without drunken disorder, piracy that wiped its feet on the doormat and
hung its hat on the rack! There was a touch of the true farce in it.
Hadn't Cunningham himself confessed that the whole affair was a joke?

Round two o'clock on the afternoon of the third day Jane, for the moment
alone in her chair, heard the phonograph--the sextet from Lucia. She left
her chair, looked down through the open transom and discovered Dennison
cranking the machine. He must have seen her shadow, for he glanced up
quickly.

He crooked a finger which said, "Come on down!" She made a negative sign
and withdrew her head.

Here she was again on the verge of wild laughter. Donizetti! Pirates!
Glass beads for which Cleigh had voyaged sixteen thousand miles! A father
and son who ignored each other! She choked down this desire to laugh,
because she was afraid it might end suddenly in hysteria and tears. She
returned to her chair, and there was the father arranging himself
comfortably. He had a book.

"Would you like me to read a while to you?" she offered.

"Will you? You see," he confessed, "I'm troubled with insomnia. If I read
by myself I only become interested in the book, but if someone reads aloud
it makes me drowsy."

"As a nurse I've done that hundreds of times. But frankly, I can't read
poetry; I begin to sing-song it at once; it becomes rime without reason.
What is the book?"

Cleigh extended it to her. The moment her hands touched the volume she saw
that she was holding something immeasurably precious. The form was unlike
the familiar shapes of modern books. The covers consisted of exquisitely
hand-tooled calf bound by thongs; there was a subtle perfume as she opened
them. Illuminated vellum. She uttered a pleasurable little gasp.

"The Song of Songs, which is Solomon's," she read.

"Fifteenth century--the vellum. The Florentine covers were probably added
in the seventeenth. I have four more downstairs. They are museum pieces,
as we say."

"That is to say, priceless?"

"After a fashion."

"'Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it; if a
man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly
be contemned!'"

"Why did you select that?"

"I didn't select it; I remembered it--because it is true."

"You have a very pleasant voice. Go on--read."

Thus for an hour she read to him, and by the time she grew tired Cleigh
was sound asleep. The look of granite was gone from his face, and