Left alone, Sonia stood an instant silent in her place; then, with movements of swift decision, she locked the door by which Martha had gone out, and, crossing the room to another door, softly turned the handle. She had her bedroom candle in her hand, and as the door yielded and opened, she passed into the room beyond it, and stood still once more, as if possessed by that presence from out the past. The lights in this room had been put out, and all the doors and windows closed. She knew that she was safe in her solitude, and need no longer struggle with the feelings which crowded her heart. She went to the dressing-table, and took up the old clothes-brush, and put her lips to the dent which she herself had made there once, by using the brush as a hammer. Then silently dashing away the heavy tears that rolled from her eyes, she looked closely at the grotesque figures of women and fish, and recalled such amusing things which had been said about them that she began to laugh, even while more tears were gathering, and straining her throat with pain. The nervous little laugh died away as she pressed the brush again to her lips. Then she lifted, one by one, all the familiar objects that lay before her, and looked at them, while her tears fell like rain. Presently she took up the portfolio from the table near by, and turned over the thick sheets of blotting-paper within. She could see plainly the inverted and almost illegible, but characteristic, impression of a woman’s writing. In some places this was lost in very different characters, but in others it was distinctly recognizable. She walked to the dressing-table with it, and held it before the mirror, and read distinctly in one place the words, “Yours always, Sophie,” and in another, “Yours faithfully, Sophia Keene.” Her heart trembled. She had no idea to whom she had so signed herself, but she wondered passionately if Harold had ever tried this experiment, and seen those signatures from the faithless woman who had been his wife. Suddenly she put the book back on the table, and fell on her knees before it, laying her face upon its pages, and sobbing upon them until they were saturated with her tears; for, underneath her own handwriting, she had seen, reflected in the glass, writing which seemed almost as familiar, in which she had deciphered the words, “Your loving husband.” She had destroyed every word of that handwriting which she had ever possessed, and thousands of times her heart had hungered to see it in these very words. It was upon this spot that her lips were laid now, while they whispered out, in inarticulate sobs and gasps, words of heartbroken pain.