Anne scraped gently at these with a fingernail, releasing an old smell of iodine and salt. She rubbed at the scratches on the steel lock and hasp she had pried off with a small file. The stack of pages she held on her lap, like a creature. Would she read them? She still could not decide. It was early on a September morning in 1882; it had been more than thirty years since Henry had first shown her this letter, when they had wondered how to deliver it to Mrs. Hawthorne. How unearthly the feeling — like the whisper of the sea in one’s ear, a sound one almost ceases to notice over time but of a sudden with meaning articulated, the sea itself trying to speak in sentences, now that she had at last seen these pages again. The longer she did not read them, the more difficult the prospect of reading them seemed.She needed to take a walk. She tucked the pages back into the desk, but left the lid open. Rummaging in the back hall for her boots and hat, she stepped on the collie-dog’s paw and in the agitation of his yelping stepped back abruptly and banged her head on a coat peg.“It’s nothing,”
