Most people have a box of this sort. In it are queer trifles, little geometric nets on which beads are strung or sewn. Green and scarlet parrots preen themselves on half-finished trees. It is that note of half completion, as of a task suddenly put down and soon to be resumed, which makes such things so appealing. Perhaps a needle is still sticking in a corner of the fabric, waiting, it seems, for the fingers that will never come again. And when you look you see the hand that placed it there, you hear a voice and see a face bending over the pretty, unimportant thing, and it's ten to one that you are a child again on some slow, lazy afternoon of sun; and the voice is the voice of your mother telling you the same old story you have heard a hundred times as you watch her, fascinated by her brilliance, hypnotized by the growth of the brocade bird and its beaded eye: a masterpiece which fills your mind and stands out as the most marvellous and beautiful thing the world has ever seen. Clever, wonderful mother.... "There's funny people about, and no mistake!" says the storeman again, giving the box a prod with his foot. We go on. He unties the wrappings round another deposit. All these things, he explains, belong to "a divorced couple." How new they are, he comments. How quickly they must have found out their mistake; no sooner married than divorced and storing their things, and chucking away good money after bad! I peep in with a feeling that I am eavesdropping. There, piled up sideways, is the table round which this unknown tragedy of married life was acted, the solemn, stiff chairs, witness to it all, the pictures which for a little while were gathered for this mockery of a home. "Why they don't sell it I can't think," says the storeman. I wonder, too, why they keep it! Neither one nor the other can bear to live with it. Then what queer sentiment, what common memory, retains this split home here in the pathetic silence of lapsed things? We turn a corner. More avenues, sheeted, deserted. "Some of these people are dead, we think," remarks my guide, waving his hand towards the dim roof. "This lot was put in at the beginning of the war. We had to sell quite a lot. Payments lapsed, and no one replied to advertisements. It is a mystery to know who it belongs to now, sir, and that's a fact." * * * As we turn into another warehouse we meet a man and woman. They have pulled aside the sheeting and are standing among chairs and tables and pictures. The woman comes out and says nervously: "We've just come to see our things. The manager said that we might." As we enter the next compartment we hear this man and woman talking. "Oh, look! There it is, next to mother's writing-table. Do pick it up and let me hold it!" There is the sound of the man walking over the stiff wrappings. "Oh, my dear!" comes the woman's voice. "My dear!"