The octoroon made no further comment on his confusion.  Her eyes wandered from him over the stately furniture and up to the stuccoed ceiling.

“They told me you lived in a wonderful room,” she remarked absently.

“Yes, it’s very nice,” agreed Peter in the same tone, wondering what might be the object of her hazardous visit.  A flicker of suspicion suggested that she was trying to compromise him out of revenge for his renouncement of her, but the next instant he rejected this.

The girl accepted the chair Peter offered and continued to look about.

“I hope you don’t mind my staring, Peter,” she said.

“I stared when I first came here to stay,” assisted Peter, who was getting a little more like himself, even if a little uneasier at the consequences of this visit.

“Is that a highboy?” She nodded nervously at the piece of furniture.  “I’ve seen pictures of them.”

“Uh huh.  Revolutionary, I believe.  The night wind is a little raw.”  He moved across the room and closed the jalousies, and thus cut off the night wind and also the west view from the street.  He glanced at the heavy curtains parted over his front windows, with a keen desire to swing them together.  Some fragment of his mind continued the surface conversation with Cissie.

“Is it post-Revolutionary or pre-Revolutionary?” she asked with a preoccupied air.

“Post, I believe.  No, pre.  I always meant to examine closely.”

“To have such things would almost teach one history,” Cissie said.

“Yeah; very nice.”  Peter had decided that the girl was in direct line with the left front window and an opening between the trees to the street.

The girl’s eyes followed his.

“Are those curtains velour, Peter?”

“I—­I believe so,” agreed the man, unhappily.

“I—­I wonder how they look spread.”

Peter seized on this flimsy excuse with a wave of relief and thankfulness to Cissie.  He had to restrain himself as he strode across the room and swung together the two halves of the somber curtains in order to preserve an appearance of an exhibit.  His fingers were so nervous that he bungled a moment at the heavy cords, but finally the two draperies swung together, loosing a little cloud of dust.  He drew together a small aperture where the hangings stood apart, and then turned away in sincere relief.

Cissie’s own interest in historic furniture and textiles came to an abrupt conclusion.  She gave a deep sigh and settled back into her chair.  She sat looking at Peter seriously, almost distressfully, as he came toward her.

With the closing of the curtains and the establishment of a real privacy Peter became aware once again of the sweetness and charm Cissie always held for him.  He still wondered what had brought her, but he was no longer uneasy.

“Perhaps I’d better build a fire,” he suggested, quite willing now to make her visit seem not unusual.