And that new edition of Scott which was not finished issuing when she went away, she would find that complete when she came back.  Her little collection of fairy books too—­she was sure to glance at that! and then she would find two or three new ones there finer than any of the old ones; alas! so many beautiful books kept coming out now that she had gone.

Yet somehow she might see them, after all, if they were taken softly to that little room and laid on that table altar.  When it was quite sure that no one was looking or listening, the shy soul might steal out of the air and turn the pages with a sigh.

Just so some savage lover might bring gifts of fruit and coloured beads, and bright plumed birds, to the grave of his dead love, for the future anthropologist to draw his moral of the childishness of all human idealisms.

One day, as Theophil had stolen quietly into that room on some such votive errand, an impulse had come to him to open the drawer of the desk.  There might be some message for him there.  Any writing of the dead we have never read before is a message.

Among various odds and ends, he came first upon one of those little tradesmen’s account-books interleaved with bad blotting-paper in which the housewife writes her orders week by week.

It was full of Jenny’s writing, and though the entries were merely weekly repetitions of the same string of groceries:—­“2 lbs. of the best tea,” “6 lbs. loaf sugar,” “6 nutmegs,” and so on,—­yet, “the hand being hers,” they made a record that could only be read through blinding tears; and one page which bore a severe little note, to the effect that the tea had been far from good of late, read almost like a personal revelation.

Theophil kissed the page, and, replacing the book, took up another, and his heart leapt to find it was a little diary.

He hesitated for a moment.  It seemed wrong to read it, and yet he knew that Jenny’s soul held nothing she would not have shared with him, and he was so hungry for a word from her though it were only a word out of the past.

The entries were not many nor long, but it smote his heart to find how large a space his name, his interests, his successes, filled there.  The entries of honour were little heart-notes of evenings together especially happy; there were two birthdays still singing for joy, and sometimes there was a saying of his she had put down because it was so helpful, or a poem she had copied out; and also there were clever little criticisms of books she had read, and sometimes a wise little reflection of her own,—­which brought home to him, with a certain pang, that the little child who had seemed so dependent on him had been an independent personality, after all.

As he came to the last entry, he put the book down with a gesture of pain.  The last entry had been made the day after Jenny had discovered Theophil’s love for Isabel.  It was very brief, just a sob:  “Have realised that I am no fit wife for Theophil.  And yet how I love him!”