The Inner Woods
In the fireplace there were birch logs ready to be kindled. At her suggestion he put a match to them for the cheeriness they gave while she lighted a green shaded lamp which radiated a soft glow over the heavy mahogany library table upon which it stood. The room slowly warmed out of the gloom and shadows as though the three walls closed in nearer to the fire. Just outside the radius of warmth the bookbindings shone gold in the dark. In a frame six inches deep the ghostly outlines of a portrait of Horace Arsdale flickered near and away as the flames rose and fell.
Miss Arsdale came to a chair a little to the left of Donaldson, brushing back from her eyes the soft hair which in the firelight shone like burnished copper. He smiled at the strange chance which led her to seat herself almost directly in front of the grandfather's clock, so that facing her he faced the pendulum which ticked out to him the cost of each new picture he had of her. It was now within a few minutes of midnight—one half of his first day gone before he had more than raised the glass to his lips. He felt for a moment the petulant annoyance of a man imposed upon—as though Time were playing him unfairly; until today the hours had dragged heavily enough; now they sped like arrows.
Facing her he faced the pendulum which ticked out to him the cost of each new picture he had of her
And yet he did not count the time as ill spent. Though he had anticipated nothing of this sort, he found himself enjoying the situation with as deep a satisfaction as anything which had so far occurred in the swift hours which had sped by since noon. Outside lay the quick-moving throngs which he so loved, in his room there waited for him the gentle marine, the bit of brown ivory, the luxury of deep blooming roses, and yet he was not conscious of missing them. Those things had been waiting for him all through the long tedious years, and this—well perhaps this, too, had been waiting for him. He wondered if this effect was produced by the surroundings which were much as he would have chosen them if he had possessed the means from the first. The sober good taste of the room, its quiet richness, its air of being a part of several generations of men of culture pleased him.
He turned to the girl again. She too was one with this past of the room. The straight nose with its shell-like nostrils as sensitive to her thoughts as her eyes, the sharp cut corners of her mouth, and the fine hair over her white forehead dated back to women whose features had long been refined through their souls. All that he wished to crowd into a week, they had possessed for a hundred years or more. It showed even in this girl who had not yet come into the fulness of her womanhood.
She sat uneasily far forward on her chair, leaning toward the flames as though fearful of what might happen next. The light played upon her hair and her white face, making her seem almost a thing of some lighter, spirit world.
"I don't feel that I ought to detain you," she said, breaking the silence which he for his part would have been willing to continue, "but"—she looked up at him with a half-shamed smile—"I have n't the courage to refuse your kindness."