"In Madam Grant’s room? How strange! I don’t understand that." "Nor I, either. Yet you say he knew her?" queried Granthope. "Only slightly, so he gave me to understand, at least—still, that may not be true. He may have his reasons for not telling more." She turned to him with a strange, deliberate, questing expression, and said, "Who _are_ you, anyway?" Then, "Was Madam Grant your mother?" "I don’t know. I’ve often suspected that it might be so, but somehow I don’t quite believe it. I don’t, at least, _feel_ it." "Why did you run away?" "Just before she died she asked me to take some money she had and to keep it safe. I hid it and ran away because I was afraid that they’d find it and take it away from me. I went to Stockton and carried the package to a bank, but they frightened me with their questions and I ran away without any explanations. Of course it’s lost, and it was, as I remember it, a big sum, some thousands. I could never prove that I left it there, for my name wasn’t on the package of bills. I had written some false name—I forget what. I never let any one know that I had lived with Madam Grant, after that, for fear that I should be accused of having stolen the money. My story would never have been believed, of course." "I see." Clytie’s eyes half closed in thought. "I’m sure it was meant for you, Francis." The sound of his name stirred him and his hand tightened on hers. "Perhaps so. But I’ve always thought that she intended it for some of her kin. It has been impossible for me to trace any of her family, though. All I know about her is that she was at Vassar College, but I can’t possibly identify her, because Grant was undoubtedly a name she assumed here." "We must try to see what we can do, you and I. Perhaps I may be able to help you, somehow. What happened after that?" "I worked at odd jobs in the country for a number of years, then came back to San Francisco. There I did anything I could get to do till I met Madam Spoll. She was a medium, and is yet. I lived with her several years." As he had torn down the draperies of that dark, mysterious room, he went on, now, to tear down the curtain of shams and hypocrisies that had hidden his true self from her and from her kind.