And on the handle
of the basket hung a little kid glove. I looked at it closely; the
tiny finger-tops and oval nails had left light creases on the delicate
leather, and an indescribable perfume, in which violet predominated,
drove away the vile animal scent that pervades such gloves. I flung it
on the fire.
All about the room lay books that were not of my culling, from the oak
cases, whose every door stood ajar,--novels innumerable,--"The Arabian
Nights," Vaughan's "Silex Scintillans," with a scarlet leaf laid in
against "Peace," and "Tennyson" turned on its face at "Fatima," a heavy
volume of French moral philosophy, a Methodist hymn-book, Sir Thomas
Browne's "Hydriotaphia," and a gilded red-bound history of "Five Little
Pigs."
I rang the bell, and ordered all the books to be gathered up and put
into an old bookcase, long banished to a dark attic. I walked to the
fire and leaned my head against the mantel. The embers were all dead; in
the gray ashes was the print of a little foot, whose arched instep had
left no trace between the light track of the small heel and the deeper
impression that the slender toe had left. That footprint told the
secret of her airy motion,--that step so akin to flight, that on an
overhanging mountain-ledge I had more than once held my breath, looking
to see her extended wings float over the silent tree-tops below, or
longed to grasp her carelessly trailed shawl, that I might detain her
upon earth.
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