ver of
the larger volume and the page bearing the woodcut, where a sort of
pocket was formed that had escaped our notice. Laid upon the table, the
little book rolled away from the girl's fingers and lay curled upon
itself in the lamplight. The limp morocco cover was spotted with mildew
and half-revealed pages of close, fine writing blotched in places with
rusty stains. It gave out an odor of mould and age in an atmosphere made
sweet by Desire's presence.

Phillida, who had been silent even when Vere left her to go upstairs,
shrank away from the book on the table. She darted a glance over her
shoulder at the curtained windows behind her.

"Drawls, I cannot help what everybody thinks of me," she said
plaintively. "I am cold. The fire is ready laid in the grate. Will you
put a match to it, please?"

No one smiled at the request. Her husband uttered some soothing phrase
of compliance. We all looked on while the flame caught and began to
creep up among the apple-logs. Bagheera rose and changed his position to
one before the hearth. When Vere stood erect, Desire leaned toward him.

"Will you read, aloud, sir?" she asked of him, and made a gesture toward
the morocco book.

She surprised us all by that choice. I was unreasoning enough to feel
slighted, although the task was one for which I felt a strong dislike. I
fancied Vere liked the idea no better, from his expression. However, he
offered no demur, but sat down at the table and began to flatten the
warped pages that perversely sprang back and clung about his fingers.
Desire slowly turned her lovely eyes to me, eyes that looked by gift of
nature as if their long corners had been brushed with kohl. She said
nothing, yet somehow conveyed her meaning and intent. I understood that
she did not wish to hear me read those pages; that it was painful to her
that they should be read at all.

Vere was ready. He glanced around our circle, then began with the simple
directness that gave him a dignity peculiarly his own.

"'Mistress Desire Michell, her booke, Beginning at the nineteenth year
of her Age,'" he read, in his leisurely voice.

The living Desire Michell and I were regarding one another. I smiled at
the quaint wording, but she shuddered, and put her hands across her
eyes.

Yet there was nothing in those first pages except a girl's chronicle of
village life. This book evidently carried on a diary kept from early
childhood; a diary written out of loneliness. Apparently