The night of Sunday beheld the withdrawal of Mr. Rickman into the immensity of his preposterous dream.  From this blessed state he emerged on Monday morning, enlightened as to the whole comedy and tragedy of his passion.  To approach Lucia Harden required nothing less than a change of spirit; and Mr. Rickman doubted whether he could manage that.  He could only change his shirts.  And at this point there arose the hideous fear lest love itself might work to hinder and betray him.

As it turned out, love proved his ally, not his enemy.  So far from exciting him, it produced a depression that rendered him disinclined for continuous utterance.  In this it did him good service.  It prevented him from obtruding his presence unduly on Miss Harden.  In his seat at the opposite table he had achieved something of her profound detachment, her consummate calm.  And Lucia said to herself, “Good.  He can keep quiet for a whole day at a time, which is what I doubted.”

Six days had passed in this manner, and he had not yet attempted to penetrate the mystery and seclusion of the Aldine Plato, the Neapolitan Horace and the Aurea Legenda of Wynkyn de Worde.  He turned away his eyes from that corner of the bookcase where he had good reason to suppose them to be.  He would have to look at them some time, meanwhile he shrank from approaching them as from some gross impiety.  His father had written to him several times, making special inquiries after the Aldine Plato, the Neapolitan Horace, and the Aurea Legenda of Wynkyn de Worde.  He replied with generalities in a guarded manner.  He was kept very busy, and was as yet unable to send him any more detailed information.  He had begun to feel it strange that these questions should be put, to marvel at the assumption that they could in any way concern him.  Rickman’s had ceased altogether to exist for him.

He was beginning to lose all sense of strangeness in his position.  The six days might have been six years and Court House the home of his infancy, Lucia’s presence filled it with so warm an atmosphere of kindness and of love.  The very servants had learnt something of her gentle, considerate ways.  He was at home there as he had never been at home before.  He knew every aspect of the library, through all the changes of the light, from the first waking of its blues and crimsons in the early morning to the broad and golden sweep of noonday through the south window; from the quick rushing flame of the sunset to its premature death among the rafters.  Then the lamps; a little light in the centre where they sat, and the thick enclosing darkness round about them.