Then, while Dorothy still prepared tea, she moved from the window and walked to the little shelf of books that occupied the recess on the farther side of the fireplace. She took down a volume protected by a stout brown paper wrapper and began to read as she stood. Still reading, she sidled slowly back to the window, where the light was better, and mechanically turned the page. She could always pick up a book and lose herself at a moment's notice like this. If at such times she was spoken to, she usually gave an "Eh?" or a "Yes--no, I mean," and continued to read. She considered it to be evidence of her powers of mental concentration. The book she was reading now was the first volume of _The Golden Bough_. Such a book, of course, was far too expensive for her to buy; therefore, in order that she might read it and its kind, she subscribed to a sort of private Association which was composed of herself and a dozen or so of her old friends of the McGrath. They bought the books as they were published, passed them (protected by the brown paper covers) from one to another, and after a time sold them back to the bookseller again at diminished (but still quite good) prices. None but rather expensive and abstruse books were thus bought; had _The Golden Bough_ been procurable in the Bohn Library the Association would have felt that something of its choiceness had gone; and Amory hoped, when she had got through _The Golden Bough_, to be the next in rotation for certain of the Tudor Translations, and she did wish Laura Beamish would hurry up with _Apuleius and the Golden Ass_. These things contributed to breadth of outlook. It had for too long been a justly-founded reproach against artists that they had no general culture. Amory felt that, of all people, an artist certainly could not know too much; and what an artist knows will go, sooner or later, into his or her art.... She was still deep in _The Golden Bough_ when Dorothy called, "Ready--come along, Amory----" Reluctantly Amory laid aside the book and sat down at the little gate-legged table. As the two girls took tea they talked of Miss Geraldine Towers's engagement, of Amory's own plans after the wedding, of the Exhibition that for various reasons Mr. Hamilton Dix had repeatedly postponed, and of one thing and another. Then Dorothy rose. She must get back to the fashion studio in Oxford Street. "You're going to work, I suppose?" she said, as she tucked the Doubleday thing into her belt and adjusted her hat before the little kitchen mirror.