doll. "I baptise it," he said with a
sm