--?" Cornelia questioned.

"With _them_--these modern wonders; such as they are!" Then he went on:
"It must have been to help me you've come back."

She said nothing for an instant about that, only nodding instead at his
photograph. "What has become of yours? I mean of _her_."

This time it made him turn pale. "You remember I _have_ one?"

She kept her eyes on him. "In a 'pork-pie' hat, with her hair in a long
net. That was so 'smart' then; especially with one's skirt looped up,
over one's hooped magenta petticoat, in little festoons, and a row of
very big onyx beads over one's braided velveteen sack--braided quite
plain and very broad, don't you know?"

He smiled for her extraordinary possession of these things--she was as
prompt as if she had had them before her. "Oh, rather--'don't I know?'
You wore brown velveteen, and, on those remarkably small hands, funny
gauntlets--like mine."

"Oh, do _you_ remember? But like yours?" she wondered.

"I mean like hers in my photograph." But he came back to the present
picture. "This is better, however, for really showing her lovely head."

"Mary's head was a perfection!" Cornelia testified.

"Yes--it was better than her heart."

"Ah, don't say that!" she pleaded. "You weren't fair."

"Don't you think I was fair?" It interested him immensely--and the more
that he indeed mightn't have been; which he seemed somehow almost to
hope.

"She didn't think so--to the very end."

"She didn't?"--ah the right things Cornelia said to him! But before she
could answer he was studying again closely the small faded face. "No,
she doesn't, she doesn't. Oh, her charming sad eyes and the way they say
that, across the years, straight into mine! But I don't know, I don't
know!" White-Mason quite comfortably sighed.

His companion appeared to appreciate this effect. "That's just the way
you used to flirt with her, poor thing. Wouldn't you like to have it?"
she asked.

"This--for my very own?" He looked up delighted. "I really may?"

"Well, if you'll give me yours. We'll exchange."

"That's a charming idea. We'll exchange. But you must come and get it at
my rooms--where you'll see my things."

For a little she made no answer--as if for some feeling. Then she said:
"You asked me just now why I've come back."

He stared as for the connection; after which with a smile: "Not to do
_that_----?"

She waited briefly again, but with a queer little look. "I can do those
things now; and--y