"I know all that you suffer," she said. "You are doing the strong thing, the brave thing! The man in you is not astray now; it was lost, but it has found its way back. When your memory comes, you will see that it is fate that has been leading you. There was nothing in your past that can not be buried and forgotten. What you have been you will never be again. I know that! I saw you fight Devlin and I know why you did it. I heard you play the violin! Whatever has been, I have faith in you now!" She spoke breathlessly, in very abandon, carried away by her feeling. As she spoke he had turned toward her, his paleness flushed, his eyes leaping up like hungry fires, devouring her face. At the look timidity rushed upon her. She stopped abruptly and took a startled step from him. He turned from her instantly, his hands dropped at his sides. The word that had almost sprung to speech had slipped back into the void. "I thank you for the charity you have for me," he said, "which I in no way deserve. I ... I shall always remember it." She hesitated an instant, made as if to speak. Then, turning, she went quickly from him. At the edge of the bushes she stopped with a sudden impulse. She looked at the handkerchief she held in her hand. Some tiny lettering was embroidered in its corner, the word _Jessica_. She looked back--he had not moved. Rolling it into a ball, she threw it back, over the bushes, then ran on hastily through the trees. After a time Harry turned slowly, his shoulders lifting in a deep respiration. He drew his hand across his brow as though to dispel a vision. This was the first time he had hit upon the place. He saw the flat ledge, with the bushes twisted before it for a screen. She had known the place before, then! The white and filmy cambric caught his eye, lying at the base of the great, knob-like rock. He went to it, picked it up, and looked at it closely. "Jessica!" he whispered. The name clung about him; the very leaves repeated it in music. He had a curious sensation as if, while she spoke, that very name had half framed itself in some curtained recess of his thought. He pressed the handkerchief to his face. The faint perfume it exhaled, like the dust of dead roses, gave him a ghostly impression of the familiar. He thought of what she had said; she had not known him! And yet that look, the strange dreaming sense of her presence, his name on her lips in the moment of bewilderment! He struck his forehead sharply with his open hand. "Fool!" he said, with a bitter laugh. "Fool!" CHAPTER XXV THE OPEN WINDOW