She dropped to a seat on the couch and leaned languidly against the cushions, clasping her hands in her lap. He scarcely dared look at her, and walked nervously up and down the room, dreading the inevitable ordeal. For a while he did not speak, then he turned swiftly to say: "Positively, I don’t know where to begin!" "You would better begin at the beginning, then—with Madam Grant." "You suspected that, then?" "It was that suspicion that has drawn me to you. I should never have begun to love you without that, perhaps. It seemed to justify my growing feeling for you. Haven’t I hinted at that often enough? I mean that in some way we had been connected before. You _were_ the little boy who disappeared when she died, weren’t you?" "Yes, of course." "But I can’t make it out! There was never any child there when I went, though I was conscious of some secret presence—some one invisible." "I was locked in the closet—I watched you through a crack in the door." "Oh!" Her eyes widened with a full direct stare; her breath came quickly at the revelation. He watched her, as her expression was transmuted from bewilderment to the beginning of an agonized disillusion. He could not bear it, as he saw that her mind was hastening to the explanation, and he forestalled her next question by his ruthless confession. "Of course, that’s the way I was able to give you that very wonderful clairvoyant reading—the picture of you in Madam Grant’s room." She took the blow bravely, but it was evident that she had not been quite ready for it. "Then you are really not clairvoyant at all? You were simply imposing on my credulity? I want to know the exact truth, so that we can straighten matters out." She spoke slowly, hesitatingly. "I told you it was a ghastly story—this is the least of it," he said, wincing. The smile fluttered back to her quivering lips, and with a quick impulse she rose, went to him again and clasped his hand. "Oh, I’m not making it easy for you!" she cried. "Forgive me, please. I can bear anything you say—be sure of that, won’t you? Come here!" She drew him down to the couch beside her, still keeping his hand in hers. "This is better," she said softly. "Don’t think of me as an inquisitor, but as a friend. What you have been can not matter any longer. But let us have no more deceit or reserve between us. You see, I don’t quite understand yet about that day. How did you know who I was? How did you get my name?" He summoned his courage as for an operation desperately necessary, and looked her straight in the eye. "That was a trick. I read ’Clytie’ inside your ring." She took it without flinching. "But my last name—that wasn’t there!" "Oh, that was inspiration; I can’t explain it. You see, I had happened to hear the name ’Payson’ that morning, and it recalled the fact that I had seen it before upon a picture in Madam Grant’s bedroom. Your father’s name, ’Oliver Payson,’ it was."