of hotels at Luzerne, at St. Moritz and
at Biarritz.

Susan admired, as he explained his scheme of life to her and
Palmer when they visited his apartment. Always profound
tranquillity in the midst of intense activity. He could shut
his door and he as in a desert; he could open it, and the most
interesting of the sensations created by the actions and
reactions of the whole human race were straightway beating
upon his senses. As she listened, she looked about, her eyes
taking in impressions to be studied at leisure. These
quarters of his in Paris were fundamentally different from
those in New York, were the expression of a different side of
his personality. It was plain that he loved them, that they
came nearer to expressing his real--that is, his inmost--self.

"Though I work harder in Paris than in New York," he
explained, "I have more leisure because it is all one kind of
work--writing--at which I'm never interrupted. So I have time
to make surroundings for myself. No one has time for
surroundings in New York."

She observed that of the scores of pictures on the walls,
tables, shelves of the three rooms they were shown, every one
was a face--faces of all nationalities, all ages, all
conditions--faces happy and faces tragic, faces homely, faces
beautiful, faces irradiating the fascination of those abnormal
developments of character, good and bad, which give the
composite countenance of the human race its distinction, as
the characteristics themselves give it intensities of light
and shade. She saw angels, beautiful and ugly, devils
beautiful and ugly.

When she began to notice this peculiarity of those rooms, she
was simply interested. What an amazing collection! How much
time and thought it must have taken! How he must have
searched--and what an instinct he had for finding the unusual,
the significant! As she sat there and then strolled about and
then sat again, her interest rose into a feverish excitement.
It was as if the ghosts of all these personalities, not one of
them commonplace, were moving through the rooms, were pressing
upon her. She understood why Brent had them there--that they
were as necessary to him as cadavers and skeletons and
physiological charts to an anatomist. But they oppressed,
suffocated her; she went out on the balcony and watched the
effects of the light from the setting sun upon and around the
enormously magnified Arc.

"You don't like my rooms," said Brent.

"They