and
watching the magical changes which the decorator was working in his
store. This was consolation, this was inspiration, but he longed for
the return of Margaret Green, that she might help him enjoy the
realization of her ideas in the equipment of the place; and he held
the decorator to the most slavish obedience through the carpenters and
painters who created at his bidding a miraculous interior, all white,
or just off-white, such as had never been imagined of a bookstore in
New York before. It was actually ready by the end of August, though
smelling a little of turpentine still, and Erlcort, letting himself in
at the small-paned black door, and ranging up and down the long,
beautiful room, and round and round the central book-table, and in and
out between the side tables, under the soft, bright shelving of the
walls, could hardly wait the arrival of the _Minnedingdong_ in which
the elderly girl had taken her passage back. One day, ten days ahead
of time, she blew in at the front door in a paroxysm of explanation;
she had swapped passages home with another girl who wanted to come
back later, while she herself wanted to come back earlier. She had no
very convincing reason for this as she gave it, but Erlcort did not
listen to her reason, whatever it was. He said, between the raptures
with the place that she fell in and out of, that now she was just in
time for the furnishing, which he never could have dared to undertake
alone.

In the gay September weather they visited all the antiquity shops in
Fourth Avenue, and then threw themselves frankly upon reproductions,
which they bought in the native wood and ordered painted, the settles
and the spindle-backed chairs in the cool gray which she decided was
the thing. In the same spirit they bought new brass fire-irons and new
shovel and tongs, but all very tall and antique-looking, and then they
got those little immoral mirrors, which Margaret Green attached with
her own hands to the partitions of the shelving. She also got soft
green silk curtains for the chimney windows and for the sash of the
front door; even the front windows she curtained, but very low, so
that a salesman or a saleswoman could easily reach over from the
interior and get a book that any customer had seen from the outside.

One day when all this was done, and Erlcort had begun ordering in a
stock of such books as he had selected to start with, she said:
"You're looking rather peaked, aren't you?"

"We