"Yes, I've read that book."
"You must tell him if you liked it—they all care to hear that—and he'll see that you meet men of your own kind." For looking at her he had been able to give her words little attention. She had revealed herself anew in the dull white of a gown that brought out the elusive glow of her face. Her eyes were deep wells, shaded but luminous, under the lusterless dark of her hair, and her smile flashed a girlish benignity upon him. Acutely alive was he to the line of neck and shoulder and arm, a slender, supple neck, set on shoulders superbly but lightly modeled, the small collarbone exquisitely muffled but not lost, and the little hollow at the base of her throat prettily definite. And all was white and lusterless save the warning dusk of her eyes and the flash from her parting lips.
With such cold passion for line did his artist's eye wreak its joy upon her that, as she talked, she found herself thinking him curiously dull to the prospect she opened. It was the impersonal look she had come to know; and his replies were languid, as if he thought of other matters. It might have passed for the bored ease of a man of the world had she not known him to be amid novel surroundings.
Feeling a slight discomfort under his look, she at length diverted his eyes to the room in which they sat.
"It's the room I like best in all the house," she said. "That big drawing room you came through is inhuman. It terrified me as a child, and still refuses to make friends with me, but this library—don't you feel that I've humanized it?"
He became aware that he had felt its easing charm of dark-toned wood and dull-red walls. There were low book-shelves, low seats that invited, a broad table with its array of magazines, and a lazy fire in the open grate.
"It's a fine room to be in," he said, bringing his eyes back to her.
"There's not a chair in it," she continued, "that wasn't meant to be sat in—most chairs nowadays are mere spectacles, you know—and no glass doors before the books. Nothing enrages me like having to open a door to get at books."
"It's the room you need," he replied. "You draw all the light to yourself. It gives you color, turns your hair to black, and makes your eyes look like——"
"Mr. Piersoll!" announced the man.