Page:Resurrection Rock (1920).pdf/308

 she had not known it then. No more had he. His mother had spoken with him and touched him; and he had spoken with her and taken her hand in his; and neither, then, had known!

But somehow, later, she had found out. For she had been on her way to him in France again when her ship had been torpedoed and she was hurt. On the Gallantic, that was. Ethel's cousin, Agnes, Mrs. Oliver Cullen, had been on the Gallantic. But she had been lost. Drowned? No; that was disputed; lost, only; fate yet unknown.

Now Barney controlled himself to try to think clearly. Mrs. Oliver Cullen was dead; at least every one supposed her dead; yet it was her portrait which, Barney had said, was also the portrait of the woman of the camp at Amiens. How could that be? For that was his mother; and she, though very ill, was alive. How could his mother—the girl who had left him with Noah Jo—have become Mrs. Oliver Cullen? Why, if she had not died on the Gallantic five months ago, did not the Cullens know it? Why had he not known it before?

Yet it was plain that this, his mother, also was Mrs. Oliver Cullen. How else was Mrs. Wain involved; how else had it been Mrs. Oliver Cullen's housekeeper who had brought him here? Oh, yes; the identity was perfectly plain now. The house on Scott Street, where he had been, was his mother's; Mrs. Oliver Cullen had obtained that group photograph of officers because he was in it; his mother was the woman whom Ethel Carew and all this city, it seemed—except Lucas Cullen and had admired and loved as Mrs. Cullen.

Barney stood still gazing at her till he found himself going all weak within for love and pride in her,