It was nearly seven o'clock in the evening; a dry, acrid, coughing cold lay over London.
In the little Kensington flat of Rita Wallace and Ethel Harrison, the fire was low and almost out. The "Lulu bird" drooped on its perch and Wog was crying quietly by the fire.
How desolate the flat seemed to the faithful Wog as she looked round with brimming eyes.
The state and arrangement of a familiar room often seem organically related to the human mind. Certainly we ourselves give personality to rooms which we have long inhabited; and that personality re-acts upon us at times when event disturbs it.
It was so now with the good and tender-hearted clergyman's daughter.
The floor of the sitting-room was littered with little pieces of paper and odds and ends of string. Upon the piano—it was Wog's piano now, a present from Rita—was a massive photograph frame of silver. There was no photograph in it, but some charred remains of a photograph which had been burned still lay in the grate.
Wog had burnt the photograph herself, that morning, early.
"You do it, darling," Rita had said to her. "I can't do it myself. And take this box. It's locked and sealed. It has the letters in it. I cannot burn them, but I don't want to read them again. I must not, now. But keep it carefully, always. If ever I should ask for it, deliver it to me wherever I am."
"You must never ask for it, my darling girl," Wog had said quickly. "Let me burn the box and its contents."
"No, no! You must not, dearest Wog, my dear old friend! It would be wrong. Rossetti had to open the coffin of his wife to get back the poems which he had buried with her. Keep it as I say."