“Well, perhaps you would like to go and see my husband. He’s in his study--straight up the steps and second on the left. He’ll be working, but he’ll be glad to see you, I daresay. He used to be very interested in you, didn’t he?” “I’ll go up and see him,” replied Catherine quietly. She ascended the steps and found her way to the door of his study. With some trepidation she knocked.... § 3 It was a large room facing the west. The sun shone drowsily on a table littered with papers and opened books. There was the piano which she had so often played in the music-room at “Claremont.” There were the same bookcases, with glass doors swung open, and the aperture between the tops of the books and the shelf above filled with letters and papers. That had always been one of his untidy habits. And scattered over all the available wallspace were disconnected fragments of shelving, sagging in the middle if the span were wide, and piled high with longitudinal and horizontal groups of books. The old brown leather armchairs and the club-fender occupied positions in front of the fireplace. The carpet was thick, and littered here and there with the grey smudge of tobacco-ash and scraps of torn paper that had escaped the meshes of the basket. The scene was curiously similar to that on which she had first seen him at “Claremont.” He was sitting in one of his armchairs with an adjustable reading bracket in front of him. She could see nothing of him, but a coil of rising smoke that straggled upwards from the back of the chair told her that he existed. She had knocked on the door before entering, and his voice had drawled its usual “Come in.” He had heard the door open and close again, but he did not look round. She knew this habit of his. Doubtless he would wait to finish the sentence or maybe the paragraph he was reading. She came across the intervening space and entered the limits within which his eye could not avoid seeing her. The sun caught her hair and flung it into radiance; she was glad of this, for it made her seem youthful again. She saw him for a fraction of a second before he caught sight of her. And a strange feeling of doubt, of perplexity--might it be even of disappointment?--touched upon her. He was the same, quite the same. And yet--there was a sense in which he was not as she expected. But she had not expected him to be very much changed. It was only a passing phase that swept across her--hardly to be understood, much less explained. But she felt it, and it surprised her. When he saw her he opened his eyes very wide and stared. Then he pushed back the book-rest and rose from his chair. All the time she was watching him narrowly. There was a queer phase during which neither of them moved or attempted to move. And then, the tension becoming too great to be borne, she gave her head a little toss and said: “Well?”