In the darkness, from my vigil, I look at her.
* * * * * * The two nights which followed were spent in mournful motionlessness at the back of that room where the trembling host of lights seemed to give animation to dead things.

During the two days various activities brought me distraction, at first distressing, then depressing.
The last night I opened my aunt's jewel box.

It was called "the little box." It was on the dressing table, at the bottom of piled-up litter.
I found some topaz ear-rings of a bygone period, a gold cross, equally outdistanced, small and slender--a little girl's, or a young girl's; and then, wrapped in tissue paper, like a relic, a portrait of myself when a child.

Last, a written page, torn from one of my old school copy-books, which she had not been able to throw wholly away.
Transparent at the folds, the worn sheet was fragile as lace, and gave the illusion of being equally precious.

That was all the treasure my aunt had collected.