But if the boy had been born under the circumstances set forth in the sketch, who was the man, and why should he have assaulted the woman who bore the child's coffin? And what was she doing abroad under such circumstances? The man and the woman's object was hidden perhaps forever. But not so the woman; the artist had given her features, and as for the other woman, the author had said she was dark. There was in Gerald's mind picture no dark woman; only the girl with the coffin, the arch above and the faint outlines of bending trees! CHAPTER X. "GOD PITY ME! GOD PITY ME!" Edward was sitting thus lost in the contemplation of the circumstances surrounding him, when by that subtle sense as yet not analyzed he felt the presence of another person in the room, and looked over his shoulder. Gerald was advancing toward him smiling mysteriously. Edward noticed his burning eyes and saw intense mental excitement gleaming beyond. The man's mood was different from any he had before revealed. "So you have been out among the friends of your family," he said, with his queer smile. "How did you like them?" Edward was distinctly offended by the supercilious manner and impertinent question, but he remembered his ward's condition and resentment passed from him. "Pleasant people, Gerald, but I am not gifted with the faculty of making friends easily. How come on your experiments?" The visitor's expression changed. He looked about him guardedly. "They advance," he replied, in a whisper; "they advance!" Whatever his motive for entering that room--a room unfamiliar to him, for his restless eyes had searched it over and over in the few minutes he had been in it--was forgotten in the enthusiasm of the scientist. "I have mapped out a course and am working toward it," he said; and then presently: "You remember that pictures can now be transmitted by electricity across great stretches of space and flashed upon a disc? So goes the scene from the convex surface of the eye along a thread-like nerve, so flashed the picture in the brain. But somewhere there it remains. How to prove it, to prove it, that is the question! Oh, for a brain, a brain to dissect!" He glared at Edward, who shuddered under the wildness of the eyes bent upon him. "But time enough for that; I must first ascertain if a picture can be imprinted upon any living substance by light, and remain. This I can do in another way." "How?" Edward was fascinated.