"That's exactly what I mean," the elder said, with renewed hopefulness. "I'm quite willing to risk myself with a man of the same name as Dr. Lanfear. I should like," he said, hurrying on, as if to override any further reluctance of Lanfear's, "to tell you her story, and then--" "By all means," Lanfear consented, and he put on an air of professional deference, while the older man began with a face set for the task. "It's a long story, or it's a short story, as you choose to make it. We'll make it long, if necessary, later, but now I'll make it short. Five months ago my wife was killed before my daughter's eyes--" He stopped; Lanfear breathed a gentle "Oh!" and Gerald blurted out: "Accident--grade crossing--Don't!" he winced at the kindness in Lanfear's eyes, and panted on. "That's over! What happened to _her_--to my daughter--was that she fainted from the shock. When she woke--it was more like a sleep than a swoon--she didn't remember what had happened." Lanfear nodded, with a gravely interested face. "She didn't remember anything that had ever happened before. She knew me, because I was there with her; but she didn't know that she ever had a mother, because she was not there with her. You see?" "I can imagine," Lanfear assented. "The whole of her life before the--accident was wiped out as to the facts, as completely as if it had never been; and now every day, every hour, every minute, as it passes, goes with that past. But her faculties--" "Yes?" Lanfear prompted in the pause which Mr. Gerald made. "Her intellect--the working powers of her mind, apart from anything like remembering, are as perfect as if she were in full possession of her memory. I believe," the father said, with a pride that had its pathos, "no one can talk with her and not feel that she has a beautiful mind, that she can think better than most girls of her age. She reads, or she lets me read to her, and until it has time to fade, she appreciates it all more fully than I do. At Genoa, where I took her to the palaces for the pictures, I saw that she had kept her feeling for art. When she plays--you will hear her play--it is like composing the music for herself; she does not seem to remember the pieces, she seems to improvise them. You understand?" Lanfear said that he understood, for he could not disappoint the expectation of the father's boastful love: all that was left him of the ambitions he must once have had for his child.