"Do you understand?" said Paul.
"I--think--I--do. But how--strange--it is!" she replied, in lingering
tones, her gaze continuing to rest, as if fascinated, upon Miss
Ludington.
The latter's face expressed a great elation, an impassioned tenderness
held in check through fear of terrifying its object.
"I do not wonder it seems strange," she said, very softly. "You have yet
no evidence as to who I am. I remember you--oh, how well!--but you cannot
remember me, nor is there any instinct answering to memory by which you
can recognize me. You have a right to require that I should prove that I
am what I claim to be; that I am also Ida Ludington; that I am your later
self. Do not fear, my darling. I shall be able to convince you very
soon."
She made Ida sit down, and then went to an ancient secretary, that stood
in a corner of the room, and unlocked a drawer, the key to which she
always carried on her person.
Paul remembered from the time he was a little boy seeing her open this
drawer on Sunday afternoons and cry over the keepsakes which it
contained.
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