There was a new tone in her voice, and the professor turned sharply.  Jane hesitated.  Then he caught sight of a photograph lying among the letters on the floor.

“That, too,” he murmured.  He stood and looked at it; Jane passed out of the room.

Slowly and painfully the professor stooped down and gathered up his wife’s letters and his wife’s photograph.  He sat down in the big plush chair by the fireside and thought for a long time.  He was thinking of an old quotation from some Sanskrit poem—­“Every yesterday a dream of happiness, every to-morrow a vision of hope—­” That was all he could remember, but his mind said it over and over.  Well, his yesterdays—­the yesterdays of long ago—­were dreams of happiness—­he had no visions; to-morrow offered him nothing.  After a while he took Mary’s picture and looked at it.  His dreams slowly settled to earth—­and he began to adjust his perspective.  It was a long, long time since he had even remembered—­since the dream had been more than a vague light shining through the mist.  Now he wondered, as he stared at the pictured eyes, so laughingly helpless, at the chin, so characterless, at the pretty mouth from which no word worth listening to had ever proceeded—­wondered whether the light was other than a reflection from Youth’s glamour.  Then he took up the letters and read them one by one.  He wondered why they seemed so shallow—­why he had never noticed their irresponsible dancing from light to shade, from light affection to unreasonable and trifling fretfulness.  The last letter he held in his hand for some time after he had read it.  It was written from a summer resort.  “You had better not come down,” it read, “you would just spoil the delightful little time I am having with Mr. Sanders—­so stay at home with your books like the dear old bore you are.  Please send me ...”  He remembered how it had hurt.  He remembered shortly afterwards how she had been taken ill, and how she had chafed and feared, and how the dark had taken her while she cried in terror.  He remembered—­so much.  He wished that he had not tried to remember.

It began to grow dark.  The professor lifted the bundle of letters and the photograph, and placed them in the fire-place as carefully as if they had been burnt-offerings.  Well, they were—­to a dead Romance.  The charred paper crumbled where he had laid the letters—­a few black pieces floated drunkenly up the chimney.  The fire had gone out long before.  The professor fumbled in his pocket for a match.  When he had found it he struck it on the brick hearth, but his hand trembled so that it burnt his fingers and he dropped it.  He lit another, carefully, deliberately, and held it to the pile of papers.  They caught, the edges blackened and curled; finally the whole mass blazed viciously.  The photograph had fallen to one side and remained unburnt.  He stooped over and placed it on top of the blazing papers; then it, too, burned.

A light flared from the gas jet, and the professor looked up.  Jane stood there in her black travelling dress.  Her eyes were red with tears.