"Where did you find them, Li Ho?"
Instead of answering this, Li Ho, after a moment's hesitation, had produced from some recess of his old blue coat an envelope which he handled with an air of awed respect.
"Li Ho find more plasel too. Pletty soon put um back. Honorable Boss indulge in fit if missing."
"Which means that it belongs to father and that you have—borrowed it?" suggested she, delicately.
"No b'long him. B'long you," said Li Ho, thrusting the packet into her hand. And, as if fearful of being questioned further, he had taken the candle and departed.
"Leave me the candle, Li Ho," she had called to him. But he had not returned. And a candle is a small matter. She was used to undressing in the dusk. Almost at once she had fallen asleep.
Now in the morning, as she lay and watched the shadows of the leaves, she remembered that, though he had taken the candle, he had left the letter. It lay there on the strip of old carpet beside her cot. Desire withdrew her attention from the leaves and picked it up. With a little thrill she saw that Li Ho had been right. It was her own name which was written across the envelope ...
Her own name, faded yet clear on a wrinkled envelope yellowed at the edges. The seal of the envelope had been broken....
Sometime in her childhood Desire must have seen her mother's writing. Conscious memory of it was gone, but in the deeper recesses of her mind there must have lingered some recognition which quickened her heart at sight of it.
A letter from the dead? No wonder Li Ho had handled it with reverence. With trembling fingers the girl drew it from its violated covering.