"We'd been living here a few days. I was up in the garret. There was a box." Henry remained motionless for a few moments. Then he sighed heavily, rose, and took Sylvia by the hand. "Come," he said. "What are you going to do?" "Come." Sylvia followed, dragging back a little at her husband's leading hand, like a child. They passed through the dining-room into the kitchen. "There's a fire in the stove, ain't there?" said Henry, as they went. Sylvia nodded again. She did not seem to have many words for this exigency. Out in the kitchen Henry moved a lid from the stove, and put the little sheaf of newspaper clippings, which seemed somehow to have a sinister aspect of its own, on the bed of live coals. They leaped into a snarl of vicious flame. Henry and Sylvia stood hand in hand, watching, until nothing but a feathery heap of ashes remained on top of the coals. Then he replaced the lid and looked at Sylvia. "Have you got any reason to believe that any living person besides you and I knows anything about this?" he asked. Sylvia shook her head. "Do you think Miss Farrel knew?" Sylvia shook her head again. "Do you think that lawyer out West, who takes care of her money, knows?" "No." Sylvia spoke in a thin, strained voice. "This must be what she is always afraid of remembering," she said. "Pray God she never does remember," Henry said. "Poor little thing! Here she is carrying a load on her back, and if she did but once turn her head far enough to get a glimpse of it she would die of it. It's lucky we can't see the other side of the moon, and I guess it's lucky we haven't got eyes in the backs of our heads." "You wondered why I didn't want her to get married to him," said Sylvia. Henry made an impatient motion. "Look here, Sylvia," he said. "I love that young man like my own son, and your feeling about it is rank idiocy." "And I love her like my own daughter!" cried Sylvia, passionately. "And I don't want to feel that she's marrying and keeping anything back." "Now, look here, Sylvia, here are you and I. We've got this secret betwixt us, and we've got to carry it betwixt us, and never let any living mortal see it as long as we both live; and the one that outlives the other has got to bear it alone, like a sacred trust." Sylvia nodded. Henry put out the kitchen lamp, and the two left the room, moving side by side, and it was to each of them as if they were in reality carrying with their united strength the heavy, dead weight of the secret. Chapter XIX Henry, after the revelation which Sylvia had made to him, became more puzzled than ever. He had thought that her secret anxiety would be alleviated by the confidence she had made him, but it did not seem to be. On the contrary, she went about with a more troubled air than before. Even Horace and Rose, in the midst of their love-dream, noticed it.