Through a door marked "Private" Mr. Cannon introduced Hilda straight into his own room; then shut the door on her. He held in one hand a large calf-bound volume, from which evidently he was expounding something to Mr. Karkeek. The contrast between the expensive informality of Mr. Cannon's new suit and the battered ceremoniousness of Mr. Karkeek's struck her just as much as the contrast between their demeanours; and she felt, vaguely, the oddness of the fact that the name of the deferential Mr. Karkeek, and not the name of the commanding Mr. Cannon, should be upon the door-plates and the wire-blinds of the establishment. But of course she was not in a position to estimate the full significance of this remarkable phenomenon. Further, though she perfectly remembered her mother's observations upon Mr. Cannon's status, they did not in the slightest degree damage him in her eyes--when once those eyes had been set on him again. They seemed to her inessential. The essential, for her, was the incontestable natural authority and dignity of his bearing. She sat down, self-consciously, in the chair--opposite the owner's chair--which she had occupied at her first visit, and thus surveyed, across the large flat desk, all the ranged documents and bundles with the writing thereon upside down. There also was his blotting-pad, and his vast inkstand, and his pens, and his thick diary. The disposition of the things on the desk seemed to indicate, sharply and incontrovertibly, that orderliness, that inexorable efficiency, which more than aught else she admired in the external conduct of life. The spectacle satisfied her, soothed her, and seemed to explain the attractiveness of Mr. Cannon. Immediately to her left was an open bookcase almost filled with heavy volumes. The last of a uniform row of Law Reports was absent from its place--being at that moment in the corridor, in the hands of Mr. Cannon. The next book, a thin one, had toppled over sideways and was bridging the vacancy at an angle; several other similar thin books filled up the remainder of the shelf. She stared, with the factitious interest of one who is very nervously awaiting an encounter, at the titles, and presently deciphered the words, 'Victor Hugo,' on each of the thin volumes. Her interest instantly became real. Characteristically abrupt and unreflecting, she deposited her basket on the floor and, going to the bookcase, took out the slanting volume. Its title was _Les Rayons et Les Ombres_. She opened it by hazard at the following poem, which had no heading and which stood, a small triptych of print, rather solitary in the lower half of a large white page: