ous."

She was uneasy enough by that time, and rather frightened when she had
finished. For he sat, quiet and rather pale, not looking at her at all,
but gazing fixedly at an old daguerreotype of David that stood on his
desk. One that Lucy had shown him one day and which he had preempted;
David at the age of eight, in a small black velvet suit and with very
thin legs.

"I thought you ought to know," she justified herself, nervously.

Dick got up.

"Yes," he said. "I ought to know, of course. Thank you."

When she had gone he went back and stood before the picture again. From
Clare's first words he had had a stricken conviction that the thing was
true; that, as Mrs. Cook Morgan's visitor from Wyoming had insisted,
Henry Livingstone had never married, never had a son. He stood and gazed
at the picture. His world had collapsed about him, but he was steady and
very erect.

"David, David!" he thought. "Why did you do it? And what am I? And who?"

Characteristically his first thought after that was of David himself.
Whatever David had done, his motive had been right. He would have to
start with that. If David had built for him a false identity it was
because there was a necessity for it. Something shameful, something he
was to be taken away from. Wasn't it probable that David had heard the
gossip, and had then collapsed? Wasn't the fear that he himself would
hear it behind David's insistence that he go to Baltimore?

His thoughts flew to Elizabeth. Everything was changed now, as to
Elizabeth. He would have to be very certain of that past of his before
he could tell her that he loved her, and he had a sense of immediate
helplessness. He could not go to David, as things were. To Lucy?

Probably he would have gone to Lucy at once, but the telephone rang.
He answered it, got his hat and bag and went out to the car. Years with
David had made automatic the subordination of self to the demands of the
practice.

At half past six Lucy heard him come in and go into his office. When he
did not immediately reappear and take his flying run up the stairs to
David's room, she stood outside the office door and listened. She had a
premonition of something wrong, something of the truth, perhaps. Anyhow,
she tapped at the door and opened it, to find him sitting very quietly
at his desk with his head in his hands.

"Dick!" she exclaimed. "Is anything wrong?"

"I have a headache," he said. He looked at his watch and got up. "I'll
t