Blanchard Cayley strolled into the Mercantile Library, one afternoon, and, nodding to the clerk at the desk, walked to an alcove in the corner of the main hall. He stopped at a shelf and sat down on a stool. He had done this several afternoons a week for years, going through the library as a business man takes account of stock, examining every book in order. Of some he read only the titles, glancing perhaps also at the date of the edition; of some he looked over the table of contents. Others he read, nibbling here and there. A few he took home. He had, by this time, almost exhausted the list. He read, not like a bookworm, with relish and zest, nor like a student desirous of a mastery of his subject; he read, as he did everything, even to his love-making, deliberately, accurately, with an elaborate scientific method that was, in its intricacy, something of a game, whose rules he alone knew. He had, indeed, specialized, taking up such subjects as jade, Japanese poetry, Esperanto, higher space, Bahiism, and devil-worship, and in such subjects he had what is termed "lore," but his main object was the conquest of the whole library in itself.
This afternoon he did not read long. Looking over the top of his book, as was his custom from time to time, to discover what women were present, he caught sight of Clytie Payson in the alcove containing the government reports. He replaced his volume and went over to her.
She was in high spirits, and welcomed him cordially, as if she had but just come from something interesting and stimulating; another man's smile seemed still to linger with her.
"Why, how d'you do, Blanchard?" she said. "I haven't seen you here for a long time. What has happened? Have you finished the library yet?"
"Oh, no, not quite. I've still a few more shelves to do, but I've been studying psychology on the side."
She looked at him with an indulgence that was new to him. "In petticoats, I presume, then?"
He shrugged his shoulders. "No, I've been studying a man," he said. "What are you doing?"
She overlooked the purport of his question and answered lightly, "Oh, only looking up some statistics for father. I've been coming here quite often, lately, but I'm almost finished, now. Is there anything in the world duller than a statistic? I always think of the man who went for information to a statistician at Washington and was asked, 'What d'you want to prove?'"
"How is your father getting on with the book?"
Clytie grew a little more serious. "Why, father's queer lately. I can't understand him at all. He's taken up with some spiritualists, and I'm rather worried about it."