niature. It came to her at once that the picture must be Sassoon's,
and a quick thrill of pity and yearning welled up through her own
dejection. Stooping, she looked at it closely. She started as she did
so, for the face on the little disk of ivory was that of John Valiant.

An instant she stared unbelievingly. Then recollection of the
resemblance of which Valiant had told her rushed to her, and she
realized that it must be the picture of his father. The fact shocked and
confounded her. Why should her mother carry in secret the miniature of
the man who had killed--

Shirley's breath stopped. She felt her face tinging and a curious
weakness came on her limbs. Why indeed, unless--and the thought was like
a wild prayer in her mind--she had been mistaken in her surmise?
Thoughts came thronging in panic haste: the fourteenth of May and the
cape jessamines--these might point no less to Valiant than to Sassoon.
But her mother's fainting at the sight of the son--the eager interest
she had displayed in Shirley's accounts of him, from the episode of the
rose and the bulldog to the tournament ball--seemed now to stand out in
a new light, throbbing and roseate. Could it be? Had she been stumbling
along a blind trail, misled by the cunning dovetailing of circumstance?
Her heart was beating stiflingly. If she should be mistaken _now_! She
dashed her hand across her eyes as though to compel their clearness, and
looked again.

It was Beauty Valiant's face that lay in the locket, and that could mean
but one thing: it was he, not Sassoon, whom her mother loved!

The lamplight seemed to grow and spread to an unbearable radiance.
Shirley thought she cried out with a sudden sweet wildness, but she had
not moved or uttered a sound. The illumination was all about her, like a
splendid cloud. The impossible had happened. The miracle for which she
had hysterically prayed had been wrought!

When she blew out the light, the shining still remained. That glowing
knowledge, like a vitalizing and physical presence, passed with her
through the hall to her own room. As she stood in the elfish light of
her one candle, the poignancy of her joy was as sharp as her past pain.
Later was to come the wonder how that tragedy had bent Beauty Valiant's
life to exile and her mother's to unfulfilment, and in time she was to
know these things, too. But now the one great knowledge blotted out all
else. She need starve her fancy no longer! The hours with her lover