d amused her to find that she had imagined it quite correctly; and
when she reached the landing to which she had been directed, she
stopped, hearing his voice. He was only talking to himself; she pushed
the door and called to him.

"Oh, it is you?" he said; "you have come sooner than I expected."

"Then you expected me, Ulick?"

"Yes, I expected you."

"Expected me ...to-day! But, Ulick, what were you saying when I came
in?"

"Only some Kabbalistic formula," he replied, quite naturally.

"But you don't really believe in such superstitions, and it surely is
very wrong."

He looked at her incredulously, as he might at some beautiful apparition
likely at any moment to vanish from his sight, then reverentially drew
her towards him and kissed her. Her hand was laid on his shoulder, and
in a delicious apprehension she stood looking at him.

"Where shall we sit?"

He threw some books and papers from a long cane chair, and she lay down
in it. He sat on the arm, and then tried to talk.

"Let me take your hat."

She unpinned it, and he placed it on the piano.

His room was lighted by two square windows looking on the open space in
front of the square, where the vagrant children gathered in noisy groups
round a dripping iron fountain. The floor was covered with grey-green
drugget, and near the fireplace, drawn in front of the window, was a
large oak table covered with papers of various kinds. Against the end
wall there was a bookcase, and there were shelves filled with books.
There were two arm-chairs, a piano, and some prints of Blake's
illustrations to Dante on the wall. The writing table, covered with
manuscript music, roused Evelyn's curiosity. She glanced down a page of
orchestration, and then picked up the first pages of an article, and
having read them she said--

"How severe you are in your articles. You are gentler in your music,
more like yourself; but I see your servant does not waste her time
dusting your books ...and that is your bedroom, may I see it?"

He looked at her abashed. "I am afraid my room will seem to you very
unluxurious. I have read of prima donnas' bed-rooms."

But the bare simplicity of the room did not displease her; it seemed to
her more natural to sleep in a low, narrow bed like his, than in fine
linen and eiderdown quilts, and she liked the scant, bleak furniture,
the two chairs, the iron wash-hand stand, and the window curtained with
a bit of Indian muslin. They stood talking, h