ike the little mermaiden
of Hans Andersen, she is ready--now--to dance upon knives for the
possession of a soul! Well, she'll win her soul all right, but God grant
the winning of it doesn't end in tragedy!"

He stood for a moment gazing into vacancy with a half-tender,
half-cynical smile on his lips. Then he extinguished the lamp, called
Olga from her resting-place on the old divan, and went slowly to bed.

CHAPTER XV

Herrick duly sent Toni a list of such books as he thought suitable for
her purpose; and then began for Toni a succession of long and, if the
truth be told, tedious days spent, in Owen's absence, in the quiet,
stately library, while the August sunshine streamed in through the big
mullioned windows, and turned the books, in their many-hued bindings,
into pools of rich, dim colour, lighted here and there with the flash of
gold, the gleam of purple and scarlet.

Toni used to wish, half-rebelliously, that the sun would not shine in so
gloriously, turning the polished floor into a golden sea, and bathing
her, as she sat at the table, in a flood of dancing sunbeams.

It was so hard to sit there reading, trying in vain to dig out the heart
of some book of old stories, sagas and the like, or struggling
helplessly to understand a poem written in lovely but surely
incomprehensible metaphors, and full of words which, though she realized
their beauty, still conveyed little to her intelligence.

Herrick had perhaps slightly over-estimated her powers. He had never
before come in contact with quite such an undeveloped mind. His own
married life had been too short for him to grasp fully the
characteristics of his wife, and although in some respects she had not
been unlike Toni, she had been differently educated. Her mind had
perhaps little depth, but she was quick and versatile; and owing to her
surroundings she had been able, always, to adopt the shibboleth of the
social set to which she belonged by right of birth.

So it was that Herrick, with all his sympathy, all his intuition, failed
to plumb the shallows of Toni's mind. He gave her Rossetti when he
should have given her Ella Wheeler Wilcox; and George Eliot when he
should have introduced her to Jane Austen and her gentle sister, Miss
Burney. The "Idylls of the King," clothed in Tennyson's poetic garments,
would have won her interest--instead he advised her to read Malory, and
read him she obediently did, until her brain ached with the clash of
swords