When Latham returned to the library he found Helen sitting by the writing-table, one hand lying idly and resting on the jade paper weight. He spoke to her, and she looked up and smiled at him rather vacantly, but she said nothing. He gave her a sharp look, and then picked up a magazine and sat down, pretending to read.

She sat very still. She seemed resting—and though he watched her, he decided not to disturb her, to make no effort to arouse her.

And so they sat without a word until Hugh came back. Latham looked round in surprise, but Helen scarcely seemed to notice.

“An hour’s reprieve,” Hugh said lightly. “Awfully decent chap in there. Knew him at the front. He’ll make it as comfortable for me as he can. I’ve told Barker to do him uncommonly well. And now, to search this room in earnest!”

Stephen followed his brother into the library. “Some one has given you away, Hugh,” he said sorrowfully. “The soldiers knew you were here, when they came—the sergeant was so positive that all my denials were useless. Who could it have been?”

“Don’t you know, Stephen?” Helen said softly, rising—the Joss in her hand, but not even glancing at Pryde.

“How on earth would Stephen know?” Hugh said, going to his brother.

Stephen put out his hand. “I—I can’t tell you how sorry I am, Hugh.”

Hugh smiled at the elder. “I know, old boy, I know. And I’m not worrying. It’ll come all right.”

Helen moved suddenly, sharply, as if some shock of electricity had currented through her. Then she spoke, and her voice was strange. “Blind—blind—blind!” It seemed as if she said it unconsciously. The three men watched her intensely, each moved and apprehensive in a different way, and from a different cause. She spoke again in the same queer, mechanical manner, but this time her voice was louder, clearer, more vibrant. “Blind—blind—blind!” To Hugh and to Latham the one word repeated again and again conveyed nothing, but suddenly Stephen Pryde remembered where he had heard it last, and he shuddered. She spoke on—“As if he were an echo of the morning—‘Blind—blind—blind’!”

“Helen!” Hugh cried, alarmed for her.

“What is it?” Latham said to her insistently.

Stephen went to her quickly. “It’s nothing,” he said sharply. “Nothing—only the parting with Hugh. It’s been a great strain on her.” He turned to Hugh. “You had better go now, quickly.”

“No, no!” she said sharply, but looking at neither of them.

“Helen!” Hugh pled—distracted.

She heard him, and ran to him, brushing by Stephen.

“My dear,” she began, and faltered.

He put his arms about her. “There—there—you’re all right.”

The voice she loved best recalled her. “Of course I am,” she said brightly.

“But why did you say those words just now?” he said, impelled to ask it, though he understood a gesture of Latham’s that forbade all simulation of her strange excitement.

“I don’t know. And I didn’t exactly seem to say them—they said themselves. I don’t know what they mean, or where they come from; but they keep running through my head—I can’t stop them somehow.”

“That’s odd,” Latham remarked, his interest in what seemed to him a unique psychological case out-weighing his fear for the patient, “very odd. I seem to have heard them before too. But I can’t think where. What’s that you have in your hand?”

“Why—why, it’s his paper-weight—Daddy’s.” She held it up and gazed at it intently, as an Indian seer gazes at his crystal. In a moment she spoke again, her voice once more quite changed. “Did you ever read ‘David Copperfield,’ Helen?”

“What?” Latham said, unprofessionally tremulous with surprise and with interest.

“Did you ever read ‘David Copperfield,’ Helen?” the mechanical voice repeated automatically. The girl’s face was white and expressionless as a death mask.

“‘David Copperfield’!” Stephen Pryde exclaimed hoarsely. And as he said it he knew. And Helen knew too. She had readied the light. At that moment Richard Bransby had got his message through. Stephen’s eyes went to the table where the volume lay when he left the room the night his uncle died—then slowly they traveled to the bookcase. In that moment the whole thing was clear to him—as clear as if he had seen his confession shut in the volume, the volume by some one at sometime replaced on its shelf.

And Helen had grasped the meaning of the words she had uttered so oddly, and repeatedly. She shrined the jade god in her hands, and looked raptly at its green and rose surfaces and curves. Then she put it gently down on the table, reverently too, as some devout Catholic might handle and lay down a relic most holy—a relic miraculous and well proven. A dozen lights played and quivered in and out of its multiple indentations and intricate clefts; and the rose-hue petals seemed to quiver and color in response, but the green face of the god was immovable, expressionless, mute. But Latham’s eyes, scalpel-sharp, following Helen’s hands, thought they saw a tiny eidolon star-shaped, yellow and ambient, slip from the deep of the odd little figure, and hover a moment above it significantly, before it broke with a bubble of fiercer light and dissolved in a scintillation of minute flame. And Stephen Pryde, watching only Helen, was sure that a rim of faint haze, impalpable, delicately tinted and living, bordered and framed her.

Richard Bransby had gotten his message through—recorded at the moment of his passing, and held safe ever since in the folds of the toy he had treasured and handled with years-long habit and almost with obsession—or flashed from his heart still living and potent to the soul of his child. Richard Bransby had gotten his message through. And each in their different way knew, received, and accepted it. The old room was strangely cold. But not one of the four waiting and asking felt the smallest sensation of fear—not even Stephen, defeated, convicted.

Helen spoke, and her voice rang clear and assured, the beautiful color creeping back to her face, a great light in her eyes. “Doctor—Hugh—Daddy asked me that very question just before he died.”

“That’s strange,” Latham said musingly, pondering as in all his thoughtful years of reflection he had never pondered before.

Hugh was speechless. Stephen picked up a cigarette, and laid it down again, with a bitter smile—the hopeless smile of final defeat.

“Just before he died,” Helen said.

“‘David Copperfield,’” Latham exclaimed; “of course—I remember now. Those words you just said were a quotation from ‘David Copperfield’—where he passes the blind beggar.”

“I think you are wrong, Latham.” Stephen Pryde made his last throw more in cynical indifference than in desperation. His long game was up: that was the special message that had come through to him. But he’d fight on, cool and callous now, and meet his defeat in the last ditch of all—not an inch sooner.

“No,” Latham said sternly; “I am not wrong.”

“Yes,” Stephen smiled with slight contemptuousness as he said it; “I am sure you are.”

“I’ll show you,” Latham retorted. He went to the bookcase and took down the ‘David Copperfield’ volume.

“Yes,” Helen said quietly; “‘David Copperfield’ has a message for me—from Daddy.”

“This is nonsense,” Stephen said impatiently. “Latham, I appeal to you.”

“I tell you the message is there,” Helen said imperiously.

“It’s impossible,” Pryde began with a shrug.

“Then prove it to me,” the girl said hotly; “prove it to me—that’s the only way you can convince me.”

“She’s right,” Hugh exclaimed; “of course, that’s the only way to help her.”

There was a brief, tense pause, and then Latham, assuming the judiciary and the dictatorship to which his being the one disinterested person there entitled him, said—

“Yes. Well. If there was a message, it would be in the words you just spoke—and their context.”

Helen nodded.

“I could find the place blindfold,” Latham continued. He sat down, the book still in his hand. He opened it, turned but a page or two, and said, “Yes, here it is.” The three listened with breathless eagerness, as he read, “‘There was a beggar in the street when I went down, and as I turned my head towards the window, thinking of her calm, seraphic eyes, he made me start by muttering, as if he were an echo of the morning, “Blind—Blind—Blind.”’” He closed the book and turned to Helen.

“You see,” Stephen remarked quietly, “there’s nothing in it.”

“No,” Latham concurred reluctantly, disappointed, in spite of himself, scientist as he was, skeptic as he once had thought himself; “no, your suddenly remembering those words—it could have been no more than a coincidence.”

“Yes, a coincidence,” Stephen echoed.

“That paper-weight,” the physician analyzed on, “was associated in your mind with your father. When you took it in your hand, unconsciously you went back to the last time you saw him alive.”

“That’s it,” Stephen said cordially. Really Latham could not have given better service if he had briefed him.

Helen looked from one to another, she was on the verge of a breakdown now—and just when she had been so sure. She held out her hands, and Hugh came and led her gently back to the chair by the writing-table. “Rest awhile,” he begged. “I’ll hunt in a moment.” He glanced anxiously up at the clock.

“Oh, Daddy, Daddy,” Helen sobbed; “why didn’t you help me? Why didn’t you help me?”

“Helen,” Stephen said gravely, bending over her chair, “that question is answered. Your father’s dead—the dead never return. All this belief of yours in immortality is a delusion. If you had listened to me, you would have understood. But you wouldn’t. I tried to spare you suffering, but you were so obstinate. You made me fight this dead man—” His voice, which at first had been bitter but even, grew angry and discordant. His iron nerve was cracking and bleating under the hideous strain—“you tried to haunt me with some presence in this room—it’s been ghastly—ghastly”—he was so cold he could scarcely articulate, his tongue clicked icily against his stiffening cheek, and grew thicker and thicker—“but this invisible foe, I’ve conquered it—this obsession of yours, I’ve shown you how false, how hopeless it is—all this rubbish about this book of Copperfield—and now you must put it all away for the sake of others as well as yourself.” Helen rose very slowly, paying her cousin not the slightest attention. Suddenly she grew rigid again; Hugh and Latham, who had been regarding Stephen in amazement, looked only at her now. Stephen continued speaking to her peremptorily, haranguing her almost, “You understood that now, don’t you?”

Very slowly, again almost somnambulant, Helen turned, her hand outstretched as it was before, towards the bookcase.

“Well,” Stephen Pryde cried roughly, “why don’t you answer me? Why don’t you answer me? You heard what I said!” She moved slowly across the room. “For the future you must rely on me, on me,” Pryde pounded on. “Your father can’t help you now,” he added brutally. Still she paid no heed. Still she moved—so slowly that she scarcely seemed to move, across the room. All at once Pryde understood where she was going, what she was going to do. He was horror-struck, and made as if to pull her back roughly, but Latham moved in between them.

“Helen, what are you doing?” Stephen shrieked—“what are you doing?”

Still she paid no attention, but moved slowly, serenely on, until she reached the mahogany table on which Latham had placed “David Copperfield.” Not looking at it, her head held high, her eyes wide but sightless and glazed, she put out her hand and lifted up the volume, holding it by one cover only. An instant she stood with the book at arm’s length.

Stephen’s breath came in great noisy pants, audible both to Hugh and Latham.

Helen moved her arm gently, shaking the volume she held. Slowly, quietly, as if conscious of its own significance, a paper slipped from between the inverted pages, and fell to the floor.

“Oh, my God!” Stephen sobbed with a nasty choke. Then he swooped towards the paper. But Latham, who had been watching him again, and this time with a physician’s taut scrutiny, reached it first and secured it. Pryde fell back with a piteous laugh, maudlin, pathetic.

“Read it, I can’t,” Helen said, pointing to the paper. Latham and Hugh bent over it together.

Hugh read only the first few lines, and then hid his shamed face in his hands, and sobbed like a child. But Latham read on till he had read it all.

Helen hurried to Hugh, but Latham held out the document to her with a gesture not to be disregarded, even for a moment. She went to him, and took the paper. For an instant she shook so that the writing danced and mocked her. Then she drew herself up, and read it through, slowly and carefully—from its first word to its last. Read, she refolded it, and with an earnest look handed it back to Latham.

Slowly, quietly she turned—not to Hugh, but to Stephen. He stood near the door, trembling and cringing, his eyes fixed and staring—at something—cringing as if some terrible hand clutched or menaced him. With a cry of pain and of terror, such as the sufferers in Purgatory may shriek, he rushed from the room, sobbing and gibbering,

“Don’t touch me, Uncle Dick! Don’t touch me!”

Helen, scorn, hatred on her face, and no atom of pity, was following him; but Latham stayed her.

“I’ll go,” he said; “there is mania in his eyes. Stay with Hugh, he needs you. I’ll see to Pryde.” He thrust the confession in his pocket-book, the pocket-book in his coat. “That paper,” he told her, “will straighten out Hugh’s trouble. He’ll be free and clear to-morrow, believe me. But stay with him now; he needs you.”

Helen yielded. She went and knelt down by Hugh and laid her hands on his knee. As Latham was leaving the room, she said to him, with a grave smile—

“You see, you were wrong, Doctor. Daddy did come to me.”

“I wonder,” was his reply. “I wonder. Finding the paper in that book may all have been coincidence—who knows?”

“Daddy and I know,” Helen said; “Daddy and I know.”