r crazy when she put
the question to him. But he was a man, solid and steady, with no
vagaries of the brain, and not a tithe of the impetuosity and
immigration of the girl, who went on to ask him if he had ever seen any
one whom she resembled.

He was wondering, in a vague kind of way, how long she meant to stay
there, and if the tea-cakes his grandmother was going to make for supper
would be spoiled, when she asked the question, to which he replied.

'No, I don't think I ever did, unless it is Gretchen. You are some like
her, but I suppose many German girls have her complexion and hair.'

The answer was not very reassuring, and Jerrie showed it in her fact,
which was still upturned to Harold, who, looking down upon it and the
earnest, wistful expression which had settled there, started suddenly as
if an arrow had struck him, for he saw the likeness Jerry had seen in
the glass, and taking the upturned face between both his hands, he
studied it intently, while, like lightening, the possibility of the
thing flashed through his brain, making him colder and fainter than
Jerrie herself when she looked into the mirror.

'What if it were so?' he said to himself, while everything seemed
slipping away from him, but mostly Jerrie, who, if it were so, would be
separated from him by a gulf he could not pass; for what could the
daughter of Arthur Tracy care for him, the poor boy, whose life had been
one fight with poverty, and whose worn, shabby clothes, on which the
full western sunlight was falling, told plainer than words of the
poverty which still held him in thrall.

'Jerrie!' he cried, rising to his feet, and letting the hands which had
clasped her face drop down to her shoulders, which they pressed tightly,
as if he thus would keep her with him--'Oh, Jerrie, you are like Arthur
Tracy, or you were when you looked at me so earnestly; but it is gone
now. Do you--have you thought that Gretchen was your mother?'

He was pale as a corpse, and Jerrie was the calmer of the two, as she
told him frankly all she had thought and felt since Arthur's visit to
her.

'I meant to tell you,' she said, 'though not quite so soon; but when I
came in here I could not help it, things crowd upon me so. It may be,
and probably is, all a fancy, but there is something in my babyhood
different from the woman who died, and when I am able to do it I am
going to Wiesbaden, for that is where Gretchen lived, and where I
believe I came from, and if th