"It's his lordship's way to think of things," the discreet answer came impersonally.
Robin looked slowly round the small and really quite wonderful room.
"You know I said that, the first night we came here."
"Yes?" Dowie answered.
Robin turned her eyes upon her. They were no longer hollowed, but they still looked much too large.
"Dowie," she said. "He knows things."
"He always did," said Dowie. "Some do and some don't."
"He knows things—as Donal does. The secret things you can't talk about—the meaning of things."
She went on as if she were remembering bit by bit. "When we were in the Wood in the dark, he said the first thing that made my mind begin to move—almost to think. That was because he knew. Knowing things made him send the book."
The fact was that he knew much of which it was not possible for him to speak, and in passing a shop window he had been fantastically arrested by a mere pair of small sleeves—the garment to which they belonged having by chance so fallen that they seemed to be tiny arms holding themselves out in surrendering appeal. They had held him a moment or so staring and then he had gone into the shop and asked for their catalogue.