“I should like to see your books,” he replied.

She rose and moved towards the door.

“I am not certain,” she said, “whether you will care for my library.  You will think it perhaps too modern.  But there will be books there that you will like, I am sure of that.”

Douglas had never seen or dreamed of anything like it.  The room was ecclesiastical in shape and architecture, fluted pillars supported an oak-beamed ceiling, and at its upper end was a small organ.  But it was its colour scheme which was so wonderful.  The great cases which came out in wings into the room were white.  Everything was white—­the rugs, the raised frescoes on the walls, the chairs and hangings.

She watched his face, and assuming an apologetic attitude, said, “it is unusual—­and untraditional, I know, but I wanted something different, and mine is essentially a modern library.  In this country there is so much to depress one, and one’s surroundings, after all, count for much.  That is my poetry recess.  You seem to have found your way there by instinct.”

“I think it is charming,” he remarked.  “Only at first it takes your breath away.  But what beautiful editions.”

He hesitated, with his hand upon a volume.  She laughed at him and took it down herself.  Perhaps she knew that her arm was shapely.  At least she let it remain for a moment stretched out as though to reach the next volume.

“I always buy editions de luxe when they are to be had,” she said.  “A beautiful book deserves a beautiful binding and paper.  I believe in the whole effect.  It is not fair to Ruskin to read him in paper covers, and fancy Le Gallienne in an eighteenpenny series.”

“You have Pater!” he exclaimed; “and isn’t that a volume of De Maupassant’s?”

His fingers shook with eagerness.  She put a tiny volume into his hands.  He shook back the hair from his head and forgot that he had ever been ill, that he had ever suffered, that he had ever despaired.  For the love of books was in his blood, and his tongue was loosened.  For the first time in his life he knew the full delight of a sympathetic listener.  They entered upon a new relationship in those few minutes.

The summons for dinner found them still there.  Douglas, with a faint flush in his cheeks and brilliant eyes; she, too, imbued with a little of his literary excitement.  She handed him over to a manservant, who offered him dress clothes, and waited upon him with the calm, dexterous skill of a well-trained valet.  He laughed softly to himself as he passed down the broad stairs.  Surely he had wandered through dreamland into some corner of the Arabian Nights?—­else he had passed from one extreme of life to the other with a strange, almost magical, celerity.