In the impulse of the moment, she stretched out her hand toward the hand
in which he held the letter. The yellow candle-light fell full on him.
The awful death-in-life of his face--the mystery of the sleeping body,
moving in unconscious obedience to the dreaming mind--daunted her. Her
hand trembled, and dropped again at her side.
He put the key of the cabinet back in the basket, and crossed the room
to the bureau, with the basket in one hand and the letter in the other.
Magdalen set the candle on the table again, and watched him. As he had
opened the cabinet, so he now opened the bureau. Once more Magdalen
stretched out her hand, and once more she recoiled before the mystery
and the terror of his sleep. He put the letter in a drawer at the back
of the bureau, and closed the heavy oaken lid again. "Yes," he said.
"Safer there, as you say, Noel--safer there." So he spoke. So, time
after time, the words that betrayed him revealed the dead man living and
speaking again in the dream.
Had he locked the bureau? Magdalen had not heard the lock turn. As he
slowly moved away, walking back once more toward the middle of the room,
she tried the lid. It was locked.
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