ed onto the street, giving a
plain view of the bookshop and the other houses across the way. A
wash-stand stood modestly inside a large cupboard. Over the mantel was
the familiar picture--usually, however, reserved for the fourth floor
back--of a young lady having her shoes shined by a ribald small boy.

Aubrey was delighted. "This is fine," he said. "Here's a week in
advance."

Mrs. Schiller was almost disconcerted by the rapidity of the
transaction. She preferred to solemnize the reception of a new lodger
by a little more talk--remarks about the weather, the difficulty of
getting "help," the young women guests who empty tea-leaves down
wash-basin pipes, and so on. All this sort of gossip, apparently
aimless, has a very real purpose: it enables the defenceless landlady
to size up the stranger who comes to prey upon her. She had hardly had
a good look at this gentleman, nor even knew his name, and here he had
paid a week's rent and was already installed.

Aubrey divined the cause of her hesitation, and gave her his business
card.

"All right, Mr. Gilbert," she said. "I'll send up the girl with some
clean towels and a latchkey."

Aubrey sat down in a rocking chair by the window, tucked the muslin
curtain to one side, and looked out upon the bright channel of Gissing
Street. He was full of the exhilaration that springs from any change
of abode, but his romantic satisfaction in being so close to the
adorable Titania was somewhat marred by a sense of absurdity, which is
feared by young men more than wounds and death. He could see the
lighted windows of the Haunted Bookshop quite plainly, but he could not
think of any adequate excuse for going over there. And already he
realized that to be near Miss Chapman was not at all the consolation he
had expected it would be. He had a powerful desire to see her. He
turned off the gas, lit his pipe, opened the window, and focussed the
opera glasses on the door of the bookshop. It brought the place
tantalizingly near. He could see the table at the front of the shop,
Roger's bulletin board under the electric light, and one or two
nondescript customers gleaning along the shelves. Then something
bounded violently under the third button of his shirt. There she was!
In the bright, prismatic little circle of the lenses he could see
Titania. Heavenly creature, in her white V-necked blouse and brown
skirt, there she was looking at a book. He saw her put out one arm and