"Miss Marriott," the duke answered, "I want to know all sorts of things which I have never known before. I've always been boxed up, so to say. Life has been rather a monotonous procession for me up to the present. Now I am simply greedy and eager for new sensations."
"Then, come along," the girl answered; "come along, and I will show you the mechanism by which we produce our effects."
"Oh, no," the duke answered, "you cannot show me that, Miss Marriott, at all. You can show me a mere mechanism which surrounds and assists art. That is all you can show me. It will be in the future that you will show me art itself."
She looked at him with a quiet, considering eye, forgetting for a moment who he was: "Do you know," she said, "I think you must be an artist."
The duke looked at her rather strangely.
CHAPTER XV THE MANUSCRIPT IN THE LIBRARY
The high wall which shields the great palace of the Dukes of Paddington from the gaze of the ordinary passer-by is broken in its centre by the treble ornamental gates of ironwork. They are gates with a history, but they are gates which very few Londoners of the present generation have ever seen opened. But about fifty feet to the right of the central entrance there is a little green door set in the thickness of the high brick wall, with a shining bell-push in the lintel. It is through this door that people who have business with the ducal house, now so void and empty of living interest, enter and make acquaintance with the great courtyard in front of the façade.
The big gates during the last few days had been open for several hours each morning and afternoon, while a policeman had been stationed by them. Carts full of building materials had been driven in, while the gap in the wall, which had been made by the bomb, was built up and repaired.