In a few moments she reappeared, stopping for a moment in the hall with the lighted lamp as if to watch and listen for her husband's return.

Seen in that favorable light, her cheeks had caught a delicate color, and her dark eyes shone softly.

Putting the lamp down in exactly the same place as before, she returned to the cabinet for the book, brought it again to the table, opened it at the page where she had placed her perforated cardboard book-marker, sat down beside it, and with her hands in her lap and her eyes on the page began abstractedly to tear a small piece of paper into tiny fragments.

When she had reduced it to the smallest shreds, she scraped the pieces out of her silk lap and again collected them in the pink hollow of her little hand, kneeling down on the scrupulously well-swept carpet to peck up with a bird-like action of her thumb and forefinger an escaped atom here and there.

These and the contents of her hand she poured into the chilly cavity of a sepulchral-looking alabaster vase that stood on the etagere.