In his room, however, re-establishing his sense of comfort, he found, on a low table by the bed, a choice of whiskies, charged water, cigarettes, nectarines, orange-brown mangoes, and black Belgian grapes, Attached to an electric plug was a small coffee percolator; for the morning, Lee gathered. His pajamas, his dressing gown and slippers, were conveniently laid at his hand. He was, in fact, so comfortable that he had no desire to get into bed; and he sat smoking, over a tall drink, speculating about his hostess. Perhaps she had difficulties with the obdurate correctness of William; but Mrs. Grove would have been too well-steeled there to show any resentment to a virtual stranger; no, whatever it was lay within herself. He gave it up, since, he proclaimed aloud, it didn't touch him. The opened windows admitted the vast unsubdued clamor of New York; the immeasurable force of the city seemed to press in upon the room, upon his thoughts. How different it was from the open countryside, the quiet scene, of his home in Eastlake. There the lowing of a chance cow robbed of her calf, her udder aching, the diminishing barking of dogs and the birds--sparrows in winter and robins in the spring--were the only sounds that disturbed the dark. In the morning the farmer above Lee rolled the milk down the road, past his window, on a carrier, and the milk cans made a sudden rattle and ringing. Then Christopher washed the porches. Fanny, no matter how late she had been up the night before, was dressed by eight o'clock, and put fresh flowers in the vase. He hazarded the guess that Mrs. Grove was often in bed until past noon; here servants renewed the great hot-house roses with long stems, the elaborate flowers on the dining-table. In the morning, as he had foreseen, the percolator was connected, cream and sugar placed beside it; and before his shaving was over, he had a cup of coffee with a cigarette casting up its fragrant smoke from the saucer. His shoes might have been lacquered from the heighth of the lustre rubbed into them; a voice the perfection of trained sympathetic concern inquired for the exacted details of the suspended preparation of his eggs. * * * * * His dinner engagement with Mina Raff, arranged through her secretary, was for fifteen minutes past seven; and, meanwhile, as Mrs. Grove had offered, Adamson drove Lee down-town. The afternoon had nearly gone before he returned to East Sixty-sixth Street; but the maid at the door told him that there was tea up in the library. This he found to be a long gloomy room finished in a style which, he decided, might be massively Babylonian. A ponderous table for the support of weightless trifles filled the middle of the rug; there were deep chairs of roan leather, with an immense sofa like the lounge of a club or steamer; low bookcases with leaded glass; and windows the upper panes of which were stained in peacock colors and geometrical design.