“How do you know?”

“Because he’s in love already, in love with perfection.”

“But as he’ll be sure to identify perfection with you—­”

“He will see very little of me.”

“Then he’s all the more likely to.”

“Kitty, am I the sort of woman who allows that sort of thing to happen—­with that sort of man?”

“My dear, you’re the sort of woman who treats men as if they were disembodied spirits, and that’s the most dangerous sort I know.  If I’m not mistaken Mr. Savage Keith Rickman’s spirit is very much embodied.”

“What is the good of trying to make me uncomfortable when it’s all settled?  I can’t go back on my word.”

“No, I suppose you’ve got to stick to it.  Unless, of course, your father interferes.”

“Father never interferes.  Did you ever know him in his life refuse me anything I wanted?”

“I can’t say I ever did.”  Kitty’s tone intimated that perhaps it would have been better if he sometimes had.  “Still, Sir Frederick objects strongly to people who interfere with him, and he may not care to have the young Savage poet, or poet Savage, hanging about.”

“Father?  He won’t mind a bit.  He says he’s going to take part of the Palazzo Barberini for six months.  It’s big enough to hold fifty poets.”

“Not big enough to hold one like Mr. Savage Keith Rickman.”  Kitty rose to her feet; she stood majestic, for the spirit of prophecy was upon her; she gathered herself together for the deliverance of her soul.  “You say he won’t be in the way.  He will.  He’ll be most horribly in the way.  He’ll go sliding and falling all over the place, and dashing cups of coffee on the marble floor of the Palazzo; he’ll wind his feet in the tails of your best gowns, not out of any malice, but in sheer nervous panic; he’ll do unutterable things with soup—­I can see him doing them.”

“I can’t.”

“No.  I know you can’t.  I don’t say you’ve no imagination; but I do say you’re deficient in a certain kind of profane fancy.”

CHAPTER XXVI

It was extraordinary; if he had given himself time to reflect on it he might even have considered it uncanny, the peace that had settled on him with regard to the Harden Library.

It remained absolutely unshaken by the growing agitation of his father’s letters.  Isaac wrote reproachfully, irritably, frantically, and received only the briefest, most unsatisfactory replies.  “I can’t tell you anything more than I have.  But I wouldn’t be in a hurry to make any arrangements with Pilkington, if I were you.”  Not the smallest reference to the Aldine Plato, the Neapolitan Horace or the Aurea Legenda of Wynkyn de Worde.

Why indeed should he trouble himself?  He couldn’t understand his father’s state of mind.  He had now a positive intuition that Sir Frederick would recover in the manner of a gentleman whose motto was Invictus; an infinite assurance was conveyed by that tilted faun-like smile.  He even found himself believing in his own delightful future as Miss Harden’s private secretary, so entirely had he submitted to the empire of divine possibility.