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He made a little gesture of assent, waving his hand. ‘My wife is there: that is what keeps me in this suspense.’

‘Where? Where?’

He pointed vaguely in the direction of Joyce’s home. ‘She has gone—to see everything,’ he said.

For the moment a flash of sudden anger came to the eyes of Joyce. ‘They are all mine!’ she cried. ‘It was to me she ought to have come. I am the one chiefly concerned!’ Then the flash quenched itself, and her look grew soft and wistful once more. ‘Oh, sir,’ she said, ‘if it was the Joyce you thought—if it was her you supposed—who was she? To tell me that, even if it should turn out all different, would do no harm.’

‘It would do no good either,’ he said: then turned round to her, and took her hand between his two large brown hands, which were trembling. ‘You are very like her,’ he said—‘so like her that I am forced to believe. She looked just as you are doing when I saw her last. Some relationship there must be—there must be!’ Here he dropped her hand again, as if he had not known that he held it. ‘There was wrong done to her—the Joyce I mean. She was made very unhappy; but no wrong was meant on—on my—on—on his part. Would you really like to hear the story? But it may turn out to be nothing—to have nothing to do with you.’