The shelf that she undertook next had another air. To Hagar each case had its own air, and each shelf its own air, and each book its own air. "Blair's Rhetoric"--she had read some of that, but she didn't want it to-day. "Pilgrim's Progress"--she knew that by heart. "Burke's Speeches"--"Junius"--she had read "Junius," as she had read many another thing simply because it was there, and a book was a book. She had read it without much understanding, but she liked the language. Milton--she knew a great part of Milton, but to-day she didn't want poetry. Poetry was for when you were happy. Scott--on another day Scott might have sufficed, but to-day she wanted something new--so new and so interesting that it would make the hard, unhappy feeling go away. She stepped from the hassock upon the chair and began to study the titles of the books on almost the top shelf.... There was one in the corner, quite out of sight unless you were on a chair, right up here, face to face with the shelf. The book was even pushed back as though it had retired--or had been retired--behind its fellows so as to be out of danger, or, perhaps, out of the way of being dangerous. Hagar put in her slender, sun-browned hand and drew it forward until she could read the legend on the back--"The Descent of Man." She drew it quite forth, and bringing both hands into play opened it. "By Charles Darwin." She turned the leaves. There were woodcuts--cuts that exercised a fascination. She glanced at the first page: "He who wishes to decide whether man is the modified descendant of some preëxisting form--" Hagar turned upon the chair and looked about her. The room was a desert for solitude and balmy quiet. Distantly, through the closed parlour doors, came Miss Serena's rendering of "Monastery Bells." She knew that her grandfather was down the river, and that her grandmother was making raspberry jam. She knew that the Bishop was in his room, and that Mrs. LeGrand was out under the cedars. Uncle Bob did not count anyway--he rarely asked embarrassing questions. She may have hesitated one moment, but no more. She got down from the chair, put it back against the wall, closed the bookcase door, and taking the "Descent of Man" with her went over to the old, worn horsehair sofa and curled herself up at the end in a cool and slippery hollow. A gold-dust shaft, slipping through the window, lit her hair, the printed page, and the slim, long-fingered hand that clasped it.