“Does she indeed?” said the Prophet, feeling thoroughly overwhelmed.
“She desires me to take you to her at once, sir, there to confer and”—he lowered his voice and trembled visibly—“to arrange measures for the protection of my life.”
The Prophet found himself wishing that he had been less precipitate in covertly alluding to Sir Tiglath’s long desire of assault and battery, but before he had time to wish anything for more than half a minute, Mr. Sagittarius had guided him ceremoniously across the hall and was turning the handle of a door that was decorated with black and scarlet paint.
“Here, sir,” he whispered, “you will find Madame surrounded by the authors whom she loves, by their portraits, their biographies and their writings. Here she communes with the great philosophers, sir, the poets, the historians and the humourists of the entire world, from the earliest days down to this very moment—in Persian calf, sir.”
He gazed awfully at the Prophet, and gently opened the door of this temple of the intellect.
The Prophet expected to find himself ushered into a gigantic chamber, lined from floor to ceiling with shelves that groaned beneath their burden of the literature of genius. Indeed he had, in fancy, beheld even the chairs and couches covered with stacks of volumes, the very floor littered with the choicest productions of the brains of the dead and living. His surprise was, therefore, very great when, on passing through the door, he beheld Madame Sagittarius reposing at full length upon a maroon sofa in a small apartment, whose bare walls, were entirely innocent of book-shelves. Indeed the only thing of the sort which was visible was a dwarf revolving bookcase which stood beside the sofa, and contained some twenty volumes bound, as Mr. Sagittarius had stated, in Persian calf, each of these volumes being numbered and adorned with a label on which was printed in letters of gold, “The Library of Famous Literature: Edited by Dr. Carter. Tasty Tit-bits from all Times.”
“Madame, sir, in her library,” whispered Mr. Sagittarius by the door. “She is absorbed, sir, and does not notice us.”
In truth Madame Sagittarius did appear to be absorbed in thought, or something else, for her eyes were closed, her mouth was open, and a sound of regular breathing filled the little room.
“She is thinking out some problem, sir,” continued Mr. Sagittarius. “She is communing with the mighty dead. Sophronia, my love, Sophronia, Capricornus has brought the gentleman according to your orders. Sophy! Sophy!”
His final utterances, which were somewhat strident caused Madame Sagittarius to come away from her communion with the mighty dead with a loud ejaculation of the nature of a snort combined with a hissing whistle, to kick up her indoor kid boots into the air, turn upon her right elbow, and present a countenance marked with patches of red and white, and a pair of goggling, and yet hazy, eyes to the intruders upon her intellectual exertions.