face golden, as she holds to the glow those hands transparent and
beautiful as flames. In the darkness, from my vigil, I look at her.

* * * * * *

The two nights which followed were spent in mournful motionlessness at
the back of that room where the trembling host of lights seemed to give
animation to dead things. During the two days various activities
brought me distraction, at first distressing, then depressing.

The last night I opened my aunt's jewel box. It was called "the little
box." It was on the dressing table, at the bottom of piled-up litter.
I found some topaz ear-rings of a bygone period, a gold cross, equally
outdistanced, small and slender--a little girl's, or a young girl's;
and then, wrapped in tissue paper, like a relic, a portrait of myself
when a child. Last, a written page, torn from one of my old school
copy-books, which she had not been able to throw wholly away.
Transparent at the folds, the worn sheet was fragile as lace, and gave
the illusion of being equally precious. That was all the treasure my
aunt had collected. That jewel box held the poverty of her life and
the wealth of her heart.

* * * * * *

It poured with rain on the day of the funeral. All the morning groups
of people succeeded each other in the big cavern of our room, a going
and coming of sighs. My aunt was laid in her coffin towards two
o'clock, and it was carried then into the passage, where visitors' feet
had brought dirt and puddles. A belated wreath was awaited, and then
the umbrellas opened, and under their black undulation the procession