of receipts, newspaper clippings, verses. She let them lie. She
took out a long violet box with a perfumer's seal upon it. It held a
bunch of dried violets. She took out a bonbonniere of gold filigree. It
was empty. A powder box, a glove box, a froth of lace, a handful of
jewelers' boxes, a jewel flung loose into the drawer. This she pounced
upon. It was a brooch! She let it fall--turned to the chiffonier;
upended the two vases of Venetian glass, lifted the lids of jars and
boxes, finally came to the drawers. One by one she took them out, turned
the contents of each rapidly over, and left them standing, gaping white
ruffles and lace upon the floor. She took up daintily, in her white kid
fingers, slippers, shook them upside down. She opened the door of the
closet, and disappeared within. There was audible the flutterings of all
the distressed garments, with little busy pauses. Then Clara came out,
with her hat a little crooked; and stood in the middle of the room still
with her absorbed and sober face, looking over the gaping drawers,
pulled out and rifled, with their contents heaped up and streaming over
the floor.

Her eye fell upon the waste basket. She turned it upside down, and
stooped over the litter. She gathered it up in her white gloves and
dropped it back. Then, for the first time, she glanced at the bath-room
door; stood looking at it, as if it had occurred to her to look in the
soap dish. Then she turned again to the room, to the dressing-table. She
put back the paste-board jewelers' boxes, the jeweled pin, the laces,
which she shook out and folded daintily, the glove and powder boxes, the
gold bonbonniere, the long violet box, the leather pocket-book,--each
deftly and unhesitatingly in the place from which she had taken it, and
all the heaps of white handkerchiefs.

One by one she laid back in the chiffonier drawers, the garments,
properly and neatly folded, that she had so hastily snatched out of
them. The sun, streaming full into the room, caught gleams in her pale
hair, and struck blindingly upon the heaps of white around her, and made
two dazzling points of her gloved hands that moved as deftly as hands
uncovered. She slid back the last drawer into the chiffonier, and rose
from her knees, lightly dusting off the front of her gown; went to the
closet door and closed it. She stood before it a moment with a face
perplexed and thoughtful, then turned alertly toward the outer door. As
she passed the mirror s