"But I haven't any picture; at least, any that you'd want--only a few taken months ago, for my father."
"Show me those; why won't they do?"
"Oh, they aren't good; they--they don't look like me. Besides, I really couldn't let you print my picture, Cadge."
"All right. Good night, then; good night, Kitty."
"Perhaps I was just the least bit homesick; I'm glad you've come," Helen said to me at good-by.
She did not withdraw the hand I pressed. She was still under the excitement of the music; the song had left on her face a dreamy tenderness.
"Don't you like Cadge?" she asked, checking with shy evasiveness the words I would have spoken. "She can do anything--sing, talk modern Greek and Chinese--Cadge is wonderful."
"I know some one more wonderful. Helen, when did you begin to sing?"
"I don't sing; to-night was the first time I ever tried before any one but Kitty. Did I sing well?"
"I can't believe you're real! I can't--"
"Don't! Don't!" she laughed. "Remember your promise."
And with that she ran away from the door where I stood, and I came directly home. Home, to set down these notes; to wonder; to doubt; to pinch myself and try to believe that I am alive.
I am alive. This that I have written is the truth! This is what I have seen and heard since a common, puffing railroad train brought me from the West and set me down in the land of miracles.
It is the truth; but out of that magic presence I cannot--I am as powerless to believe as I am powerless to doubt.
God help me--it is the truth!