“I hope I shall never disappoint you, ma’am,” he told her. “No. If I owned all that I don’t think I should care for it. I esteem those things down there for taking their chance. Tourists hardly ever hurt them. It’s the wet that does most harm; the winter wet—sluicing mists, rotting rains—” She touched his arm—nearly stopped the walk.
“I can’t keep it up,” she said. “I have tried, but it’s not to be done. I knew, afterwards, that you did these things. Hertha de Speyne told me. Are you angry?”
He looked closely at her—not at all angrily.
“You talked me over with her, did you?” She blushed.
“Among other people. I know that you were with the Cantacutes the summer before last.” Then, with a sudden memory, she stopped again, almost took his arm.
“Did you see—do you know a white cottage—right up on the cliff? A green roof?”
His eyes twinkled. “Rats’ Castle! Rather. It has sheltered me more nights than one.”
Her lips pressed together as she nodded her head. “I might have known that. I beg your pardon.” Thinking of what she was to speak, presently she told him in a grave voice that she intended to live in that cottage—“before I die.”
He took that calmly. “You might do worse.”
He had come to London, he said, to supply his needs—to sell some pictures in Cranbourne-street, and to see some books. His library was in Bloomsbury; she gathered, the British Museum. He wanted “Aristophanes,” the “Arabian Nights.” He had nearly everything else. Narrow inquiry revealed his tastes. He owned two books. “Don Quixote” was one, “Mangnall’s Questions” the other. No—Bible? No. “Don Quixote” was better than the Bible, because it was our own. We were not Orientals—at least not now. Everything that a man could need for his moral and spiritual supplies was in “Don Quixote”—religion, poetry, gorgeous laughter, good store of courage, wisdom, fortitude. Mangnall was enough for the rest. Old-fashioned, perhaps: but then he, Senhouse, was old-fashioned. “I always read “Don Quixote” before I say my prayers.”