David held in his hands a photograph—­the picture of a girl.  He had half guessed what he would find when he began to unfold the newspaper wrapping and saw the edge of gray cardboard.  In the same breath had come his astonishment—­a surprise that was almost a shock.  The night had been filled with changes for him; forces which he had not yet begun to comprehend had drawn him into the beginning of a strange adventure; they had purged his thoughts of himself; they had forced upon him other things, other people, and a glimpse or two of another sort of life; he had seen tragedy, and happiness—­a bit of something to laugh at; and he had felt the thrill of it all.  A few hours had made him the bewildered and yet passive object of the unexpected.  And now, as he sat alone on the edge of his bed, had come the climax of the unexpected.

The girl in the picture was not dead—­not merely a lifeless shadow put there by the art of a camera.  She was alive!  That was his first thought—­his first impression.  It was as if he had come upon her suddenly, and by his presence had startled her—­had made her face him squarely, tensely, a little frightened, and yet defiant, and ready for flight.  In that first moment he would not have disbelieved his eyes if she had moved, if she had drawn away from him and disappeared out of the picture with the swiftness of a bird.  For he—­some one—­had startled her; some one had frightened her; some one had made her afraid, and yet defiant; some one had roused in her that bird-like impulse of flight even as the camera had clicked.

He bent closer into the lampglow, and stared.  The girl was standing on a flat slab of rock close to the edge of a pool.  Behind her was a carpet of white sand, and beyond that a rock-cluttered gorge and the side of a mountain.  She was barefooted.  Her feet were white against the dark rock.  Her arms were bare to the elbows, and shone with that same whiteness.  He took these things in one by one, as if it were impossible for the picture to impress itself upon him all at once.  She stood leaning a little forward on the rock slab, her dress only a little below her knees, and as she leaned thus, her eyes flashing and her lips parted, the wind had flung a wonderful disarray of curls over her shoulder and breast.  He saw the sunlight in them; in the lampglow they seemed to move; the throb of her breast seemed to give them life; one hand seemed about to fling them back from her face; her lips quivered as if about to speak to him.  Against the savage background of mountain and gorge she stood out clear-cut as a cameo, slender as a reed, wild, palpitating, beautiful.  She was more than a picture.  She was life.  She was there—­with David in his room—­as surely as the woman had been with him in the coach.

He drew a deep breath and sat back on the edge of his bed.  He heard Father Roland getting into his creaky bed in the adjoining room.  Then came the Missioner’s voice.