"Of course not!" Vivian cordially agreed with him. "You must have lovely times here. I don't wonder you appreciate it!" and she smiled so sweetly that he felt at ease again.
Beneath all this cheery good will and the gay chatter of the group her quick sense caught an impression of something hidden and repressed. She felt the large and quiet beauty of the rooms; the smooth comfort, the rational, pleasant life; but still more she felt a deep keynote of loneliness.
The pictures told her most. She noted one after another with inward comment.
"There's 'Persepolis,'" she said to herself—"loneliness incarnate; and that other lion-and-ruin thing,—loneliness and decay. Gerome's 'Lion in the Desert,' too, the same thing. Then Daniel—more lions, more loneliness, but power. 'Circe and the Companions of Ulysses'—cruel, but loneliness and power again—of a sort. There's that 'Island of Death' too—a beautiful thing—but O dear!—And young Burne-Jones' 'Vampire' was in one of the bedrooms—that one he shut the door of!"
While they ate and drank in the long, low-ceiled wide-windowed room below, she sought the bookcases and looked them over curiously. Yes—there was Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Plato, Emerson and Carlisle—the great German philosophers, the French, the English—all showing signs of use.
Dr. Hale observed her inspection. It seemed to vaguely annoy him, as if someone were asking too presuming questions.
"Interested in philosophy, Miss Lane?" he asked, drily, coming toward her.
"Yes—so far as I understand it," she answered.
"And how far does that go?"
She felt the inference, and raised her soft eyes to his rather reproachfully.