"Capital, old fellow!" exclaimed Lawton. "There is an air of harmony
about the name, the handwriting, and the face of your charmer that is
delightful. What a blessing she has no relatives."
"But do you notice nothing strange about these names, Harry?"
"Nothing, except that both are strangely bewitching. What more is
there?"
"Why, the similarity of the first names. Eva--Evelin; one is frequently
a contraction of the other. I don't like this, Harry; it troubles me."
"Now, Julian, you are positively absurd. Here are two women of natures
manifestly as different as light and darkness. By a coincidence, or a
distant family tie, or both, their hair happens to be the same color
(not a very unusual one, either, by the way); a similarity in their
names; also, perhaps, one or two other trifling resemblances, more or
less marked. I will admit, myself, that there is something in the face
of that siren that had she kept herself unspotted from the world might
have suggested the other--that rare being there on the easel who told
you she had no relatives or friends, and for which reason you are deeply
troubled. It is probable she told you the exact truth. I have seen
people who were almost counterparts of each other between whom there
existed no known tie of kinship. There was once a man in New York who
resembled Jay Gould so strikingly as to deceive their best friends. And
besides, the girl may have relatives of whom she knows nothing. Most of
us have cousins whom we have never seen, or even heard of. Should
Guinevere prove to be the unknown cousin of Elaine, I cannot see that
the purity and charm of Elaine is in any manner affected thereby."
"Yes, Harry; that is so. Besides"--
"Besides, the resemblance is positively trivial. No one but an artist
would think of it. I should never have suspected it without your
assistance. In the one face there is written all that is good, and
pure, and holy; in the other, all that is reckless, unscrupulous,
soulless, and if not vicious might easily become so. It does not take a
physiognomist to see that. I beg pardon for saying so, Julian, but it
seems to me that there is no more similarity between the two than there
is between the opposing elements of your own strange nature. The one all
that is good, and the other, well--not all that is bad, but very
different, you know, old boy. And it is probably these forces within you
that answer to the charms of these two beings who are so manifestly
opposites. The one inspiring only the nobleness of a blameless love; the
other suggesting the abandonment of a reckless passion."