And Now Tomorrow [antikvár]

CHAPTER ONE It was years since I had set foot in the ell storeroom. But vesterday Aunt Em sent me there on an errand, and the souvenirs I came upon have disturbed me ever since, teasing my mind with memories that persist like fragments of old tunes. There is a fascination in piaces that hold our past in safe keeping. We are drawn to them, often against our will. For the past is a shadow grown greater than its substance, and shadows have power to mock and betray us to the end of our days. I knew it yesterday in that hour I spent in the storeroom's dusty chillness, half dreading, half courting the pangs which each well remembered object brought. So we sigh, perhaps, at the mute and stringless guitar with its knot of yellow ribbon bleached pale as a dande-lion gone to seed. So we smile at the tarnished medál that set the heart pounding under the dress folds where it was once pinned. So we tremble or flush again at the fiimsy favors and dance programs with their little dangling pen-cils and scribbled names. "Now ívho was he?" we ask ourselves, puzzling over i