her room would be very hot in summer and very cold in winter.  But she was glad to be well above the sleeping house, and to be able to look from her window across the wide country, over the dark bulb gardens—­laid out like a Chinese puzzle with their eight-foot hedges—­to the lights of the town on the one hand, and, better still, to the dim curve of the Dunes on the other.  It is to be feared she sometimes spent a longer time at her window than was wise, seeing the early hour at which she had to rise; but no one was troubled by it, for she was careful to take off her shoes first thing; the rooms were unceiled, and it was necessary to tread lightly if one would not disturb people below.

On the day after that of Anna and Denah’s visit, Herr Van Heigen offered to show Julia the bulb barns.  It was a Saturday, and so after dinner, the workmen having all gone home, there was no one about and she could ascend the steep barn ladders without any suffering in her modesty.  At least that was what Mijnheer thought; Julia, her modesty being of a very serviceable order, may have given the matter less consideration, but she accepted the offer.

The barns were very large and high, many of them three storeys and each storey lofty.  The light inside was dim, a sort of dun colour, and the air very dry and full of a strange, not unpleasant smell.  Everything was as clean as clean could be; no litter, no dirt, the floor nicely swept, the shelves that ran all round and rose, tier upon tier, in an enormous stand that occupied the whole centre of the place, all perfectly orderly.  On the shelves the bulbs lay, every one smooth and clean and dry, sorted according to kind and quality; Mijnheer knew them all; he could, like a book-lover with his books, put his hand upon any that he wished in the dark.  It seemed to Julia that there were hundreds upon hundreds of different sorts.  Not only hyacinths and tulips and such well-known ones in endless sizes and varieties, but little roots with six and seven syllable names she had never heard before, and big roots, too, and strange cornery roots, a never-ending quantity.

Mijnheer told her they were not yet all in; many were in the ground and had still to be lifted.  This she knew, for she had seen the dead tops of some in the little enclosed squares where they grew; from her bedroom window, too, she saw others still in bloom—­a patch, the size of a tennis-lawn squared, of scarlet ranunculous, little blood-red rosettes, sheltered by a high close-clipped hedge.  And another patch of iris hispanica, fairy flowers of palest gold and lavender, quivering at the top of their grey-green stalks like tropical dragon-flies hovering over a field of growing oats.  These it seemed, and many others, would be brought in by and by, then the great barns would be really full.  Mijnheer took up a root here and there, telling her something of the history of each; explaining how the narcissus increased and the tulips grew; showing her hyacinth bulbs cut in half-breadthways with all the separate severed layers distended by reason of the growing and swelling of the seeds between.