"You had better say it now."
"This has to do with Basil alone. When you lay on the bed in his room, I saw your eyes turn toward the bureau. I connected your uneasiness with something in the open drawer. When I came back from the kitchen with your broth, the drawer was closed, the key gone; then I was sure. I do not like mysteries, so I went upstairs and looked again."
"The drawer was locked!"
"Yes, my dear, but I found the key."
Mrs. Lister's cheeks paled, then crimsoned. She looked now at her husband, now out the window, saying nothing. She expected to feel a terrible indignation, but she waited in vain. Instead she felt a deep relief. If she had only obeyed her husband long ago and had destroyed all Basil's possessions, she would have been far happier. Now Dr. Lister might destroy them, all his clothes, his childish toys, his youthful writings, and she need think of them no more. At last her grief was stale, she wished to think no more of Basil.
"I found in the bureau a great many manuscripts of Basil's."
"Tear them up," said Mary Alcestis. "You know you advised me long ago to destroy everything. I had just begun when I fainted."
"I never advised you to tear up any writings."
"You said Basil's 'things.'"