The silence of the room seemed emphasized by the presence of its occupant; he was one who under no circumstances was likely to disturb the serenity of a house. In most cases a single room takes on the character of the one who inhabits it; this is invariably the case where the apartment is in the possession of a woman; but turn a man loose in a room, and leave him to himself for a season, and he will have made of that room a witness strong enough to condemn or condone him on the Last Day; the whole character of the place will gradually change until it has become an index to the man's nature; where this is not the case, the man is without noticeable characteristics. Those who knew Paul Clitheroe, the solitary at the Eyrie, would at once recognize this room as his abode; those of his friends who saw this room for the first time, without knowing it to be his home, would say: "Paul Clitheroe would fit in here." A kind of harmonious incongruity was the chief characteristic of the man and his solitary lodging. He sat for some time as silent as the inanimate objects in that singularly silent room. An occasional turn of the wrist, the momentary flash of the ash at the end of his cigarette, the smoke-wreath floating in space--those were all that gave assurance of life; for when this solitary returned into his well-chosen solitude he seemed to shed all that was of the earth earthy, and to become a kind of spectre in a dream. Having finished his cigarette, Paul withdrew into the conservatory, his sleeping room, half doll's house and half bower, where the ivy had crept over the top of the casement and covered his ceiling with a web of leaves. Shortly he was reposing upon his pillow, over which his holy-water font--a large crimson heart of crystal with flames of burnished gold, set upon a tablet of white marble--seemed almost to pulsate in the exquisite half-lights of approaching dawn. It may not have been manly, or even masculine, for him thus literally to curtain his sleep, like a faun, with ivy; it may not have been orthodox for him to admit to his Valhalla some of the false Gods, and to honor them after a fashion; the one true God was duly adored, and all his saints appealed to in filial faith. That was his nature and past changing; if he could not look upon God as a Jealous God visiting His judgments with fanatical justice upon the witted and half-witted, it was because his was a nature which had never been warped by the various social moral and religious influences brought to bear upon it. He may have lacked judgment, in the eyes of the world, but he had never suffered seriously in consequence. It may not have been wise for him to fondly nourish tastes and tendencies that were usually quite beyond his means; but he did it, and doing it afforded him the greatest pleasure in life.