It was a small, oblong affair, not more than three inches wide or deep, by twice that much in length, made of some dark, hard wood; brass bound and with brass lock and brass hinges; altogether such a box as a woman might choose to keep about her room for any one of a half dozen possible uses.

Clarke did not remember that he had ever seen it prior to his unexpectedly early return from a western trip of a month's duration. He thought he would give his wife a pleasant surprise, so he did not telephone the news of his arrival to the house, but went home and entered her room unannounced. As he came in his wife hastily slipped something into the box, locked it, and put it into one of the drawers of her desk. Then she came to meet him, and he would not have thought of the matter at all had it not been for just the slightest trace of confusion in her manner.

She was glad to see him. She always was after his absences, but it seemed to him that she was exceptionally so this time. She had never been a demonstrative woman; but it seemed to Clarke that she came nearer that description on the occasion of this home-coming than ever before. They had a deal to say to each other, and it was not until after dinner that the picture of his wife hurriedly disposing of the box crossed Clarke's consciousness again. Even then he mentioned it casually because they were talked out of more important topics rather than because of any very sharp curiosity. He asked her what it was; what was in it.

“Oh, nothing!—nothing of any importance—nothing at all,” she said; and moved over to the piano and began one of his favorite airs. And he forgot the box again in an instant. She had always been able to make Clarke forget things, when she wanted to. But the next day it suddenly came to him, out of that nowhere-in-particular from which thoughts come to mortals, that she had been almost as much confused at his sudden question as she had at his previous sudden entrance.

Clarke was not a suspicious person; not even a very curious one, as a rule. But it was so evident to him that there was something in that box which his wife did not wish him to see that he could not help but wonder. Always frank with her, and always accustomed to an equal candor on her part, it occurred to him that he would ask her again, in something more than a casual way, and that she would certainly tell him, at the same time clearing up her former hesitation. But no!—why should he ask her? That would be to make something out of nothing; this was a trifle, and not worth thinking about. But he continued thinking about it, nevertheless....

Ah, he had it! What a chump he had been, not to guess it sooner! His birthday was only ten days off, and his wife had been planning to surprise him with a remembrance of some sort. Of course! That accounted for the whole thing.

With this idea in his head, he said nothing more about the box, but waited. And when dinner was over and they sat before the fire together, on the evening of the anniversary, he still forbore to mention it, expecting every moment that the next she would present him with the token. But as the evening wore away, with no sign on her part, he finally broke an interval of silence with the remark:

“Well, dear, don't keep me guessing any longer! Bring it to me!”

“Guessing? Bring you—what?” And he could see that she was genuinely puzzled.

“Why, my birthday present.”

“Why, my dear boy! And did you expect one? And I had forgotten! Positively forgotten—it is your birthday, isn't it, Dickie! If I had only known you wanted one————” And she came up and kissed him, with something like contrition, although his birthday had never been one of the sentimental anniversaries which she felt bound to observe with gifts.

“Don't feel bad about it—I don't care, you know—really,” he said. “Only, I thought you had something of the sort in that brass-bound box—that was the only reason I mentioned it.”

“Brass-bound box—why, no, I—I forgot it. I'm ashamed of myself, but I forgot the date entirely!”

But she volunteered no explanation of what the box contained, although the opportunity was so good a one.

And Clarke wondered more than ever.

What could it be? The letters of some former sweetheart? Well, all girls had sweethearts before they married, he supposed; at least all men did. He had had several himself. There was nothing in that. And he would not make an ass of himself by saying any more about it.

Only... he could not remember any old sweethearts that he wouldn't have told Agnes all about, if she had asked him. He had no secrets from her. But she had a secret from him... innocent enough, of course. But still, a secret. There was none of those old sweethearts of his whose letters he cared to keep after five years of marriage. And there was no... But, steady! Where were his reflections leading him? Into something very like suspicion? Positively, yes; to the verge of it. Until Agnes got ready to tell him all about it, he would forget that damned box!

And if she never got ready, why, that was all right, too. She was his wife, and he loved her... and that settled it.

Perhaps that should have settled it, but it did not. Certain healthy-looking, fleshy specimens of humanity are said to succumb the quickest to pneumonia, and it may be that the most ingenuous natures suffer the most intensely with suspicion, when once thoroughly inoculated.

II

Clarke fought against it, cursing his own baseness. But the very effort necessary to the fight showed him the persistence of the thing itself. He loved his wife, and trusted her, he told himself over and over again, and in all their relations hitherto there had never been the slightest deviation from mutual confidence and understanding. What did he suspect? He could not have told himself. He went over their life together in his mind. In the five years of their married life, he could not have helped but notice that men were attracted to her. Of course they were. That was natural. She was a charming woman. He quite approved of it; it reflected credit upon him, in a way. He was not a Bluebeard of a husband, to lock a wife up and deny her the society proper to her years. And her very catholicity of taste, the perfect frankness of her enjoyment of masculine attention, had but served to make his confidence all the more complete. True, he had never thought she loved him as much as he loved her... but now that he came to think of it, was there not a warmer quality to her affection since his return from this last trip west? Was there not a kind of thoughtfulness, was there not a watchful increase in attentiveness, that he had always missed before? Was she not making love to him every day now; just as he had always made love to her before? Were not the parts which they had played for the five years of their married life suddenly reversed? They were! Indeed they were! And what did that mean? What did that portend? Did the brass-bound box have aught to do with that? What was the explanation of this change?

The subtle imp of suspicion turned this matter of the exchanged rÔles into capital. Clarke, still ashamed of himself for doing it, began covertly to watch his wife; to set traps of various kinds for her. He said nothing more about the box, but within six months after the first day upon which he had seen it, it became the constant companion of his thoughts.

What did he suspect? Not even now could he have said. He suspected nothing definite; vaguely, he suspected anything and everything. If his wife noticed his changed manner towards her, she made no sign. If anything, her efforts to please him, her attentiveness, her thoughtfulness in small things, increased.

III

There came a day when he could stand this self-torture no longer, he thought. He came home from his office—Clarke was a partner in a prosperous real-estate concern—at an hour when he thought his wife not yet returned from an afternoon of call making, determined to end the matter once for all.

He went to her room, found the key to her desk, and opened the drawer. He found the box, but It was locked, and he began rummaging through the drawers, and among the papers and letters therein, for the key.

Perhaps she carried it with her. Very well, then, he would break it open! With the thing in his hand he began to look around for something with which to force the fastenings, and was about deciding that he would take it down to the basement, and use the hatchet, when he heard a step. He turned, just as his wife entered the room.

Her glance traveled from the box in his hand to the ransacked desk, and rested there inquiringly for a moment. Strangely enough, in view of the fact that he felt himself an injured husband and well within his rights, it was Clarke who became confused, apologetic, and evasive under her gaze. He essayed a clumsy lie:

“Agnes,” he began, indicating the desk, “I—I got a bill to-day from Meigs and Horner, for those furs, you know—I was sure that the account had been settled—that you had paid them, and had shown me the receipt—that you had paid them from your allowance, you know—and I thought I would come home and look up the receipt.”

It was very lame; and very lamely done, at that, as he felt even while he was doing it. But it gave him an opportunity of setting the box down on the desk almost in a casual manner, as if he had picked it up quite casually, while he began to tumble the papers again with his hands.

“The receipt is here,” she said; and got it for him.

The box lay between them, but they did not look at it, nor at each other, and they both trembled with agitation.

Each knew that the thoughts of the other were on nothing except that little locked receptacle of wood and brass, yet neither one referred to it; and for a full half minute they stood with averted faces, and fumbling hands, and played out the deception.

Finally she looked full at him, and drew a long breath, as if the story were coming now; and there was in her manner a quality of softness—almost of sentimentality, Clarke felt. She was getting ready to try and melt him into a kind of sympathy for her frailty, was she! Well, that would not work with him! And with the receipted bill waving in his hand, he made it the text of a lecture on extravagance, into which he plunged with vehemence.

Why did he not let her speak? He would not admit the real reason to himself, just then. But in his heart he was afraid to have her go on. Afraid, either way it turned. If she were innocent of any wrong, he would have made an ass of himself—and much worse than an ass. If she were guilty, she might melt him into a weak forgiveness in spite of her guilt! No, she must not speak... not now! If she were innocent, how could he confess his suspicions to her and acknowledge his baseness? And besides... women were so damned clever... whatever was in that box, she might fool him about it, somehow!

And then, “Good God!” he thought, “I have got to the place where I hug my suspicion to me as a dearer thing than my love, have I? Have I got so low as that?”

While these thoughts raced and rioted through his mind, his lips were feverishly pouring out torrents in denunciation of feminine extravagance. Even as he spoke he felt the black injustice of his speech, for he had always encouraged his wife, rather than otherwise, in the expenditure of money; his income was a good one; and the very furs which formed the text of his harangue he had helped her select and even urged upon her.

It was their first quarrel, if that can be called a quarrel which has only one side to it. For she listened in silence, with white lips and hurt eyes, and a face that was soon set into a semblance of hard indifference. He stormed out of the room, ashamed of himself, and feeling that he had disgraced the name of civilization.

IV

Ashamed of himself, indeed; but before the angel of contrition could take full possession of his nature, the devil of suspicion, the imp of the box, regained its place.

For why had she not answered him? She knew he cared nothing about the trivial bill, the matter of the furs, he told himself. Why had she not insisted on a hearing, and told him about the box? She knew as well as he that that was what he had broken into her desk to get!

Justice whispered that she had been about to speak, and that he had denied her the chance. But the imp of the box said that an honest woman would have demanded the chance—would have persisted until she got it! And thus, his very shame, and anger at himself, were cunningly turned and twisted by the genius of the brass-bound box into a confirmation of his suspicions.

V

Suspicions? Nay, convictions! Beliefs. Certainties!

They were certainties, now! Certainties to Clarke's mind, at least. For in a month after this episode he had become a silent monomaniac on the subject of the brass-bound box. He felt shame no longer. She was guilty. Of just what, he did not know. But guilty. Guilty as Hell itself, he told himself, rhetorically, in one of the dumb rages which now became so frequent with him.

Guilty—guilty—guilty—the clock on the mantelpiece ticked off many dragging hours of intolerable minutes to that tune, while Clarke lay awake and listened. Guilty—guilty—guilty—repeat any word often enough, and it will hypnotize you. Guilty—guilty—guilty—so he and the clock would talk to each other, back and forth, the whole night through. If any suggestions of his former, more normal habits of thought came to him now it was they that were laughed out of court; it was they that were flung away and scorned as traitors.

She was guilty. But he would be crafty! He would be cunning. He would make no mistake. He would allow her no subterfuge. He would give her no chance to snare him back into a condition of half belief. There should be no juggling explanations. They were clever as the devil, women were! But this one should have no chance to fool him again. She had fooled him too long already.

And she kept trying to fool him. Shortly after his outburst over the furs, she began again a series of timid advances which would have struck him as pathetic had he not known that her whole nature was corroded and corrupted with deceit, with abominable deceit. She was trying to make him believe that she did not know why he was angry and estranged, was she? He would show her! He hated her now, with that restless, burning intensity of hatred known only to him who has injured another. A hatred that consumed his own vitality, and made him sick in soul and body. The little sleep he got was passed in uneasy dreams of his revenge; and his waking hours were devoted to plots and plans of the form which it should take. Oh, but she had been cunning to fool him for so long; but she should see! She should see! When the time for action came, she should see!

VI

Something, one tense and feverish midnight, when he lay in his bed snarling and brooding and chuckling—a kind of snapping sense in some remote interior chamber of his brain, followed by a nervous shock that made him sit upright—warned him that the time for action was at hand. What is it that makes sinners, at provincial revival meetings, suddenly aware that the hours of dalliance are past and the great instant that shall send them to “the mourners' bench” is at hand? Somehow, they seem to know! And, somehow, Clarke felt an occult touch and knew that his time for action had arrived.

He did not care what came afterwards. Any jury in the world, so he told himself, ought to acquit him of his deed, when they once knew his story; when they once looked at the damning evidence of her guilt which she had hidden away for so long in the brass-bound box. But if they did not acquit him, that was all right, too. His work in the world would have been done; he would have punished a guilty woman. He would have shown that all men are not fools.

But he did not spend a great deal of thought on how other people would regard what he was about to do. As he crept down the hall with the knife in his hand, his chief sensation was a premonitory itch, a salty tang of pleasure in the doing of the deed itself. When hatred comes in where love has gone out, there may be a kind of voluptuary delight in the act of murder.

Very carefully he opened the door of her room. And then he smiled to himself, and entered noisily; for what was the need of being careful about waking up a woman who was already dead? He did not care whether he killed her in her sleep or not;—indeed, if she wakened and begged for her life, he thought it might add a certain zest to the business. He should enjoy hearing her plead. He would not mind prolonging things.

But things were not prolonged. His hand and the muscles of his forearm had tensed so often with the thought, with the idea, that the first blow went home. She never waked.

VII

He got the box, and opened it.

Inside was a long envelope, and written on that were the words:

“To be opened by my husband only after my death.”

That time had come!

Within the envelope was a letter. It was dated on the day of his return from his western trip, a few months before. He read:

“Dick, I love you!

“Does it seem strange to you that I should write it down?

“Listen, Dickie dear—I had to write it! I couldn't tell you when I was alive—but I just had to tell you, too. And now that I am dead, what I say will come to you with all of its sweetness increased; and all of its bitterness left out! It will, now that I am dead—or if you die first, you will never see this. This is from beyond the grave to you, Dickie dear, to make all your life good to you afterwards!

“Now, listen, dear, and don't be hard on me.

“When I married you, Dickie, I didn't love you! You were wild about me. But I only liked you very much. It wasn't really love. It wasn't what you deserved. But I was only a girl, and you were the first man, and I didn't know things; I didn't know what I should have felt.

“Later, when I realized how very much you cared, I was ashamed of myself. I grew to see that I had done wrong in marrying you. Wrong to both of us. For no woman should marry a man she doesn't love. And I was ashamed, and worried about it. You were so good to me! So sweet—and you never suspected that I didn't care like I should. And because you were so good and sweet to me, I felt worse. And I made up my mind you should never know! That I would be everything to you any woman could be. I tried to be a good wife. Wasn't I, Dickie, even then?

“But I prayed and prayed and prayed. 'O God,' I used to say, 'let me love him like he loves me!' It was five years, Dickie, and I liked you more, and admired you more, and saw more in you that was worth while, every week; but still, no miracle happened.

“And then one morning a miracle did happen!

“It was when you were on that trip West. I had gone to bed thinking how kind and dear you were. I missed you, Dickie dear, and needed you. And when I woke up, there was a change over the world. I felt so different, somehow. It had come! Wasn't it wonderful, Dickie?—it had come! And I sang all that day for joy. I could hardly wait for you to come home so that I could tell you. I loved you, loved you, loved you, Dickie, as you deserved! My prayers had been answered, somehow—or maybe it was what any woman would do just living near you and being with you.

“And then I saw I couldn't tell you, after all!

“For if I told you I loved you now, that would be to tell you that for five years I hadn't loved you, Dickie!

“And how would that make you feel? Wouldn't that have been like a knife, Dickie?

“Oh, I wanted you to know! How I wanted you to know! But, you see, I couldn't tell you, could I, dear, without telling the other, too? I just had to save you from that! And I just had to make you feel it, somehow or other. And I will make you feel it, Dickie!

“But I can't tell you. Who knows what ideas you might get into your head about those five years, if I told you now? Men are so queer, and they can be so stupid sometimes! And I can't bear to think of losing one smallest bit of your love... not now! It would kill me!

“But I want you to know, sometime. And so I'm writing you—it's my first love letter—the first real one, Dickie. If you die first, I'll tell you in Heaven. And if I die first, you'll understand!

“Agnes.”