dinner was achieved in silence.

When Mr. Stone, refusing to be accompanied, had taken his departure, and
Thyme had gone to bed, Stephen withdrew to his study. This room, which
had a different air from any other portion of the house, was sacred to
his private life. Here, in specially designed compartments, he kept his
golf clubs, pipes, and papers. Nothing was touched by anyone except
himself, and twice a week by one particular housemaid. Here was no bust
of Socrates, no books in deerskin bindings, but a bookcase filled with
treatises on law, Blue Books, reviews, and the novels of Sir Walter
Scott; two black oak cabinets stood side by side against the wall filled
with small drawers. When these cabinets were opened and the drawers
drawn forward there emerged a scent of metal polish. If the green-baize
covers of the drawers were lifted, there were seen coins, carefully
arranged with labels--as one may see plants growing in rows, each with
its little name tied on. To these tidy rows of shining metal discs
Stephen turned in moments when his spirit was fatigued. To add to them,
touch them, read their names, gave him the sweet, secret feeling which
comes to a man who rubs one hand against the other. Like a dram-drinker,
Stephen drank--in little doses--of the feeling these coins gave him.
They were his creative work, his history of the world. To them he gave
that side of him which refused to find its full expression in summarising
law, playing golf, or reading the reviews; that side of a man which
aches, he knows not wherefore, to construct something ere he die. From
Rameses to George IV. the coins lay within those drawers--links of the
long unbroken chain of authority.

Putting on an old black velvet jacket laid out for him across a chair,
and lighting the pipe that he could never bring himself to smoke in his
formal dinner clothes, he went to the right-hand cabinet, and opened it.
He stood with a smile, taking up coins one by one. In this particular
drawer they were of the best Byzantine dynasty, very rare. He did not
see that Cecilia had stolen in, and was silently regarding him. Her eyes
seemed doubting at that moment whether or no she loved him who stood
there touching that other mistress of his thoughts--that other mistress
with whom he spent so many evening hours. The little green-baize cover
fell. Cecilia said suddenly:

"Stephen, I feel as if I must tell Father where that girl is!"

Stephen turned.