Page:Selected Czech tales - 1925.djvu/132

 the top one which had been pushed back hastily.

‘Just fancy, all her treasures unlocked,’ he thought: ‘the room is not locked either; the servant might have put her nose into everything.’

Involuntarily and without a set purpose, he took hold of the two ornamental bronze rings and pulled out the drawer.

In it were books, jewelry, embroideries, photographs, and keepsakes. A box of cedar-wood was in the right-hand corner. He knew it; he himself had given it her as a Christmas or New Year’s present, when she had expressed a wish for a box in which to keep various trifles.

Hron touched the little box, and noticed that the key of wrought iron was in it.

‘Careless little woman! The drawer open and the key in her box! And what about all those sacred secrets, those valueless, and yet so carefully guarded mysteries?’

It suddenly struck him, although he did not feel the ordinary human curiosity: ‘I wonder what they are, these things that my dear Magda has collected in this box?’

He almost smiled at the thought that perhaps his first letter was among them, the