Page:Stringer - Wine of Life.djvu/258



TORROW, alone in his studio, sat down and strug- gled to straighten out a disorganized world. But always between him and what promised to be tran- quillity stood that mocking and leering suspicion which proved too intangible to be combated and too persistent to be ignored. As he sat confronted by uncertainties which could prove more torturing than truth itself his unhappy and wandering eyes rested on his wife's trunk, the steel-bound theatrical trunk which stood so definite and so personal a part of her belongings. He had un- questioningly and unconsciously respected the privacy of that trunk, accepting what it held as something essentially and personally hers, the accrued possessions of the past it was her privilege to cherish and to screen, if she so de- sired. Then he remembered the little chamois bag of jewels, the locked make-up box which held them, and the carefully tied bundle of letters which rested there beside them.

Then he looked away, finding the thought of spying inexpressibly abhorrent. But still again his glance went back to the dark mass of the trunk, sarcophagus-like in its ponderousness, and still again he felt the tug of sus- picion, demanding that it be verified or for all time re- jected. Finally he surrendered to an impulse which proved too strong for him, and crossed to the trunk and opened it.

He could vaguely foresee, as he lifted out the first make-up box, in which, he remembered, the key to the lower box was hidden, that what he was about to do in- volved the danger of bringing him vast miserv, of thrust- 248