And, his suspicions awakened by this discovery, he searched uneasily further through her apartments, and discovered, rolled like a huge piece of carpet and covered over by a large basket, the crépe and silks she had protested were stolen.
VII
MY WIFE!
The second time his wife left him, Jack Bigelow was very wretched. He missed her exceedingly, though he would not have admitted it, for he was also very angry with her.
When she had gone away that first time, so soon after their marriage, he had not felt her absence as he did now, for then she had not become a necessity to him. But she had lived with him now two whole months, and had become a part of his life. She was not a mere passing fancy, and he knew it was folly to endeavor so to convince himself, as in his resentment at her treatment he was trying to do.
The house was desolate without her. Everywhere there were evidences of his little girl. Here a pair of her tiny sandals, some piece of tawdry kanzashi for her hair, her koto, samisen, and little drum; in the zashishi, in her own little room, and all over the house lingered the faint odor of her favorite perfume, so subtle it made the young man weak.
He grew to hate the silence of the rooms. Their household had always been small, with just a man and maid to wait on them; and now only one presence gone from it, and yet how painfully quiet the place had grown! He realized what all her little movements had become to him. He stayed out-doors as much as he could, only to return restlessly to the house, with a faint hope that perhaps she was hiding somewhere in it, and playing some prank on him, as she was fond of doing, bursting out from some unexpected place of hiding. But there was no trace of her anywhere; and when the second day actually passed, the realization that she was indeed gone forced itself home to him, leaving him stupid with rage and despair.