He looked at her fixedly for a moment, as if striving to materialise a thought that lay somewhere in the back of his mind. He was vaguely conscious of an impression that he could unfathom all this seeming mystery without a suggestion from her if given the time to concentrate his mind on the vague, hazy suggestion that tormented his memory. He sat down opposite her and rested his arms on the table. The lines about his mouth were rigid, uncompromising, but there was a look of wonder in his eyes. She leaned forward in her chair, the better to watch the changing expression in his eyes as she progressed with her story. Her hands were clenched tightly under the table's edge. “You are looking into my eyes, as you have looked a hundred times,” she said after a moment. “There is something in them that has puzzled you since the night when you looked into them across that great ballroom in London. You have always felt that they were not new to you, that you have had them constantly in front of you for ages. Do you remember when you first saw me, James Brood?” He stared, and his eyes widened. “I never saw you in my life until that night in London, I------” “Look closely. Isn't there something more than doubt in your mind as you look into them now?” “I confess that I have always been puzzled by by something I cannot understand in--but all this leads to nothing,” he broke off harshly. “We are not here to mystify each other, but to------” “To explain mysteries, that's it, of course. You are looking. What do you see? Are you not sure that you looked into my eyes long, long ago? Are there not moments when my voice is familiar to you, when it speaks to you out of------” He sat up, rigid as a block of stone. “Yes, by Heaven, I have felt it all along! To-day I was convinced that the unbelievable had happened. I saw something that------” He stopped short, his lips parted. She waved her hand in the direction of the Buddha. “Have you never petitioned your too-stolid friend over there to unravel the mystery for you? In the quiet of certain lonely, speculative hours have you not wondered where you had seen me before, long, long before the night in London? In all the years that you have been trying to convince yourself that Frederic is not your son has there not been the vision of------” “What are you saying to me? Are you trying to tell me that you are Matilde?” “If not Matilde, then who am I, pray?” she demanded. He sank back frowning. “It cannot be possible. I would know her a thousand years from now. You cannot trick me into believing--but, who are you?” He leaned forward again, clutching the edge of the table. “I sometimes think you are a ghost come to haunt me, to torture me. What trick, what magic is behind all this? Has her soul, her spirit, her actual being found a lodging-place in you, and have you been sent to curse me for------” She rose half-way out of her chair, leaning farther across the table.