She
would go back to her own room and bed--But she only went as far as
the bureau where she had left the candlestick, which having
seized, she returned to the closet and slowly, reluctantly
reopened the door. Before her on the wall hung a cap,--and it was
no shadow which gave it that look like her husband's; the broad
peak was there. She had not been mistaken; it was the duplicate of
the one she had picked up in the attic of the Claymore Inn when
that inn was simply a tavern.
Well, and what if it was!--Such was her thought a moment later.
She would take down the cap, set it before her and look at it till
her brain grew clear of its follies.
But after she had it in her hand she found herself looking
anywhere but at the cap. She stared at the floor, the walls about,
the desk she had mechanically approached. She even noticed the
books lying about on the shelves before her and took down one or
two, to glance at their title-pages in a blind curiosity she could
not account for the next minute. Then she found herself looking
into a drawer half drawn out and filled with all sorts of
heterogeneous articles: sealing-wax, a roll of pins, a pen-holder,
a knife--A KNIFE! Why should she recoil again at that? Nothing
could be more ordinary than to find a knife in the desk-drawer of
a young man! The fact was not worth a thought; yet before she knew
it, her fingers were creeping towards this knife, had picked it up
from among the other scattered articles, had closed upon it, let
it drop again, only to seize hold of it yet more determinedly and
carry it straight to the light.
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