They climbed one more flight.  The room was small, occupying half the third-floor frontage.  A large window opened onto the street, giving a plain view of the bookshop and the other houses across the way.  A wash-stand stood modestly inside a large cupboard.  Over the mantel was the familiar picture—­usually, however, reserved for the fourth floor back—­of a young lady having her shoes shined by a ribald small boy.

Aubrey was delighted.  “This is fine,” he said.  “Here’s a week in advance.”

Mrs. Schiller was almost disconcerted by the rapidity of the transaction.  She preferred to solemnize the reception of a new lodger by a little more talk—­remarks about the weather, the difficulty of getting “help,” the young women guests who empty tea-leaves down wash-basin pipes, and so on.  All this sort of gossip, apparently aimless, has a very real purpose:  it enables the defenceless landlady to size up the stranger who comes to prey upon her.  She had hardly had a good look at this gentleman, nor even knew his name, and here he had paid a week’s rent and was already installed.

Aubrey divined the cause of her hesitation, and gave her his business card.

“All right, Mr. Gilbert,” she said.  “I’ll send up the girl with some clean towels and a latchkey.”

Aubrey sat down in a rocking chair by the window, tucked the muslin curtain to one side, and looked out upon the bright channel of Gissing Street.  He was full of the exhilaration that springs from any change of abode, but his romantic satisfaction in being so close to the adorable Titania was somewhat marred by a sense of absurdity, which is feared by young men more than wounds and death.  He could see the lighted windows of the Haunted Bookshop quite plainly, but he could not think of any adequate excuse for going over there.  And already he realized that to be near Miss Chapman was not at all the consolation he had expected it would be.  He had a powerful desire to see her.  He turned off the gas, lit his pipe, opened the window, and focussed the opera glasses on the door of the bookshop.  It brought the place tantalizingly near.  He could see the table at the front of the shop, Roger’s bulletin board under the electric light, and one or two nondescript customers gleaning along the shelves.  Then something bounded violently under the third button of his shirt.  There she was!  In the bright, prismatic little circle of the lenses he could see Titania.  Heavenly creature, in her white V-necked blouse and brown skirt, there she was looking at a book.  He saw her put out one arm and caught the twinkle of her wrist-watch.  In the startling familiarity of the magnifying glass he could see her bright, unconscious face, the merry profile of her cheek and chin. . . .  “The idea of that girl working in a second-hand bookstore!” he exclaimed.  “It’s positive sacrilege!  Old man Chapman must be crazy.”