“There am I,” she said, “rather in the background, dressed up as a beautiful village lass—do you see? And that’s Alan. He was handsome, wasn’t he?” Her voice was quite steady as she said it, but it had rather a minor ring. “And there—that girl over there in the shirtwaist and habit skirt, is Wrenn’s daughter.” As Barrison looked, he felt as certain as though he had seen her with his own eyes, that she—Wrenn’s daughter—was the woman who had been in Mortimer’s dressing room the night before. CHAPTER XIX GLIMMERS IN THE DARKNESS He raised his eyes to find Miss Templeton regarding him from the other side of the table with a rather curious expression. “I had no idea that you would be interested in the Wrenn girl,” she said. “I thought that my information would point rather toward her father. Why are you interested in her?” Barrison hesitated. Charming as he found this woman, he had no mind to confide in her just yet. He countered with another question, one which had, as a matter of fact, trembled on his lips ever since he had come into the room. It was an impertinent question, and he knew that she would have a perfect right to resent it. Yet there was an indefinable attitude about her—not familiarity, but something suggesting intimacy—when she spoke to him, that made him somewhat bolder than his good taste could justify. “Miss Templeton,” he said, “you have just told me that you cared so much for Alan Mortimer that you waited for six years to get in the same company with him. I know that only a few days ago you were still sufficiently interested in him to be——” He really did not know how to put it, but she did. “Jealous?” she suggested promptly, and without emotion. “Oh, yes, I was—in a way—insanely jealous. You see, it had become an obsession with me; I don’t imagine I really loved him any longer, but I was being cheated of something I had worked for and sacrificed for. Probably, not being a woman, you wouldn’t understand.” “Probably not,” said Jim. “And—will you forgive me for adding this?—I understand even less your mood to-day. Last night you were deeply moved at the play; I saw that. Perhaps”—he paused; he did not know whether to speak of the revolver or not—“you were even on the verge of—some scene—some violent expression of emotion, some——” She glanced at him, startled. “How did you know that? But, suppose it were true. Will you go on, if you please?” “No; I am merely offending you.” “You don’t—offend me.” Her tone was singular. “I should really like you to go on. There was something else that you did not understand. What was it?”