He struck a match and set light to the paper. The wood crackled, the flames spurted up. Cynthia threw off her cloak and, crouching before the fire, warmed herself. Harry Rames drew up an arm-chair for her. "Won't you sit here, Cynthia, and be comfortable?" he asked, and his voice seemed to rouse her from a gloomy contemplation. She stood up and walked over to his bureau. Harry's eyes followed her movements closely. With a growing consternation he saw her grasp the handles of a locked drawer and try to open it. "What do you keep in here, Harry?" she asked. "Oh, some old forgotten things." "Your charts?" "My word, yes. I believe they are there," he said with an air of surprise. "Will you show them to me?" Cynthia asked. "I should like to see them." "I don't know where the key is. It's lost." "Are you sure?" "For all the chance I have of finding it, dear, it might just as well be at the bottom of the Serpentine." Harry had not moved away from the fireplace. Cynthia, her back toward him, had been playing with the brass handles of the locked drawer. Now she swung round suddenly. Often she had wondered what errand had taken him from the house at one o'clock of the morning after she had revealed her heart to him in this very room. Now she guessed the truth. It was on that night that he had begun to build up his dykes against the encroachments of his longings. She faced him; her eyes burned steadily upon his face, thoughtful, but betraying nothing of her thoughts. "Yes," she said, "I suppose it might as well be in the Serpentine." She turned again to the drawer. "A knife will open it easily, Harry." Harry Rames moved uncomfortably. "It had better be left alone, Cynthia," he said. But she insisted and, opening a blade of his knife, he went reluctantly across the room to her side. "It is your wish, Cynthia. You will remember that?" he said gravely. "For myself I would much rather that it should never be unlocked until both of us are dead." Cynthia showed no surprise at the gravity of his voice. But now she too paused. "There is still time," she was saying to herself in feverish trouble of mind, though her face was calm. "There is still time. He is giving me my chance--my last chance." Her eyelids were lowered over her eyes and she glanced at him under the thick lashes. "You are afraid to open it, Harry?" "Yes, I am afraid." It was not merely the outrush of old and overwhelming memories which he dreaded. But that locked drawer had become to him a symbol of his own self-mastery. So long as it remained locked, and no longer, he would dominate his torments and be the captain of his soul. For so long he would keep locked a frail door against his yearnings. Cynthia, in a voice so faltering and low that it was hardly audible, said: "Still I should like it opened." "Very well."