mured.

"I am afraid you are doomed to be disappointed," she said, as she came
and stood by his side at the table. "I have made such a mystery of it,
whereas, no doubt, you will find it trivial."

"You said it was a weird idea. I am sure it is a charming one. Whatever
it is, you know what it will be to me."

"I know, darling," she said, suddenly grave again.

She bade him cut the string and open the package. At last, as he was
removing the many wrappings, "It is an old door-knocker," she said; "the
figure of a lovely grotesque old wizard, wrought in bronze. I came
across it on the door of a fifteenth-century house in Delft a year or
two ago, and it so fascinated me that I bargained for it with the owner.
It has ever since remained one of my pet possessions, and I at once
thought of it for you. Tell me truly what you think of it!"

Wyndham held up the strange bronze man, slim and long, with fantastic
bearded head, and grasping in one hand a rod that merged into a huge
serpent that lay coiled round the body. The two legs were welded at the
bottom into one big foot, the heel of which formed the hammer. It was a
piece of grotesqueness worthy of the East, finely and subtly modelled,
and quaint rather than grim in its suggestiveness.

"A masterpiece!" he said at last. "I have never seen anything of the
kind to match it."

"I should say it is by an artist of at any rate the early renaissance,"
she ventured, her face agleam, for she had awaited his verdict with
anxiety. "The modelling is so careful and scientific."

"Those were the days when artists still thought only of their work, and
so much forgot their own existence that they took no pains to proclaim
themselves to the world. The work of the so-called dark ages remains,
the artists lie unknown and unheard of, if indeed they were known to the
world at any time."

"You will set up my wizard on the door of your house. Every time you
hear it you will think of me as floating there like a spirit. Isn't that
weird? I have the idea that if an enemy should touch it, you would
somehow know at once, and be on your guard. Oh, yes, I was convinced it
was a magic knocker the moment I saw it."

He was still staring at it gravely, as if he, too, felt some eerie
quality in it. She looked at him, then broke into laughter. "Aren't we a
charming pair of children, taking our own make-believe so seriously?"

He laughed, too, though uneasily. "It is good to be children again."

"Li