Dick got up.

"Yes," he said. "I ought to know, of course. Thank you."

When she had gone he went back and stood before the picture again.
From Clare's first words he had had a stricken conviction that the
thing was true; that, as Mrs. Cook Morgan's visitor from Wyoming
had insisted, Henry Livingstone had never married, never had a son.
He stood and gazed at the picture. His world had collapsed about
him, but he was steady and very erect.

"David, David!" he thought. "Why did you do it? And what am I?
And who?"

Characteristically his first thought after that was of David himself.
Whatever David had done, his motive had been right. He would have
to start with that. If David had built for him a false identity it
was because there was a necessity for it. Something shameful,
something he was to be taken away from. Wasn't it probable that
David had heard the gossip, and had then collapsed? Wasn't the fear
that he himself would hear it behind David's insistence that he go
to Baltimore?

His thoughts flew to Elizabeth. Everything was changed now, as to
Elizabeth. He would have to be very certain of that past of his
before he could tell her that he loved her, and he had a sense of
immediate helplessness. He could not go to David, as things were.
To Lucy?