Miss Geraldine breakfasted an hour ago alone in her wing of the house; Miss Geraldine sent her compliments, and wanted to know if I would visit her in her own rooms after I had finished breakfast. He might take Miss Geraldine my compliments, and say that I would have much pleasure in doing so. He had better go at once. No, I required no more coffee. He went. Her compliments, indeed, and her wing of the house, I wonder why she didn't send her card. Yes, I would visit her just as often as I pleased--yet I would not if my visits didn't please. No, in that case I would drown myself in the moat, but there was no moat; well, in the big bath upstairs. And the way the old butler said, "Miss Geraldine" quite calmly, though he knows Miss Geraldine is a boy; and she is a boy, and she ought to be smacked for being such a prig. But why smack her when it's not her fault? No, it's James Wilder and the old butler that require smacking, and still--and still, these two old fools between them have produced, or helped to produce, this weird child, just as she is; and in all God's earth she is the most beautiful thing, and the most strange. She is like a thing made of mist, yet she is real; she is a ghost, yet one can touch her. What is she--what is he--who am I--I don't know--I don't want to know. Ha! I felt just then the claws of the little falcon pinching my wrist. That was the jumbling kind of stuff that ran through my head as I breakfasted; then, when I had finished, instead of going at once to find Geraldine's wing of the house, I hung about the room looking at the pictures, putting off my visit just as a person puts off a bite at a peach. At last I came. I seemed to know the way by instinct; there was no placard with "To Geraldine" on it, but I found Geraldine for all that. I crossed the hall and passed the picture gallery scarcely looking at the door. Then I lifted a heavy corded silk curtain, and found myself in a corridor. Upon my word, I thought I was in the Arabian Nights. Each side of the corridor was panelled, and on the cream white panels were painted flowers,--it was a regular flower-garden of painting. The roof was white, with coloured windows, each made in the shape of a fan. These stained glass fans were the prettiest things in the way of windows I had ever seen--so I thought. The corridor ended in a heavy curtain like the one at the other end; two doors stood on each side of the curtain. I chose the right hand door, for I guessed it belonged to the room she was in. I was right. I knocked. A voice cried, "Come in," and in I came.