"What strange books for a little girl! Who on earth recommended you these?"
"No one. I knew nothing at all about modern books, so I just sent for all and any I saw in the advertisements in the papers. Most of them are great rubbish, it seems to me, but there are one or two I like."
He did not speak for a few moments.
"All on philosophy! You ought to read novels at your age."
"I did get some in the beginning, but they seemed all untrue and mawkish, or sad and dramatic, and the heroines did such silly things, and the men were mostly brutes, so I have given them up. Unless I see the advertisement of a thrilling burglary or mystery story, I read those. They are not true, either, and one knows it, but they make one forget when it rains."
"All women profess to have a little taste for philosophy and beautifully bound Marcus Aureliuses, and Maximes, and love poems—clever little scraps covered in exquisite bindings. And one out of a thousand understands what the letter-press is about. I am weary of seeing the same on every boudoir-table, and yet some of them are delightful books in themselves. You have none of these, I see."
He picked up the La Rochefoucauld.
"Yes, here is one, but this is an old edition." He turned to the title-leaf and read the date, then looked at the cover. It is bound in brown leather and has the same arms and coronet upon it that my chatelaine has—the arms of Ambrosine Eustasie de Calincourt and an "A. E. de C." entwined, all tooled in faded gold.
"The arms on my knife!" Antony said, pulling it from his waistcoat-pocket and comparing them.
"My knife," I said.