"I wonder whether you would talk to me about him. I must prepare a biographical chapter and the material is so very scant." Thomasina rose unsteadily, and asked to be excused for a moment. She went out into the hall and climbed the stairs slowly. When she came back she carried her little inlaid box as though it contained precious and fragile jewels. She stood before Dr. Scott and held it out. "Here are Basil Everman's letters," said she. "They show all his plans and hopes. They were written to _me_." The first utterance of a bride could have been no more filled with sweet triumph. "I did not know that any of his plans had been carried out. I did not know anything survived. You may use the letters if you wish." Dr. Scott felt like Richard that there were moments in life to which one could say, "Linger, thou art so fair!" Thomasina still held out the little box. "Do you wish me to look at them now?" "If you will." He put out a shaking hand. He would have thought long before exchanging this experience for a year of the opportunities of a Boswell. Thomasina took up a book; then she walked into her garden; then she crossed the hall, closing both doors behind her, and practiced finger exercises in her music room. The light, delicate arpeggios and runs and trills came faintly to Dr. Scott's enchanted ears. Thus had Thomasina quieted her soul a thousand times. When she returned there remained but one letter in the little box. Dr. Scott was not reading; he sat staring at the floor. It seemed to him that he had helped to open the tomb of a Queen Ta, that he had touched the jewels with which the hands of love had decked her. Then he looked up. Thomasina regarded him; alive, breathing, lovely, she was not in the least like Queen Ta. He felt that he must speak, but his eloquence, slow, but equal to every occasion, failed him now. "If you will tell me what passages you wish to use, I shall copy them for you." "May I say that they were written to you?" An inward light illumined Thomasina's face. It was not pride, it was an emotion more intense, more exalted. "You have been honored above most women," said Dr. Scott. Thomasina took one of the letters in her hand. "Say they were written to a friend. His biography does not need me, and I had rather be invisible beside him." Thus Thomasina, who longed, in Mrs. Lister's opinion, for fame! "Now I must go over to the Listers to say good-bye to Richard." Together Dr. Scott and Thomasina crossed the campus and at the Listers' door Dr. Scott said good-night. He could scarcely wait to get back to his study and to his pen. He did not mean to stop at his house; indeed, he thought it unlikely that his house would see him until dawn, but remembering a need for matches, he ran up the steps. There sitting on the doorstep, a valise beside her, was a small figure. "Cora!" said Dr. Scott. "What in the world are you doing here?" Cora rose stiffly. It seemed that she had been waiting a long time.