Where a man
would have simply left his forgotten slippers or collars there was
a glass of still unfaded flowers; the cold marble top of the
dressing-table was littered with a few linen and silk toilet covers; and
on the mantel-shelf was a sheaf of photographs. He walked towards them
mechanically, glanced at them abstractedly, and then stopped suddenly
with a beating heart. Before him was the picture of his past, the
photograph of the one woman who had filled his life!
He cast a hurried glance around the room as if he half expected to see
the original start up before him, and then eagerly seized it and hurried
with it to the light. Yes! yes! It was SHE,--she as she had lived in his
actual memory; she as she had lived in his dream. He saw her sweet eyes,
but the frightened, innocent trouble had passed from them; there was
the sensitive elegance of her graceful figure in evening dress; but the
figure was fuller and maturer. Could he be mistaken by some wonderful
resemblance acting upon his too willing brain? He turned the photograph
over. No; there on the other side, written in her own childlike hand,
endeared and familiar to his recollection, was her own name, and the
date! It was surely she!
How did it come there? Did the Van Loos know her? It was taken in
Venice; there was the address of the photographers. The Van Loos were
foreigners, he remembered; they had traveled; perhaps had met her there
in 1858: that was the date in her handwriting; that was the date on the
photographer's address--1858.
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