thing glittered on the cushion of
the chair, and looking nearer she found a steel-clasped book, upon the
cover of which lay a dead heliotrope, a little key.

It was Moor's Diary, and now she understood that passage of the note
which had been obscure before. "I leave that behind me which will speak
to you more kindly, calmly, than I can now, and show you that my effort
has been equal to my failure." She had often begged to read it,
threatened to pick the lock, and felt the strongest curiosity to learn
what was contained in the long entries that he daily made. Her requests
had always been answered with the promise of entire possession of the
book when the year was out. Now he gave it, though the year was not
gone, and many leaves were yet unfilled. He thought she would come to
this room first, would see her morning flower laid ready for her, and,
sitting in what they called their Refuge, would draw some comfort for
herself, some palliation for his innocent offence, from the record so
abruptly ended.

She took it, went away to her own room, unlocked the short romance of
his wedded life, and found her husband's heart laid bare before her.

It was a strange and solemn thing to look so deeply into the private
experience of a fellow-being; to trace the birth and progress of
purposes and passions, the motives of action, the secret aspirations,
the besetting sins that made up the inner life he had been leading
beside her. Moor wrote with an eloquent sincerity, because he had put
himself into his book, as if feeling the need of some _confidante_ he
had chosen the only one that pardons egotism. Here, too, Sylvia saw her
chameleon self, etched with loving care, endowed with all gifts and
graces, studied with unflagging zeal, and made the idol of a life.

Often a tuneful spirit seemed to assert itself, and passing from smooth
prose to smoother poetry, sonnet, song, or psalm, flowed down the page
in cadences stately, sweet, or solemn, filling the reader with delight
at the discovery of a gift so genuine, yet so shyly folded up within
itself, unconscious that its modesty was the surest token of its worth.
More than once Sylvia laid her face into the book, and added her
involuntary comment on some poem or passage made pathetic by the
present; and more than once paused to wonder, with exceeding wonder, why
she could not give such genius and affection its reward. Had she needed
any confirmation of the fact so hard to teach herself, th