She got up stiffly and went round and round the room, taking up every little toy from the tables thoughtfully, arranging mats and flowers--touching everything with a wistful clinging because it had been spared to her. And then she suddenly remembered--remembered that she was not quite safe yet. Everything downstairs was still. She stole to the door and listened. Then she pattered out onto the landing, stooped down, and taking off her slippers carried them in her hand. She crept down the stairs--cursing the steady tick of the tall clock, the rustle of her silk petticoat. She reached the study and waited outside the door for a moment. She was gathering courage to save her honor. She turned the handle at last. Someone had lighted the lamp--the reading lamp with the green shade. It cast a faint yellowish flicker on the horrible shrouded things that were stretched, side by side, on the big table. In the drawer of that table Conifer kept a flask of brandy. She took it out and tipped some of the blazing spirit down her throat. It nerved her to peel the sheet from Kinsman’s face, to draw it lower, to thrust her delicate hand, heavy with Conifer’s jewels, into the inner pocket of the dead man’s coat and steal her letters. Then she drew the sheet back--heart, hand, and head heavy with recollection. All sorts of minor things flashed through her dizzy head--things which had been romantic, daring, delightful at the time--which she exaggerated now into deadly sins, never, never to be wiped out. At Sophia she did not look. But her light blue eyes fixed on Kinsman. His thin lips seemed to have taken a mocking curve--although she had the best of the game. His mouth was shut forever and her letters were back in her own possession. She tucked them into her bodice, remembered to pick up her slippers from the floor, and stole away. There was a servant in the drawing room tending the fire; there was another, as she could hear, busy in the bedrooms, preparing for the night. But the nurse was downstairs and the nurseries were empty, except for the sleeping children. She crept in, looking furtively round the firelit walls. She went over to the hearth, dug the unclean letters fiercely in, and watched them burn. There was a little white frock airing on the guard. She took it up in her hot hands and kissed it. Toys were all over the floor; one, a fur monkey with one eye missing and the other fiery-red, seemed to blink up malignantly--and as if it knew and would one day tell her children. She went into the night nursery and looked at two small heads and two small bodies curled under flowery eider downs. The children were both babies under three. There were toys here too and little socks that she had knitted. These two rooms filled her with a wilder misery and terror than she had known before, because she had been so near losing those little heads on the pillows.