One April night I sat up in the veiled light made by a clouded moon.  Rain points multiplied themselves on the window glass; I heard their sting.  The impulse to go out and ride the wind, or pick the river up and empty it all at once into the bay, or tear Eagle out of the cloud, or go to France and proclaim myself with myself for follower; and other feats of like nature, being particularly strong in me, I struck the pillow beside me with my fist.  Something bounced from it on the floor with a clack like wood.  I stretched downward from one of Madame Ursule’s thick feather beds, and picked up what brought me to my feet.  Without letting go of it I lighted my candle.  It was the padlocked book which Skenedonk said he had burned.

And there the scoundrel lay at the other side of the room, wrapped in his blanket from head to foot, mummied by sleep.  I wanted to take him by the scalp lock and drag him around on the floor.

He had carried it with him, or secreted it somewhere, month after month.  I could imagine how the state of the writer worked on his Indian mind.  He repented, and was not able to face me, but felt obliged to restore what he had withheld.  So waiting until I slept, he brought forth the padlocked book and laid it on the pillow beside my head; thus beseeching pardon, and intimating that the subject was closed between us.

I got my key, and then a fit of shivering seized me.  I put the candle stand beside the pillow and lay wrapped in bedding, clenching the small chilly padlock and sharp-cornered boards.  Remembering the change which had come upon the life recorded in it, I hesitated.  Remembering how it had eluded me before, I opened it.

The few entries were made without date.  The first pages were torn out, crumpled, and smoothed and pasted to place again.  Rose petals and violets and some bright poppy leaves, crushed inside its lids, slid down upon the bedcover.

VIII

The padlocked book—­In this book I am going to write you, Louis, a letter which will never be delivered; because I shall burn it when it is finished.  Yet that will not prevent my tantalizing you about it.  To the padlocked book I can say what I want to say.  To you I must say what is expedient.

That is a foolish woman who does violence to love by inordinate loving.  Yet first I will tell you that I sink to sleep saying, “He loves me!” and rise to the surface saying, “He loves me!” and sink again saying, “He loves me!” all night long.

The days when I see you are real days, finished and perfect, and this is the best of them all.  God forever bless in paradise your mother for bearing you.  If you never had come to the world I should not have waked to life myself.  And why this is I cannot tell.  The first time I ever saw your tawny head and tawny eyes, though you did not notice me, I said, “Whether he is the king or not would make no difference.”  Because I knew you were more than the king to me.