Of his wife, too, there were almost forgotten relics. An oak chest opened unexpectedly disclosed a pair of little pink satin slippers standing wistfully on the top of the tissue paper that protected the dresses beneath. The key was in the lock. He closed the lid reverently, locked the chest, and put the key in his pocket. They had had together five years of placid happiness. She was a sweet, white-winged soul— Angela. Her little boudoir on the second floor had not been used since her death, and was much as she had left it. Only the dust-sheets and the gloom invested it in a more ghostly atmosphere than other less sacred chambers. Her work-basket stood by the window. He opened it and found it still contained a reel of thread and a needle-case stuck full of rusty needles. On the wall hung an enlarged portrait of himself at the age of thirty—he was not quite so lantern-jawed then, and his hair was thicker on the top. A water-colour sketch of Angela hung over the oak bureau, at which she used to write her dinner-notes and puzzle her pretty head over household accounts. He drew up the blind so as to see the picture more clearly. Yes. It was like her. Dark-haired, fragile, with liquid brown eyes. There was just that dimple in her chin. . . . He remembered it so well; but, strangely, it had played no part in his customary mental picture of her. In the rediscovery of the dimple he found a vague melancholy pleasure. . . . Idly he drew down the slanting lids of the bureau, and pulled out the long narrow drawers that supported it underneath. The interior was empty. He recollected now that he had cleared it of its contents when settling Angela’s affairs after her death. He thrust up the slanting lid, pushed back the long right-hand drawer, pushed the left hand one. It stuck. He tried to ease it in, but it was jammed. He pulled it out with a jerk, and found that the cause of the jam was a letter flat against the end of the drawer with a corner turned over the edge. He took out the letter, closed the drawers, and smiled sadly, glad to have discovered a new relic of Angela in the bureau—probably a gossiping note from a friend, perhaps one from himself. He went to the light of the window. “_My adored heart’s dearest and most beloved angel_”—so the letter began. He scanned the words bewildered. Certainly in his wildest dreams he had never imagined such a form of address. Besides, the handwriting was not his. He turned the sheet rapidly and glanced at the end; “_God! How I love you._ Will.” Will? Will Hammersley. It was Will Hammersley’s handwriting. What did it mean? He paused for a few moments, breathing hard, looking with blind eyes through the window over the square. At last he read the letter. Then he thrust it, a crumpled ball, into his pocket and reeled out of the room like a drunken man, down the stairs of the lonely house, and flung himself into a chair in his museum, where he sat for hours staring before him, paralysed with an awful dismay.