Page:Marsh--The seen and the unseen.djvu/57

Rh be able to offer us an explanation of how it is that Mr. Dodsworth and I should both of us have been photographing a woman whom neither of us have ever seen."

Mr. Paley leaned back in his chair. He looked up at the ceiling. He pressed the tips of his fingers together. And he preserved that silence which is golden.

"It is to be noted that the attitude of the woman is, throughout, one of protection to the man and defiance to us—of defiance, that is, to the manipulator of the camera. She first of all, in Mr. Dodsworth's plate, tries to hide the name upon the slate. Then she actually, with her own person, conceals the man. In my first plate she confronts me boldly, as if to give me to understand that it is with her I have to reckon. Then she rubs out the name upon the slate, she writes another in its place. And, having substituted one name for the other, she seems, by a mere effort of will, to have effected an exchange of men: George Solly is gone, Evan Bradell occupies his place. She appears as Solly's guardian angel, resolute, at all hazards, to prove that she is on his side; and she seems to be making frantic efforts to express her unwavering faith in Solly's innocence, even going so far as to point out the man on whose shoulders the guilt should properly be laid."

The doctor paused, and the governor spoke.

"With regard to Dr. Livermore's fanciful explanation of the somewhat peculiar circumstances connected with these photographs—and the doctor will excuse me if I say that I did not think that he was capable of such flights of imagination"