"We." Randolph looked more intently. Housekeeping _à deux_? A roommate? Matrimony? Here was the intrusion of another piece on the board--a piece new and unexpected. Would it turn out to be an added interest for himself, or a plain source of disconcertment? Cope, having unconsciously set the ball rolling, gave it further impetus. He sketched his absent friend and told of their plans for the winter and spring terms. "I shall try for a large easy chair," he concluded, "unless Arthur can be induced to bring one with him." Randolph, by this time, had led Cope into the den, established him between padded arms, and given him a cigar. He drew Cope's attention to the jades and swordguards, to the odd assortment of primitive musical instruments (which would doubtless, in time, find a place at the Art Museum in the city), and to his latest acquisition--a volume of Bembo's "Le Prose." It had reached him but a week before from Venice,--"_in Venetia, al segno del Pozzo_, MDLVII," said the title-page, in fact. It was bound in vellum, pierced by bookworms, and was decorated, in quaint seventeenth-century penmanship, with marginal annotations, and also, on the fly leaves, with repeated honorifics due to a study of the forms of address by some young aspirant for favor. Randolph had rather depended on it to take Cope's interest; but now the little _envoi_ from the Lagoons seemed lesser in its lustre. Cope indeed took the volume with docility and looked at its classical title-page and at its quaint Biblical colophon; but, "Just who _was_ 'Pietro Bembo'?" he asked; and Randolph realized, with a slight shock, that young instructors teach only what they themselves lately have learned, and that, in many cases, they have not learned much. But in truth neither paid much heed to the tabulated vocables of the Venetian cardinal--nor to any of the other rarities near by. Basil Randolph was wondering how he was to take Arthur Lemoyne, and was asking himself if his trouble in setting up a new ménage was likely to go for nothing; and Bertram Cope, while he pursued the course of the bookworm through the parchment covers and the yellowed sheets within, was wondering in what definite way his host might aid the fortunes of Arthur Lemoyne and thus make matters a little easier for them both. "_All' ill.'mo Sig.'r paron ossevnd.'mo.... All' ill.'mo et ecc.'mo Sig.'r paron... All' ill'mo et R.R.d.'mo Sig.'r, Sig.'r Pio. Francesco Bembo, Vesco et Conte di Belluno_"--thus ran the faded brown lines on the flyleaf, in their solicitous currying of favor; but these reiterated forms of address conveyed no meaning to Cope, and offered no opening: now, as once before, he let the matter wait. Randolph thought over Cope's statement of his plans, and his slight touch of pique did not pass away. Toward the end of the evening, he spoke of the wreck and the rescue, after all. "Well," he said, "you are not so completely committed as I feared." "Committed?"