Notwithstanding, in the days which followed there was a perceptible change in Annot's attitude toward him: she became, as it were, conscious of his actuality. One afternoon she read aloud to him a richly-toned, gloomy tale of Africa. They were sitting by a long window, open, but screened from the summer heat by stiff, darkly-drooping green folds, where they could hear the drip of the fountain in its basin, a cool punctuation on the sultry page of the afternoon. Annot proceeded rapidly in an even, low voice; she was dressed in filmy lavender, with little buttons of golden velvet, an intricately carved gold buckle at her waist.

Anthony listened as closely as possible, the faint smile which seldom left him hovering over his lips. The bald action of the narrative—a running fight with ambushed savages from a little tin pot of a steamer, a mysterious affair in the darkness with a grim skeleton of a fellow, stakes which bore a gory fruitage of human heads, held him; but the rest... words, words. His attention wavered, fell upon minute, material objects; Annot's voice grew remote, returned, was lost among his juggling thoughts.

“Isn't it splendid!” she exclaimed, at last closing the volume; “the most beautiful story of our time—” She stopped abruptly, and cast a penetrating glance at him. “I don't believe you even listened,” she declared. “In your heart you prefer, 'Tortured by the Tartars.'”

His smile broadened, including his eyes.

“You are impossible! No,” she veered suddenly, “you're not; if you cared for this you wouldn't be... you. That's the most important thing in the world. Besides, I wouldn't like you; everybody reads now, it's frightfully common; while you are truly indifferent. Have you noticed, my child, that books always increase where life runs thin? and you are alive, not a papier-mÂchÉ man painted in the latest shades.”

Anthony dwelt on this unexpected angle upon his mental delinquencies. The approval of Annot Hardinge, so critical, so outspoken, was not without an answering glow in his being; no one but she might discover his ignorance to be laudable.

She rose, and the book slipped neglected to the floor. “The mirror of my dressing table is collapsing,” she informed him; “I wonder if you would look at it.” He followed her above to her room; it was a large, four-square chamber, its windows brushed by the glossy leaves of an aged black-heart cherry tree. Her bed was small, with a counterpane of grotesque lace animals, a table held a scattered collection of costly trifles, and a closet door stood open upon a shimmering array from deepest orange to white and pale primrose. An enigmatic lacy garment, and a surprisingly long pair of black silk stockings, occupied a chair; while the table was covered with columns of print on long sheets of paper. “Galleys,” she told him. “I read all father's proof.”

He moved the dressing table from the wall, and discovered the bolt which had held the mirror in place upon the floor. As he screwed it into position, Annot said:

“Don't look around for a minute.” There was a swift whisper of skirts, a pause, then, “all right.” He straightened up, and found that she had changed to a white skirt and waist. Fumbling in the closet she produced a pair of low, brown shoes, and kicking off her slippers, donned the others, balancing each in turn on the bed.

“Let's go—anywhere,” she proposed; “but principally where books are not and birds are.” At a drugstore they purchased largely of licorice root, which they consumed sitting upon a fence without the town.