Paul nodded. He was listening, with death in his heart. The whole fantastic substructure of his life had been suddenly kicked away, and his life was an inchoate ruin. Gone was the glamour of romance in which since the day of the cornelian heart he had had his essential being. Up to an hour ago he had never doubted his mysterious birth. No real mother could have pursued an innocent child with Polly Kegworthy's implacable hatred. His passionate repudiation of her had been a cardinal article of his faith. On the other hand, the prince and princess theory he had long ago consigned to the limbo of childish things; but the romance of his birth, the romance of his high destiny, remained a vital part of his spiritual equipment. His looks, his talents, his temperament, his instincts, his dreams had been irrefutable confirmations. His mere honesty, his mere integrity, had been based on this fervent and unshakable creed. And now it had gone. No more romance. No more glamour. No more Vision Splendid now faded into the light of common and sordid day. Outwardly listening, his gay, mobile face turned to iron, he lived in a molten intensity of thought, his acute brain swiftly coordinating the ironical scraps of history. He was the son of Polly Kegworthy. So far he was unclean; but hitherto her blood had not manifested itself in him. He was the son of this violent and pathetic fanatic, this ex-convict; he had his eyes, his refined face; perhaps he inherited from him the artistic temperament--he recalled grimly the daubs on the man's walls, and his purblind gropings toward artistic self-expression; and all this--the Southern handsomeness, and Southern love of colour, had come from his Sicilian grandmother, the nameless drab, with bright yellow handkerchief over swarthy brows, turning the handle of a barrel organ in the London streets. Instinct had been right in its promptings to assume an Italian name; but the irony of it was of the quality that makes for humour in hell. And his very Christian name--Paul--the exotic name which Polly Kegworthy would not have given to a brat of hers--was but a natural one for a Silas to give his son, a Silas born of generations of evangelical peasants. His eyes rested on the photograph of his Princess. She, first of all, was gone with the Vision. An adventurer he had possibly been; but an adventurer of romance, carried high by his splendid faith, and regarding his marriage with the Princess but as a crowning of his romantic destiny. But now he beheld himself only as a base-born impostor. His Princess was gone from his life. Death was in his heart. He saw his familiar, luxurious room as in a dream, and Jane, anxious-eyed, looking into the fire, and Barney Bill a little way off, clutching his hard felt hat against his body; but his eyes were fixed on the strange, many-passioned, unbalanced man who claimed to be--nay, who was--his father.