his cigar again--and again she reminded him of it. He
answered her as his own generous impulsive temperament urged him; he
said, "Tell me nothing that causes you a moment's pain; tell me only
how I can help you." She handed him the box of matches; she said, "Your
cigar is out again."

He laid down his cigar. In his brief span of life he had seen no human
misery that expressed itself in this way. "Excuse me," he answered; "I
won't smoke just now."

She laid her cigar aside like Amelius, and crossed her arms over her
bosom, and looked at him, with the first softening gleam of tenderness
that he had seen in her face. "My friend," she said, "yours will be
a sad life--I pity you. The world will wound that sensitive heart of
yours; the world will trample on that generous nature. One of these
days, perhaps, you will be a wretch like me. No more of that. Get up; I
have something to show you."

Rising herself, she led the way to the large oaken press, and took her
bunch of keys out of her pocket again.

"About this old sorrow of mine," she resumed. "Do me justice, Amelius,
at the outset. I haven't treated it as some women treat their sorrows--I
haven't nursed it and petted it and made the most of it to myself and to
others. No! I have tried every means of relief, every possible pursuit
that could occupy my mind. One example of what I say will do as well as
a hundred. See it for yourself."

She put the key in the lock. It resisted her first efforts to open it.
With a contemptuous burst of impatience and a sudden exertion of her
rare strength, she tore open the two doors of the press. Behind the door
on the left appeared a row of open shelves. The opposite compartment,
behind the door on the right, was filled by drawers with brass handles.
She shut the left door; angrily banging it to, as if the opening of it
had disclosed something which she did not wish to be seen. By the merest
chance, Amelius had looked that way first. In the one instant in which
it was possible to see anything, he had noticed, carefully laid out on
one of the shelves, a baby's long linen frock and cap, turned yellow by
the lapse of time.

The half-told story of the past was more than half told now. The
treasured relics of the infant threw their little glimmer of light on
the motive which had chosen the subjects of the prints on the wall.
A child deserted and lost! A child who, by bare possibility, might be
living still!

She turned towards Amelius s