He did not follow her, but acting on the sudden impulse of his mind he entered the house and went up to Innocent's deserted room. He opened the door hesitatingly,--the little study, in its severe simplicity and neatness, looked desolate--like an empty shrine from which the worshipped figure had been taken. He trod softly across the floor, hushing his footsteps, as though some one slept whom he feared to wake, and his eyes wandered from one familiar object to another till they rested on the shelves where the old vellum-bound books, which Innocent had loved and studied so much, were ranged in orderly rows. Taking one or two of them out he glanced at their title-pages;--he knew that most of them were rare and curious, though his Oxford training had not impressed him with as great a love of things literary as it might or should have done. But he realised that these strange black-letter and manuscript volumes were of unique value, and that their contents, so difficult to decipher, were responsible for the formation of Innocent's guileless and romantic spirit, colouring her outlook on life with a glamour of rainbow brilliancy which, though beautiful, was unreal. One quaint little book he opened had for its title--"Ye Whole Art of Love, Setting Forth ye Noble Manner of Noble Knights who woulde serve their Ladies Faithfullie in Death as in Lyfe"--this bore the date of 1590. He sighed as he put it back in its place. "Ah, well," he said, half aloud, "these books are hers, and I'll keep them for her--but I believe they've done her a lot of mischief, and I don't love them! They've made her see the world as it is not--and life as it never will be! And she has got strange fancies into her head--fancies which she will run after like a child chasing pretty butterflies--and when the butterflies are caught, they die, much to the child's surprise and sorrow! My poor little Innocent! She has gone out alone into the world, and the world will break her heart! Oh dearest little love, come back to me!" He sat down in her vacant chair and covered his face with his hands, giving himself up to the relief of unwitnessed tears. Above his head shone the worn glitter of the old armoured device of the "Sieur Amadis" with its motto--"Mon coeur me soutien"--and only a psychist could have thought or imagined it possible that the spirit of the old French knight of Tudor times might still be working through clouds of circumstance and weaving the web of the future from the torn threads of the past. And when Robin had regained his self-possession and had left the room, there was yet a Presence in its very emptiness,--the silent assertion of an influence which if it had been given voice and speech might have said--"Do what you consider is your own will and intention, but _I_ am still your Master!--and all your thoughts and wishes are but the reflex of MY desire!"