‘Do you ever go to Westminster Abbey?’

The intellectual hunger of his face was softened; he did not smile, but kept a mild gravity of expression which showed that he had a pleasure in the girl’s proximity.  When he had spoken he stroked his forehead with the tips of his fingers, a nervous action.

‘I’ve never been inside,’ Thyrza made answer.  ’What is there to see?’

’It’s the place, you know, where great men have been buried for hundreds of years.  I should like, if I could, to spend a little time there every day.’

‘Can you see the graves?’ Thyrza asked.

’Yes, many.  And on the stones you read who they were that lie there.  There are the graves of kings, and of men much greater than kings.’

‘Greater than kings!  Who were they, Mr. Grail?’

She had rested her elbow on the arm of the chair, and her fingers just touched her chin.  She regarded him with a gaze of deep curiosity.

‘Men who wrote books,’ he answered, with a slight smile.

Thyrza dropped her eyes.  In her thought of books it had never occurred to her that any special interest could attach to the people who wrote them; indeed, she had perhaps never asked herself how printed matter came into existence.  Even among the crowd of average readers we know how commonly a book will be run through without a glance at its title-page.

Gilbert continued: 

’I always come away from the Abbey with fresh courage.  If I’m tired and out of spirits, I go there, and it makes me feel as if I daren’t waste a minute of the time when I’m free to try and learn something.’

It was a strange impulse that made him speak in this way to an untaught child.  With those who were far more likely to understand him he was the most reticent of men.

‘But you know a great deal, Mr. Grail,’ Thyrza said with surprise, looking again at the bookshelves.

’You mustn’t think that.  I had very little teaching when I was a lad, and ever since I’ve had very little either of time or means to teach myself.  If I only knew those few books well, it would be something, but there are some of them I’ve never got to yet.’

‘Those few books!’ Thyrza exclaimed.  ’But I never thought anybody had so many, before I came into this room.’

’I should like you to see the library at the British Museum.  Every book that is published in England is sent there.  There’s a large room where people sit and study any book they like, all day long, and day after day.  Think what a life that must be!’

‘Those are rich people, I suppose,’ Thyrza remarked.  ’They haven’t to work for their living.’

‘Not rich, all of them.  But they haven’t to work with their hands.’

He became silent.  In his last words there was a little bitterness.  Thyrza glanced at him; he seemed to have forgotten her presence, and his face had the wonted look of trouble kept under.