Paula paused before the door, which never to her knowledge had opened to
the passage of any other form than that of Mr. Sylvester, she was
conscious of an agitation wholly distinct from that which had hitherto
afflicted her. All the past curiosity of Ona concerning this room,
together with her devices for satisfying that curiosity, recurred to
Paula with startling distinctness. It was as if the white hand of that
dead wife had thrust itself forth from the shadows to pull her back. The
candle trembled in her grasp, and she unconsciously recoiled. But the
next moment the thought of Mr. Sylvester struck warmth and determination
through her being, and hastily thrusting the key into the lock, she
pushed open the door and stepped across the threshold.

Her first movement was that of surprise. In all her dreams of the
possible appearance of this room, she had never imagined it to be like
this. Plain, rude and homely, its high walls unornamented, its floor
uncovered, its furniture limited to a plain desk and two or three rather
uncomfortable-looking chairs, it struck upon her fancy with the same
sense of incongruity, as might the sight of a low-eaved cottage in the
midst of stately palaces and lordly pleasure-grounds. Setting down her
candle, she folded her hands to still their tremblings, and slowly
looked around her. This was the spot, then, to which he was accustomed
to flee when oppressed by any care or harassed by any difficulty; this
cold, bare, uninviting apartment with its forbidding aspect unsoftened
by the tokens of a woman's care or presence! To this room, humbler than
any in her aunt's home in Grotewell, he had brought all his griefs, from
the day his baby lay dead in the rooms below, to that awful hour which
saw the wife and mother brought into his doors and laid a cold and
pulseless form in the midst of his gorgeous parlors! Here he had met his
own higher impulses face to face, and wrestled with them through the
watches of the night! In this wilderness of seeming poverty, he had
dreamed, perhaps, his first fond dream of her as a woman, and signed
perhaps his final renunciation of her as the future companion of his
life! What did it mean? Why a spot of so much desolation in the midst of
so much that was lordly and luxurious? Her fears might give her a
possible interpretation, but she would not listen to fears. Only his
words should instruct her. Going to the desk, she opened it. A sealed
envelope addressed to hersel